Bullshit Nationalists in Outer Space

Shawn Misener

Guest post by Shawn Misener:

Do you ever get the feeling that our feet are not bound to the ground anymore, that our seemingly inherent ties to location and place are becoming less and less relevant in this postmodern, absurd world?

No?

OK then. You don't have to read on.

But listen: We humans are insanely nationalistic. Or at least we historically have been. And to a great (yet translucent) extent, we are still as ground-thumping as always today. We fight over our land as well as the peoples of our lands. That's what being nationalistic is all about. Sticking with your own. Sticking together. Sharing a common land, a common ancestry, a common religion, a common culture, whatever.

It's all bullshit, really. Think about it. Especially in this day and age. ALL BULLSHIT.

We have no excuse to be nationalistic these days beyond, say, our affiliations to our favorite sports teams, or characters in prime-time television. That's entertainment, and by and large it's harmless.

But for the past God-Knows-How-Long, Bullshit Nationalism has cost millions of lives. People kill each other over their differences and over their claims to land and culture. That shit pisses me off. You can't deny it. People are being killed because of their ethnicity, their religion, their culture, and just about anything else that draws lines and demarcations between peoples.

We are so entrenched in nationalistic thinking that we don't even think about it. It's almost Zen, if it weren't so goddamn idiotic: We think so that we don't. Americans today, who have no real basis for claiming to know what is real, claim that all different types of people and things are real. Of course people will disagree and fight, because that's what being human, being American, is about. Diversity. That beautiful, misleading and ultimately damning word: Diversity.

Liberals love it and promote it. Conservatives accept it. Both perpetuate it. Regardless of political bent, we all take for granted that the world is populated by many, many different cultures, like a big damn spray of wildflowers off the highway or something.

Well, it's true, I guess. But here's the problem: While it may be true, it's damaging. It's the first step that always leads to violence, to car bombing, to hate speech. Even if you are pro-diversity and would never hurt a fly, you still silently and minimally contribute to the idea that THERE ARE SEPARATE THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE.

That may sound far out, yet kind of obvious. But it's 2012, and I think maybe we need to be finally listening to the mystics. They've had it right for thousands of years, and they've been a peaceful bunch, meditating against knobby trees and handing out corn meal and such. They're right: THERE ARE NO SEPARATE THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE.

Let's not get too far into the philosophy. The Buddhists have dedicated much of their brainpower to proving this point. It would take me a book to explain and justify why it's so. You just have to take me on faith. Which I never do for anybody else, skeptic that I am. So fuck it. Either you buy in or you don't. If you are with me, you just have to agree that distinctions amongst people are temporary, illusory, and basically not real. They seem real, but are constructed.

Ok, so if you agree (and I know many of you want to), you have to look at people today with their opinions and nationalism and think they are fucking nuts.

Time to finally lift our feet off the ground. With the dominance of the internet and information technology, we are bound less and less to place. Instead, all of art, creativity and possibly thought can be seen as being created in SPACE. You are reading this essay in such a space on the internet.

Time to evolve in our thinking. Instead of focusing on the diversity of people and cultures in the world, let's focus on the one thing we all have in common: Humanity. We're all humans, and that (hopefully) is a fact. You can't distinguish humans from humans as humans, because we're all human. To me, it's almost a DUH thought, yet profound in the deepest way possible. Because we don't think that way at all. We are trained from the get-go to recognize and highlight difference. We are told to respect and (gag) tolerate it. That's fucking wrong.

The only way to move from here on out is into space. And in space, there is no land. We are all just human beings, bobbing along and blurting words. Forget that we speak so many different languages, because that in itself is a precipitating factor in nationalism. Let’s go forward as astronauts and explore what it means to be in the same boat.

I know, I'm crazy to think that anything like that can happen. Let the world burn then. Hopefully, diversity will be replaced by the concept of similarity, and we will learn to "tolerate" how similar we are.

We'll see. People can be fucking stupid, you know. You're probably thinking how stupid I am right now. But you read this far, didn't you?

Closet nationalist, you.

~ Shawn Misener

Shawn Misener is a writer living in Michigan. He’s been published in over 100 print and online journals, and edits the absurdist poetry blogazine, “Clutching at Straws.”