Influence of Nationalism on the Individual - Coursework Example

I. Introduction Contemporary authors, without any significant exclusion, come together in thinking that nations are unified through psychological rather than by material, physical or traditional bonds. Nationalism is something embedded in the strength of mind, not in the physical foundation or common heredity or ancestry that held them together as one. Precisely what the character of the psychological or spiritual dimension may be that brings together, what it is that transforms when a group of people is renewed into a nation, or what is changed in a person when he shifts his commitment from one nation to another, is not explained clearly where any effort is exerted to find an answer to the problem in any way (Diaz 1997). Zimmern defines nationalism as a “form of corporate consciousness of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home country” (Diaz 1997: 28). If we will try to disregard the connection to a particular home country, it would appear that all that will be left is a popular consciousness, which perhaps implies a consciousness of belonging to a collective unit or society. For the objective of this paper, nevertheless, I should attempt to find out what this popular consciousness or ‘nationalism’ and what its influences may possibly be upon individual actions that feel or experience it. Among the more definite theories on popular consciousness, I will choose a few sorts for more comprehensive analysis to demonstrate the nature of each and what are considered as fundamental to the character of nationalism. It should be mentioned that some of the assumptions I will discuss are more or less as unclear in their arguments as those that I have just mentioned. They are more vivid in their comparisons, but are fairly as indefinable when we try to find out what they really imply. Others are satisfactorily exact in the assessments that they make, yet the stages or methods to which they evaluate the consciousness are fairly as little recognised as the consciousness per se. Possibly the most brilliant and at the same time most acknowledged of the contemporary theories is Le Bon’s which is, fundamentally, that a nation moves toward a crowd in the form of its consciousness and that a crowd provokes in the people who represent it a condition strange to itself and related to the mesmerizing and other anomalous conditions. Analysis of this theory entails an examination of the nature of the mind of the crowd on the one hand and then of the concern on the extent the nation bears a resemblance to the crowd on the other hand. II. Le Bon’s Study of the Popular Mind Le Bon (2002) argues that the individual in the crowd is on the whole transformed, that in a significant extent he drops all of his distinctive attributes of control, and that he is mixed with the other individuals to compose a new psychological body. He mentions relatively graphically of the mechanism as one of surrendering all of the gained attributes and returning to the instincts which all individuals have in similarity merely because they are human beings. In these deep-seated instincts they are slightly dissimilar from lower animals; they move down to a lower stage of civilization and evolution. More particularly he measures up the individual in the crowd to an individual mesmerized. He claims that in both circumstances the functioning of the mind is in suspension and that the individual is regulated merely by the activities of the medulla. The neurology integrated in this argument is outmoded, if it were recognized, but we are not that concerned with the specific assumption than with the illustration of the condition and form of actions. The examination of the theory is the proximity of the likeness between the individual mesmerized and the individual in the crowd. In the phase of hypnosis, the individual is marked by vulnerability to indication in thought as well as in action, and even in awareness. The slightest command is carried out, however impossible it may appear. If we will use this premise in the influence of nationalism in individuals’ thoughts and actions, it can be assumed that any statement made is accepted, and the individuals will even see things said to be existing when actually nothing really exist. The nationalistic individual appears as well to harbour the sentiments that are commanded to him. He will weep or kill at command; he becomes infuriated when the command is given to clench his fist. He also will at command take up a role and act it our effectively. An almost constant indication of this phase of hypnosis is that there will be a clean slate of memory of the events that transpired when wakened. When we evaluate the action of the individual in the crowd with this condition we discover commonalities and a number of dissimilarities. It should be stressed out that Le Bon (2002) would not attribute this strange condition to every crowd, yet merely to those subjected under particular conditions. He would claim that individuals could assemble without undergoing this condition, without turning out to be absorbed into the unity that surrenders each to the command on the whole. The presence of the strange condition does not rely upon the crowd’s size, but upon other auxiliary conditions. Sometimes the group goes into a state of unconsciousness, becomes mesmerized; sometimes the same group or perhaps another group of similar dimension could assemble and the individuals in it stay normal. Le Bon (2002) has in point of view the crowd in action, such as the French Revolution or any crowd spoiling in riots. It is at this point that we witness the individuals provoked with little thinking and poor control. It can be unquestionable that under these circumstances the individual will carry out actions that he would not do when alone. The decrease in control is in the impact of the dictatorial dynamics of experiences, the dynamics that compose what we classify under the concept of reason. Generally, the instincts prevail, but not in the hypnotized state and not even in the crowd is path altogether abolished. The boundaries of normal morals and favourable taste are basically lessened. The hypnotized individual will