I am a software engineer living and working in Belgrade, Serbia. My hobbies contain a lot of things including cycling, bikepacking, photography. My political view are closer to left-wing anarchism.

All the photos are made by myself (if not specified other) and are shared under CC-BY 4.0.

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  • 8 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: April 27th, 2023
  • Sem@lemmy.mltoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•AgreeEnglish
    4·
    6 days ago

    and not the positive sense of the word

    I cannot agree. Tolstoy started his writing from the breaking the myth about the “good patriotism”.

    It is generally said that the real, good patriotism consists in desiring for one’s own people or State such real benefits as do not infringe the well-being of other nations.

    Talking, recently, to an Englishman about the present war, I said to him that the real cause of the war was not avarice, as is generally said, but patriotism, as is evident from the temper of the whole English society. The Englishman did not agree with me, and said that even were the case so, it resulted from the fact that the patriotism at present inspiring Englishmen is a bad patriotism; but that good patriotism, such as he was imbued with, consists in Englishmen, his compatriots, acting well.

    “Then do you wish only Englishmen to act well?” I asked.

    “I wish all men to do so,” said he; indicating clearly by that reply the characteristic of true benefits,—whether moral, scientific, or even material and practical,—which is that they spread out to all men; and therefore to wish such benefits to anyone, not only is not patriotic, but is the reverse of patriotic.

    Even in the definition of the “positive patriotism” you were mentioned there is a paradox.

    Love of one’s country; devotion to the welfare of one’s compatriots; passion which inspires one to serve one’s country.

    If one wishes the welfare of one’s country, the welfare of one’s compatriots… Does they wish the welfare of only one’s compatriots? If yes, it is a wish of superiority of one’s country, the superiority of one’s compatriots over other people. If not, it is not patriotism just by the definition.

    There is nothing bad to wish the welfare of people living around you, your neighbors. But it is solidarity, not patriotism. Patriotism is tightly coupled to the concept of the national state (because all the modern states are actually a national states). While Tolstoy did not mention the word nationalism, he mentioned the concept of nations and national states. And he criticized the whole concept.

    I would again agreed with Leo, that the concept of nations and national states might look modern in the time of French Revolution (and there were no “nations” before no matter what the today’s patriots will try to sell you), but even in the time of his writing the concept was already totally outdated, I’m not even saying about today. And I do not understand how are you going to distinguish the concept of national states and patriotism while all the states are national state. Why not just to use the word “solidarity” instead and leave the “patriotism” in the past era of world wars?

  • Sem@lemmy.mltoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•AgreeEnglish
    21·
    6 days ago

    I would agree with Leo Tolstoy that patriotism is just bad. And I do not understand why should we invent a “good patriotism” while the term itself is so bad.

    To destroy governmental violence only one thing is needed: it is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and above all—is immoral. It is a rude feeling, because it is one natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations those outrages which they themselves are ready to inflict on others; it is a harmful feeling, because it disturbs advantageous and joyous peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all it produces that governmental organisation under which power may fall, and does fall, into the hands of the worst men; it is a disgraceful feeling, because it turns man not merely into a slave, but into a fighting cock, a bull, or a gladiator, who wastes his strength and his life for objects which are not his own but his governments’; and it is an immoral feeling, because, instead of confessing oneself a son of God, as Christianity teaches us, or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and his conscience.

    https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leo-tolstoy-patriotism-and-government