David f

People of different "tribes" seem to have difficulty living together in, among others, Bahrain, Belgium, Cyprus, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Turkey and the USA.

There are still a significant proportion of Scots, among them Sean Connery, who want Scotland to secede from the UK.

Among European electorates there appears to be a solid majority in favour of keeping Muslim Turkey out of the EU.

Peaceful co-existence between tribes definitely did not work in the former Yugoslavia. It split into its component parts as soon as it could. Ditto Sudan.

The Singhalese and Tamils fought a decades long brutal civil war in Sri Lanka. The scars still linger.

When Syria's Assad falls expect a slaughter of Christians and Alawites.

You may want to read this piece in the highly respected journal, Foreign Affairs, put out by the (US) Council on Foreign Relations.

Us and Them
The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism
By Jerry Z. Muller (Professor of History at the Catholic University of America)
From Foreign Affairs , March/April 2008

http://www.tfasinternational.org/iipes/academics/mullercm.pdf

Quotes:

>>Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.

[…]

…a survey would show that whereas in 1900 there were many states in Europe without a single overwhelmingly dominant nationality, by 2007 there were only two, and one of those, Belgium, was close to breaking up. Aside from Switzerland, in other words -- where the domestic ethnic balance of power is protected by strict citizenship laws -- in Europe the "separatist project" has not so much vanished as triumphed.>>

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade but we seem to be incurably tribal. Maybe we need to build political systems that recognise that fact.

I have no easy answers but denying facts will lead to catastrophe.

Dear stevenlmeyer,

The title of the string is “Can we transcend tribalism?” not “We can transcend tribalism.” I don’t know that we can.

Although people of different ethnicities have clashed throughout history the form of tribalism called ethnic nationalism is a fairly new idea. Empires such as the Roman have covered a multitude of various peoples and languages. There was never a common language the people in the eastern part of the empire spoke Greek and the western Latin in addition to the local languages and dialects.

Other forms of state organisation were dynastic entities where royal houses such as the Hapsburgs ruled a number of disparate, non-contiguous peoples.

The American and French Revolutions carried the idea that all men (white) regardless of their ethnic origins were equal citizens. The founders of revolutionary France and the US were men of the Enlightenment.

Ethnic nationalism was a nineteenth century idea in reaction to the Enlightenment. It contended that nations should be formed by people of a similar ethnic, linguistic and religious heritage. If that wasn’t so they would be made so.

After the unification of Italy d'Azeglio wrote L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani (literally: Italy has been made; now it remains to make Italians. All Italy was made to adopt the Tuscan dialect so unity was created.

In the case of the former Yugoslavia most of the population during the Byzantine Empire were Orthodox Christian. They were a fairly united ethnic entity. When the Turks conquered the Balkans the upper classes became Muslims. When the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire conquered the northwest part of the Balkans most people in that area became Catholic.

1. Ethnic nationalism is a fairly new ideology. It appeared in the nineteenth century and can disappear.

2. Ethnicities are not fixed entities. They can be created as in Italy to unify a country. They can come into being as in the Balkans and split a previously unified group. They can disappear completely as the Burgundians did in France.

Those are also facts.

However, as to the broader question of tribalism let’s continue the discussion.

David f wrote:

>>The title of the string is “Can we transcend tribalism?” not “We can transcend tribalism.” I don’t know that we can>>

Fair point.

I don't know whether ethnic nationalism is as recent as you say. I seem to recall there was a troublesome mob of "chosen people" at the Eastern end of the Roman Empire. The Romans had to put down a couple of rebellions there quite ruthlessly as did their imperial forebears, the Greeks.

The Greeks themselves fought some vicious wars with the Persians.

Whatever the case may be, ethnic nationalism seems rather firmly established at the moment. Far from fading it seems to be intensifying. Can you imagine a Geert Wilders being a major player in Dutch politics 20 years ago?

And Wilders is not alone. So called "far right" parties have done well in all the Nordic countries.

In Italy, which you cite as an example, the Northern League seems to have gone from strength to strength.

Everyone seems to be picking on the Gypsies.

The Han Chinese are trying to colonise, there is no other word for it, various parts of China such as Tibet and Xinjiang. The Tibetans and the Uighars are resisting.

In our neck of the woods the Javanese are making a land grab in West Papua. Indonesia should more properly be called the Javanese Empire.

Everywhere you look ethnic nationalism of one sort or another seems to be on the rise.

I fear the answer to your question is "no."

I don’t like that answer. I used to think we could all just get along. But it looks as if, perhaps, we can't.

Dear stevenlmeyer,

I read the article. It seemed an accurate account of the past and the present. It stated, "Whether politically correct or not,
ethnonationalism will continue to shape the world in the twenty-first century."

One can note the past and the present. One cannot predict the future in human affairs with any certainty.

As ethnonationalism took the world by surprise in the nineteenth century, its demise may take the world by surprise in the twenty-first century. Or it may not. I can't predict the future either.

The world population is growing day by day and the world's resources are dwindling day by day.
It won't be all that long before fighting starts anew over the resources.

Start learning a foreign language or learn to fight; the options are limited.

Dear stevenlmeyer,

The wars you mentioned have nothing to do with ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism means the establishment of a nation on the basis of a shared ethnicity, religion or other identity.

From my reading of history the revolt against the Romans was an agrarian revolt. The farmers in ancient Israel had excellent practices such as rotating crops and letting land lie fallow periodically. The Romans insisted on the production of grain for the hungry mouths of the Romans. The Hebrew farmers rose in rebellion against the destruction of their land. It was not a unified rebellion. Some such as Josephus went over to the Romans.

The Romans were not a unified entity either. The ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians were all conglomerates of varying languages and ethnicities. One of the classics of ancient literature is Xenophon’s “Anabasis.” It is about a group of Greek mercenaries fighting their way through the Persian Empire. As they went into different locales genrally one of the Greeks was familiar with the local language indicating that what was called Greeks were a conglomerate of different peoples.

I agree. Indonesia should be called the Javanese Empire. It is a conglomerate of peoples dominated by Java rather than an ethnic nationalist state.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_nationalism:

Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e. the understanding of ethnicity as an essence that remains unchanged over time.

Ethnic nationalism is not racial prejudice, wars between people of different ethnicities or empire. It is a concept which arose in the nineteenth century defining a method of nation formation.