Australia - no pride allowed, page-121 - HotCopper | ASX Share Prices, Stock Market & Share Trading Forum

Originally posted by alonso: ↑

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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excellent post alonso. though I doubt that "Democrats have a disdain for almost ANY love of their country" has any validity. it smacks of the kind of bias that you declaim in seeking balance.

like the division between right and left politics, the generational divide too is a fabrication constructed by those who seek victory through divide and conquer. generational difference is a matter for sociologists to neatly notice change in cultural norms, values and morals. political difference is far more exaggerated than social differences. more extreme as political parties seek to separate out voters who support them from those who don't.

if we could ditch this destructive division we could have a better functioning democracy. right and left politics both have valid points. as you suggest we need to find the balance, the fulcrum and make our political choices nearer to that mark rather than supporting extremes and difference.

all imo only.