Nationalism FAQ November 17, 2006 Revision: 1.1 Purpose: the Nationalism Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) defines Nationalism and Pan-Nationalism, explains their relevance to the citizen, and explores the changes civilization would undergo in a Pan-Nationalist system. Table of Contents 1. Definition 1.1 What is Nationalism? 1.2 What is Pan-Nationalism? 1.3 Why are Nationalist movements "socialist"? 1.4 What is race? Ethnic group? Nation? 1.5 Is it a political system? 1.6 What is that Nationalist position on caste? 2. Implementation 2.1 How would politics change? 2.2 How would my life change under pan-nationalism? 2.3 Are nationalists racists? 2.4 Doesn't Nationalism cause wars? 2.5 Would this wreck our economy? 2.6 How do you hope to achieve this? 2.7 Would it work? 2.8 How will this make my life better? 3. Relevance 3.1 Why do we need change? 3.2 Why not a less comprehensive solution? 3.3 Why should I care? 3.4 What will it get me? 4. Authorship 4.1 Authors 4.2 Sponsorship 4.3 Revision History ---=^=--- Section 1: Definition 1.1 What is Nationalism? Nationalism is the belief that political groups should be constructed around the idea of "nation," or population group unified by culture, heritage and language. As such, Nationalist is "rule by culture" where cultural values come before profit motive or popularity, which enables forward-thinking leadership instead. With profit motive, every object and idea and person is for sale, and society leads itself in circles. With leadership, society determines its goals and moves toward them. The term "nationalism" comes from the term "nation," which has a different meaning in current politics. Currently, the nations of the world are political constructions made of borders, legal systems and economies, called "nation-states." These are not compatible with the view of nation that was common in history up until the last century: The term "nationalism" is generally used to describe two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination. (1) raises questions about the concept of nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual's membership in a nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/ The nation-state, in our current model, uses abstract concepts to unify its populations who have little in common on a cultural or ethnic level, and so become competing cultures. These abstract concepts usually take the form of an absolute which will never be demonstrated as being singularly right or wrong, like "freedom" or "free trade," but in the absence of cultural unity what brings people together is economics. Economics thus replaces culture, and soon every object and idea and person is for sale. In these market-driven societies, there is no possibility for leadership because what sells is not the right decision but the popular decision, no matter how stupid it is. Those who uphold higher values like doing what is right, living according to tradition, and caring about the implications of their actions instead of turning a buck, are penalized. Those with the lowest values possible, who care nothing for the consequences of their profit-making activities, are rewarded. The modern Eastern, Western and Middle Eastern states are dying because of this method of leadership. People are encouraged to engage in sociopathic profit-making activities, and they do, causing indirect damage and socialized cost. Leaders are dependent on popularity and so avoid truth in favor of popular statements. The result is a decaying society where few agree on any direction and there is no credible leadership except in the financial community. Such societies exist for so long as they have wealth, and then fall off the radar of history immediately. Nationalism opposes this trend by making cultural value systems more important than money. This binds people together as a nation, shows them a clear path toward what is good for that nation, and makes money serve the people instead of command them. It also reminds us that popular ideas are usually illusionary, and that we must lead ourselves according to a long-term plan. Without the fix that Nationalism provides, modern societies will lead themselves into an abyss of internal conflict, low birth rates, foreign wars, pollution and crime. 1.2 Why are Nationalist movements "socialist"? Nationalist movements are said to be "socialist" because in our modern lexicon the best word we have for a population that values culture more than money is "socialist." This means that economics, and the state itself, serve the cultural objectives of the population. This is the concept of an "organic state," or civilization in which values and heritage are inseparable from the philosophy of ruling, and economics and politics serve that instead of leading away from it for the convenience of oligarchs. 1.3 What is Pan-Nationalism? Pan-Nationalism is the idea that every ethnic group on earth deserves its own nationalist state, including those of mixed ethnicity. Where individual groups may elect to be nationalist, pan-nationalism is the idea that all groups will work for the right to nationalism for all groups. Pan-Nationalism is the idea that the best way for humanity to rule itself is for each ethnic group to have national autonomy, and be independent of oversight or critique by others. 