Against God and Country

Just to be clear here: I don't want to hurt anyone with my writing. My purpose of writing this text (and blog overall) isn't to provoke controversy – what I'm doing is rambling, provoking thinking in (at times) starkly different ways. And yes, this is one of those times – as the title might read-out.

To me, human identity is like an onion, or like a russian matryoshka doll (a doll inside a doll -thingy) if that's more to your liking. At the core is the smallest possible identity, the person itself. On the very next layer is the family-identity; in other words, the togetherness you feel with your brothers/sisters and mother(s)/father(s). Next comes your togetherness with your kinship (cousins, aunts, grandparents...) or perhaps some of the most intimate friendships. On and on these layers go, piling on the previous ones – togetherness with the people in the region you live in, with people you go or do not go to church with e.c. On and on, layer after layer.

Finally the onion is ready. All those layers shape your identity in some way, some more so than others. The outer the circle, the more people it holds in. That onion (or a doll, if you wish) is you. I have my own onion and so does everyone else.

All the layers – the different kinds of togetherness' – I've listed above seem natural to me: it's natural to feel togetherness (which seems to be my word of the day) with your family, kin, friends and people you meet or share something concrete (like similar taste in music, literature... anything, really, which separates you from others) with. And I think they are natural ways to create the ”me-ness” of oneself.

But I see two layers – which would eventually show-up in everyone's onion – to be un-natural, artificial. Tell me, does this sound familiar: they are based on vague or unidentified dogmas; they hold some kind of holy icons; they have sanctified individuals; they include some sort of holy scripture which lays foundations to all who are part of this... thing; tendency to violent behaviour; xenophobia and/or misogyny; social acceptance/disapproval on base of your support or the lack of it to this... thing – just to name a few.

I know what you're thinking: just another bible-bashing atheist. Perhaps, but I'm not going to dig into that today – some other time, maybe. Religion is the first, yes, but what about the other? It's a bit more tricky, isn't it? Well, I gotta give you some credit, I used a lot of religion-colored words.

Nationalism, my friend.

Think about (just to take a common example for everyone) american nationalism, which usually is very much like religious fundamentalism. Ask yourself (aloud, if you want) a difficult question which very few people outside small but international academic circles haven't asked: what is it based on? There is the holy scripture (The Constitution and The Declaration of Independence), but that isn't the foundation of being an American – it's rather the foundation of the USA, the state itself, not the national identity of the people living in it. Sanctified individuals (saints, in other words): Lincoln, Washington (such a remarkable fellow that there is a state and a major city named after him), Jefferson among many others – still, their existance don't lay the basis of being an American, rather they paved a way for it, if you want to say so. Tendency to violent behaviour? Do I need to comment on – sorry to tell you so – american imperialism? Xenophobia – well, isn't a national identity sort of based around that idea? The funniest (I have a rather dark sense of humor, I admit) is that nationalism, just like religion, is extremely socially acceptable – infact, you'd get your ass beaten if you wouldn't declare to be a ”patriot” (what is that – a militant defender of one's nation – if the whole concept of nationalism is this hard to define?).

So there we are: a vague dogma, holy scriptures, saints, violency, xenophobia (in the case of Christanity this comes out usually as misogyny) and the social pressure to accept this whole social construction. And, to me at least, that's what it is: a social construction, built on purpose – and not trying to sound like a conspiracy-theory lunatic here – to keep the subjects (”citizens” in modern terms) under control. In a way it's a very useful tool: you don't have to have massive police forces to keep the subjects at bay, because they believe in the unidentified being of State (which itself cannot do wrong, but the ”people in power” can – what a paradox, don't you think?). It's all very rational, I'll give it that.

This what it all comes down to: what is this togetherness with people you'll never meet, share nothing in common and who hold very different values than you, based on? In other words: what is that single thing that includes all Americans (just as an example; could be Finnish, Swedish, Ethiopian, Japanese... anything!) but excludes all non-Americans?

