Proud To Call America Your Home?

[Physics Guy]

It seemed weird for me for any young person to be proud, exactly, of where they live. If you like your home, then sure, you can be happy or grateful to be there, but proud? You might as well be proud of having been given a hundred-dollar bill by a deranged millionaire.

I think of pride as feeling good about yourself, feeling that you are worthy and good. An accomplishment is something of which you can be proud. However good the place where you live may be, though, if you're under 30 then your home probably doesn't owe any of its goodness to you. You haven't had time to do anything significant to make it as good as it is. So its merits aren't your accomplishment; they don't show anything good about you.

I guess that identity is a pretty fluid thing, though. If I feel proud of an accomplishment, if I feel that what I did says something good about me, then it might be that I'm applying some kind of syllogism to deduce from my deed that I must be a good guy. But perhaps that kind of deduction sort of works in both directions, action-and-reaction. If the deed says something about me, and I accept that, then I'm kind of incorporating the deed in my definition of what "me" even means. Whom am I? I'm the guy who did that.

It was Pooh’s turn to feel glad because it was he who had first found the North Pole. When they got there, Tigger would see a notice which said, ‘Discovered by Pooh, Pooh found it,’ and Tigger would know the sort of Bear Pooh was. THAT sort of Bear.

Defining oneself in association with something like that probably works fine, psychologically, even if the something isn't a deed that one has done. If you identify yourself as part of a family or tribe, some of the qualities of that larger group somehow rub off on you.

I think this might be a bug in the human brain, because it doesn't make sense that we should get the same kind of feeling of pride from just being born into a particular group that we might get from having personally saved someone else's life. It doesn't make sense to feel shame or guilt by association, either. Like the way allergy pills make you sleepy because histamine is also a wake/sleep regulator, something in the brain just seems to be implemented in a kludgy way, here.

Anyway, I suspect that there are really two issues in whether or not people feel pride in their country. Do they think their country is good? And do they identify themselves with their country? You can divide the box into four squares: people who are proud of their country, people who admire their place of residence without feeling part of it, people who dislike their place of residence without feeling responsible for it, and people who are ashamed of their country. I wonder what surveys would show about how many young Americans are in these boxes these days.

[Gunnar]

Ceebs, if you only paid attention to the fires, then you didn't notice the peaceful protests and the fact that a small minority of protestors committed acts of violence. We saw weeks of daily protests -- hundreds of thousands of people. One anarchist set fire to three police cars during one large protest downtown. An unidentified person set fire to a small construction shed. There was exactly one "BLM" sponsored protest march. The marchers were 100% peaceful, in part because the organizers avoided the Capitol Hill police station which had become a magnet for the minority of folks that insist on violently confronting police. I run into people who still think that major portions of Seattle were destroyed by fires. Never happened, although Fox showed pictures from another city and claimed it was Seattle.

It's both tragic and fundamentally dishonest how far right conservatives ignored the truth of what you stated here. Even in the small, mostly conservative city in which I live, there were some BLM, multi-racial protestor groups marching in the streets (mostly just the sidewalks). As far as I could see, they were entirely peaceful and respectful of others, and not destructive or violent, nor did they intentionally obstruct traffic. I saw no evidence of local public disapproval or resentment of them.

As was discussed in at least one earlier thread, the BLM movement unwisely left off the word "too" following the words "Black lives matter", thus making it too easy for bigots to dishonestly and maliciously infer and accuse BLM protestors of holding, or at least implying, that White lives somehow didn't matter or mattered less than Black lives, which was never their intent.

Speaking of fires blamed on BLM protestors, my sister, who is a die-hard conservative and lives near Portland Oregon and had to evacuate her home because of wildfires endangering her home, angrily informed me that people with BLM printed on their clothing and vehicles were observed starting fires in her neighborhood. I informed her that "BLM" also stands for "Bureau of Land Management", which is the primary federal agency responsible for fighting wildfires on federally owned land, some of which is adjacent to her community. Starting backfires is one of the standard techniques for fighting wildfires. That is almost certainly who the observed fire starters were, and they probably saved her home!

I also should have pointed out to her how stupid they would have to have been to openly advertise who they were if they were really Black Lives Matter protestors maliciously starting fires.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Oh no, Gunnar. Your sister is an idiot.

[canpakes]

It seemed weird for me for any young person to be proud, exactly, of where they live. If you like your home, then sure, you can be happy or grateful to be there, but proud? You might as well be proud of having been given a hundred-dollar bill by a deranged millionaire.

I think of pride as feeling good about yourself, feeling that you are worthy and good. An accomplishment is something of which you can be proud. However good the place where you live may be, though, if you're under 30 then your home probably doesn't owe any of its goodness to you. You haven't had time to do anything significant to make it as good as it is. So its merits aren't your accomplishment; they don't show anything good about you.

