2.5 Be loyal to us while we hurt you
Patriotism is defined as…
Love of country.
That’s good enough for the dictionary, but in real life it’s not that simple.
To be a patriot of your country is to swear allegiance to…
What?
In our hunter–gatherer days, allegiance was a matter of…
Mutual benefit.
You were loyal to your tribe and your tribe was loyal to you. It was…
Win-win.
But in modern mass society…
The mutual part is left out.
Patriotism, allegiance to country, has become a…
Strategy of exploitation.
A strategy by which some people do very well at the expense of many others. It’s…
Win-lose.
How does this happen? The people at the top take a basic, ancient function of our genome, our innate feelings of tribal loyalty, and…
Turn that against us.
They turn tribal fundamentalism into a tool of personal gain, instead of using it to serve the welfare of the whole, which was the original point of tribalism.
Here’s how it works.
You’ve heard the billionaires, the corporate elite, the politicians giving speeches about patriotism. What they say out loud is this…
I love my country. And you should love it too. It’s a noble thing to be a patriot. And if you’re not a patriot then you deserve to have bad things happen to you.
What they’re thinking, but keeping to themselves is this…
I love my country because of what I can get away with. I get to take advantage of people without repercussions. I don’t have to pay my employees a living wage. I know how to work the system. I pay next to nothing in taxes. I get government subsidies for my business. I get to take without giving. Life is good.
What they’re telling the rest of us is essentially…
I want you to be a patriot of this country, by which I mean a patriot of the system that runs this country and benefits me. I don’t care if you have to struggle to get through your days. I don’t care if you’re always living scared about tomorrow. I don’t care if you run out of money before the end of the month. That’s your problem not mine.
And I like that I don’t have to care.
What they’re doing is…
Usurping the authority of the tribe. They claim to be the voice of the tribe even though they’re really the voice of their own interests. And they want us to accept their authority uncritically.
What do they feel for the people they exploit?
Given how good exploitation is for them, it seems like it should be gratitude, but it’s not. And it’s certainly not love. Instead it’s disdain. They can’t believe how easy it is to convince tens of millions to stay loyal to a system that makes their lives so much harder than they need to be.
And what’s their big dream, these people at the top?
We want you to submit to this system that works so well for us. But more than that, we want you to love it. And even more than that, we want you to love us. While we are hurting you.
Tribal allegiance is not the same thing as love. It’s got its pluses and minuses. But…
This toxic allegiance is pure evil.
And it’s important for us to realize that all of us have a vulnerability to it. And so we need to vigorously question any tribal feelings and impulses we have. We need to make sure we’re making conscious decisions instead of responding automatically to the ancient tribal compulsion in our genome.
By contrast, what might patriotism look like if it were infused with nurturance? We as a nation would replace corrupt allegiance with…
Real love for the real people who make up the country.
All the people.
We’d make a commitment to…
Nurturing action.
We’d take a stand for…
Everyone having enough before anyone has too much.
And imagine if your country actually practiced these ideals…
Wouldn’t you love it like crazy?
But then there’s one more thing. If we infused our patriotism with upgraded love, we wouldn’t keep our caring limited to within the borders of our own country. We’d start putting our species first instead of our tribes.
