National Shame

MikeUpNorth

I think some of the emotion is a bit like the gambling addiction feelings. We have a team which we support, we could just walk away now, but there's always that feeling that "my numbers might come up in the next draw, I best keep playing". So we do. And then when are numbers really do come up and we win something, "hooray for me, what a good decision it was to keep playing!"

Of course in football it's a lot more complicated, but I think that's the base emotion.

Plechazunga

We've picked good numbers, happily

But to me the football support feeling is pretty similar to the national pride thing. When England looks good, it gives me a vicarious sense of pride, as if I were somehow implicated in the success. Whereas something like the Iraq war makes me feel ashamed. The feelings aren't that strong, probably cos I'm not very Nationalist... but they're there. Do you not experience that at all Mike?

MikeUpNorth

I feel no shame for the Iraq war, I was opposed to it. I'm not nationalistic at all though. In an ideal world I would rather there was no such thing as nations.

Plechazunga

What about Shakespeare, or the Beatles? Do you feel any pride in them, that people from your scrap of land have contributed so much to human culture?

MikeUpNorth

Uh, I don't think proud is the right word. Maybe I can relate to the Beatles more because their British, and so appreciate them more than if they were from say the US.

I'm proud of MY past, MY achievements, MY friends. I'm not proud of the achievements of people just because they happen to share the same country as me. I don't think it's that strange, I know a lot of people who feel this way.

Plechazunga

No, as I said I think it makes perfect sense, I even admire it. I'm just probing cos I'm interested.

MikeUpNorth

I'm quite interested in it as well. I cannot relate at all to what people are feeling when they go out and wave union jacks when Ellen Macarthur returns from a little sail. Sure go and support her, it's an achievement, but the "go on, do it for Britain" attitude leaves me totally cold. Similarly people who get to the top of a mountain and stick up a flag of their country, I have no idea why they do that.

Put it this way, I feel much more proud of the achievement of getting to the moon and back, even though it's not my country's achievement, than I do of anything British I can think of.

Plechazunga

I feel the same about Ellen Macarthur and planting flags. But I have to admit I feel a slight glow from the prestige that Shakespeare, say, has across the world. When I hear that Trinity College, Cambridge, alone has more nobel prizes than France, Holland and Italy put together, it gives me pleasure... it is ridiculous, I can see that, but there it is.

surf

Cecil Rhodes said that to be born an Englishman was to win the lottery of life. He was not wrong, in that the English are fortunate to be able to bask in the reflected glory of Shakespeare, Churchill and the rest. We can and do turn it to our advantage in countries like the USA where Anglophilia is common.

FresnoBob

If you want to complain/apologize/ignore the British Empire, consider that the creation of EMPIRE and the expansion of a single dominant "culture" is one of the most significant phenomena in history and, compared to the rest--from Babylon to the Third Reich and beyond (say, Dubya's Texas wet dream) the Empire created by those nasty little people from the small island off the coast of Ireland doesn't fare too badly in comparison to the rest--including the Romans, Ottomans, and 23 different dynasties in Egypt. Compare the "atrocities" in the Empire upon which the sun never set to those of any prior imperial entities, and you sorry little Limies look like whimps and candy-asses in comparison to those before you.
If you can't take pride in the fact that a bunch of short, irritable people from an island nation once ruled much of the globe and set in place the foundation for what is becoming the international language, an international market, and an international concept of human rights, tough. Maybe the problem isn't your forebears, but the fact that you are sitting on your rear end and not emulating them sufficiently in ambition and effort to make a real difference.

Plechazunga

Short?

Good post Fresno. But where do you stand on the corresponding shame issue? Doesn't have to be in relation to the Empire, or indeed England/Britain.

dRNk SAnTA

Plech, when you feel national pride is it towards Britain or England? Do you feel as proud of a Scottish person's achievement as you do for an English person? Is it better when the person is from your local area?

I think it is an interesting question about national shame. I reckon it's simply human nature to try to forget the bad, especially when it's just something in a history book.

