Who Are You?

Each of us has multiple allegiances. As social animals, this is to be expected. We are members of our family, our community, our nation, our religion, our heritage, our work family, our trade partners. We are supporters of sports teams, followers of people, interests and hobbies.

When it gets down to our core, we have our most important allegiances, our core identities. Our prime self definitions.

If you were forced to choose between identities, which would be the most important? Which ones would trump all the rest?

In a world that has become unkind to the concept of nation, where do you place your loyalty? Many people consider the concept of nation passe. Indeed, in the US we have the federal government more concerned about cultural injustice than closing a porous border. We have dropped trade barriers between nations, and have a president to declares all nations to be equal, none superior to another. In Europe, the European Union has begun to blur the national identities, and in the Middle East the concept of religious identity as the essential social glue is on the rise.

What would a post-national world look like? The idealistic see it as one less barrier to world unification, but I wonder if it would just open us to more divisiveness. If nations are not worth defending, what is?

The most important allegiances are those that dignify our lives, add a degree of divinity to our otherwise worldly existence. This is usually summarized as "God and country". With country out of the picture, we are left with God.

Will it be possible for all to agree that God is a personal choice, that religion should not be the cause of conflict? Fundamentalists of each religion have tried to impose their will on others within and without their religion.

The horror of the Holocaust has, at least for now, put a damper on active anti-Jewish actions by Christians. Many religions are by their nature peaceful. This leaves Islam as the wild card. Fundamental Islamic teaching is no different than other fundamentalism, with strict control of the adherents and a convert or die approach to the heathens or infidels. Other religions seem for now to have moved past that hatred.

The uprisings in the Middle East will tell us quite a bit about the next 100 years. Hopefully, freedom is not another word for jihad. How wonderful it will be if the newly liberated masses in the Middle East embrace national pride that allows all citizens to public office and equality, no matter what their religious leanings.