Alongside our other preoccupations, such as cocktails and the shortage of antibiotics, LSS has often covered the touchy issue of identity politics. (LSS 22 10 20 was a typical example, but it wasn’t the only one. We have always felt that identity trumps just about every other concern in the way people vote and think, even at the cost of their own economic well being.
So it’s nice to see our concerns shared and expressed by finer minds. And among such minds, few are finer than that of Simon Kuper, who writes for the Financial Times on an eclectic range of subjects from Association Football to politics. In our link below [1] he returns to the painful subject of Israel and compares its deep identity crisis with that of the United States (astute readers will recall our own essay into this territory (LSS 29 7 23) But Simon does it much better, and really names names, and the terrible dangers that they represent.
The ethno-nationalist thing has always bedevilled progressives from Enlightenment Philosophers all the way out Left to Communists, because it’s not really supposed to exist. We remember Medieval History books in which Swabians hated Saxons, and vice versa. The fact that they are now all Germans meant little at the time. Identities are indeed entirely arbitrary and subjective. But they are intensely real to those who hold them at any one time. And as Simon points out, the lower you go down the social scale, the more fervently these passions are nurtured.
If all nationalities were abolished tomorrow, would people stop hating each other? We think not; probably, you would find the red blood group O people at war the the As, Bs and ABs or the left handers with the right handers or something. Identity and xenophobia are as intrinsic to the human condition as bipedality and colour vision. To acknowledge its existence, and find strategies to cope, offers the possibility of engineering sustainable systems. Because if they fail this time, we are all lost forever.
[1]https://www.ft.com/content/9a8a9bc0-0a81-43e6-b215-bde2611ba6cc
#ethno nationalist #xenophobia #israel #united states #palestinians #enlightenment #simon kuper
Learning, Science and Society 