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It seems that some people have conflated the idea of "socially constructed" with something not being real. Nations are composed of people and power structures;

It seems that some people have conflated the idea of "socially constructed" with something not being real. Nations are composed of people and power structures; while these may have been designed by people, in no way does it mean that they don't exist, or that they don't create distinctions and differences between groups people over long periods of time. People naturally feel like their history and the shared history of their kin is part of their identity, something they can lay claim to in an abstract sense. The events of the past influence your birth and life, as they did for the generations preceding you. There is such a thing as a healthy variety of pride in your identity; obviously we know what it looks like when taken too far, but the cries to eliminate it completely seem to me to be dangerous propositions.

oh-kumudo 9y ago
My thought exactly. Such claims as the one from the video, in fact, are attractive, partially because they are catchy and counter intuitive, a lot like conspiracy theories. While extreme nationalism is dangerous, nationalism is an effective way, not the most effective, to establish order and reach consensus to tens and hundreds of millions of people. And it is awkward to see that the creator of the video highlight the US exceptionalism to end their argument, which by itself, IMHO, is pretty nationalistic.
- allemagne 9y ago
  I didn't get the impression at all that mentioning US exceptionalism undercut the video creator's argument, or that they were really trying to argue that nationalism isn't an effective way to establish order. The creator went to lengths to describe how powerful of a force nationalism is. The point is that it's remarkable how much effect it has, given that it's a concept without a clearly defined delineation (categorizing languages, shared history, culture, ethnicity, and even borders is a whole other thing) that didn't exist a few hundred years ago. Taking umbrage to how the author uses the concept of "existence" or "being made up" as basically a philosophical shorthand in the context of deconstructing what national identity really is seems overly semantic. Is the issue really just that it's controversial and click-baity to say "national identity isn't real" as a headline out of context? Because that's irrelevant to the thrust of what's being said.
gkya 9y ago
An argument is that it's not "socially constructed", but is imposed on peoples by the hegemone entity. Most nations today in existence were established by monarchic or oligarchic regimes, and did not represent at the time of constitution the ethnic-geographic situations where they were founded. Examples: Italy, Spain, Turkey, most Middle Eastern states, etc. Most nations had a phase of "We made the nation, now we need to make the nationals" work.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

My thought exactly. Such claims as the one from the video, in fact, are attractive, partially because they are catchy and counter intuitive, a lot like conspiracy theories. While extreme nationalism is dangerous, nationalism is an effective way, not the most effective, to establish order and reach consensus to tens and hundreds of millions of people. And it is awkward to see that the creator of the video highlight the US exceptionalism to end their argument, which by itself, IMHO, is pretty nationalistic.

allemagne 9y ago
I didn't get the impression at all that mentioning US exceptionalism undercut the video creator's argument, or that they were really trying to argue that nationalism isn't an effective way to establish order. The creator went to lengths to describe how powerful of a force nationalism is. The point is that it's remarkable how much effect it has, given that it's a concept without a clearly defined delineation (categorizing languages, shared history, culture, ethnicity, and even borders is a whole other thing) that didn't exist a few hundred years ago. Taking umbrage to how the author uses the concept of "existence" or "being made up" as basically a philosophical shorthand in the context of deconstructing what national identity really is seems overly semantic. Is the issue really just that it's controversial and click-baity to say "national identity isn't real" as a headline out of context? Because that's irrelevant to the thrust of what's being said.

gkya 9y ago

An argument is that it's not "socially constructed", but is imposed on peoples by the hegemone entity. Most nations today in existence were established by monarchic or oligarchic regimes, and did not represent at the time of constitution the ethnic-geographic situations where they were founded. Examples: Italy, Spain, Turkey, most Middle Eastern states, etc. Most nations had a phase of "We made the nation, now we need to make the nationals" work.