THE LIMITS OF COMPASSION AND THE MORALITY OF NATIONALISM

by Bay Area Guy

In my last post, I used an image from a humorous meme called "Islamic Rage Boy," which uses well-timed photos to regale us with hilarious facial expressions. As funny as the pictures are, the man behind the meme, Kashmiri activist Shakeel Ahmad Bhat, has lived a rather harrowing life. It's no wonder he's so angry. If I were illiterate, crippled on account of being tortured, and had watched my sister get thrown out of a window, I too would be enraged; and to top it all off, the poor man is now an object of international ridicule.

The reason why I bring up someone like Islamic Rage Boy is because he made me ponder immigration, nationalism, and the supposed obligation that Western countries have to allow destitute people like Bhat to emigrate and seek a better life. Obviously, the nationalistic alt right would prefer that the likes of Bhat stay put in their home countries. But in my opinion, for nationalism to function as a truly powerful force, it requires more than a defensive fear about immigration and shifting demographics – as rational as such fear may be.

A DIFFERENT WAY OF LIFE

by Brett Stevens

Our problem is that our people have lost the reason to unite and stay together. This often happens with majority groups, unlike the envious minorities who want to take power from them. Because we already have the power, we have turned to other things for our quest in life, things which are more specific to the individual, things that divide us and weaken us.

The ultimate consequences of our present trajectory are extremely negative, but it is hard to get people to recognize this simply by pointing out negatives. These are obscured by the ambiguities of the future and human psychological traits, like time preference habits, which focus on immediate positives at the expense of distant negatives.

In order to move people you need to recognize this simple rule: people respond more to visions of a possible future that is good than to warnings about the negative results of present day actions. Quite simply, you have to show them an ideal of what is better, because, by the principle of competition, people will pick whatever offers them a better way of life.