Talk politics.

Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban have called for a cultural counter-revolution aiming to overcome the cocktail of crises that the EU is fasing. Brexit is a fine opportunity for starting this process, Orban said during a recent summit. And Kaczynski says UK's decision is not a mere sign of the change of mood on the Albion, it's a symptom of a crisis of European identity that several Western countries have set a while back. He listed a few recent crises, starting with the 2008 economic plunge (which in his opinion may've been mitigated but is still getting coped with), the migration issue, and Germany's clash with South Europe over austerity, plus the crisis of European balance resulting from the weakening of France, Italy and Spain and Britain's departure. This has brought a German domination over Europe, these two smartheads are arguing, and that's not good.

What about the recipe? It's reforming EU, this eternal mantra that we keep hearing. The change has to bring a cultural counter-revolution, they say, and argue that Europe's true wealth is in the diversity of its cultures, their differences, and the various political systems and structures that they have (I'm sure Orban would've loved to have a system in Hungary that resembles more Putin's Russia, or maybe what Erdogan's Turkey is being turned into as we speak). Their argument is that any attempt to integrate all these diverse elements into a homogeneous European culture would result in a "pop culture that's essentially American, therefore alien to European values", which is a losing scenario for Europe. The words are Kaczynski's.

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A recent conversation made me thinking about nationalism, patriotism and all the related sentiments (including the more extreme forms, like chauvinism and jingoism).

IMO, nationalism/patriotism/jingoism is the stupidest/most-amusing/dangerous thing humankind has ever come up with. That, and those funny ass-washing bidets. That said, of course there are nuance differences between patriotism and nationalism/jingoism which, under certain circumstances, are not exactly insignificant (I'm sure we could all come up with all sorts of past and more recent examples just off the top of our bonets/baseball-caps/top-hats).

One might also argue that a certain amount of patriotism helps create a sense of community, and provides coherence in a society, and a purpose in an otherwise seemingly random world. And to a point, it does.

However, past experience seems to suggest that patriotism, even in its most noble form, tends to create more divisions than unity on larger scales. What I mean is, sure, it can somewhat provide internal unity within a relatively encapsulated community, especially in favor of the pursuit of a certain cause (like throwing back an invader, or overcoming an economic depression), but in the larger picture of humankind, patriotism has been more of a detriment rather than asset in the long run. And hopes are that in the 21st century it'll be finally transcended, to give way to universal humanism.

On a more personal level, there are few things more hilarious and/or disturbing and dangerous than a person, or worse, a large group of people, blindly following a certain set of notions that have been deeply funnelled into their mentality just because they're somehow supposed to come along with the whole package of devotion to one country or another that is patriotism - even in the face of blatant injustice, staggering immorality and outright irrational stupidity. Unfortunately, historically, too few people have chosen to live by the principle that "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism".

Thoughts? (And forgive/feel-free-to-mock the unusually abstract nature of the post).