Pride of any kind can only create rivalries and wars. As soon as you belong to any group or subgroup, that's it, you have established that you were against the ideas and values of another group or subgroup. War in any form can then begin, as it somehow never fails to happen.
Pride is a very dangerous weapon. It is used to justify wars, it is used to justify killing millions of people. Not that we really care, since these people cannot be proud of what we are proud to represent, proud to be. They are not really humans or civilized, are they? They become insignificant.
It would never occur to many that pride is only a pretext, a pretence, and really, wars have nothing to do with pride or identity, or religion. It is a tool to manipulate the masses into believing anything, to do anything, in the name of identity, in the name of a flag, a fake symbol which does not ultimately mean anything significant, and should not reasonably be used to justify atrocities and genocides.
I can barely believe that I have just written this. I never thought when I was young that I would be trying to convince anyone that war was wrong, as I was so convinced there would be no need to by now. However, wars, just like everything else, are cyclical, they always come back after a certain amount of years. We never learn anything from the past, from history. And the same old arguments, symbols and tools are being used again and again to justify any political agenda. Amazingly it always works.
Pride is an essential component to all this. And the sooner we realize that we do not belong to anyone, to any political party, to any set of already established philosophies or political ideas or religion, the better we will be.
We are not a mindless collective controlled by a few bad men, a flock of birds with one collective mind. We are all individuals capable of having opinions, capable of stating what we want. Take a step back, and understand that a flag, a feeling of belonging to any group, does not justify anything.
And most importantly, we need to understand that governments can fall and should fall as soon as a majority of the citizens wishes it. Under the democratic rules, I would have thought that many more governments would have fallen within my lifetime. As it stands, I have never witnessed such a thing, no matter how unpopular any decision any government made. We simply accepted it and went on our way. Or decided to wait for the next elections, and we know now that fraud is rampant everywhere, at every level.
Democracy is gone, we have to move to new tactics in order to be heard and operate change. As soon as 50,000 citizens walk out across the country to denounce anything, a referendum needs to be called, across the country.
No, no, it does not matter that Obama has won, electoral fraud still happened in California with Proposition 8, will still happen again on any new proposed law, and more likely also at the next presidential elections. We are not out of the woods yet, far from it.
Don't even think that once we succeed in getting back to paper ballots, fraud would have disappeared. We are aware now of what has been going on for so long, we have proved it. We need to be doubly careful in the future, and insure some sort of democracy still exists, not just a pretend one.
If you truly feel the need to be proud of anything, it should be to be proud of yourself, who you are as an individual, what you are capable of accomplishing on a personal level, not on a collective one.
You are quite certain that you have nothing in common with your next door neighbor, why should you think that you have so much in common with a whole nation? You could quite easily kill your neighbors, because you know by now that you simply cannot live next to these people, and they deserve to die. And yet, you do not kill them. Why should you then decide in your mind that you are proud to be the same as million others living in your country, and find it acceptable to go to war and annihilate entire nations on the other side of the planet?
Be proud of yourself, of your own little family, but do not go beyond that nucleus. Go any further and you will no longer be acting under the influence of what defines you as an individual, you will no longer be establishing your own values and beliefs, you will no longer belong to yourself. You will belong to others, and those others will make sure you will be obeying their will, their rules, not yours.
Pride is a dangerous weapon, never forget it next time you see the flag of your nation. A flag will always be but a flag, it is meaningless, it cannot be used to create a false sense of belonging and justify wars through pride, through being part of something larger than you could ever hope to be. You do not need to be part of something larger than you. You are yourself, an individual with rights and freedoms guaranteed by law, and that is all that is required.
Think for yourself, be proud of yourself, do not stop thinking or expressing your opinion. As soon as you begin to be proud of something larger than you are, you are lost, humanity is lost, whether this influence is political or religious in nature. Others have now taken control over you and what you will be proud of.