1.4 What is race? Ethnic group? Nation? The word "race" has three important definitions. First, in the vernacular and ancient history it applies to the three major groups of human evolution: Africans, Asians and Europeans. Second, in the historical sense, it describes each level of evolution within those groups, for example among Europeans, neo-Liths, Falids, Alpinids, and Nordids. Finally, it is used as a synonym for "ethnicity," which means the specific mixture of races and inherited traits that defines a local population, as in "Laotians" or "Alsatians." Nationalism uses the last definition with awareness of the first. Terms like race are used to describe groups who observably share traits (there is no "race gene"; race in this context is a collection of attributes localized to an area). Each racial group has unique traits developed by its path through evolution. Each ethnic group also has such unique abilities and inclinations. Those of unbroken ethnic strains however have an inborn intuition that guides them toward the values of their ethnicity, because culture is shaped by its local population and also determines who prospers and so shapes that same population. Every ethnic group shares more traits with others in its race than other races, but shares the most traits with other members of its group. People who are born without a clear line of heritage, culture and language are adrift in a world of too many decisions. They can make some of these decisions, but others require age/experience, time and the ability to think critically. Most people do not have these abilities, and so will make poor decisions that have long-term consequences. They will be oblivious to this process until they are older. Culture prevents this problem by giving people ways of doing tasks well that do not change. When we think about it, critically, most of what makes life better or worse has not changed since the dawn of humanity. The same values that made a person a heroic, respected person then apply now. Culture preserves this, and lack of culture in market-driven societies replaces it with illusion that has eventual extremely bad consequences. 1.5 Is it a political system? While it includes what we would recognize as a political system, Pan-Nationalism unites culture and politics and philosophy with the indigenous population of a state. Pan-Nationalism is for that reason a system of civilization. A political system addresses politics, where a civilization system addresses the entirety of the design of human settlement. Nationalism espouses the "nation," which is an organic state composed of people linked by culture, heritage and language. Pan-Nationalism espouses a world of such nations. When each ethnic group has autonomy, culture is preserved. If we merge cultures, we destroy them and get mall-culture. Culture is the only force which can oppose rampant capitalism, insane mass religion (not all religion), and other forces that occur when there is no cultural consensus. In my view, most people do not want to hurt other races, but they also want to have a culture of their own. For this reason, we pick a system where we each get cultural autonomy and fend off sickening cultureless globalism -- and that system is pan-Nationalism. In modern systems, culture is presumed to be a personal choice, which means that it cannot be shared and so dies. In its place we are given a Big Brother/Big Mother government that presumes to know a single rule that is best for all peoples, and imposes it upon them by force, reducing all culture to a lowest common denominator through a process of averaging. This is typical for systems where politics is not united with a philosophy of the civilization that is integral to its culture. Pan-Nationalism allows each autonomous ethnic group to maintain and develop its own formula for civilization. 1.6 What is the Nationalist position on class? Class, or the ranking of people according to income earned, is a derivation of the philosophy known as social Darwinism, which presupposes that the best people in a society are the ones who earn more money. While there is some correlation in that the smarter, healthier and of strong character people will do better at any given task, it is an illusion to assume that they are motivated to earn more money. Nationalists realize that the best people are rarely insecure and so do not need excessive wealth to justify their own worth to themselves. The advantage to using cultural values instead of money to rank people is that we may pick the best in our ethnicity and send them off to do tasks which would not personally enrich them but enrich us all. As every society known to humanity necessarily ranks people by ability and dedication, it is impossible to avoid hierarchical structures, but if we use a hierarchy based on personal worth instead of money, we are able to divide people into "castes" which reflect those tasks of which they are capable. Since heredity determines most of this ability, caste positions are passed on between generation unless the person in question proves unfit for the tasks assigned. Ancient societies had a caste system as a way of differentiating between critical thinkers who became leaders, capable people who became artisans and freeholders, and those whose ability limited them to working for others, who became workers. This system is gentler in that it encourages people of all abilities to see themselves as part of a team whose goal is quality of life for society as a whole, and eliminates the class conflict and inter-class sabotage that remains pervasive in modern societies. The ancient Hindus, for example, defined caste through "karma" in which the individual grew in competence, health and nobility through selective breeding and slowly moved up the ladder of ability between generations. This is a more realistic view of natural selection than Social Darwinism. ---=-=--- Section 2: Implementation 2.1 How would politics change? The nation-state would end under a Pan-Nationalist system, as would the idea of societies where economics and politics lead the people. The people would be able to command their own future as a whole, and be less selfish because they would have values in common toward which all could work. This would