| Kantor said: This is nothing new. It's the very basis of nationalism. That guy over there who was born in the same arbitrarily defined area of a landmass as me did something good, so I should be proud of it. When you get down to it, why should you be proud of anything that anybody has done? Analysing every aspect of human behaviour is ridiculous, because there's no real "point" to anything that anybody does. Save somebody's life? They'll still be dead in 70 years. 70 years out of the billions which the universe has existed. |
I agree that nationalism is ridiculous. It can be downright dangerous when it's manipulated by the powers that be. Will there have to be an alien attack from space before humans feel the desire to come together as ONE SPECIES rather than fight over real estate? I guess there always has to be a villain in some regard. Maybe that's the bigger question. Why does there always have to be a villain? One winner, one loser.
The rest of your statement seems exceedingly grim though. Sure, in the scheme of the fate of the universe, one human isn't making any stellar changes. But in the context of being a social being (the "we're all stuck here together" syndrome) even small things we do everyday matter. People can choose to do things that re-enforce positive emotions or betray them. Spreading positive notions makes a huge difference as opposed to all the "Negative Nancies" out there.
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