I definitely feel national pride about all that, I would find it hard to relate to MikeUpNorths way of thinking.

brad-dyrak

I wouldn't go leaving context out of it. For me, an act of a state deserving of a value judgement (good or bad) is one that steps out of the moral context of its time. These are the acts truly deserving of our pride vs. shame.

An example of this sort of historical landmark would be as you mentioned, England's early abolition of slavery, setting a trend towards a universal emancipation. By beating the rest of the west to the ideal of abolition, they rose above and beyond the moral norms.

Contrast that with the English contribution to the propogation of slavery which was, to an extent, just more an application of scale. An unfortunate application of efficient administration, crossed with an existing massive transport infrastructure. This would be similar in nature to the British contribution to the tale of empire (also in this thread), bringing it to a larger, captive audience. If anything, the unique British contribution to the tale of empire was SCALE, not say the ruthlessness of it's conquest or maybe the callousness of its administration. To choose but a few, Portugese, Belgian, Aztec, Mongol, Zulu etc. imperial policies by most measures were worse than the British. The fact that other empires failed to reach the scope of the British was not through an ethics based decision on their part (ie. "OK, that's enough empire for us. Let's not be like those Brits and take any more as that would just be mean..."), but rather an inability to reproduce the British success.

Anyway, I don't know where that leaves me. It doesn't seem to make logical sense to feel pride or shame for another's actions, but I do. I don't feel like German kids should have to feel bad about the '40s, but I do feel a pride if I ascribe the ideal of an English 'pluck' to the sailors at Trafalgar, and I feel that everyone should be proud of going to the moon and back, not just the Americans. I can't quite connect it.

VidaRed

it is the fault of the british for majority of current problems...mainly terrorism

dividing india into 2 parts on the basis of religion just so that they will go on fighting for eternity...this is where islamic terrorist groups were first formed in pakistan and they have spread to the middle east and south east asia and driving away the palestines from there lands on which they were living for many generations and giving it to jews (again bringing religion into it) just so because hitler committed atrocities on them.

Sultan

I think it's nationalistic terror as opposed to Islamic terror.

Nationalism is dangerously on the rise, it's mostly the root cause of racism, and terrorism in todays world. It lends legitimacy, and continued division of people, and lands.

Love of one's mother land is correct, and acceptable, but people should give up their pride in nations. Tribal ties should have no place in the modern world.

Very good thread.

holyland red

holyland red

The Brits did feck up the ME, although this warrants discussing in another thread and not settling for your brief ignorant summary.

Sultan

Muslims can be nationalists. Which religion do not have their fair share of bigots?

Their wrong mind.

Giggsy PO

This concept of a national pride/shame is a little bit misleading IMO. You feel proud about some very concrete event, ideas presented by very concrete person/representatives. So I am proud of very concrete persons because of what they did/though/spoke and not because of their same nationality as mine. And the same goes for the negative stuff. People/representatives and their acts, ideas worth of shame, hatred or odium... I don´t consider them as my representatives just because of the same nationality. So in one line I can despise them and simultaneously don´t feel sorry for them.

Sultan

Anyway, wrong comparisons/analogy.

Of course all Qaeeda members will be Muslim by faith. Just as the Irgun terrorist gang were I assume all Jewish.

I don't wan't to derail a wonderful thread.

Fitzjames

All countries have the capacity to be bullies.
BIGGER countries (such as the European super powers) have more capacity to be a bully.
France, Portugal, Spain, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Belgium and Holland are among those in EUROPE who built up Empires. Even Italy had a go in the 1930s by which time it was too late.

The purpose of the Empires was not to enrich Dutch East Indies, India, Algeria, Argentina or Brazil.
All empires operate for the benefit of the "centre"..........London, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon.
Essentially the Americans in WW2 insisted on the disbandment of Empires and the post colonial nations that emerged 1945-1965 are due to that
Some British still havent forgiven the Americans for that. And the force of British Imperial rhetoric ("the mother country") was emphasised by how little respect was mutual in London, Bradford, Birmingham etc.