establish clear boundaries for what is expected and what is not tolerated, and would allow government to be less intrusive. When government is not needed to define values, government reduces to a reasonable size. When economics is not used to define values, values become less convenient for those who wish to remove wealth from the population. Within the context of this change, politics would not be greatly altered. There would still be a leadership process but it would be a more mature one. Instead of making wild promises about wealth or "freedom" conferred upon the individual, politicians would have to address the questions that society as a whole faces. Instead of justifying actions on the basis that they produce profit, potential actions would have to make sense with the cultural values of a population. Pan-Nationalists tend to be realists. We recognize that war will always exist, murder will always exist, and crime will always exist. Not all people can be reasonable, and if all people thought the same way, boredom would rapidly set in. The goal of a healthy society is to minimize behaviors that weaken it as a whole, and through this, to strengthen its people. In this new frame of mind politics would be more honest, more realistic, and less random. 2.2 How would my life change under pan-nationalism? World nationalism would grant each ethnic-cultural group its own autonomy, reducing the number of wars fought within countries as well as the ethnic strife that currently grips most industrialized nations. There would be less of a need for powerful government, for the fighting of wars against "terrorism," for a public morality that chains all people to a lowest common denominator that serves no one but oligarchs. Cultural values would replace public morality, and the moral capacity of individuals would become more important. 2.3 Are nationalists racists? Nationalists like to use this summary: Nationalism is conserving your people, racism is comparing them against others. What we consider "racism" is a vestige of multicultural systems where different cultures are in competition for not only wealth, but cultural values standards. This conflict cannot be publically recgonized so long as multiculturalism is considered "good," so it is driven underground in the form of enduring ethnic tension. Nationalism ends this in a nation. Pan-Nationalism ends it in all nations by giving each group autonomy and the freedom to live according to its standards. 2.4 Doesn't Nationalism cause wars? Far from it. Nationalism is a sensible order, but those who oppose it deny it, and in trying to create an unrealistic alternative produce more wars. World War I was caused by nation-states vying for imperial power and forming alliances that drew them into a brutal conflict. World War II, essentially a continuation of the same conflict, was instigated by the threat of another type of international alliance, Communism. This tension later turned into a Cold War that held the world hostage to nuclear doom for nearly fifty years. Behind imperialist thinking we see a simple root cause: the profit motive on the part of investors in the countries involved. Unlike conquest in ancient times, when countries warred against nearby lands in order to expand, imperialism exploits the resources of distant nations for the industrial economy of the imperial power. This makes people wealthy inside that nation, but like all market-driven decisions, causes long-term decay which later explodes into problems which everyone must pay for. Nationalism did not cause the Cold War; fear of Nationalism did. Nationalism did not cause the Viet Nam war; fear of Vietnamese nationalism did. Nationalism did not cause the Iraq war; inability for Iraq to divide into three nations (Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis) did. In Yugoslavia, failure to recognize the autonomy of two national groups caused conflict. Nationalism ends wars by protecting the people of nations from insane outside alliances like world Communism, NATO, the Austrio-Hungarian alliance and now the United Nations. World War I was caused in part by the two opposing alliances developed by Bismarckian diplomacy after the Franco-Prussian War. ... At the settlement of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the principle of nationalism was ignored in favor of preserving the peace. Germany and Italy were left as divided states, but strong nationalist movements and revolutions led to the unification of Italy in 1861 and that of Germany in 1871. http://www.cusd.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/great_war/causes.htm The United States is currently wracked by racial tension because different groups do not combine. Its solution is to attempt to force the problem. As in World War II, this will lead to bigger problems further on. Amusingly, the United States is the world's foremost champion of multiculturalism and the state that has had the greatest number of problems with race riots, inequity, racial hatred and high rates of crime. Currently, it leads industrialized nations in the number of people in prison as well as the number of foreign political wars started and lost. Nationalism would cure this if people would accept it. 2.5 Would this wreck our economy? It would strengthen our economy by streamlining it toward the production of tangible things that make life better for the citizens of each nation. Nation-state economies are reckless, since they are driven by the popularity (and consequent scarcity) of any good or service at any given time. A nationalist economy puts cultural values first, and reduces speculation in favor of a good solid living for all based on the amount of wealth generated by the nation's workers. Further, nationalist economies protect the workers from the random trends brought on by speculative capital that result in inconsistent employment. 