As a German I am on the other side of the patriotism spectrum. We have been indoctrinated over and over again that every national pride is bad and unethical. That the weight of history still rests on our shoulders. This is a terrible thing to do to their children as we all grew up with self hatred and litlle self-esteem.
When I see my US friends showing off their love for a country that their forfathers stole from the natives, the French and Spanish I can only wonder. Why is anyone proud to be any nationality? They didn't do anything for it except when they are a refugee who went through hell to build a new life somewhere else. Everyone else should just stop feeling false attachements to an authority that will just send their children to the next pointless war when they can.
Pride OR shame based on an accident of birth is silly. The notion that Germans should feel bad, or that Americans should feel good, based on the piece of dirt they were born on, is just silly. The "us versus them" that matters is not about nationality, or color, or religion, or income level, or education level, or any of that. The "us versus them" that matters is between those who commit aggression (which includes every "government") and those who don't.
Nation states are just like religions and economies. They are just another chess piece for the oligarchs to control us. My hope is that one day enough people will wake up to the reality of our situation and evolve past it.
How is an economy a means of control?
One based on debt has no element of control? I suppose if a true free market economy actually existed you could say it had no control mechanism. One doesn't though.
Take the USA's as a good example. It is based off consumer spending, and the majority of that spending in financed though debt. Then those people are much easier to control.
Agreed. How easily people are controlled, right? It is a lie. We should defend and support ideals worth defending and supporting, not ethnic backgrounds or nation states. As a species we are intelligent enough to move past such nonsense if we reject all of the attempts to divide us. Will we though as a majority? I'm not sure we will. There sure are a lot of programmed zombies stumbling around.
Yes, there surely are, all around the world. And don't forget the supposedly 10% of psychopaths withouth any empathy.