![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbThe idea of nationality is pretty much universal. Every human being is conscious of the difference between people who do things "our way" - which is widely taken to be the proper way - and people who do not. That "our way" is also and by definition "the right way" is not necessarily the case. In many traditional geographies, there feature peoples of fabulous righteousness and moral perfection, such as Homer's "righteous Solymi" and the Hyperboreans among whom Apollo himself would be pleased to dwell. Sometimes, real but distant nations are invested with this sort of chrism: the Han geographers called the Roman Empire "Da Qin", which, I am told, means "Greater China", and cast it as a kind of super-China with righteous inhabitants and a just Emperor. This happens more frequently for nations that are distant in time - the classic instance being the fantastic unconscious misrepresentation that the Renaissance cast on the whole story of the Roman Empire.
What is however the case is that neighbouring nations are NEVER cast for this super-righteous role; the truly good nations are always distant either in time or in space. The simple truth is that they are too well known. Everyone knows that neighbours tend to dislike each other, but one should also remember that, within limits, that dislike tends to be based on facts. To know the worst about England, go to a Scotsman. To avoid unpleasant surprises when visiting the USA, listen to a Mexican. And vice versa. Of course, you may get ignorant prejudice. But you are also more likely to find out unpleasant truths about the nation in question that even the locals barely notice, or to which they are too used to regard them as unpleasant.
At the back of this lies an important fact: that every human community, and especially every state, regards itself - and indeed, it is - as an attempt to realize on earth the rule of decency and good government. An attempt, I insist; everyone knows that the actual state and community fall well short of that rule. But there is a clear sense that certain virtues, certain ideals, are more closely understood, striven for, and to some extent realized, there, than anywhere else. And that means that the dislike between neighbours is often founded on genuine differences in what is commonly found good, useful, decent, valid and important. The disorder and inefficiency of Italy offends the innate German sense of purpose and cleanliness (which have a hidden yet intimate connection with German romanticism and idealism). The stiff-necked arrogance and inflexibility still perceived underneath the polite surface of Germany offends Italian modesty and love of things for their own sake. And both nations are quite right. Italy is chaotic; I say so, and every Italian who does not think lying is patriotic will agree with me. Germans are people "with whom you cannot argue, but to whom you can give orders": I heard that from an Italian, but it was a Swabian - the most comparatively modest, down-to-earth, unpretentious of Germans - who laughed and confirmed it was true.
That is because there is no absolute certainty of what good government is. There is a widespread, one would say universal, understanding of what bad government and lack of decency in public life are; and nearly everyone would point to certain African and Asiatic governments - though by no means all - as indubitable paradigms of that. But to a considerable extent, each country tends to form its own ideal of what a good community is. This ideal can even be unconscious; it can certainly be buried. Italy adopted an inappropriate, French-imitated state structure in 1860, for very good reason; but ever since then we have been struggling, half-blindly, angrily, towards a model more suited to our own experiences and the way we live. But each existing nation has what might be called an inborn idea, an Aristotelian or Hegelian individual idea, of what it would be like if it were perfect; and civic virtue, in each country, is largely to do with the conscious or unconscious struggle to approximate this ideal.
What is however the case is that neighbouring nations are NEVER cast for this super-righteous role; the truly good nations are always distant either in time or in space. The simple truth is that they are too well known. Everyone knows that neighbours tend to dislike each other, but one should also remember that, within limits, that dislike tends to be based on facts. To know the worst about England, go to a Scotsman. To avoid unpleasant surprises when visiting the USA, listen to a Mexican. And vice versa. Of course, you may get ignorant prejudice. But you are also more likely to find out unpleasant truths about the nation in question that even the locals barely notice, or to which they are too used to regard them as unpleasant.
At the back of this lies an important fact: that every human community, and especially every state, regards itself - and indeed, it is - as an attempt to realize on earth the rule of decency and good government. An attempt, I insist; everyone knows that the actual state and community fall well short of that rule. But there is a clear sense that certain virtues, certain ideals, are more closely understood, striven for, and to some extent realized, there, than anywhere else. And that means that the dislike between neighbours is often founded on genuine differences in what is commonly found good, useful, decent, valid and important. The disorder and inefficiency of Italy offends the innate German sense of purpose and cleanliness (which have a hidden yet intimate connection with German romanticism and idealism). The stiff-necked arrogance and inflexibility still perceived underneath the polite surface of Germany offends Italian modesty and love of things for their own sake. And both nations are quite right. Italy is chaotic; I say so, and every Italian who does not think lying is patriotic will agree with me. Germans are people "with whom you cannot argue, but to whom you can give orders": I heard that from an Italian, but it was a Swabian - the most comparatively modest, down-to-earth, unpretentious of Germans - who laughed and confirmed it was true.
That is because there is no absolute certainty of what good government is. There is a widespread, one would say universal, understanding of what bad government and lack of decency in public life are; and nearly everyone would point to certain African and Asiatic governments - though by no means all - as indubitable paradigms of that. But to a considerable extent, each country tends to form its own ideal of what a good community is. This ideal can even be unconscious; it can certainly be buried. Italy adopted an inappropriate, French-imitated state structure in 1860, for very good reason; but ever since then we have been struggling, half-blindly, angrily, towards a model more suited to our own experiences and the way we live. But each existing nation has what might be called an inborn idea, an Aristotelian or Hegelian individual idea, of what it would be like if it were perfect; and civic virtue, in each country, is largely to do with the conscious or unconscious struggle to approximate this ideal.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 03:31 pm (UTC)Nowadays, with the world shrunk by rapid travel, it becomes the more hermetically isolated countries which get cast in the role of Utopias. This has the curious effect of leading to the idealization of precisely those countries which are the most hellish, becuase it is those countries which take care to keep tourists out, or at least keep them insulated from their common people. Cuba is the obvious example of this sort of thing.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 05:45 pm (UTC)I'd be interested in hearing more about this, and what you see as the national ideal of other Western states (I remember that CS Lewis once suggested that in eschatological times, France would finally be ruled by the Goddess Reason, or something like that).
-MrMandias