Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one’s situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn’t a decision nor an accomplishment.
But then how do I do jingoism? /s
Yep. People watching the Olympics while being obese sitting on a sofa eating big macs with extra cheese. The athletes did all the hard work, and the audience at home take the pride for whatever reason.
Humans have not evolved beyond tribalism. They still think in terms of borders instead of the planet.
Removed by mod
I think the problem is that people conflate being proud of others with themselves. They take on the achievements of others as their own.
This dude was from my place and was great so therefore I’m great.
This is what nationalists, fascists, racial supremacists and other extremists do on the regular. They have no achievements of their own to be proud of so they have to steal somebody else’s.
There are two sides to it.
If a childhood friend of yours grows up to be a skilled athlete, you can be proud that someone with a shared downtrodden background as yourself has excelled: it’s a shining example to the world that it can’t oppress all of us, and there is a sense of genuine communal solidarity in it.
That being said, if you come from a pretty majority background with plenty of opportunities, and you take communal pride in your friends achievements, then there is nothing really won. The world was never trying to keep your community down, your friend just did well and you should be happy for him and that’s about it.
Came prepared to downvote this for being common sense, but judging by the comments it actually is surprisingly unpopular! Well played.
I don’t know if it was intentional on OP’s part, but our April Fool’s Day rules are in effect at the moment, so posts are expected to be “Popular Opinions” .
Are comments in April fool’s mode too? Seems like all the communists took a day off and all the nationalists showed up. The comments here are very unexpected.
Lol. Only the post submissions are expected (though not required) to be Popular for today. Comments, as usual, are open season.
Lol I didn’t even see that, fair enough 😄
Tribalism is mainly emotional rather than rational and, further, humans feel a need to belong, so choosing the logical take on things like national pride (or pride in one’s sport’s team, political party and so on) is very unusual and when voiced generally receives an intenselly negativelly response from most others as they are heavilly emotionally invested into their love of, and pride in, things like nation, sports team, religion, etnicity, politics and so on.
I would have expected to agree with you, but in thinking it through, I am proud of things I didn’t do, but not for myself, if that makes sense. I’m proud of my mom for getting through grad school with a small child (my sister, I wasn’t even born yet), and I’m proud of my dad for quitting drinking a decade before. Those are both very difficult things and I feel positive about them in a way that feels similar to how I feel when I understand a new aspect of my field and the same as how I feel when my niece learns a new thing. I would call it more of an indirect pride, I guess.
I can see extending that to more distant ancestors, especially if there’s been a consistent threat and various ancestors were instrumental or inspirational against that threat. It’s not a requirement to feel any sort of way about your forebears, but I don’t think it’s out of line to feel pride or shame. I also don’t think it really makes a difference if you’re blood related to the people or just culturally related (or anywhere in between), so I guess it would apply to a culture at large as well (generally geographically related).
Ooh, ooh! There’s a song for that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kjBNy5AlNQNeeds to be narrower. Nobody should be proud of being from where they are from because they are from there. It’s not inherently good to be from any particular place.
But you’re allowed to be proud of your local community because of things they have done regardless of whether you were born there or not.
So I shouldn’t proud of my personal identity and my roots? Which literally plays a huge part of who I am today and especially, where I was brought up cuz without it, I wouldn’t be me and I wouldn’t have an identity without it.
But ok then go off………
Not really. We all came from somewhere. We all have an identity. Unless you worked hard for it, you shouldn’t feel pride in it. Someone else worked hard for it, THEY should feel pride for it. You should feel humble, grateful, or lucky that you are able to enjoy it (assuming they’re good “roots”). You shouldn’t feel pride in having won the lottery.
You still have your identity without having to feel proud about it.
My country sucks big time. Should I feel ashamed even though I contributed nothing to its suckiness?
You nailed it. Most correct and succinct comment in the thread.
Agreed. Also genetic heritage. I literally didn’t have any choice in any of it. And to pretend my genetic heritage is somehow something to be more proud of than any other genetic is literally racist.
This applies to all races equally.
I think society would benefit if we all felt a sense of pride in our communities and people in a positive aspect
Can we do that on a global scale instead of being restricted to within the borders?
I think we’d need to find aliens first
sense of pride
- Sense of community? Yes
- Sense of respect? Yes
- Sense of responsibility? Yes
- Sense of accomplishments? Yes
- Sense of pride? Errrr… Not really.
When people write “a sense of pride in” I think they (and you) are saying “be responsible for X so you can feel good about it”. Nothing wrong with that, and I think you’re right.
However I don’t like the phrase. Pride is the wrong emotional target. It brings with it a sense of superiority in some. There’s a reason it’s one of the deadly sins.
Fair, but I think we agree with the sentiment of what I meant.
You can be proud about your country. You can be proud about everything that makes your country special. Your food, your traditions,… Why shouldn’t you.
Because you did nothing to create any of that. Appreciating one’s country especially certain aspects of it seems like a good idea. Being proud of it makes no sense. Most countries have some ugly shit in their past. Proud of that too? Not sure you get to pick and choose.
There’s nothing that necessitates that you can only be proud of things you have personally done.
Unless you care about “meaning”
Yeah, if you’ve got no own accomplishments to be proud of, I guess you can do that.
Sorry you are from a miserable area that has nothing to enjoy and take pride in. I’m from St. Louis originally, and despite it’s many faults, history of racism, and 2 centuries of shooting otself in the foot i still am proud to be from there. The sports teams are my favorite, the Arch is a beautiful monument, and the free services such as the zoo, Art Museum, and Muny theater are all amazing municipal achievements that took the whole community to accomplish.
You can be proud of where you are from and be open about the faults and problems of that place. Civic pride isn’t blind nationalism.
…April fool’s…?
Not sure if you’re being serious, but if you are, you’re perfectly proving my point.
LGBT+ people celebrate pride month for how they were born. Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass,and Malcolm X all took pride in looking like their parents. Ukrainians are proud of their country in the face of Russian invasion. Were all those people dumb for taking pride in something they had no control over?
It just seems to me that you are ashamed of wherever you are from and can’t understand someone else having prode in their home
Agreed. Nobody should be proud of their height, their skin color, eye color, anything they didn’t work for. Happy, sure. Proud? No.
I’d rather not be born in a place where this opinion is unpopular.
I told my children that pride is a product of hard work; in life, there’s nothing worth boasting about unless you’ve earned it through effort.