I guess that identity is a pretty fluid thing, though. If I feel proud of an accomplishment, if I feel that what I did says something good about me, then it might be that I'm applying some kind of syllogism to deduce from my deed that I must be a good guy. But perhaps that kind of deduction sort of works in both directions, action-and-reaction. If the deed says something about me, and I accept that, then I'm kind of incorporating the deed in my definition of what "me" even means. Whom am I? I'm the guy who did that.

It was Pooh’s turn to feel glad because it was he who had first found the North Pole. When they got there, Tigger would see a notice which said, ‘Discovered by Pooh, Pooh found it,’ and Tigger would know the sort of Bear Pooh was. THAT sort of Bear.

Defining oneself in association with something like that probably works fine, psychologically, even if the something isn't a deed that one has done. If you identify yourself as part of a family or tribe, some of the qualities of that larger group somehow rub off on you.

I think this might be a bug in the human brain, because it doesn't make sense that we should get the same kind of feeling of pride from just being born into a particular group that we might get from having personally saved someone else's life. It doesn't make sense to feel shame or guilt by association, either. Like the way allergy pills make you sleepy because histamine is also a wake/sleep regulator, something in the brain just seems to be implemented in a kludgy way, here.

Anyway, I suspect that there are really two issues in whether or not people feel pride in their country. Do they think their country is good? And do they identify themselves with their country? You can divide the box into four squares: people who are proud of their country, people who admire their place of residence without feeling part of it, people who dislike their place of residence without feeling responsible for it, and people who are ashamed of their country. I wonder what surveys would show about how many young Americans are in these boxes these days.

Exactly. I’d guess that this is how the respondents who wavered on ‘pride’ are likely processing the question. And it will be difficult for some others to understand that reaction in the same way, or to accept that not having pride in a thing outside oneself isn’t even necessarily an indication of negativity. It can simply be a neutral or indifferent reaction to what the question wants to imply when read and processed by a different person.

The sort of mindset that processes the Gen Z response as implicitly negative might also be the same that supports legislation aimed at reducing or eliminating discussion within the classroom of some less-savory elements of this nation’s past, on the claimed purpose of ‘keeping some students from feeling bad about themselves’.

[Some Schmo]

The word pride has a slightly altered meaning from when I was a kid. Growing up, it primarily meant an emotion felt for some accomplishment. These days, it's not only associated with the LGBTQ+ communities, it's associated with the fight for certain rights. Despite being an advocate for gay rights, I never liked that they used the word pride in that way. It's now seems more associated to its secondary meaning "self-respect" (e. g. I can't do that; I have my pride, after all).

My guess is that a lot of Gen Z's hear the word pride in association with being an American and they might think something like, I don't need to be an American to have self-respect, or, I don't need to fight for my rights as an American. Some probably feel a need to fight for the rights of women (or some other oppressed subgroup of Americans). So they might feel pride for their in-group, but America has become too fragmented to feel a sense of respect for every American, or to embrace the idea that being an American in and of itself is intrinsically a valid source of pride.

[Gunnar]

Oh no, Gunnar. Your sister is an idiot.

And yet, she is one of the most musically talented people I know. She has one of the most beautiful soprano voices I have ever heard, and has brought great joy to others by selflessly sharing that talent and inspiring and teaching music to others. I love her dearly, despite how eagerly and uncritically she has committed herself to swallowing the extreme right wing cool aid.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Oh no, Gunnar. Your sister is an idiot.

And yet, she is one of the most musically talented people I know. She has one of the most beautiful soprano voices I have ever heard, and has brought great joy to others by selflessly sharing that talent and inspiring and teaching music to others. I love her dearly, despite how eagerly and uncritically she has committed herself to swallowing the extreme right wing cool aid.

My apologies. She sounds lovely.

- Doc

[Gunnar]

And yet, she is one of the most musically talented people I know. She has one of the most beautiful soprano voices I have ever heard, and has brought great joy to others by selflessly sharing that talent and inspiring and teaching music to others. I love her dearly, despite how eagerly and uncritically she has committed herself to swallowing the extreme right wing cool aid.

My apologies. She sounds lovely.

- Doc

No apology needed. She is indeed a lovely person in most ways, but I can't help but agree with you that she nevertheless has some idiotic and even bigoted tendencies. She is musically knowledgeable and adept, but seems to have a bit of disdain for science, diversity and ethnic and religious tolerance (though she would probably deny that).

[Moksha]

And yet, she is one of the most musically talented people I know. love her dearly, despite how eagerly and uncritically she has committed herself to swallowing the extreme right wing cool aid.

It is like Ajax. I feel confident he would stop for the elderly person in the crosswalk, and perhaps even wave, even though that person probably is receiving social security.