Patriotism -- a Social and Cultural Construct of Nation States
Patriotism as a Social Construct
In general, social constructs are ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, and identities that are largely created or inspired artificially by social learning within the social environment. Patriotism is a typical example, simply because it is an arbitrary allegiance to the nation of one's birth and not a matter of conscious choice or decision on the part of the individual. The route to patriotic feelings is not a rational analysis and a logical comparison of the relative merits of various different nations culminating in the selection of one nation by the individual based on merit or any sort of qualitative measurement of the nation state. Rather, it is an automatic theme inspired by society during the early socialization process, such as by rote memorization of the Pledge of Allegiance in American kindergartens and grade schools.
Perhaps the best evidence that patriotism is strictly a social construct is the fact that it is expressed universally among the citizenry of nation states: Americans experience a patriotic impulse for the U.S., the French for France, Germans for Germany, and so forth.
The Evolution of Patriotism
Patriotism is only a relatively recent development in human history, primarily because before the Age of Enlightenment, most people in the world had little connection to anything farther fro their homes than a few days' travel. The vast majority of human beings never ventured beyond the local region of their birth and knew very little, if anything, about human affairs elsewhere, much less in other nations. In fact, many people may never have known what country they lived in. The Enlightenment brought technology that increased communication and travel to distant regions. As nation states developed from many previously isolated communities, monarchs and oligarchies tended to promote the concept of patriotism and loyalty to royal families for the purpose of suppressing rebellion, maintaining power and authority, and funding major expenses such as wars for territory and resources fought against other nation states. That mechanism probably culminated in World War I when millions of young European men known as the "lost generation" died fighting one another, many of them without any understanding of the reasons why, let alone any personal animus for their battlefield enemies. Ultimately, the reality of mechanized warfare did a lot to diminish the traditional "glory" of war between nation states.
