Nowadays, we don't hate people because of their race. That's just mean, right? But people love to hate others, so we found a new thing to disciminate between races. We call it "culture". And cultures shouldn't mix. They must stay pure...

This song is a good example for what I mean. It's taking prejudices against Germans and turns them around. It claims to describe "real" Germans. There was a huge shitstorm afterwards by "patriots" as well as non-patriots bacause they didn't understand what Böhmermann, a german satirist, tried to state with this song and video.

In Germany people try to be proud of their nation again. That's especially hard, because of what Germans did in the past. National pride led to national socialism and the holocaust. So nowadays, whenever anyone says she_he is proud to be a German, she_he is called a Nazi.

Nations as a starting point for culture

Historically Germany became a nation very late. After the German-French war in 1871 the first real German Reich was founded. But people living there didn't feel as Germans. They have lived in kingdoms so long, other  criteria defined who they were. So the educational system, churches and everything tried to establish this national pride however they could. And that worked... A little too well. Being a true, meaning born, German still is very important. People, who's 'blood is not German', can't be german.

Why do people need this feeling of belonging to an abstract construct like "nation"? We are social animals and want to belong to groups. We need groups for support and security. That's why we mostly live in families, have friends, join clubs. These memberships are part of who we are. We have defined roles in these social groups - mother, daughter, sister, ... - which tell us how to behave properly. We don't need to discuss every norm and value we live after. The group defines it and we live after this. It makes life easier. These norms and values form a "WE" that discriminates us from "THEM". We are good people, they are bad people. We have the right values, they are wrong. We are better. Having a construct like culture connects the nation's people, it unites them. And it gives leaders a reason to send them to war, to defend US against the bad THEM.

Learning to belong to a nation

Children learn very late, to which nation they belong (see Piaget and Weil, 1951, 1976). There are three distinct phases of that developement.

In the first phase children think of tangible experiences they made in a certain country: "Italy is nice, because the cake tastes better than in Switzerland."

In the second phase, children start to decentre and focus on the family's values: "Switzerland is nice, because my parents live there and I was born there." It's the start of the developement of a group identity.

In the third phase, children adopt national stereotypes: "Switzerland is peacefull and neutral."

This developement takes place until children are 12, 14 years old.

Children don't understand what a nationality is for a long time. If you ask a child at the age of 5 "where do you come from?", it will answer you "from the playground". At the age of six, children understand what the person asking this question means. Than they will tell you "From Turkey", even if they were born in Germany. This understanding is learned in this early age by children who look different. Children who meet the norms take longer to learn this, because they are not asked this question over and over again. Children, who are asked this question, learn that they don't belong here, but somewhere else. The nation their parents or even grandparents were born in, gains importance for their personality. They learn that they don't look german and have to justify their being here.

Nations and their stereotypical culture

To discriminate US from THEM, we tell ourselfes stories of our culture. Germans are bright, we are the poets and thinkers after all, we are punctual, industrious, neat. And we are proud of this. But at he end of the day, they are just stereotypes. Not all Germans are smart (I wish they were...), appear right on time and so on. Of course not, because we are individuals, we have a right to chose how to live. On the other hand, there are a lot of people in other nations who fit this description. Nevertheless we tell ourselfes these stories to make life more predictable.

We need stereotypes, prejudices, to sort the complex social world we live in. So prejudices are not always bad. But fixing individuals on these beliefs is always bad.

And this is exactly what culturalism does. It tells you that people from different nations have different cultures per se. So they can't live in another nation. They won't fit in. And if many of THEM come here, if - God forbid - they mix with US, they will destroy OUR culture!

Culture as a construct

But culture is a construct. That's what the video shows. We can and should define what it means to be german or american or what ever.

We all have different cultures in ourselfes, because culture means how we act, how we live, which values and norms shape our behaviour, what we think is right and wrong, beautiful or ugly and so on. And these norms vary from group to group and as we switch from group to group, our behaviour changes. Maybe you have different groups of friends: On you met at school, one you met at work. You will behave differently in these different groups. Because whenever a group forms, it builds own values and norms. So even if all group members have the same nationality, each group has different norms. And if someone with another nationality enters this group, she_he will adapt. And yes, over time these norms change due to different reasons. But this is not a problem. 

There is no "typical German". What should this mean anyway? What is german? Killing jews? Starting World Wars? The norms and values that are lived here, are lived at other places, too. And some are not valued by "Germans". Connecting nation and culture makes it impossible for migrants to become a full member of the country they live in. Because in that view culture is fix, it can't be changed. In history a "pure" culture never existed. And in times of globalization even less. 

In this complex and diverse world, many people get scared that something will be taken away from them. The only thing that no one can take away from you is your nationality. So it seems more and more people assign more and more relevance to this. They are scared that refugees will change our culture. That muslims will force "good german women" to were niqabs. So they try to impose their views on them, demanding them to be more german, simultaneously making it impossible for them to really feel as Germans, because they weren't born here. 

Christianity is not a german invention, it came here through migrants. So actually we should force people to believe in Wotan, Donar, Freya or Frigg. But we don't, because we adopted Christianity as the religion lived in Germany. We - Oh my! - changed our "culture"!

Enemies as uniting entities

Like shown before, groups need common enemies to define who they are. It's THEM we need to discriminate from to know what makes US so special and good. For Germans it was the French, estalishing the German-French enmity for hundreds of years. For the USA is was Great Britain. And in Star Trek, aliens came to unity humanity. On the Enterprise people from different nations work together as HUMANS. Of course, it still needs THEM, but it showed that it is possible to define ourselfes as human beings, earthlings so to say, and not by nations. 

My hope is that even without a common alien enemy, somewhen humans will define themselfes as part of this One World, not of a nation. That's what I try to teach my students, so they can teach this to the kids they work with. Without nations, there is no more need for any national "culture" and we can see the human being standing in front of us, not just stereotypes.

No Nation, No Border!

Qapla'! 

Pitty