History? No, since there are millions of people who consider themselves ”American” and whose ancestors weren't born in the same place/state/kingdom. In other words, they don't ”share the same history” (how could anyone own history, that's completely other thing) with these people.

Language? Please, give me a break! All ”Americans” don't speak English as their mothertongue – or at all, to be precise.

Residency? Certanly there are lots of ”Americans” who at this very moment live outside nation's borders? By the way, have they already shipped all the troops out of Irak or – hell! - Germany?

Citizenship? Being an ”American” isn't same as being a citizen of the US of A, although it certanly is a big part of it. What about those millions of people who have two passports – do they have two different national identities? Weren't the whole point to find a feature on all ”Americans” which excluded all ”non-Americans”?

This list could go on forever but that's not the point I'm trying to make. What is the point, then? It all boils down to this simple, rather amazed realization, that there is no-one – none that I've heard of, at least – in the public attacking nationalism. Some – few, hated and not very famous – individuals attack patriotism (rightfully so), but no public speaker that I've heard of attacks nationalism, the foundation of all wars in the world (ofcourse, let's give religion some credit – it certainly deserves it) since the late 18^th Century (The French Revolution, to be more precise).

There are several out-spoken atheists who attack the counterpart and co-operative of nationalism, but let's rewind the clock 20, 50 or 100 years back and there are fewer and fewer of them. 100 years ago Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens (may he rest in peace) would've been burnt at the stake. Well, not literally, but you get the point. People have grown since then, they have accepted the rational choice of not believing in religious dogma – eventhough other religious dogmas are usually out of this tolerance-zone.

Other than most notably the lately deceased Eric Hobsbawm and some others (some, but suprisingly few) have attacked nationalism in academic circles – let alone in public discourse. There is no word for non-nationalist. So, if I may, I'd like to make up a word, right here and right now; also, I'd like to declare myself to be that sort of a person. The word ”atheist” is a combination – in a way – of two words: ”a-” and ”theist”. "Theist" is a person who believes in some higher deity; "a-" is the denial of the word that follows it (much like ”un-” or ”non-” e.c).

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, my own word, the term for all the world to behold: apatriot.

Since ”patriot” is a person who – sometimes violently (in verbal or physical form) – supports his/her nation and supports it in every turn, I'd like to classify myself as a person who is the denial of these values.

I am an apatriot and damn proud of it.

A very short summary for those who were too lazy to read the whole rambling: Human identity is laid like an onion: layers on layers of some classification of ”me”. Most of these layers are natural, but two seem to me very artifical: religion and nationalism. After bashing nationalism I conclude that I'm an apatriot.

Further reading: There are quite a number of studies of nationalism out there, but the one I'm familiar with is Hobsbawm's ”Nations And Nationalism”.

On Similarity of Human Nature

There is a difficult question, which hasn’t been asked enough. As you’d expect, the answer isn’t any easier than the question. First, I need to look some things behind this question, the context of the whole problem as I see it.

We are humans, all of us: no matter the color of your skin, size of your nose (a fact which late Michael Jackson seemed to dismiss), the amount of fat around your stomach, quantity of arms and legs, size of your shoes, your nationality, your religion et cetera – humans, all of us. Still, if there are these several rather massive differences between us, what binds us together? Our collective DNA? Culture, perhaps?

No and yes.

Still carrying on with this point I’m trying to make: if there’s something that binds us together, it would have to be universal (by definition), something to do with all humans across the Globe from infants to elders. As mentioned, this thing wouldn’t be any physical (ab)normality, nor would it be cultural standard (universal moral values, ethics etc.) since I, as a relativist, don’t believe in such things (f.e. Plato's Forms is just plain stupid theory). What is there left, then?

 Emotions, feelings, my dear friend. Laughter is a universal sign of joy and happiness; joy and happiness both occurring (in one way or the other, varying from culture to culture and from individual to individual, but still basically in similar ways) universally among human species. Sadness is also universal; same as love/affection and hate/anger not to mention all the other feelings that are more or less similar across the space-time-continuum.