commit a fake murder act with a plastic knife, but will not kill with a real knife. A crowd will commit murder, as has taken place altogether very frequently, yet it does not carry it out unless it can locate some bases that would convince a rational individual in a calm moment. The wrongdoer is murdered because the sanction of the law is unsatisfactory. The capitalist are obliterated for fear that they may once again rise into power and exploit the working class. Or this wealthy person merits death, not because he has committed anything to himself, but because he comes from a class that has exploited and he will do the same if the opportunity arises, or he should have harmed an important person or he would not have been that prosperous. The crowd takes action because it agrees to these premises, yet in several cases the premises are provided by the leader, and the more significant the suggestibility of the crowd is demonstrated by the reality that they will distinguish but the one aspect of the condition which is supplied by the charismatic leader, and in which they are not in a position to oppose the propensity to accept as true a statement of the most deceptive kind (McKim 1997). The transformations in the emotions are as definite as are the transformations in thinking and action. In terms of the crowd this is a minor occurrence. The thought or the awareness is indicated primarily and sentiment and action tag along. If we acknowledge that there are commonalities between the circumstance in the crowd and in the state of hypnotism, we should as well acknowledge that there are dissimilarities which are fairly as remarkable. The individual hypnotised to the point of unconscious action always fails to remember after rousing what he carried out during the process of hypnosis. There is no such memory loss in the crowd (Periwal 1995). The individual recalls all of his actions. The hypnotised individual provides exact evidence of being in an unusual condition. He demonstrates indications of the arrival of the state through whimpers and variation in breathing that may lead to slight seizures. These are absent in the maturity of the popular consciousness. As the most unconvinced critic would be forced to acknowledge that there are commonalities between the popular mind and the hypnotic, the dissimilarities are fairly as definite. One is substantiated in the claim that an individual in the crowd is to a certain extent similar in his actions to the hypnotised individual, not that the individual is hypnotized. The commonality is in the act, not in the condition per se (Le Bon 2002). It has as well been claimed that in the crowd the individual is significantly suggestible or that the individual is restricted altogether by replication. The first of these assumptions declares what is true of the theory of hypnotism. Not to create the individual in the crown too dissimilar from the individual in his normal life, it is well to put emphasis to the fact that in one point everything that we do is carried out through suggestion. Trimmed down to its most basic form recommendation is nothing more than routine on the one hand and connection of thought on the other (Bellinger 2001). Supply any individual a motivation that has been linked to a particular movement and he will carry out that movement without further ado. Ask him a question and his answer will most frequently come from his mind and in nearly all cases from his lips. Suggestion is nothing more. This argument that the individual is under suggestion is regarding all that is actual in Le Bon’s premise that an individual in a crowd is a hypnotised individual. It is merely necessary to mention that an individual is at all times under suggestion and is more controlled by it in the crowd than when alone. III. The National Consciousness, Sentiment and Action Though the nation has several of the features of the crowd it is not a crowd, nor is the crowd so natural in its actions as Le Bon and other thinkers claim. Though there are principles that regulate the activities of the nation and there are assumptions that would allocate to the nation a consciousness very much as consciousness is supplied to the individual. These assumptions have similarities with the premises of Le Bon. They vary from it primarily in that they consider the consciousness of the nation as a more highly developed consciousness, just like the consciousness of a rational, normal person than of an individual hypnotised. We could analyse this assumption and in relation with it attempt to find out how the nation reflects, even if we cannot acknowledge the assumption that we are analysing. The comparison on which several of these assumptions are founded is the somewhat spiritual one that the nation holds a super-individual consciousness, that through living together the citizens of a nation in some way build up a real new consciousness that is connected to the bodies of the individuals significantly the same manner that the consciousness of the individual is to the “cells of which his body is composed” (Kohn 1955: 37). This is great analogy. One oftentimes mentions the body as a container of cells, each of which is a self-sufficient element except for its reliance upon the entirety for its nourishment, and for definite of its motivations. Likewise, one could claim, the individuals are self-regulating when alone, but when they assemble there is in to a certain extent developed or created a set of occurrences that is shared by all of them. The intended and emotional mechanisms are more important in this process; the sane and sensory aspects are insufficient in evidence if they are not all in all absent. The resolve of the group governs the resolve of the individual, given that the latter has any position in the movement of the group at all (Maley et al. 2003). It is in the field of thoughts and actions that the group most practically approaches an individual component in its group. If we recall our analogy of the individual, it is the controlled processes and the tightly interconnected emotional mechanisms that may be the simplest to examine through the objective process. As a matter of fact, even in the individual, apart from a slightly more certain knowledge of