The waving of flags
I'm sure it's escaped very few of us that today is September 11th. In Catalonia at least, that makes it a day for waving flags.As I look from my balcony I see flags adorning terraces, cars, passers by, other balconies. The Catalan flag has four red stripes, said to represent the smeared blood on the shield of a long lost warrior. A warrior implies a battle which, in turn, implies a divide. Perhaps 'adorn' is the wrong word.
I don't like flags. I don't like my own country's, the (possibly soon to be revised) Union Jack any more than the Tricolour or the Keys of St. Peter.
Flags only seem to have the power to divide us. They divide us along ethnic, national and religious lines and only serve to unite us in small, petty ways that ignore our common humanity.
The only exceptions I can think of, and I'm happy to hear of others, are the rainbow flag and the CND. Even these flags, necessitated by bigotry and warmongering respectively, probably wouldn't exist in a perfect world.
When will we stop waving flags? I'm starting today.
Comments (7)
Show me a 'true' flag representing all the people 'under' and, more importantly, not under it.... then we can talk about the false ones!
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung."
If the shoe fits..,
Thanks for the solidarity.
Divisive is indeed the word!
I'm something of a quote butcherer myself - so many half remembered pearls of wisdom!