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The Forum > Article Comments > Is it time to stop being patriotic? > Comments

Is it time to stop being patriotic? : Comments

By Alex Kats, published 2/8/2013

A year later, after 9/11 and the political exploitation of the Tampa incident, xenophobia had crept into our happy society, and people started to be racially and offensively profiled.

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Excellent answer, LEGO:

Our genes, indeed, have no interest in our own welfare, but are programmed to serve their own ends.

How longer are we to listen to and obey every whim of those little tyrants?

Yes, human beings are tribal and territorial - human beings are in fact animals: yet we need not come down to their animal level, we are able to rise above it - and so we should endeavour to do, each as best one can!

Dear Fester,

<<If everyone was happy to live a very basic existence then Yuyutsu's idea would be a good one. Because there aren't the resources to give everyone a standard of living enjoyed here, the human characteristics you noted explain observations.>>

Certainly, having allowed our genes to order us around for that many generations, having told us to be fruitful and multiply while we obeyed like sheep, now human numbers are such high that a reasonable standard of living for everybody is unattainable. That forces the lucky minority of 'have's to close their borders to the unlucky majority of 'have-not's.

The only long-term solution is to reduce human population. Meanwhile, we can become a bit more intelligent and drop such excess nationalistic baggage (eg. the pomp and fanfare part), considering carefully how to keep only those elements of nationhood that are truly necessary in order to avoid barbarian invasions.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Monday, 5 August 2013 1:18:07 AM
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To Yuyutsu.

Genetic programming of human behaviour can only be ignored up to a point. Have you ever heard of homosexuality? There is no biological reproductive imperative that would justify male or female homosexuality. But there is no way in the world that you are going to convince a homosexual that they should ignore their genetic programming and become heterosexual, just because some religious moral puritan says that it is against God's will or because some rationalist says it is illogical.

Sigmund Freud was the first person to make the connection between mental illness and the suppression of instinctive behaviour. Some of his patients (who were homosexuals) exhibited bizarre behaviour which even they admitted was irrational. Freud deduced that the reason why these patients were acting strangely was because of the very strict conformist morality at the time which these patients agreed with, and which they willingly conformed to. The desire to conform to societies expectations by suppressing their natural desires caused these patients to engage in self destructive acts like attempted suicide, or just plain crazy behaviour.

Freud coined the word "neurosis" to explain this phenomena.

The problem with the utopian view so enamoured of tertiary educated elites, is that the creation of their Aquarian state depends upon the complete suppression of normal instinctive behaviour and its total replacement with a new age ideology. This ideology is no less strict in it's moral Puritanism than that of Victorian and Edwardian England. Socialists once claimed that human beings could create a class blind society, and they failed. Their ancestors now claim that they can create a race blind society, and they will fail also.

Unfortunately, they are going to destroy the social cohesion of your country and bankrupt it before they realise that they were wrong. And when they do wreck it, they will claim it was all the Right's idea, and that they were so smart that they always knew it would never work.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 5 August 2013 4:45:34 AM
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Dear LEGO,

The mistake of the Aquarian movement was in assuming that all flowers can blossom at once, advocating a revolution instead of evolution.

Each individual can only grow in their own time and pace. While it is possible to assist another to grow, growth itself must come from within. Suppression is the attempt to force growth on another prematurely.

Re homosexuality, in his book "The Selfish Gene" (a piece of depressive reading), Richard Dawkins explains why a certain (small) percentage of homosexuality within the general population is in fact desirable by the genes, so let us assume that the genes 'know' what's good for them.

Our spiritual challenge is not to overcome our homosexuality (should that be the case), but to overcome sexuality altogether as well as free ourselves from the other impositions of our genes - including patriotism. It cannot be stressed enough that this is an individual process and that it doesn't happen overnight, but may in fact take many lifetimes to accomplish.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Monday, 5 August 2013 1:46:18 PM
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Hey guys, I’m not sure the author deserves some of the vitriol that is being served up.

OK, so he is left of centre and you have every right to disagree with his ‘open door’ migration policy.

But I think he was just trying to say that he wishes other people were given the chance that his family was given to settle in this great country. He is being slammed as being a hypocrite, when I think the opposite – he is saying others should get the chance he got…?

I don’t think wishing for a more humanitarian approach to asylum seekers should trigger the kind of response this article has. I’m a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) by the anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Asian,, anti-Israel, pseudo Anti-Semitic, virtual White Australia Policy kind of responses that have popped up.

Anyway, maybe I should go back to hugging some trees....
Posted by ferrisb, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 10:46:48 AM
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@ferrisb

<<I think he was just trying to say that he wishes other people were given the chance that his family was given to settle in this great country... he is saying others should get the chance he got…?>>

What everyone, the whooooooooooooooooooooole world?

<<Anyway, maybe I should go back to hugging some trees..>>

Yep! start with a honey locust tree: http://tinyurl.com/k5u498s
Posted by SPQR, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 11:00:49 AM
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ferrisb,

" I’m a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t be) by the anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Asian,, anti-Israel, pseudo Anti-Semitic, virtual White Australia Policy kind of responses that have popped up."

You shouldn't be surprised.....it's what OLO does best.
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 1:56:06 PM
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