National Pride

There is something I don't quite understand about national pride or national identity. People often seem proud of things associated with the nation they live in that they have no hand in actually contributing to. Sporting events, old battles, inventions and discoveries from 100s of years ago.

The nation seems like quite an artificial and mainly political construction with a sense of national identity being promoted for the sake of obedience and cohesiveness. So what is it that people are actually proud of? The history? The national psyche?

The English seem quite proud of the fact that England once had a large empire whose existence caused the deaths of more people than the Third Reich. The Scottish seem quite proud of what is essentially a "200 year PR exercise" aimed partly at tourists. Other than this they seem quite proud of the fact that they make the English language incomprehensible to the rest of the world, that they eat trash tasteless food, that they look down on education, that their capital city has been made to look like a shortbread tin and the violent reputation.

People will actually talk with pride about the violent reputation Scotland and in particular Glasgow has. The type of violence that generally happens is really quite pathetic; drunken one sided knife attacks by an uneducated and marginalized underclass.

I often hear Scottish people go on about how you should be proud of where you are from with no way of qualifying this. I think it shows a lack of thought and character that you attach much of your ego to such a poor construct.