Most certainly one day, you will be ashamed for having so blindly followed any idea or course of action dictated by others, without first considering all that is truly involved, the real motivations behind any decision. As soon as you are proud of something other than yourself, you belong to other people, and other people will decide your destiny.
Pride is a very dangerous weapon. It is used to justify wars, it is used to justify killing millions of people. Not that we really care, since these people cannot be proud of what we are proud to represent, proud to be. They are not really humans or civilized, are they? They become insignificant.
It would never occur to many that pride is only a pretext, a pretence, and really, wars have nothing to do with pride or identity, or religion. It is a tool to manipulate the masses into believing anything, to do anything, in the name of identity, in the name of a flag, a fake symbol which does not ultimately mean anything significant, and should not reasonably be used to justify atrocities and genocides.
I can barely believe that I have just written this. I never thought when I was young that I would be trying to convince anyone that war was wrong, as I was so convinced there would be no need to by now. However, wars, just like everything else, are cyclical, they always come back after a certain amount of years. We never learn anything from the past, from history. And the same old arguments, symbols and tools are being used again and again to justify any political agenda. Amazingly it always works.
We are not a mindless collective controlled by a few bad men, a flock of birds with one collective mind. We are all individuals capable of having opinions, capable of stating what we want. Take a step back, and understand that a flag, a feeling of belonging to any group, does not justify anything.
And most importantly, we need to understand that governments can fall and should fall as soon as a majority of the citizens wishes it. Under the democratic rules, I would have thought that many more governments would have fallen within my lifetime. As it stands, I have never witnessed such a thing, no matter how unpopular any decision any government made. We simply accepted it and went on our way. Or decided to wait for the next elections, and we know now that fraud is rampant everywhere, at every level.
Democracy is gone, we have to move to new tactics in order to be heard and operate change. As soon as 50,000 citizens walk out across the country to denounce anything, a referendum needs to be called, across the country.
No, no, it does not matter that Obama has won, electoral fraud still happened in California with Proposition 8, will still happen again on any new proposed law, and more likely also at the next presidential elections. We are not out of the woods yet, far from it.
Don't even think that once we succeed in getting back to paper ballots, fraud would have disappeared. We are aware now of what has been going on for so long, we have proved it. We need to be doubly careful in the future, and insure some sort of democracy still exists, not just a pretend one.
If you truly feel the need to be proud of anything, it should be to be proud of yourself, who you are as an individual, what you are capable of accomplishing on a personal level, not on a collective one.
You are quite certain that you have nothing in common with your next door neighbor, why should you think that you have so much in common with a whole nation? You could quite easily kill your neighbors, because you know by now that you simply cannot live next to these people, and they deserve to die. And yet, you do not kill them. Why should you then decide in your mind that you are proud to be the same as million others living in your country, and find it acceptable to go to war and annihilate entire nations on the other side of the planet?
Be proud of yourself, of your own little family, but do not go beyond that nucleus. Go any further and you will no longer be acting under the influence of what defines you as an individual, you will no longer be establishing your own values and beliefs, you will no longer belong to yourself. You will belong to others, and those others will make sure you will be obeying their will, their rules, not yours.
Pride is a dangerous weapon, never forget it next time you see the flag of your nation. A flag will always be but a flag, it is meaningless, it cannot be used to create a false sense of belonging and justify wars through pride, through being part of something larger than you could ever hope to be. You do not need to be part of something larger than you. You are yourself, an individual with rights and freedoms guaranteed by law, and that is all that is required.
Think for yourself, be proud of yourself, do not stop thinking or expressing your opinion. As soon as you begin to be proud of something larger than you are, you are lost, humanity is lost, whether this influence is political or religious in nature. Others have now taken control over you and what you will be proud of.
Most certainly one day, you will be ashamed for having so blindly followed any idea or course of action dictated by others, without first considering all that is truly involved, the real motivations behind any decision. As soon as you are proud of something other than yourself, you belong to other people, and other people will decide your destiny.
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