I find the hyper-critical eye with which we survey nations so fascinating--especially the uber-hyper-critical eye with which we view our own.
We have yet to make the realization that not only are nations composed of individual people but that they are also in a very real way macrocosms of us individuals. They have personalities. They have lifetimes. They have births and deaths. They mature as they grow.
Let's take ourselves for an example. When we were born, we were pretty barbaric. We only cared about the most rudimentary things. We often disliked anybody outside our immediate circle (imagine a toddler greeting strangers outside the family--he cries!), or anybody we perceived as too different from us. (Sound like the early history of, oh, say, pretty much every single ethnicity or civilization?) As we grew we became more civilized. Our horizons broadened. Our visions lifted. We didn't stop making mistakes, but the mistakes became less flagrant and immature (for most people) and we came closer to the ideal for which we all strive.
Do any of you hate yourselves over sins or mistakes you made last year? No? Well, should you? No? Okay. I agree. How about mistakes from last decade? How about when you were a kid? I'm guessing you still don't, and still think that you really shouldn't. Well, that's because you've bypassed that most important milestone of maturity which is to learn to profit from and then to leave the past in the past. You are absolutely right in your answers. There's no use in continuing to cling to dirty laundry, even if you yourself soiled it. Wash it and move on. I would never tell somebody who's forty to feel bad over something they did when they were a stupid junior in high school or a reckless sophomore in college. Heck, I wouldn't even tell a stupid junior in high school to feel bad for something he had recently done as long as his attitude had changed. Attitude is the key. (If he didn't feel bad for it, rather than castigate the misdeed, I would hone in on the flawed attitude, and only focus on the actual act insofar as it helped with the attitudinal adjustment--just for the record.) Sincerity counts for so much. I will forgive you so many mistakes--heck, I will forgive you crimson sin--if your heart is in the right place and if you are really trying.
I doubt there is a soul among my readers who would disagree with what I just said. If anybody right now is thinking, "We should cling to our previous misdeeds committed in stupidity and ignorance!" please feel free to shoot me an e-mail at worldcast@gmail.com to explain your genius to me.
Okay... now here is where I take a step into the abyss.
If we realize it's illogical, pointless, and even a bit cruel to rub previous mistakes in the faces of good-hearted people, then WHY do we feel so justified in doing it to nations--especially our own dear America?
When America was an infant, it was raised under the nursing mother of Britain. When America realized that its mother was cruel and did not have its best interests at heart, it daringly shook off her yoke and struck out on her own.
She was young.
She had so much potential.
She was going in a direction that, precisely speaking, no society on such a scale had ever gone before.
Because she was so young and inexperienced, she made some big mistakes, particularly racially-based slavery--but that's not the only one, there are others. As America grew, she learned, paid the price for her mistakes, repented, and continued on her inspired path.
Why should we be surprised that a young nation going in an entirely new, visionary direction didn't get it 100% right as soon as she left Go? Why should we freak out that, just like US, she had to grow, mature, change, repent, and learn by trial and error?
Not only that, but why do so many folks in our generation bigotedly cling to America's past mistakes? Great errors, as horrible and ghastly as some might have been, are often committed by great people or great entities in the birth-throes of greatness. That doesn't mean that the country is now and forevermore illegitimate and that any claim to excellence it has must be mocked and ridiculed. That simply means that that country is human--like every single one of its inhabitants! Gasp!
What would your life be like if you refused to let go of your mistakes? If you never forgave yourself? If you let every single major mistake you've committed over your lifetime weigh down on your soul immeasurably?
Such a mentality, unless corrected, would surely lead eventually to suicide. At the very best such a life would be long and joyless.
Rationally speaking, we ARE all imperfect (speaking of us individuals). But there MUST be a somewhat irrational dedication to ourselves within us, a sense of legitimacy, that pushes us to go on with dignity, proud of who we are, despite our mistakes, in order for us to live life, or to live it more fully and abundantly. Rarely can a person rationally prove his own self-worth with evidence and facts. There would be so much raw meat to the contrary anyway for any potential opposition. But despite what may seem rational and logical, we must press on in love for ourselves and forgiving tolerance for our shortcomings. Otherwise we will simply burn ourselves out.
Nations are like people. We must be proud of who we are as nations, just as we are as individuals, in order to survive. That, my friend, is the virtue of patriotism. It's the same as the virtue of self-esteem. Isn't it funny how all those hippy youth-camp counselors praise the one, and curse the other, when they are two ends of the same pole?
What happens if a nation is ashamed of itself? Well, it will be more susceptible to having itself changed. Could that be bad? Absolutely. Could that also, contrarily, be good? There are surely cases where that could be good, yes. However, history has shown us that when a people are hanging their heads in shame, and someone comes along, promising to change it, to make it into something they can be proud of again, sometimes not-so-nice things happen. Perhaps not ALL the time, but enough we should be worried.
I hereby end with an ultimatum to all Americans ashamed of their country. Like anybody or any other country, we have made mistakes. But we have LEARNED, REPENTED, and CHANGED from them, and CONTINUE to do so! (There's no mandatory minimum guilt-trip required, folks!) I realize Puritans shot Indians! I dont minimize the gravity of it! (I will add though that it's a mighty thin pancake that only has one side.) Heck, I could go on forever and talk about the
various and sundry mistakes America has made and CONTINUES TO MAKE AS SHE CONTINUES TO GROW. I warn you that we have made some, and that we make some today, and that we WILL make more--but that we are still excellent, we are still loveable, we are still worth our existence and the pursuit of our happiness. If you would not advise a sincere individual to cling to foolish mistakes of the past, why would you do it to a whole nation of millions of decent folks? Why shackle a good force unnecessarily? And I warn you of this in closing: if you manage to make all the good, strong, productive, vibrant countries of the world--the ones who have helped make the world what it is today--ashamed of who they are, who will stop someone else from coming in and changing them for the worse? They won't. They would welcome it. No one fights for a cause they don't believe in--even if that cause is themselves.
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