Towards National Humility

National pride?
That was one of your crowning achievements then, was it? Being born in whatever particular part of the world you just HAPPENED to be born in through sheer happenstance? Yes, you must be very proud of yourself. A job well done.
What is it you're proud of, exactly? Perhaps I'm just ignorant. Proud of the achievements of great minds before you that shared the same landmass? What was it you did that contributed to those achievements?
What does a national identity offer a person, really? From the perspective of a Brit who, in a PROUD Naval town, almost trips over union jack-touting nationalists who are a burning cross and a pointy hood away from salivating over a lynching - what is it about our horrific colonial past that deserves to be celebrated? When you pledge your unwavering allegiance to something as superficial as imaginary lines drawn on a map, are you also proud of the uncounted millions before you who did unspeakable things? And what wonderful part of the rich and diverse British culture is so worthy of your pride? Is it our emotional coldness? Our ability to queue? Our doilies and our tea cups and our male chauvinism craftily masquerading as chivalrous etiquette? "I'm very proud of the pork pie"? - what is it?

Perhaps I'm being too vicious. It's very nice, after all, to feel a sense of belonging towards a place...but where that simple comfort translates into a fierce national pride is what baffles me.
I don't particularly like Britain, let alone love it. As for Wales, the "country" of my birth, I feel next to nothing. Hearing Myfanwy in a resonant baritone over rolling hillsides doesn't move me. The Welsh Assembly has been, for the past few years, drilling national pride into the poor Welsh folk. The very thing that got me thinking about my own lack of a national identity was an advert online trying to persuade me to learn the dying, archaic language - "We learn Welsh" it said, emblazoned above a dragon, "because we're proud of our heritage." Coinciding with this propaganda, my generation in particular seem oddly patriotic all of a sudden. I always considered pride a particularly mischievous vice, but apparently it's a virtue if it's for one's country.

The ugly face of this bubbling nationalism, of course, is that of slappable BNP leader Nick Griffin. The BNP - despised by anybody that has a brain - "exploit" the "perfectly acceptable" national pride of the British public. I believe national pride to be dangerous at all levels. You are drawing a distinction between yourself and "outsiders" on nothing but geography - which is entirely superficial! It means absolutely nothing. Do you swell with pride whenever you come across the numbers that represent the latitude and longitude of your place of birth? The only real use national pride has is for convincing people to fight and die.

I apologise if I offend anybody. I of course don't mean to equate anybody with Griffin for merely feeling proud of their roots. Perhaps I'm simply missing something that's innate in mankind; but I feel a greater sense of belonging as part of mankind as a whole, rather than based on the meaningless boundaries drawn up over centuries of squabbling. It makes no more sense to be proud of one's country than it does to be ashamed of it - and I'm not ashamed of Britain either. It's not "my" country, and it's not yours either, really. It's merely one small part of a much more exciting whole. I'd hate to deny myself the full appreciation of what that means because of that particularly mischievous vice.