Remind me what it was - patriotism

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The kind that the word patriotism suggests you love is not your family or relatives, much less the one that gave birth to you that year, letina. It is an unusual form of love for millions of people you will never get to know and even more of them who lived in ancient centuries, for mountains you will never climb, lakes you avoid because you don't like swimming in fresh water, traditions you don't understand and don't delve into, for example, Old Slavonic or reading Ostrogorski, for songs, images or icons completely different from what can be seen on social networks or Netflix.

During a typical working day, these questions don't even cross your mind. The sense of belonging and love for the homeland are usually not in focus until some challenge, personal or general, appears, and then you "automatically" know where you belong, whose side you are on, who are your potential allies and who are your enemies. Unfortunately, this focus can narrow dramatically, and people go crazy, as if a rabies virus infects thousands or even millions, and what was originally (or at least should have been) love for one's own kind turns into hatred for others.

"GO, THINK"

There are countless stories about patriotism. People sacrificed their lives and fought wars for him. But the great truth is also hidden in the legend about the inner drama of a failed artist. He is about thirty years old, lives in Milan, which was then under Austrian occupation. His two operas were received very poorly, and his two children and wife died one after the other. Broken, he decides to stop composing and completely change his life. A libretto was offered to him on the table and he (allegedly) opened it at random and read the lines: Oh, my homeland, she is beautiful and lost! Oh, membrane, Yes, sir, it's fatal.He starts writing immediately. Nabucco, a drama about Jewish slavery in ancient Egypt, will be immediately recognized as the anthem of the patriotic struggle against foreign rule, and Verdi not only the most important name in Italian culture of that time, but also a symbol of the liberation and unification of his homeland.

Truly, the homeland seems to us the most beautiful when it is lost, the dearest when the memories of it are painful. Patriotism is clearly recognized in the readiness to fight and give our lives for the freedom of our homeland and not allow a change of borders, laws, human rights, freedom, language and values ​​to be imposed on us. This feeling is probably recognized by all communities, in many it is one of the most important values ​​and themes of traditions, songs, films and music, and some are ready to make any sacrifice to achieve it. But if the defense fails, if you are expelled and you fear that you will never see it again, the homeland becomes an object of insatiable love. It is enough to remember the lyrics of the song "Far Away", and the entire so-called post-Kosovo cycle is in a certain way dedicated to that.

WHAT NEXT?, THE MORE LONGING

I heard the most interesting story of this kind in Istanbul. Whenever I was there at conferences, many colleagues approached me and said the same thing in English - "Hello, I'm Jazić, my grandfather came from Bitola". Only recognizable surnames and toponyms have changed - Preševo, Brčko, Niš, Prijepolje... One colleague told me that she did not understand the meaning of the word Mostar for a long time. Every afternoon, when she finished lunch, her grandfather would get up from the table and say "I'm going to Mostar", which was a sign to put a jug of water, ratluk and a daily newspaper next to the couch - satiety, peace, sugar and an afternoon nap carried the memory of a happy childhood, the era before the refugees, so the children thought that Mostar was some unusual synonym for paradise. Turkey was his homeland, but his love for Mostar was etched so deeply and in such a childish way that nothing could erase it.

It is not fundamentally different for those who live far from their homeland while studying or working. The root of the word pečalba is in the old Slavic word for torment and loneliness (in Russian, it is still the basic meaning of the word "pečal"), and it is similar to the term nostalgia, which contains the Greek word for pain (better known from medical terms such as an-algetik, a medicine against pain). The reasons are not only in separation from the people you love and who you may miss in different ways. It is obviously necessary to adapt to other laws, language, work relations...

Many other challenges, however, easily go unnoticed - the landscape, climate, spices, humor, the way of expressing feelings... All this is usually sufficiently foreign and "blistering" to you that, sooner or later, it begins to embellish our image of the homeland and intensify the longing for it, so often, when you listen to immigrants, it is not at all clear why they left that paradise and agreed to live in some kind of "labor camp".

