I’m a little confused by the hyper-patriotic sentiment that is in vogue these days. The Oxford definition for patriotism is “devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country”. There’s a couple of things I’m confused about in this definition:

• What is “one’s country”?
• What is “country”

Starting off, most likely, “one’s country” is the country one is born in, or feels some sort of allegiance to because of historical, familial ties. Given that where and to whom we’re born is a roll of the dice, being assigned a value for “one’s country” is a random event. It’s like having people randomly assigned Red/Blue/Green when they enter a room, and then expecting them to sing of the virtues of Green forever. It makes very little sense to me. To my grandfather born in a little village around the year 1900 (we’re not sure of the exact year 😬), “his country” was the princely state of Nawanagar, which wasn’t really that well defined. My uncle was technically born in British India (it even had a passport). My dad was born in independent India. I’d like to think they’re all patriotic to the same country, but did they really choose it? What happens if you’re not really attached to the country you’re born in? As per the current rules of the game, you can’t just abandon it and adopt a new one without significant paperwork (if it’s possible at all).

In recent times, it’s much more common for people to adopt “one’s country”, like with legal immigration, for example – and this makes a little more sense to me – but the vast majority of hyper-patriotic individuals I’ve encountered do not belong to this camp, or are attached to the country they’ve emigrated from. The latter exhibit cognitive dissonance of epic proportions where their actions contradict their thoughts and speech every single day – they think country X deserves their utmost support and total devotion, but they’d rather build their whole life in country Y. Maybe they’re not really fooling themselves and only putting on a facade, which is why they dial up their (fake) patriotism.

But at a higher level of abstraction, what really is a country? Is it the government, the people, the geographic boundaries, the constitution (if there is one)? Is it only a country if the UN acknowledges its existence? I’m not the only one having trouble here, even Wikipedia is confused about the definition. I feel that the concept of “a country” has evolved in the last few centuries, and will continue to do so in the future. Countries are constantly changing – there are social revolts, political transitions, civil wars, international conflicts – and having devotion and vigorous support for an entity that can change in unpredictable fashion seems like a fool’s errand.

There’s more questions that lead ahead from here. Why does a country exactly need (or want) one’s devotion and support? Should patriotism be restricted to just one country? Who or what really benefits from the textbook definition of patriotism? Can you instead offer devotion and support to principles and ideals instead of a country? But I’ll leave you to ponder upon these questions yourself and pick them up again some day in the future.