An earlier article (‘This Above All’Dec.2008) raised the subject of  personal identity and its significance and responsibility in the social and political context.  No excuse is needed for returning to the subject since it so radically affects one’s personal fulfilment, social success and outlook on the world in general.

The starting point is that membership of any society necessarily entails some sacrifice of personal choice and freedom.   And so long as this seems well worth paying for the security and other benefits enjoyed, we are reasonably content.  Unfortunately, however, the apparatus of modern society is all too apt to become more and more intrusive and restrictive with the passage of time :  population density generating the many often intimidating bureaucracies established to regulate our lives.  Thus the individual’s unique selfhood is gradually squeezed out, to the extent that it experiences the ‘non-entity’ feeling of becoming a ‘nobody’;  of not mattering much any more . Personal reaction to this malaise ranges from apathy through passive resistance to authority to downright anti-social behaviour in a more or less damaging form.  It also gives rise to an ever-expanding entertainment industry as a kind of safety-valve to prevent social discontents coming to the boil, as it were.   Thus, for example, domestic TV with all its blandishments, titillations and diversionary content gives people a vicarious form of selfhood, since they are apt to identify with or absorb themselves in the synthetic families and characters they see, for example, in popular ‘soap operas’.  Indeed, TV viewing has obviously had a debilitating effect on family life.  So while seemingly harmless and even somewhat beneficial enough on the surface,  the cost to personal fulfilment, family cohesion and cultural development is looming ever larger .  The lowest common denominator policy which obviously dominates programme contents has a generally diminishing effect on the individuality and sense of personal worth of audience members.,   This is strikingly exemplified in the so-called ‘celebrity culture’, whereby a few individuals are ‘idolised’, ‘lionised’, ‘ikonised’ at the expense of their ‘fans’, who literally sacrifice themselves to the celebrity’s ego.  This may strike you as a curmudgeonly view of people simply ‘enjoying themselves’.  But that is precisely what they are not doing;  they are being ‘enjoyed’ by the performers, who would have you believe they are giving themselves to their audience when in fact they are absorbing the audience selves into their own egos in an essentially predatory way.    The reference to ‘personalities’ in entertainment, sport and politics etc.. itself implies non-entity status for everybody else.

And to say that entertainments are therapeutic by ‘taking people out of themselves’ now and then is at best a half-truth, as in so many instances people have no recognisable selves to escape. from;  they are actually escapees from the sheer boredom of their own empty lives.   And it is perfectly obvious that popular entertainments thrive on public boredom much as gardens do on manure.   

There are therefore ample grounds for concluding that the entertainment industry actually augments and compounds the de-personalising effect of modern society and its many bureaucratic institutions. It serves the governing regime no less than the bloody arena of ancient Rome.

Another major element of the de-personalising process is the resort to de-personalised labels for individuals.  Thus individuality is ‘disappeared’ behind labels denoting their occupational or functional or utility status.  The individual becomes just another ‘case’( as in medicine and law); or is casually referred to as the baker, joiner, clerk, teacher, nurse, dentist, assistant;  member, supporter, voter, viewer, client, specimen of the type. etc..  He or she is reduced by officialdom to a  social, political or economic statistic : in short, a mere category.  

This de-personalising process is so persistent and pervasive that it gets taken for granted as the common ground of existence much the same as gravity.  Thereafter in manifold subtle ways it comes to influence a person’s  self-regard, opinions, social attitudes and behaviour.  In other words what passes for personal identity  passes out of the individual’s control and is replaced by a synthetic version generated by the social, cultural, commercial and political environment.  Now it must be admitted that many individuals find a kind of refuge in being absorbed as it were in some authoritative organisation or other.  It relieves them of many anxieties and stressful choices associated with being an individual . Meanwhile the more affluent resort to ever more extreme self-indulgence and the ministrations of psychotherapists ;  while others are engulfed by cults or dissident groups of one kind or another   The youthful rebelliousness so apparent nowadays likewise reflects the underlying loss of identity, meaning and purpose  pervading modern societies.  

Needless to say there is any amount of political and sociological theorising and posturing going on in the background, while writers, artists  and dramatists scavenge the social ruins for their own nourishment, self-fulfilment and aggrandisement.

But how does all this relate to the contemporary political environment and the patriotic attitude in particular ?    Well to begin with it is obvious that anyone lacking the patriotic attitude has suffered a loss of identity, meaning and purpose which no other allegiance can replace.  You can give yourself any sort of label which takes your fancy  -  Socialist, Feminist, Buddhist, Catholic, Republican or whatever  -  but you can never extricate your selfhood from your racial and national ancestry, cultural heritage and genetic composition.  It is sheer self-delusion to pretend otherwise , and all too apt to involve neurotic anxiety, despair and anti-social behaviour.  Most of the ‘anti’ mobs we see on the streets  exhibit all the mental squalor, confusion and disorientation  arising from this rootlessness .  Like the self-styled atheists they commonly fail to produce any cogent alternative to the beliefs they affect to deplore in  other people.

The patriotic attitude is therefore the foundation of personal identity, meaning and purpose. It is essentially what you are, not what you happen to think or believe. It gives the individual a sense of collective security within which there remains ample scope for constructive self-expression and fulfilment in one’s occupation and cultural activities.  And it certainly threatens nobody else’s  racial, national or cultural difference , except when that becomes itself threatening to the survival of one’s unique character and identity.  All the events, ceremonies and festivities consolidating this basic sense of identity are conducive to the health of society as well as its individual members.  Thus any downgrading or suppression of  this essentially wholesome self-expression can only be decadent and inimical to racial and national survival.                 

So let us rejoice in our racial, national and cultural identity , and defend it to the death;  since to lose that fundamental anchorage is to betray all the sacrifices of our noblest ancestors and forfeit any hope of a worthwhile future.