I think the most effective nationalistic systems are best at creating a slightly idealized, slightly personalized “proxy figure” that people come to empathize with. We create that figure’s identity, define the contours of the group, and then automatically apply that identity to members of our group who we don’t know personally to create a bond that wouldn’t normally exist outside of the 150-300 people in our tribe/small town/city block. Of course, there are many more identities and groups in our society that compete with the nationalist figure, religious, racial, geographic, ethnic, political. Part of the success of the American system relative to others has been slowly minimizing the effect of those other identities so that they don’t continue to cause friction, but there are still cultures in our own society who don’t really identify with the American figure and operate largely according to their own rules. At certain times, we've felt it necessary to make moral judgments about these cultures, for example during desegregation or in dealing with inner-city gangs, and regulate their rules and norms above their protests. It wasn't too long ago that the kinship bond between someone from New York and someone from South Carolina by virtue of being American was almost non-existent. I see no reason that the current kinship bond between someone from America and someone from Afghanistan by virtue of being human can't similarly evolve.

Besides, I don't know if Eben was necessarily saying we needed to eliminate kinship ties or see the nameless Afghan child in the same way as we see members of our close family, just that we owe them enough of a kinship tie not to bomb their villages with robot drones.

-- JonathanWaisnor - 02 Mar 2010