Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
Power dynamics among countries (and why you must rise above the din)
Humans take power dynamics in almost any realm they touch.
I invite the readers here to understand power dynamics not just to leverage them and to avoid abuse, but also to step beside them.
And above them.
An asshole is trying to give you the upper hand?
Sure, you can fight it.
But you can also smile to yourself thinking "what an idiot" and let him have his petty "win".
Power battles you must avoid
The power battles I invite you to step beyond are the ones that involve "groups".
For example:
- I'm from this culture and we're better than those others
- I follow this team and we must beat those others
And of course, the most idiotic of them all:
- I'm a man (/woman) and we must beat women (/men) (also read toxic masculinity)
You must actively fight these ingroup/outgroup tendencies because social studies show that whenever groups are formed, even on the basis of extremely randomly selected traits, people started feeling a sense of belonging to that ground and a sense of hostility against others and "different groups".
The "Stanford Experiment" is the most famous and extreme example, it's been heavily criticized but the fact that people feel and act on group belongings remains a basic truth of social-psychology).
Power Battles Among Nations
Modicum amounts of nationalism as in "being glad of coming from a certain cultural background" is fine.
As long as you're aware of the limitations, the ways it can harm you and as long as you keep it under control.
Otherwise, I recommend you position yourself above nations, countries and even cultures. Or, better than above, you position yourself "longitudinally", such as you appreciate the beauty and the cultural productions of each country without feeling "pride" for your own or hostility for others.
When you manage to "step above the fray" you become a higher quality individual and you start seeing how ridiculous others sound.
Look for example at this article on CNN:
Notice especially this one:
Gobbling up cultures in a way that should alarm
Should it alarm us?
Why?
Only someone deeply ensraned in a (highly meaningless) cultural power war should get alarmed.
When you manage to rise above a meaningless sense of belonging to "US" or "Western culture" you can start wondering: why should the world be "alarmed" about China "gobbling up cultures"?
We should not be alarmed.
A Chinese or anyone who doesn't enjoy fast food might wonder if it was any better when the US "gobbled up cultures" with McDonalds and Starbucks.
But that would be, again, to be the victim of a power struggle (just from a more leftist "no logo" kind of way).
To truly move above the fray is to realize that Nic Robertson point of view ( the CNN journalist who wrote the piece) is nothing but a distorted, ethnocentric position mired in a meaningless mindset of international power dynamics.
But Don't Fall Into Cultural Relativism
However, make not mistake: this is not to say that all cultures are the same.
A culture that recognizes basic human rights and guarantees safe travel is far better than a repressive culture who doesn't have the power to guarantee safe world-travel.
The Alternative: A Free Man In A Free World
Looking, acting and living as a free citizen of a global world is the best position you can take.
For yourself, and for the world itself.
Stepping above the fray as a free man in a free world means refusing to take part in meaningless wars based on groups, countries and cultures.
And refusing to take side with this or that country.
A truly international free man only espouses values, not flags or countries.