intentions, one is aware of a great deal about the actions and emotions in another individual as in one’s own self. Even the intentions are not at all times more definite to the doer than to the spectator. The movement of the crowd is only the action the individuals that constitute it. The individual action relies upon the response to a motivation. This motivation provokes the movement most often related with it, its normal response, or an intuitive reaction. When many of the responses struggle, as when the most often reaction would generate an impact evidently unfavourable, preference should be made between them. It is at this point alone that aware guidance is of significance or is successful in any extent. Even in the individual this control is wielded first by other motivations which are as well influencing the individual at the moment, or through consideration of the favourability of the possible implications of the acts. These implications are favourable either for the reason that they have an open natural appeal, or possess an appeal that is in some way natural, since they are endorsed by the society in which the individual is a member (Kriesberg 1973). To act in a manner to gain social approval is indeed naturally pleasant. The actions of a nation are regulated by the same principles. The dissimilarity is to be located, primarily, in the conviction that a nation might make right or moral what would be wrong or immoral for an individual. This can be found in the basic reality of war. A nation could kill indiscriminately, even though killing is prohibited to the individual under different situations. This is, apparently, partly a survival; partly it appears to be an issue of necessity. In relation to war a nation will rationalise what the individual lacking with justification would not. The acts of violence in Belgium were founded on the intentional theory that terrorism implies the easiest means to subdue and to suppress revolt (Cox 2002). Accompanied with this there appears to have been an idea that all sufferings inflicted upon the vulnerable individuals, such as women and children, upon captives and helpless men were carried out to the grandeur of the mother country and so were to be justified if not exalted. The pillaging and rape were a fitting incentive for men who were giving their life for the mother country. The strange circumstances and the general support of the nation justified the most horrendous display of primitive instincts. IV. Conclusion The nation, just like the crowd, possibly will through the common recognition of what would normally be denounced, make probable actions that would not be probable to a single individual. The idea that the continuation of the nation is more valuable than the life of any individual has been made use of not to occasionally justify actions for which the individual may perhaps find no guarantee. This glorification of the nation makes an issue of self-importance what else would be most blameworthy. The combatant is respected for an action no more important than that for which the executioner is disrespected. In this point, the resolve of the nation put into effect through gradually developed principles and ambitions regulates the act, could occasionally be said graphically to represent the resolve of the individual. In this logic resolve implies no more than the mechanism of principles that force or rationalize the action. The actual implementation is by fairly a handful of members. The most proximate approach in the contemporary period to the nation’s actual movement as a whole is witnessed in the enlistment for the draft in the America and Great Britain. These two countries had detested any intervention with the resolve of the individual. Only when the predicament arrived that could be addressed in no other means, was obligatory service chosen in Great Britain. America benefitted by the encounter of Great Britain on one occasion on joining the war. In these two countries the response was open and quick, with almost no need for resort to coercion. As a whole, individuals understood the justice of a selection based on the capability for service, and complied with the first bids with pride. Here at this point again national ideologies may be assumed to have supplied the intentions and pushing force, as the actions were carried out by several individuals. Nevertheless, all the intentions are the fundamental components in the start of any action. They make up what is basically the resolve of the individual. When they are collective to a nation as an entirety and lead into action by a significant fraction of the members, it could be concluded that they compose action of the whole as genuinely as some core insight, which stimulates the movement of particular muscles of the body, form the resolve of the single individual. In times of exhilaration the individual in the nation resembles the individual in the crowd in no further as he is more probable to recognize the principles and objectives as his own than he would do otherwise alone. Yet it is unthinkable that an individual should be alone, and all that is left to us as an implication of the debate of the resolve of the nation is that the resolve is an outcome of the action of the collective principles upon the independent individuals who make up the nation, that, as the individual acknowledges these principles for the reason that they appeal to his decision, they appeal to his decision for the reason that he belongs to the nation, and both decision and action are a statement of the social character and of the reality that the individual has been brought up and been educated in a nation. .References Bellinger, C. K. (2001), The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom and Evil, New York: Oxford University Press. Burckhardt, J. & Nichols, J.H. (1943), Force and Freedom: Reflections on History, New York: Pantheon Books. Cox, R. W. (2002), The Political Economy of Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization, London: Routledge. 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(1995), Notions of Nationalism, Budapest: Central European University Press. Sorel, G. (2004), Reflections on Violence, New York: Dover Press. Read More