New year speach 2014: end to poor nationalism?

Do you recognise this feeling of scarcity, like in not knowing enough music that matches every type of emotion you’re experiencing? I do. Every now and then I’m captured by this desperate urge to find more music. I listen to music superficially while hardly being able to enjoy it. It’s pretty depressing actually, experiencing this scarcity.

But of course, you know this feeling of scarcity! You’ve experienced it yourself by not being able to read my new year speech before actually getting up and running. That’s true poverty. Great actually, without having thought of it, I’ve now created something you middle-class readers among you can refer to when I’ll talk about poverty later on. My apologies for the tunnel vision this may have caused you, but we’ll about to address this soon.

Anti-nationalist

The delay of this yearly published, moralising, teaching and with help of selectively choosen sources substantiated new year speech was caused by the fact I have been traveling whole of december and partially in january. And because I was traveling an area that was recently plagued by nationalistic / ethnical violence, the Balkans, it got me thinking. It is weird for me as an anti-nationalist: why kill people for their own country (especially when considering in the long run they will all become part of the EU anyhow ;)) Anyway. Maybe the idea of a nation is good for the people’s morale when times are hard. Yet, we see nationalism rise in other countries as well, like in The Netherlands, a near utopic welfare state. Are we becoming less smart because of the crisis, or what? (I hear you: “I am not nationalistic, I shop the Swedish (wrong, head-quarters are in The Netherlands) IKEA, I go to the Irish Primark and did you know that many of our stores are owned by foreign investors anyway?” Sadly, that is only a part of anti-nationalistic. Because I suspect that you are buying it because you unilaterally enjoy the luxury of being able to buy products that are cheaply manufactured by people who cannot escape their countries shitty employment regulations.

define: poverty

Whereas poverty used the be defined as a poor, sad way of living, today it used more in a judging manner. You are considered poor based upon economical criteria. And so you’re also being labeled as a welfare junk, even though he/she may not even receive welfare benefits but just chooses the live by lower standards (to stay in dependent for example).

Poor: should you prefer your own people over other?

Being poor is a problem on their own for those experiencing it, but it is a reason of concern to society when those experiencing poverty hold on to fake solutions like a strong nation. This may be explained from social/evolutionary psychology: typically a nation is depicted of consists of a similar kind of people. It appeals to the animal like instinct to prefer having your own genes to survive over those of others. It is a strong instinct that requires conscious awareness to suppress it.

So what is bad about nationalism?

So, is protecting your ‘own’ nation at the cost of others a bad idea? Let’s use a simple example. Consider you have two nations, each consisting of two people. Nation A is rich, nation B is poor. Both have one inhabitant who has university level education, and one who only enjoyed practical education. Imagine a new disease threatens the country. Would you rather use the brain power of the person from nation B, or stick to discussing the problem with your less talented compatriot? Similarly, do you think it is smart in the long run to have someone with a university degree to serve drinks to tourists in nation B? Even when he would be of less practical use at that moment, like an computer scientist in a country without computers, he/she might still be able to think more abstractly about problems and processes that may in the long run help the country forward. Collaborating makes sense. Not using talents is unwise. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Obviously there are risks attached to having people with different cultures communicate, but simply holding on to the idea that it is better to first employ people from your own country when he or she is under or over qualified for a job is short-sighted. Let people do what they’re good at and we will all benefit.

Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function

A recent research by Mani, Mullainathan Sharir and Zhao (2013) observed a decrease of about 13 points on the IQ scale in cognitive function when poor people were put under additional financial stress. That’s the difference between just high education and a university degree. Wouldn’t we gain a lot if we more people with just a practical education could be trained with more theory as well? While it will improve their competitiveness on the global job market, wouldn’t we all benefit from an average increase in intelligence?

Recap

Let’s repeat what we’ve learned so far. Rising nationalism rises with increasing poverty. Irrational, but explainable: under stress it is instinctive to choose for your own people first.

So what will we do?

So what to do to stop the rise of nationalism. Should we increase the stress of being poor by tightening welfare benefits, making more complex laws that should force them out of welfare? Although understandable, it is as understandable that people would like to punish criminals just hard. But what is actually a smart thing to do?

Whether it should be about redistributing wealth, or simply a different approach towards those who are poor… i don’t know. Maybe simply a more relaxed approach would give huge benefits already. By making society less complex (see ideas42.org for some good examples). And not everyone with a low income experiencing stress, so maybe it is also a mindset.

Please reread the previous two paragraphs and change poor people to poor countries, like within the EU for example Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain (the PIIGS countries…).

I would suggest to consider the unemployed in your street, the ‘white trash’ from the city part you don’t live, the ‘foreigner’ (whether he or she does or doesn’t live in your country) all as fellow men. Not as a danger or troublemakers, but as regular people who in the end also just want to do good. When we show more trust and approach them inclusive ¹ instead of distrusting them and excluding them from our parties we will be able to experience the whole that is bigger that the sum of its parts. Trust everyone like our family and we will all be brothers.

May I still wish you a joyful new year?

¹ And here I mean really trust: not stasi-inspired monitoring