The role of the British working class in Empire has I believe never been fully looked at. There is a tendency to believe the private soldier was as much a victim as the colonised. Nonsense. He was encouraged by Empire to believe that whatever his lowly status he was at least better than the Hottentots, Indians and Jamaicans.

Britain sees its colonial past in political terms.
Some (Guardian reading beardy types) might want to visit every former colony to say "Sorry, we were evil"
Others including retired majors in Tunbridge Wells will feel it was a good thing, pragmatic and no aplogy necessary.
The usual semi literate semi feral people like Smithfield Meat Porters......in so far as any of their views are coherent.........believe its "political correctness gone maaaaaaaaaaaad".

So the legacy of Empire exists in East London, West Midlands, South Bradford and North Leicester.
No sympathy from me for any post colonial hand wringing or chauvinistic flag waving.
You reap what you sew.

Plechazunga

As Frosty anticipated, this is turning into a debate on the British Empire, with a range of simplistic analyses on offer. But the thread's supposed to be about the principle. In fact, it doesn't need to be about nationalism any more than religious, tribal, racial, political identification.

I'm suggesting that if you feel proud of your group for its successes and glories - which you by no means have to - then logically, you should be ashamed of its failures and wrongs.

Ok, so like Mike you have little or no nationalistic feeling. But many do...

Brad-Dyrak I'll get back to you when I have a minute, I need to think about it.

Spoonez el Grande

Nationalism is gay. I hope this has been informative.

Giggsy PO

Time to bring Niall Ferguson in when talking about Empires.

FresnoBob

The English settlers in the New World were, allegedly, short and stocky in comparison with the native population along the Atlantic seaboard.

If people insist they have no "pride" in their nation's accomplishments through history, why should they feel any "shame" for the less savory portions of that history either? If one rejects the good, impressive, or just damn amazing things those dead folks scattered in graveyards around the country [or died overseas or were buried at sea], why pretend an intellectual/moral superiority by claiming the bad?
What good does "shame" or apologies do for actions done hundreds of years ago? Are we expecting the Turks to apologize for their "illegal" capture of Constantinople in 1453, or the Aztecs to make amends to other natives of central Mexico for brutal conquest, human sacrifice, and cannibalism? If they do, what is accomplished?
Most people are products of their time--and for many leaders throughout history that meant acting under what we, today, consider rather barbaric concepts of race, religion, sex(ism), treatment of captives, and the rights of imperial expansion. How many cultures and nations in the past actually considered themselves inferior and rightfully subjugated by others, rather than naturally superior? The "extention of the blessings" of their beliefs and practices to the lesser nations, or having the "inferior" entities serve their national and imperial aims was often viewed as morally correct then as they are viewed to be evil, pernicious, and wrong today. It is not that many of the actions we view with horror were "proper," but that viewed through the eyes of that contemporary society, these acts were often done with less malice and evil intent than we now ascribe to them.
In the never-ending historical process of evolving social mores and practices, we have a right to say that prior practices are no longer acceptable and learn from the past to prevent such reoccurances, but inter-generational bookkeeping on "national sins" serves no cognizable purpose other than to allow an anacronistic critique of the ancients pass for intellectual debate. There are thoughts and beliefs that were once in vogue that now, thankfully, are no longer considered true or acceptable, but our job is to learn from the past and move on.

Spoonez el Grande

Basically, nationalism is gay?

Sultan

It's difficult or even impossible to feel shame or animosity towards an entire nation. I can understand a feeling of shame, or even hatred towards members of our countries decision makers.

Typical scenario after a national event :

This does not represent us or our country, or it's values. Mistakes have been made. A few obvious civil servants will be punished, a few superiors reprimanded or demoted, hard questions held at bay at hearings, changes promised, and then the new admin denies involvement and all responsibility.

We all move on...