As I write this, I’m in the coffee shop of a hockey arena, waiting for my son’s team to go on the ice. I’m British, by birth, but the love of hockey has gradually seeped into my soul. Following Canada’s gold medal victory in hockey at the Vancouver Olympics, I found myself with a strange and wonderful mixture of emotions – good and bad – and I’ve been examining them. There’s the hockey story, sure. But there’s also a story about winning and losing in the international community. How’s a Canadian supposed to handle that?
From wheresoever you hail, a sense of national identity seems desirable. You live in a land, and become part of it. And it becomes part of you. Patriotism (that slightly suspect quality… or emotion) appears to develop when the two get forged into one – sometimes with explosive effect.
Obviously, if we primates look at patriotism in the context of our evolution, it’s clear that many (if not most) explosive times in our past have had a lot to do with it. That’s no surprise. You can argue that patriotism is a form of defence mechanism. And, defending oneself has been a core tenet of the survival of the fittest reality up until now. But is it any more?
In the 21st century, is patriotism (and its slightly meeker cousin – nationalism) going to be a relevant, primal aspect of living on the planet? Or – more specifically – in the 21st century can we afford for it to be a relevant, primal aspect of living on the planet?
The world was certainly caught up with things patriotic and nationalistic in the 20th century. There was plenty of emphasis on flag and fear, by Jingo! Consider your immediate response to the following verse.
“We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo! if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and we’ve got the money too.”
Jingoism – you can read all the dictionary definitions of it that you can find, and you won’t get a better understanding than is conveyed in the words of that song. It was belted out as a raucous, in-your-face barroom song – a British taunt to the Russians – when they were engaged in a tussle over the city of Constantinople in 1878.
“We don’t want to fight, but if we do” – how’s that for a classic example of passive aggressive posturing? Bullying, anyone? Today, bullying seems so 20th century – and it was! Jingoism was embraced as an acceptable part of the lexicon of international affairs. For example, during the Spanish-American war that led to the annexation of Puerto Rico and the alienation between the U.S. and Cuba that still exists today, Teddy Roosevelt quoth thus: “There is much talk about ‘jingoism’. If by ‘jingoism’ they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are ‘jingoes’.“ And, when the little Austrian housepainter started throwing his weight around in the 1930’s, British PM Neville Chamberlain was berated for not being jingoistic enough.
The fact that the word is clearly British in heritage interests me… especially since I’m British in heritage, too. During the Vancouver Olympic Games, I was visiting in England. You’ll possibly remember that in the first few days of the Games, Canada came under a lot of criticism – and, let the record show that it was the British media that was the most critical.
Jingoism of a sort? I think so.
Discussion?