Nationality: A Case of Mistaken Identity
()
About this ebook
This essay critiques the idea that there are national characteristics that the people of a nation all share. The word "nationality" can be used to indicate what citizenship a person has, but means nothing more than that.
Laird Stevens
THEMATIC BIO Laird Stevens My life–at least, the part of it that I still carry with me today–began with music. My father played the piano by ear. He played, and I wrapped myself in the sound. He was my earliest God. One evening, when my mother put me to bed, she said that I would soon begin piano lessons, and the thought was so electric that I stayed awake until morning. Seven years later, my beautiful world–impossibly intricate, and shamelessly cerebral–was destroyed in a flood of hormones. There were a few survivors, but the shadow of sex was on them all. To make sex pretty, I called it “love” (as I had been trained to do), but it wasn’t love, and it didn’t become anything like love until a few years later. Certainly, it had to do with love, but the walk from sex to love was long and difficult to understand. After that, there was literature. At fifteen or sixteen, I developed an incomprehensible thirst for other people’s stories. My story, which was both new and exciting, was not yet connected to anything else. Reading Dickens and Dostoevski and D.H. Lawrence, I found a place to fit in. And then, finally, there was philosophy. Descartes showed me that nothing I knew was certain. At sixteen, it was easy to agree. I knew that music and love were guiding my life. I didn’t even presume to ask why. I knew that if I ever made sense of my life, it would be in terms of the stories that I now read compulsively. But after reading Descartes, I started caring about something quite different. I started caring more about questions than I did about answers. I would get my answers in due time, once I started asking the right questions. And the right questions were the ones that cut deepest into my belief system, the belief system that I, like Descartes, had patched together uncritically from childhood to the present. Much later (I was twenty-two at the time), I was reading Plato and discovered what he called “the divine madnesses.” These were things that we did that made us feel like Gods. But, and this was an insurmountable ‘but,’ we were not Gods, and could never do these things unless we had the help of the Gods. The four divine madnesses were music, love, poetry and philosophy. Music was possible only if a God took over our bodies and wrote it for us. The same was true of poetry. Love (and I had no trouble believing this) was a gift of madness from the Gods, and so–unparadoxically–was philosophy: the reasoning of a God was simply madness to a person unpossessed. So said Plato, at any rate. But whatever issues you may have with Plato, remember that no one since has had any better ideas. We still talk about how musicians and poets are “inspired” when they write: they breathe something in, and this allows them to create. Science has nothing useful to say about love, and I have no good answer to the question, “Where do ideas come from?” They gallop into my consciousness like wild things, and if I manage to catch the good ones and let the bad ones go, my day is nothing less than extraordinary. My commitment to the idea of divine madness varies, but it is the most useful one I have ever found when it comes to defining my own life. It is one that I would recommend everyone try on for size.
Read more from Laird Stevens
The New Blue Fairy Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Blue Fairy Book Part 1: Fairy Tales 1 to 6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Blue Fairy Book Part 2: Fairy Tales 7 to 12 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParadise Lost Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death Fairy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Blue Fairy Book Part 3: Fairy Tales 13 to 18 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Nationality
Related ebooks
Gale Researcher Guide for: Defining Nationhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElectronic Voting Machines: The True Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRhysop's Fables Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRituals, Myths and Religions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Progressive Gene: How Genetics Influence the Morality of the Left Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevolution in the Air Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExplore The World Geographycal Facts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScience in Civil Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCuba’s Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExpel the Pretender: Rhetoric Renounced and the Politics of Style Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCulture and Anarchy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Categorically Incorrect: Ethical Fallacies in Canada's War on Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Logic of Hatred: From Witch Hunts to the Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe British Raj Novels: A Colonial Hangover Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Principles Of Secularism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: The Continuing Significance of Gender Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman and the Right to Vote Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Welcome To America: How Cultural Marxism is Slowly Destroying America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAchieving True Democracy: A New Breed of Party as Realistic Next Step Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSur’s Ocean: Classic Hindi Poetry in Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorld Cultures Analyzing Pre-Industrial Societies In Africa, Asia, Europe, And the Americas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA White Man's Perspectives on Race and Racism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollective Geinus: The Naming Project Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMulticultural Marketing Is Your Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho On Earth Are You?: A Handbook for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Politics For You
Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The January 6th Report Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear: Trump in the White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prince Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Nationality
0 ratings0 reviews