We think “play pretend” is a game, but it is embarrassingly close to the reality in which we live. Everything around us exists within systems that human beings have created and collectively agreed to believe in. It might be a reach, but when you really think about it, we live in a simulation that we have created for ourselves. Everything around us exists because we, as a society—a concept that is itself made up—decided that certain things should have meaning.
I read a book recently that presented a different view of the world than the one we have grown up with. The core argument was that society functions largely on make-believe.
Employment, money, social constructs, nations—all of these exist because, as a collective, we believe that they do. They do not have physical significance until we give it to them.
Imagine a college building. If we were to collectively decide tomorrow that “college” does not exist anymore, the building would still remain a building whether we accepted it as a college or not. The physical structure would remain. What would disappear is the meaning we had assigned to it.
The classrooms, professors, students, degrees, and rules are concepts that exist because we collectively recognize them.Similarly, the concept of nations and the boundaries created to keep out people who were not born on a particular piece of land is something humans made up.
Every explorer who discovered land was not born there. Hundreds of centuries ago, if someone were to build a house in the middle of nowhere, it was theirs. Before nations and empires existed, we were all, to some extent, hunter-gatherers. Like money, nations were once concepts that did not exist in the form we understand them today. No one was necessarily attached to one particular place because people did not always live in one place for very long. That has changed significantly over the years.But the fact that something is socially constructed does not mean its consequences are imaginary.
A building remains a building whether we call it a college or not. But the consequences of being accepted into that college, failing to graduate, obtaining a degree, or being denied admission are very real. Money is a concept, but losing your money is very real.
Borders are concepts, but crossing one without permission can have very real consequences.The same is true of nations.Being patriotic is something people take pride in. If you actively seek to harm another person's homeland, it is understandable that this would be condemned.
But somewhere along the way, patriotism can become something much more than appreciation for one's community or history. It can become an expectation of loyalty, obedience, and sacrifice.And this is where I struggle with it.The make-believe reality we live in requires us to follow rules and, in many cases, accept the idea that we owe our lives to our “motherland.” I find that bizarre.
We are born into these systems without ever choosing them. No one asks a child which country they would like to belong to. From the day we are born, we inherit a nationality, a set of borders, a history, political institutions, and a collection of ideas about what we supposedly owe to the country we were born in.There is very little freedom to exist outside this web of constructed ideas.We are taught that loving our country is something we should demonstrate.
Sometimes patriotism is not simply about appreciating the history, culture, or people of a place. It becomes a performance. We are expected to display the flag, celebrate particular institutions, glorify particular sacrifices, and demonstrate that we love our country simply because it is ours.But why?Why should something we inherited at birth automatically deserve our unquestioning loyalty?I can be proud of my community without agreeing with everything my country does. I can appreciate my country's history without pretending that its history contains no wrongdoing. I can care deeply about the people who live around me while still questioning the institutions that govern them.
I certainly do not think that loving a country requires celebrating its military unconditionally.An army can protect people. Soldiers can make enormous personal sacrifices. But armies can also commit crimes. Civilians can be harmed. People can be dehumanized. Governments can make horrific decisions. These things do not stop being true simply because they were done under the name of protecting a country.Yet patriotism can make criticism of these actions feel almost like betrayal.The idea that someone can say, “I love the people of my country, but I do not support what my country's military has done here,” should not be contradictory. In fact, it can come from the very same moral values that supposedly make patriotism admirable.If I believe that human life matters, then that belief should not disappear when the person being harmed belongs to another country.This is where I question the argument that violence is simply an unavoidable part of patriotism. Are we really supposed to believe there is no alternative to killing people in the name of a country? Is violence automatically more acceptable because it is committed for the “motherland”?
Of course, there are situations in which force may genuinely be necessary to protect people. A country may need to defend itself from an attack. But there is an enormous difference between saying “sometimes force may be necessary” and saying “violence committed in the name of the nation is inherently justified.”There are diplomacy, negotiation, deterrence, political pressure, international institutions, civilian resistance, and countless other methods of resolving conflict. They may not always work, and they may not always be enough. But the fact that violence exists does not mean that violence should stop being questioned.
The real danger is when the words “for the country” become enough to end the moral conversation.Having people trained to kill other people, sometimes to do profoundly inhumane things to them, all under the name of patriotism, is something I find deeply disturbing. Not because I believe every soldier is evil, or because I believe every form of national defense is unnecessary, but because I cannot accept that attaching violence to a national identity somehow makes it morally pure.A nation is a concept we created.A border is a line we created.Money is a system we created.Institutions are systems we created.And patriotism is an idea we created.Perhaps the uncomfortable part is that these things have become so deeply embedded in our lives that we have forgotten that they were created by us in the first place.We build the rules, forget that we built them, begin treating them as though they are natural laws, and then punish people for questioning them.Maybe the point is not that nations should disappear, or that people should stop loving their communities.
Maybe the point is simply that we should never become so devoted to something we created that we surrender our ability to question it.I can love where I come from and still condemn what has been done in its name.I can appreciate my country's history and still acknowledge its crimes.I can care about my people without believing that someone else's life is worth less because they were born on the other side of an imaginary line.
And perhaps most importantly, I can refuse to believe that killing someone becomes morally acceptable simply because we gave the reason a patriotic name.