However, I see all the feelings listed above to be “only” versions of something more primal, some feeling that lurks deeper in us all: survival. “But survival isn’t an emotion”, you are screaming, and you’re right. Survival is an instinct constructed by several different feelings, but without this construction the whole species would die eventually. That’s some natural selection for you.

I see survival as an construction built on two basic (proto-)feelings: lust (not to be confused with love) and fear. Without lust the race would die fairly quickly; without fear for your or your loved-ones' well-being the race would die. That’s more than you can say about sadness or anger – and to me that makes them more primal, more important for the species overall. Thus these feelings are more universal, occurring in human interaction more similarly than some other universal feelings listed above.

Out of these two, which is more important? Before giving you my answer I’d like to stress out that – as mentioned – they both are extremely important and in my answer I’m not trying to dismiss either of these factors, but rather underline the importance of the “arch-feeling” of choice.

To me, a horror-fiction writer, the answer seems clear. No matter what the perspective is – sociological, historical, fictional, anthropological or biological, scientific or religious – fear unites us, every single one of us.

I would argue that every single human being can be made scared under clinical (perhaps a poor choice of word, but what I'm after is ”scientifically” similar conditions) and similar factors – fear factors, if you will. Self-preservation (in other words, primal fear for the preservation of individual's race/family/life/etc.) can be triggered by factors which are much more universal than factors triggering the will for the expansion of genetic pool (in other words, lust).

Here is a hypothetical situation: Someone is chasing you with a hammer (or other weapon of choice), and if this anonymous bogey-man catches you, he will kill you. I’d be scared shitless, pardon my French madam. If we add also dark woods, full moon, starless sky, owls, thrilling music and other horror-clichés, the chase-scene would have more flesh over its bones, but the basic structure would still be there: he’s after you and won’t rest until you are lifeless at his feet. Fear, primal self-preservation, would grab you by the throat and it wouldn’t matter who you are, where were you born, what is the color of your skin etc. Fear unites us.

But this isn’t the only possible fear-triggering situation. Consider this: someone is holding your kids (a son and a daughter) at gunpoint, urging you to do something, because in few seconds he’ll blow your sons' brains on the floor and, after that, your daughters'. Would you be scared motionless or determined to do something, anything? Again, I added some elements to the story to give it touch of sophistication, which is unnecessary for the point I’m trying to patch through: this time you aren’t in immediate danger, but in fact your offspring is. Still, the basic horror, that gut-grabbing terror, is there.

Lust doesn’t work the same way. Even though The Almighty Natural Selection has written a piece of code into our DNA to feel lust at the first sight of genitalia differing from your own (or, in some cases, same genitalia), the relativity is much more clear when we talk about more complex situations. Beauty is sort of a follow-up to lust: we lust what we consider to be beautiful, and we also think beautiful things are lustful. And there is nothing wrong with that, just stating a fact.

 With fear it's – again – different: there is no similar ”follow-up” for fear as there is for lust, no single emotion (more or less) directly derived from the proto-feeling of fear. What we fear is what has a power to harm us. But there is a twist in this: there are way more things that could possibly harm us than we have a brain capacity to use for fearing these things. Someone might fear (for a good reason, granted) snakes; someone else might fear (for an equally good reason) spiders; someone fears cars, someone airplanes etc. All objects of fear are rational by any definition of the word, but no-one (at least I hope) is afraid of everything that could possibly harm this individual – even lying in bed will eventually be harmful and thus to be feared. If you'd fear everything, you'd kill yourself for the sheer pain of existence you'd be having from simply being alive.

Even if we don't actively fear everything around us, with some good convincing and reasonable arguments, these phophias could be triggered. Consider this situation: You're on your routine check-up at the doctor's office waiting for some vague results from a test you really don't understand due to medical jargon the doctor was using. Through this facade of non-understandable words you still catch ”heart failure”, ”cancer” and ”mortal illness”. Every now and then fear of cancer or other serious illness has crossed your mind, but for the first time in your life you are face to face with a possibility of having cancer or heart problems, often as not fatal.

