5/22/09

just learned...

...that patriotism is at best mislead social responsibility, at worst some serious identity issue...

7 comments:

  1. You think so? I always thought that patriotism was the love of imaginary lines.

    ReplyDelete
  2. are imaginary lines not usually an instrument for definition of some kind? that's what i meant with identity issues...
    if you are not sure who you are, draw a line to distinguish between the >in<- and the >outside< - for some this line is their >home-country<...
    i find it rather silly to be proud of something you had no influence on, e.g. the country you happen to be born in...
    what do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah, excellent point - when looked at abstractly I guess issues of identity are indeed inextricably linked to imaginary lines, as these are what we use to define ourselves when we cannot find another way to do so.

    Yes, I completely agree that it is silly to be proud of your home country - because firstly it raises the issue of deciding what a "country" is - is it rocks and soil? Is it a set of politicians? And secondly because, as you say, you had no choice in it. What is the logic in assuming, for example, that America is superior to Afghanistan on the principle that America happens to be where you were born. This is silly because it is basing your views on a set of co-ordinates, rather than who you are - if you were born in Afghanistan, would you still hold the view that America was superior, or would your position be reversed? If the latter, then your esteem for America is based solely on being born there, not logical analysis of what might make it "good".

    By the way, what is it with Germans and speaking better English than English people? Ich kann nicht sehr gut Deutsch sprechen :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. wow, i didn't expect to convince someone with my logic that easily...;)

    i can't speak for all germans, but myself happened to be studying english AND sociology after spending some time in ireland... comes in handy as english slogans and loanwords seems to be 'hip' in the german media... so in terms of the newest consumption trends it now is VITAL to understand english...*laughs*

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not to diminish the all persuasive power of your uber-logic (there's a loan word for you :P), but in fairness it perhaps helped a little that I was already in strong agreement with your central point.

    Though nontheless, I did completely miss the way in which your mention of "identity issues" encompassed the simple concept of national borders - but I am always willing to accept any good point that I blindly miss - which happens a lot.

    I guess between studying English and spending time in Ireland it should follow that you speak good English, but all the Germans I know speak really good English - yet English people seem to prefer to learn French, desipite the fact it is much more different to English than German is.

    And yes, I have noticed a lot of English loan words appearing in German, even from my distant point of view. "Ich chatte" indeed :P - not to mention the slow extinction of the dopple...er...this thing - β

    ReplyDelete
  6. it is called 'eszet', to name something in between an harsh 's' and an (in german) even harsher 'z'...

    actually german is a lot more difficult to learn than french due to the very strict grammar - all those prepositions demanding one of the four grammatical cases, the three grammatical genders... and don't let me start on the time modes...

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think the difficulty of learning a language depends a lot on what language you are starting from.

    At school I had to learn both French and German (and have forgotten most of both of them now), and I found German easier because it's more logical - French...is...less so - I still do not understand why J with an apostrophe can become 'I', nor do I understand their auxilliary verbs or any of the other ridiculously complicated things in the French language.

    In German at least the sentence structure is vaguely similar to English (albeit with the verb at the end). Though yes, the various cases (none of which I can remember) and genders (Der, Die, Das, - masc, fem, neuter(?) yes?) are pretty complicated. Though they probably aren't if you happen to be dutch.

    ReplyDelete

feel free to let your mind flow, but do hit the subject... ;)