On Aug 27, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Jon Louis Mann wrote: > nationalism is an aberration that is found in many countries, and to > be abhorred. it is especially repugnant in nations where their > citizens actually believe they are better than other nations (like > some french, saudi, israeli, japanese citizens, etc.).
I think that nationalism is not an aberration at all. I would be willing to guess that it is a larger form of xenophobia, which I would be further willing to guess conferred evolutionary advantages: kill off the other guys and your genes live on. The other guys can be other guys in the tribe (to hell with you guys, I am going to be the one whose genes live on in this tribe), other tribes (to hell with those guys, we are going to be the ones...) and so forth. We even had a racist dog when I was a kid. He was raised by my family of white people in a neighborhood of mostly white people, so when black kids from "the projects" walked by, who were different, he went nuts. Then again, dogs are remarkable at picking up subtle clues in the behavior of their human companions, and my dad was quite a racist. The dog may have "known" that black people were "bad" because he saw his master tense up when they were around. Different is Dangerous Maru Dave _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