There are sociologists who claim that right-wing movements often arise under the most direct influence of the diaspora, which turns out to be more conservative, religious, xenophobic, and traditional than the mother country (Serbia and Croatia at the end of the eighties are no more prominent examples of this than Turkey).

SELECTIVE LOVE

It hurts when you are separated from your homeland. But it doesn't end there. One could say that by definition the homeland is where you feel that the development of social events can hurt you. Of course, the great powers will not give up their colonies until they are forced to do so, but the reasons for this are exploitative interests or pride, while they do not care what happens to the people who live there. The situation with emigrants is completely reversed: they may not care who is the mayor of the city where they study or work, while they wholeheartedly support movements or protests in their native country and are pained by the defeats, crises or problems it is going through, so they are ready to return to it when war is declared.

Patriotism, unfortunately, is as selective as most other forms of love. Most people simply love as long as it is easy to love and turn their heads as soon as it becomes necessary to reconcile paradoxes and imperfections. That's how we all like to talk about "our" Nobel laureates, the glorious history, and for the basketball team we easily say "tonight we play against..." (although at best we'll drink beer in front of the TV). At the same time, we do not include details about cowardice, weaknesses, flaws or historical mistakes in the textbooks, we do not stop bragging by loudly - especially not in front of foreigners - admitting the war crimes committed by our schoolmates, colleagues and neighbors.

In the largest number of countries in the world, any expression of pride in one's homeland is very naively considered patriotism, and very often any attempt to talk about its dark sides, everything that should be improved in it, and for which in its history one should most sincerely apologize, is welcomed as treason. The clearest example of how difficult this process is is the fact that in Berlin, a monument to psychiatric patients who were killed or forcibly sterilized by the Nazis (of which there were about half a million in total) was opened in September 2014, almost seventy years after the end of World War II.

WHO INVENTED BAKLAVA?

The big problem of patriotism lies in the plurality, in that other peoples feel the same, they are proud of what we are. As Kish clearly learned when he moved from Hungarian to Yugoslavian elementary school, all nations believe that they are world champions in hospitality, even though it would be the most meaningless sports discipline and no one has ever organized a championship. In a psychological sense, the logic is simple: what good is belonging to a large group if I can't be proud of it; and when someone else is proud of the same property, there is a wonderful opportunity to prove it and fight. And then patriots of different countries can go to war because they all believe that Mostar is only theirs, fight over a football score, the nationality of someone who died three hundred years ago, the question of who invented baklava, where are the most beautiful women, which people are the most intelligent...

If you have the luxury of watching from the sidelines, it's usually endlessly boring. The problem is that it easily becomes dangerous, since even those who seek freedom for themselves may be ready to deny it to others, and those who love their homeland sometimes believe that their love is more valuable than the love and homeland of others. Patriotism knows how to turn into such a passion that it is not difficult to abuse it, turn it into hatred, nationalism, even fascism. Many authoritarian governments are based and maintained precisely on causing fear of others, convincing that coexistence is impossible, negotiations and fraud. Along with that, there is continuous proof that no one has ever loved their homeland as much as that leader and his followers, and that all those who are not with them must be traitors who love some foreigners or have traded their love for some modern thirty pieces of silver. And no matter how many times that card has been played, it apparently still works in all sorts of places around the world.

Unfortunately, this is not always a sufficient defense, but the homeland, as the once famous song said, is truly best defended with honor, knowledge and good upbringing. One of the big problems of the modern world is that many of the most important politicians in the world behave as if no one has ever educated them, they have never even passed by a cultural institution, they have never loved anyone. And that's why, yes, love your permanent and/or temporary homelands: plant a tree, clean up after yourself, donate blood, repair the institutions you work in, read to children who have no one to read aloud to them with pleasure... But don't forget that in every kind of relationship, even in patriotism, pride always - but always - represents a step backwards in relation to love.

The author is a psychologist