Australia - no pride allowed, page-113

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    There is a downside to too much pride as well as an upside to some degree of pride.
    Some countries have been fanatic in their "pride" for their country, or more correctly some elements in those countries. Take the example of the PRC, and the fanatical love of country under Mao, or the Japanese before the war. Hitler's Germany.
    That degree of pride is usually accompanied by disdain or even hatred of "the other", which is only a hop step and jump from enmity and war.

    A lack of pride in your country or at least respect for its history, the good and the bad, is not a good thing.
    It's pure negativity. The United States is in a pretty bad place with that now. The Republicans are overboard with their USA USA USA. Not a balanced state of mind. The Democrats have a disdain for almost ANY love of their country. Balance is out the window.
    In Australia and probably elsewhere in the western world my feeling is that many younger people do look down on their country, they are more susceptible to group pressure, and it may be fashionable to be out of step with older traditions which will probably wither away on the vine. They are more in step with the group attitude of the international generation of their own age.
    Add to that we have allowed ourselves to become too enmeshed with politics as if it were a cultish world-wide craze to completely dominate our lives.

    But these things ebb and flow over time, each generation, according to their age, looks back with.fondness at what it used to be like or looks forward with eagerness to change things. I suspect it was even thus in the horse and buggy days and it is more so in the present age of instant world wide communication. Generations spans have also shortened I think, so the process of challenge and push back becomes like a whirlpool of contesting beliefs and aspirations.
    We do the best we can to get along, we opt out, we rage and rebel, we even resort to violence out of these conflicting influences.
    And so it will go on.
 
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