Nationalism as opium

Mad About Pyramids

The above link is an article in the 22 September issue of Science which reports a growing trend in the erstwhile developing nations but now seems to have engulfed all the societies in its grip. The gist of the report is that the archaeologists in Bosnia & Sarajevo are prevented from studying a hill over a small town called Visoko that resembles a pyramid (in shape). The archaeologists contend that the underlying rocks that form the structure of the hills are

stone slabs ... nothing more than fractured chunks of sediment called breccia, the remains of a 7-million-year-old lakebed that was thrust up by natural forces.

But the media, general public, and the politicians do not want to listen to the scientific explanation, and worse, they do not want to continue scientific study of the hills, instead they want to support the millionaire businessman who promises to find pyramids that will fill the poor Bosnians minds with a pride of the distant past, a prehistoric supercivilization, because the present has nothing much to offer. The archaeologists are teeming with anger as they say that the layer between the surface and underlying breccia has remains which are crucial to the study of the history of the last two millennia, but that layer is being destroyed by the overzealous diggers scouting for a pyramid. The archeologists' community is suffering from severe fund shortage, and the whole social and economic machinery is killing them in lieu of some false glory pertaining to the distant past.

The academic in me cringes whenever I come across such news, and these are getting more frequent nowadays. The rich guy will behave like an all encompassing god bringing a sense of romantic adventure by disclaiming all the orthodox notions of study, the general public will follow suit with salivating tongues, hoping for a redemption from their dreary existence by a deliverance that will not need any effort on their part, the politicians will feed on the ego of the rich guy, and the drunken fervour of the general mass to secure his own position by the support of money and popular choice. And the media will, of course, sell whatever that earns hard cash.

Building a culture of any worthy note requires generations of very hard sincere work, there is no shortcut to it. Cultures in the decline have the tendency of looking back to their glorious past to rejuvenate their fledgling morale. If the glorious past doesn't happen to have occurred in the near past then one doesn't have much choice but to look in the very distant past, and if someone conjures up something in the guise of lost glory then the public goes into frenzy. Nationalism can be used as a very effective opium to guide the people off from thinking coherently, logically, to lure them into a false sense of well being, and the politicians love it as it doesn't involve any effort on their part. The truth can go to hell!!

This particular news is from Bosnia, but this is a very common feature all over the world, in fact this trait confirms the universal nature of man. Everywhere, at all times, few scrupulous people lure the masses into the false belief of well being by using nationalism (and religion) as opium to stifle all scientific, progressive thoughts by not allowing the development of a free debating atmosphere where opposing perspectives are dealt with respect and candour.

Nationalism, at best, is the natural love for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the man, and at worst is the hatred for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the other man. Stifling the gain of knowledge by logical, rational study retards growth, which is the antithesis of life, because life implies growth, of knowledge, awareness, leading to the realization of self.