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I would concern myself BECAUSE I am a patriot of the United States of America. Nationhood is a fact fought for by many millions of veterans, and believed in by the vast majority of Americans, not just an idea. We had our own culture and common language before LBJ and TK pushed through the 1965 Act which is part of the ruin going on besides the illegal invasion. The fact of enforced borders and nationhood has been extant for a long time, throughout the world. Invasion is an act of war, and changing borders only has occurred when one country conquered another, or one country agreed to join as one with another because of common bonds of language, politics, and history. I continue to fight for my country because we have been invaded and attacked, and I never rescinded my Military Oath, or gave up my citizenship.
You are foolish to think you know, really know, that nationhood is only an idea and not a fact. I suggest you go to another country and try becoming a voter and property owner without being a citizen.
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The indigenous peoples also had their own language and culture before the Europeans settled here on Turtle Island (North America). The colonization of North America is happening again but now under different conditions. The burgeoning population of the entire planet is driving people to this part of the world, where there is realtive space to be, to live. There is no stopping it, especially under the current and inherited economic systems by which virtually all countries and peoples participate in. Come to think, this is what spurned the first colonization as well; new ground where people could claim a stake.
Nationhood is an idea, born out of the need to be secure. The need for security, to have enough to eat, a roof over one's head, and some prospect of creative livlihood, is a need that every human shares no matter their place of origin, religious beliefs, diet or specific cultural values. If we are thinking in terms of nationhood, we only create more division and conflict. It is the same as when we identify with certain religious groups, or tribes, or clans, or gangs.
We have evolved biologically and technologically, but has our consciousness evolved? Or, by indentifying oneself with the nation states of the world, with the tribe, are we still at the level of our predecessors who engaged in tribal warfare? i think we are still identifying ourselves as members of tribes ... (patriot?) and our entire economic systems reflect this .... so that we feel we need to protect our boundaries .... but there are none. They are not seen from space. We made them up and now feel that we must defend them. Those boundaries are real and your concerns are real at that level. The projected "reality" is mesmerizing and compelling and when one has their entire lives invested in a particular path or way of thinking, it is difficult to give that up because one's identity is based on that. Who would you be without your identity as a veteran or as an American? Are you really different from that child in Bangladesh who would also strive for security - for food and shelter and room to flourish at least in some small ways. Your fate is locked with that of the child's.
It is true that immigrants stream into America (and Canada), that vast area of Turtle Island known as the US, all seeking a means to survive, provide and be. I guess they have their reasons which are not much different from mine or your reasons even though we were born here.
I am a child of an immigrant. Maybe i should feel ashamed? Do I not belong here because I don't have the same historical roots that created a near genocide of the indigenous peoples during the first colonization?
And now more peoples come .... and we need to protect this place from them ....
They either come here and work or we outsource the work. How many jobs are being exported overseas? Are you concerened (because you haven't mentioned it). It's cheap for the companies to hire folks in Mexico or India while US citizens could have also done that outsourced work. If US citizens do the work it will cost the corporations more and as profit is always the bottom line, why would corporations hire US citizens at a higher cost when they can get the work done cheap in those impoverished countries where people NEED the work? This is what is happening .... again our economic model which pits one against the other, endlessly.
We cannot solve our ecological problems as individuals and as you are trying to do, without getting to the root. Your Earthship becomes a bunker which then becomes a prison. We are intimately related, regardless of the boundaries we have created with that tribal consciousness that has been our record and still seems to persist.
When I was born, I was automatically given citizenship. I didn't ask for it. It was hoisted upon me. So when i travel I can produce some identification which allows me to pass through "borders" without much trouble. But do I accept that particular identifcation? It is pragmatic within this system that we have inherited and continue to uphold but aside from that, it has not much reality for me.
Am I really this citizen of this so called country or am I an individual of homo sapien residing on this planet we call Earth? Earth being a small and beautiful planet within the universe as we know it. Hubble has come up with some amazing images. Have you seen them?
To identify myself with this passport is what we have agreed to do, en masse, and we are given no choice within this framework. The framework is not written in stone. Nothing is.
If you believe in something, it becomes an "idea" and you seem to have many ideas and beliefs. That you are an American citizen is one of them. Are you sure you are not religious? Is citizenship or patriotism not akin to religious belief? Afer all, there is belief .... in god or in nationhood. You either praise the icon on the altar or you identity with the name in your passport. You also gained citizenship when you were born on this small and wonderous planet which is located somewhere in this vast universe ... and you have become that identity and you now need to protect it.
Do you see it? Can you step outside the stream? Because folks are doing just that ..... stepping out of the stream.