Hi Cleopatra:
It's true that in most of cases national identities cannot survive a critical examination so does this mean that we have no justification to give to national identities and nations any merit in our political reality as you suggest Capel Dodger?
As a rule I don't give ideas that can't survive a critical examination any merit in itself, although they can often tell you something about the people who hold to such ideas. As to national identity, each case should be examined separately. While some people have a traditional sense of nationality - there was a sense of German nationality before there was a German nation-state, for instance - there are many others who don't. These are primarily people in areas which have been ruled by empires and which have a mixed population, such as Mesopotamia or Afghanistan. There people identify themselves by clan, tribe, guild, and/or religion. Nations that are imposed in these areas, often with borders that are arbitrary or reflect recent accidents of history (Afghanistan's borders are a result of both), are dangerous constructs.
And when you will have accomplished your plans about demolishing Israel first and the rest of the world later you will have rugby in order to control people by dividing them into teams.
Firstly, this is all going to take time and Israel won't be there that long. I won't have to demolish it, it will collapse from its own contradictions. The thing about "teams" is that they
can be manipulated, not that they necessarily will be. In general I think sport can be a means of displacing rivalries whcih might otherwise become violent (as I mentioned above, light-heartedly). Football - soccer - has, for some reason, become associated with mob violence, but rugby has never had that association even though its supporters are at least as passionate. The reasons for that might teach us something, if we ever work them out.
A question for Americans: are there any sports in the US which are traditionally associated with crowd violence (as opposed to ice hockey, which appears to be sanctioned team violence reminiscent of the Roman Arena)?
There is something that is called political philosophy in case you don't know. Usually it predates the creation of political ( applied) ideologies but you cannot view it separately unless you want to support your theories.
I agree, and it was the point I was trying to make. Nationalism as a subject of political philosophy pre-dated nation-states in Germany and Italy, but post-dated nation-states like France and Spain. It was the nature of these latter states that the political philosophy was trying to analyse, and to use in the synthesis of a new ideology.
Could you please provide me an non- Greek text that supports what you say?
It just seems to me self-evident that city-dwelling, "sophisticated" people are going to describe their more rustic (and possibly violent) neighbours as "barbarians" or equivalent. If I find myself in that part of my library, I'll look up some Sumerian texts (descriptions of campaigns and conquests are probably the best bet) and see what I can find, but I don't think the survival of such texts is an important point. I have my opinion, but I can't prove it. If you have the opinion that the Greeks were the first, fair enough.
I should have known better back then and fed you to the crocodiles right away...
Unfair. As a very young child I saw a pantomime version of Peter Pan and had nightmares afterwards about the crocodile that had eaten Captain Hook's hand and was determined to get the rest of him. Threaten me with magic, please: I don't believe in that, but I do believe in your crocodiles.
We have analyzed that ad nauseam. Of course it's all my fault. You remember 