Psamathe wrote:All this debate about "loving your country" or "hating your country" seems a bit weird to me. I don't "love my country" nor do I hate it. I often think that strong nationalism can be the cause of so many problems in the world and with humanity.
Why should I love my country and more than I might love France or Germany or Peru or anywhere else. People are people and in any group there will be some you get on with and some you don't - and I don't see the bit of land you happen to have been born on as being a bit determinator n that regard.
Ian
Good questions.
Nations are inventions of aristocrats and other dominant collectives intent on collecting more. More territory, more subjects, more resources, more power. Historically they've exuded royals, emperors, tyrants, dictators and similar. The lower orders are subsumed into these nations whether they like it or not.
That's not to say that the lower orders can't, eventually, gain advantages of their own from belonging to a nation - assuming they aren't amongst those winnowed by being cannon-fodder or the other victims of internecine warfare between the nations and their rapacious kings & aristocracy. Nevertheless, a nation is an artificial construct,
Some nations are more obviously artificial in that they consist of many different tribes, ethnicities, religious collectives, different language speakers and so forth. Britain is one of those. One of the motives of the builders of such nations, aside from their primary motive for more power and riches, is to establish a greater stability, a longer peace and (as a consequence) a greater prosperity and well-being for all. Late in British history that motive became primary, as democracy superseded royalty.
The trend, then, has been away from tribalism and internecine warfare between competing little nations to larger nations which achieve peace and prosperity by means of overarching agreements (perhaps established as an empire, even) between competing interests, which operate via cooperation and tolerance for each other, rather than wars of dominance. The EU is perhaps one of the best modern cooperatives of this kind since it doesn't run as an empire, despite what the foolish Borisgraph readers believe. The United States is another example (or was until Trump revived the toxin of White Supremacy).
Brexit is a reversion to tribalism. It seems to have been engendered by New Aristocrats who prefer the chaos of dominance competitions & war, since they prosper win or lose. They are, these days, international; or, to be more accurate, without nationality. The very rich funding the efforts to achieve Brexit are, in fact, as unpatriotic as you can imagine, in that they're more than happy to sacrifice the wider nation in order to make a greater lump of personal power and riches for themselves.
This is as clear as day, if one cares to examine the evidence of who is funding Brexit propaganda and who or what else they are associated with. They've developed many of the old rhetorical rabble-rousing techniques to suit the modern methods of communication, which allow them a far greater reach and effectiveness in creating and swaying mob opinions. They often employ the sort of extreme and faux nationalism found in the likes of an Al post. They themselves care not a hoot for the country, it's traditions or the lower orders inhabiting it.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
I wonder what funny juice she is on 
