Guo. Nation, country. The square around the perimeter of the symbol for guo represents the borders of the country. Inside is the word for “land”: the small square is a mouth, and the line below multiplies that symbol to mean “all people”. On the right is a weapon for defense.
The very idea of a nation is built on exclusion and defense.
The young and ignorant never seem to tire of fighting. A child fights when a toy is taken from him. A youth joins a gang and fights for streets that never ultimately belong to him. A fascist is swayed by doctrines of superiority and attacks foreigners. A rebel is moved by talks of nationalism and works to overturn a government. A racist supports the idea of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The tragedy of all of these attitudes is that they confuse loyalty with chauvinism. As we are growing up, our elders exhort us: be proud of your culture, protect your country, chapmion the cause of your ideals. When these ideals are expressed with loyalty, the result is often great deeds of heroism and creativity. When these ideals degenerate into chauvinism, the terrible excesses of racism, brutality, and extermination emerge.
One who follows Tao eventually realizes the futility of racial and national divisions. This takes a very long time, because so much of our learning is subtly influenced by these ideas. Indeed, some might say thata these social features are rooted in our very emotional makeup. But being a follower of Tao has never been about doing what society says. Being a follower of Tao means walking the spiritual path. And the ideas of race and nationalism cannot be valid on a path that goes through a land with no borders.
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I think the current national mood of Bush supporters definitely trends towards chauvinism. His supporters refuse to see the clear examples of when Bush is simply wrong. They don’t realize that they have stepped even beyond nationalism and into chauvinism.
My own loyalties are to the real ideals of this country – freedom, liberty, justice, and opportunity for all people who live here. But my thoughts have moved beyond national borders. I recognize that we need to work with other countries and create better opportunities and living conditions for all people. It isn’t right that with only 5% of the population of the world, we use 25% of its resources. That is simply unsustainable. The current situation in Iraq is about oil, plain and simple, and who will control it. It leads us into conflict not only with the Iraqi people, but with all of the middle east, and will be a losing battle. The only real solution is to cut down on the amount of oil we use, and this administration will not move in that direction. We are simply lost until there is a change in the administration, and will keep moving under Bush in an unstable, unsustainable direction that only leads to more conflict and greater strife, more military deaths and civilian deaths in other countries, more terrorism.
But so many simply will not see the reality. They pretend that America is so great we can do whatever we want, not seeing this is how past empires were led to ruin. It is only in working with other nations that we can sustain our own nation without massive conflict.
Americans do not know the tragedy of war. They haven’t seen their families and homes destroyed. We haven’t had real war in this country since the civil war, and it isn’t in our current memory. Some individuals know the pain of war, but for most of us, we are like Bush, who see it on the TV screens and “know how hard it is”. But, like him, we don’t have the real experience of war and the violent shift it brings into people’s lives.
I read a joke about undecided voters – undecided if Bush is back in office whether they will move to Canada or Mexico. That is sort of how I feel. I don’t even know if I will be able to stay in this country with my boys if Bush is back in office and institutes a draft. I could not have my children fight for this administration and its wars for oil.
I try to know this will all pass, as Mark Morford reminds us in his column today. But the changes it will bring to my life, to this country, in the meantime, are hard to take. I don’t like where we are, I don’t like how we are seen by the world. I’ve cast my vote already (by mail) and that is all I can do. Now it’s all over for me but the waiting and watching and hoping for the best.
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