The futility of nationalism

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Albert Einstein once said about nationalism “As a citizen of Germany, I saw how excessive nationalism can spread like a disease, bringing tragedy to millions”.

The truth of that statement is apparent in the number of nationalistic conflicts currently playing out on the world stage, as fights between Israel and Palestine, Ukraine, Russian Syria and Yemen increase. Whether or not they are separate lands, or are viewed as deflections, the universal pride of autonomy remains the same for each patch of the earth that someone inherits. However, when one considers this tiny zip code we share in the inexhaustible universe, we may be nothing more than neighbours that oceans divide into ‘great’ and ‘small’ countries. If good fences make good neighbours, as they say, good oceans may actually be making bad neighbours.

For example, nationalistic conflicts are not confined to physical wars but are also expressed in economic or trade wars such as in tariffs to protect or to prioritise a country’s products and people. The disease of nationalism spreads to the extent where an immigrant’s contribution to a specific country is often overshadowed by the vain hubris of ethnocentrism. Thus, if you are not a native, your energies and service may still be welcomed in areas such as manufacturing, teaching, healthcare and technology, or in building bridges highways and so on – but your specific value to that country as a human being becomes dated with the expiry date of your own contribution.

After which, you become like a sugarcane whose sweet service is extracted and then spat out. Still, nationalism is self-defeating if it actually takes two hands to clap. And, what of our own self-exalted portion of the globe in the grand scheme of things when, as Psalm 24:1 says, The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof?

HOMER SYLVESTER

Elmsford, New York