LET'S AVOID HARM!: LET'S DISMANTLE IDENTITY INDOCTRINATION THAT ALIENATES US FROM OTHERS

Toxic identity groupism has caused much suffering throughout history, and continues to do so…read more. It is always linked to a doctrine that, among other things:

1.- IT TELLS US WHO BELONGS TO US AND WHO DOES NOT, establishing a separating perimeter to define it. There is even the paradox that essentialist nationalism excludes most living human and non-human beings, but includes the dead and unborn, previous generations, even thousands of years ago, and future descendants, despite the fact that we do not know them.

2.- It often deceives us with the idea that those of us who are part of that community HAVE A LOT IN COMMON AND DIFFER FROM OTHERS. However, the reality is that there is usually a great variety of people within each national, ethnic, religious, etc. group and, furthermore, great similarity between specific members of that group and certain individuals from other collectives.

3.- IT INSTILLS IN US WHAT IS OUR CULTURE AND WHAT IS NOT, what is our literature or gastronomy and what is not, what are our traditions and what are not, etc. All this despite the fact that the authorship of each creation belongs only to its creator and the right to enjoy it belongs to all humanity.

4.- It often includes a narcissistic pride and OVERVALUATION OF ONE’S OWN GROUP (such as saying that “we are a great nation”) and, at times, chauvinism and even supremacism. This was the case with Nazism, which considered Germans and Austrians, of Aryan race, to be superior to almost all others, such as the Slavs. This was incongruous, since in much of Germany, from Hamburg eastward, the inhabitants were largely Germanicized Slavs in the Middle Ages. Even the name of the German capital, Berlin, is of Slavic origin. And Vienna, the capital of the Austria where Hitler was born, was largely populated by inhabitants of Slavic origin.

Read LET’S LIVE WITHOUT HARM! Let’s combat the perverse narcissism we all have

5.- It tends to IDEALIZE THE PAST OF THE TRIBE, no matter how many crimes and horrors it may have committed throughout history.

Read: LET’S REPAIR THE DAMAGE!: Including historical damage

6.- It tends to extol and GLORIFY ICONS of its community, no matter how villainous they may be.

Read LIVE WITHOUT HARM: Let’s not honor any villain, but those who fight for a better world

7.- Sometimes it establishes external, internal, or both enemies at the same time, such as Indians with Pakistanis and vice versa, Muslims with Jews, Serbs with Croats and vice versa, Catalans with Spaniards and vice versa, etc. Sometimes it also tells us who our allied or related groups are.

8.- It teaches us how to treat other groups: whether we can enslave them or not, steal, plunder, conquer, mistreat, etc.

Read HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARM? Let’s avoid labels that are a blank check to cause harm

9.- In certain cases, even what to feel: contempt, hatred, sympathy, etc.

Read FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let’s not tell others how they should feel

For example, national doctrines often instill in us that those born within certain physical borders are “ours.” This is despite the fact that these are millions of people we do not know, and some of whom we would prefer never to know.

On the other hand, if there is someone 30 meters from that territorial limit with whom I get along wonderfully, we connect deeply, we are very similar in character and way of thinking, despite all this, the group doctrine tells me that they are not “mine,” that they are different from “us,” that they are not part of my group. All this even if they resemble me much more and I have much more affinity with them than with others who are supposedly “mine” but whom I do not know at all or with whom I do not get along.

The same happens with other types of perimeters, such as belonging to a religion, an ideology, or the use of a language. And the issue is that this indoctrination usually takes place from childhood, a time when we are especially credulous and “programmable,” so it tends to be recorded like software on a computer and it is difficult for us to question it as adults.

But wouldn’t it be more logical for each person to freely choose, without brainwashing, with whom they want to identify? Let’s do as in typical international schools where the children of multinational executives and diplomats study. In these, teaching is done instead of instilling doctrines.

Read THE ART OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let’s think for ourselves and avoid toxic indoctrination

I have decided to free myself from mental clutter and take control of my own mind. In my family, I absorbed my father’s Spanish nationalism, and at school, Catalan nationalism. In adolescence and youth, I was very much a Catalan nationalist, even a supremacist. Now I look back and am ashamed of it. How could I have been like that?

Seeing all the harm that nationalisms have caused, I have evolved and distrust them. And now I identify with those who are reasonably good people, whether they are my neighbors or residents of New Zealand, right on the other side of the world from where I was born and live.

Read THE REVOLUTION OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let’s not be racist, ethnicist, xenophobic, ultranationalist

My homeland is composed of those who are reasonably just and honest, whether from Europe or other continents, even if they are of other species. And my nation is made up of those who do not cause too much harm to others and who, when I try to convince them not to, listen to me because a part of them knows that it is unethical, no matter where they come from.

Do you also dare to open up and choose your identity free from the conditioning of education? Because to end the poisonous plant of nationalist and gregarious wars and conflicts, it is not enough to prune it; it is necessary to pull out its root, that is, identity indoctrination.

Let’s have broad views like a plain instead of narrow ones like a gorge. Let’s be reasonably open and cosmopolitan.

Thank you for sharing if you believe this analysis can contribute to a better world.