How dare they? This is our country. No nation can allow thugs free reign to roam at will, killing our citizens at a whim. If, as it seems, this was the Russians, who do they think they are? We have cruise missiles; can’t we blow up the Moscow headquarters of the KGB/GRU/FSB? (Delete ridiculous acronym as appropriate.) This was my reaction to the appalling attack in Salisbury. I was incensed by the Litvinenko attack too. Although I hasten to add, my instinct for retaliation was held only briefly and not in any sense seriously. The dangers of escalation would be unthinkable: a point that I suspect Putin well understands and trades on, to his advantage.
And yet my rational humanist mind tells me that countries do not exist. They are abstract entities created by minds under the spell of genetically mediated tribal instincts. We create countries because we have a biological need to belong. I well remember the massive lump in my throat during the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations when I reflected on the fact that no other country in the world could put on such spectacular military displays. The attachment to my country might feel strong, but people with other allegiances like the French, Russians and every other kind of people are not different in any meaningful sense, they are just ordinary folk trying to get on with their lives like me and everyone else. People are just people.
It is as if human beings are under a spell worthy of the great Dumbledore himself. It is taken as a given that human beings need a sense of identity which extends beyond the only one I believe to be valid: our identity as a member of a family of sentient beings (all humanity and all other feeling animals). My genes were hexing me, telling me how to think, and imposing a sense of justified rage about what happened to the Skripals. Patriotism is a strong emotion, but to be a good emotion we have to accept that what Putin is doing is s gallant expression of patriotism, that Nazi promulgation of their Fatherland cult in the 1930s and 40s was entirely right and proper, and even that ISIS’s love of their Caliphate is noble, justified and honourable.
For me, in an apparently empty and soulless universe, the only thing that matters is our very feeling that things matter. That is where meaning comes from. The love of my wife and family matters. Such feelings are fundamental to all of us. It is the very sense of mattering that matters and rescues me, and all of us, from an empty soulless, nihilistic universe. Because identity not only matters to us it matters profoundly, there is a real dilemma, and there is no easy answer. So it is for all of us to find reconciliation between the bewitchment of our emotional connections and our rational understanding. Most people don’t bother. They let their emotions trump the obvious irrationality – and danger – of dividing human from human.
I won’t let my genes tell me how to think. For me, I see my patriotism as a curse. Even if I allow myself the fleeting pleasure of seeing the flashing sabres and proud red-tunics of the guardsmen at British military parades, I understand the context and won’t let myself get carried away. I have the magic key to patriotism’s dreadful spell book. Our survival as a species might depend on all finding our own keys.
Peter D Fisher 