In this situation you'd be (rightfully) afraid; your fear of cancer (or other illness) has been triggered.

 Lust is much more simple: you see something which rocks your boat and your animalistic lust is out of control. The trigger could be anything from an attracting representative of an opposite sex to (and I'm not making this up – there actually is a fetish for this) peeing in your pants. Still, not everyones' lust can be triggered by peeing in your pants, whereas everyone will be afraid of cancer in the situation described above. If you wouldn't be afraid, you'd be a sociopath or some other lunatic.

Is this fair – comparing possible diagnosis of cancer with peeing in your pants? No, but my point is there: even if you weren't afraid of snakes before, after thrown into a pit full of 'em (in a same fashion as one famous archaeologist with a hat and a whip) you'd be scared – again, I'm sorry for the profanity – shitless. Same cannot be said about peeing in your pants or (again, not making this stuff up) breaking glass with a woman's shoe: even if I'd pee in my pants along with everybody living in the same city for two weeks in a row, I would have absolutely no sexual fantasies about it.

Of course I'm exaggerating, but still you get my point. After all it boils down to this ”simple” statement: from the perspective of natural selection, it's more important to stay alive or keep your offspring alive than make more offspring, because if you'd be dead, you'd be unable to make more offspring, but if don't make more offspring this very moment, you can make them later, but that requires that you stay alive. Man, that's a long sentence – a lot of rambling.

A very short conclusion for those who were too lazy to read the whole rambling: Out of the two most primal human emotions (lust and fear) I consider fear to be more profound to the survival of human species, and therefore more universal among human individuals. I also argue that by similar conditions everybody can – and should – be scared.

READ ME! Introduction to Ramblings

I've chosen the name for this blog to be Ramblings, because it seems to be the only title that fits. I have no real agenda in this blog other than just to ramble on and on about things I observe and think. Just a stream on consciousness, in a way.

 There are, however, some things you must know about these ramblings of mine: they are not scientific and I'm using no hard data to back up my arguments. There is a good reason for this: these sort of texts, that I'm going to post, are in no way written in that gray scientific norm, which is usually the curse for most (in other aspects interesting) ”real” articles or books. And, besides, I'm just a lazy bastard who doesn't have time/possibilities to do research to support my arguments – after all, there are only 24 hours in a day (out of which preferably 7-10 hours are used on sleeping) and I'm just one man with a – now here's a real shocker – life.

Other reason for this choice of style is the freedom it gives. These ramblings are sort of ideas that I've had for a quite some time without a possibility to use them in my ”real science” (well, we can argue is history really a science) or in my literature (horror-scifi-fantasy-other mumbojumbo -fiction). When I was writing the first rambling I found the process very liberating – to be able to just say what I think about this and that subject without being worried about the accuracy of my non-existing footnotes or the correct interpretation of the source material.

 However, I'm not ruling out the possibility that in some later ramblings I'm going to use (intentionally) someone else's theory/idea/point. When this happens, I'll make sure to make you know it has happened. Other times, if I'm using someone else's point or theory and not putting a ”Further Readings” at the end, I'm unaware of the non-originality of my rambling. Please, if I violate someone's copyright unintentionally, do not shut my blog down or do any other youtubian action against me – just simply inform me about the fact that I have (I must emphasize this: without any intention to do so) stolen your/someone's idea, and I'll promise to edit the problematic post at first place. If I don't do that, please, shut my blog down, you have a right (and my permission) to do so.

What is that I want you to know: A) don't take my ramblings too seriously – they are not meant to be super-serious even if the point (buried deep under stupid jokes and even stupider examples) is; B) I'm not trying to pursue any political/economical/religious/ideological agenda – I'm just being me; C) I'm getting no money out of this – I'm writing these ramblings just for the fun of it and to train my English; D) I'm not trying to steal anyone's ideas, just promoting my own.

And remember: always look on the bright side of life. After all, I'm just rambling.