2.6 How do you hope to achieve this? We believe Pan-Nationalism is a better design for society, and as we would with any other method, we explain patiently as a precursor to getting existing political entities to adopt it or, that failing, to creating our own political party. 2.7 Would it work? People can be motivated by more than the selfish accumulation of wealth. When you think of the better people you know, you will see that while they like to earn good money, they make the bigger decisions on their life based on more values than simply earning money. A Nationalist system would motivate people toward these values, replacing pure profit motivation with participation in actual living community. 2.8 How will this make my life better? The socialized costs of our society (including violent urban decay, predatory businesses, and a feeling of lack of orientation toward values) would be reduced. This creates a better place to raise families, have friends, or just be yourself. It might be the final freedom to live in a society where one is not constantly bathed in the strife and selfish needs of others. In a society of self-interest standards cannot exist, and while we enjoy "freedoms" we create long-term problems for our grandchildren. Environmental destruction, overpopulation and the increasing violence and decay of our cities are proof of this. Nationalism ends the commercial society that destroys culture and produces one culturally and ethnically "grey race" who have no values systems except what they learn from television. When culture is more important than profit, people act according to what is right for society of a whole instead of what benefits them personally yet has destructive consequences. As the past thirty years have shown us, simply earning a living and ignoring the larger problems causes them to increase in size like tumors. There is no way around this issue but systemic change. ---=-=--- Section 3: Relevance 3.1 Why do we need change? What we are doing as a society is not working. If we close one eye, we can ignore the problems, but they are continually getting worse and will eventually swamp us. Even more, now that we see the true nature of our culture, we realize that it is not that much fun to live in an industrial modern society based around function and income. We are wired as beings to want more. We want a recognized place in a community, a culture that affirms the values we feel to be true, and most of all something upon which we can build for a better future. There is no such perception of our current society if you ask people off-camera. Each ethnic group wants autonomy and familiarity, or cultural and ethnic likeness to the people around them. This ends the feeling that we are alone against the world. It ends the desire to work for selfish ends, since the individual is now part of a culture and working for the health of that organic entity. Unlike government, culture both gives and takes, and it does not "command" because it is formed of consensus itself. Without this consensus, the idea of a society is ludicrous, because it will be a few people working while others parasitize society at large. 3.2 Why not a less comprehensive solution? Numerous reforms have been tried within the system of government we now have, but the nature of any system is to shape new ideas to forms convenient for itself. As a result of that process, "change" occurs in small dosages and is blown away by the change in political power only two years later. Our current system will not address the problem. Even more importantly, Pan-Nationalism is a civilization system and not solely a political one. Looking for "sea change"? Indeed, while our current outlook on government remains, all change is controlled by the form of the system in which it must occur. How does a dysfunctional system persist? We are divided against one another because there is no dominant ethnic-cultural consensus in our land, so lacking a larger idea to attach themselves to, people vote for whatever they feel will benefit their pocketbooks. They have no idea (apparently) that most of these "profits" create new disasters in socialized costs which they will end up paying, canceling out their new gains and adding obligations that previously did not exist. Pan-Nationalism ends our division against each other by allowing autonomy for each ethnic group, and collaboration between ethnic groups. 3.3 Why should I care? If you have a family, or friends you care about, or even just like life or appreciate nature, you want a better future. You know that our current path will lead to nothing but destruction of the finer things in life. Since you have a working mind, it's up to you to pick the best possible future. If you believe strongly, you will find yourself working toward that future in the ways that fit into your current life. If you have seen enough of modern life to be cynical, you will see why Pan-Nationalism, or the idea of organizing countries around culture and not economics, is a good idea. We reduce those socialized costs and make life easier and more meaningful. You will always have a context in the extended family known as culture. Needless conflict is reduced, as is the greedy profit motive. This makes for a saner society and gives you more time for the things you really care about. ---=-=--- Section 4: Authorship 4.1 Authors This FAQ was written by Chris Stevens, a thinker based in Texas. 4.2 Sponsorship Pan-Nationalist Movement http://www.pan-nationalism.org/ 4.3 Revision History - Version 1.1 / November 26, 2006.   Draft formalized. ---=^=--- Copyright (c) 2006 Pan-Nationalist Movement May be republished as long as this copyright and link remain. All rights reserved.