Identity

Identity is a contradictio in terminis. No one can be defined ex nihilo. So we are nothing in the beginning. So we start being something when something else is outside us. If we want to be somebody we need somebody else to look at us and listen to us, and here is the trap of the whole idea: we are dependent containers of `nothingness´. Perhaps what there is is just a continuous WHOLE and it´s our senses that betray us all the time, making us think we are individuals. Besides, what do we think a person is? We conceive ourselves always flowing, constantly changing, I, me, myself. But when the time to speak comes, our brain tricks us and makes us believe there´s a continuity: me, me, me. Me when I was 4, me when I was 17. Only that me and I can´t really be told to be the same entity. When the I wants to speak about its own, it happens that we tend to dislike the paradox, but the language is revealing: I look at myself in the mirror. Why not I look at I? Aren´t we seeing the same thing that is looking?In some languages there is no ´myself´at all. In others, there is no I. So language does not give us any definite answer, either.
When we are confronted with others the reaction can be two-folded. On the one hand we aspire to be recognised as individuals. On the other, we also like to think we belong into something bigger, we want to be accepted into it. It´s this feeling I couldn´t be more sympathetic and identified with. We are poor dependent creatures. We are poor devils.
But, how come can I defend nationalism from this very point of view? I know it sounds like complete nonsense. But the thing is, I don´t believe in the pure fanatism of defining a nation ex nihilo, from the void, or "from God", as some prefer to call it. Instead, I believe a nation is a reaction. A lie to combat a previous lie. And in this dynamic tension nationalism grows as much as the recognition of the other grows.
Asuming recognition is good (they all say it is, don´t they?) and respectful, nationalism can be an enriching force within society. But it must NEVER become static. Turn it static, and you get fanatism. We don´t wan´ no more poor devils gettin´around, do we?
Besides, I truly despise the so-called "political nationalism", now or any time, but especially now when it is so badly stained with the corruption of the modern "political" game (please understand "political" in a 21st century way). And, please, DONT call this nationalism. It is just cheap political rubbish. Nationalism as I understand it stems from a personal feeling of both identification (poor wretches we are) and diferentiation (we still like to be our own wretch after all), and it involves all of a person´s spheres, from the most intimate one to the most genuinely political one (please understand "political" in the classical Greek way:)
It is a positive re-assurance, a breath of permanence, which deep down we all know to be so pathethical, simply because nothing stays, and we are all going to die! ...pantha rei