Nationalism Part 4

It could have been Heseltine or was it Lawson or was it Ridley? Anyway a few years ago a British politician from the Conservative Party said, in the wake of an upsurge in Scottish nationalism, that the United Kingdom cannot break up because if that were to happen the U.K., or rather, England, would just be another unimportant little country like Holland. Of course South Holland and North Holland are in actual fact two of the twelve or so provinces of the Netherlands, but I am digressing. The point is, I don't really see the problem with being "small" like Holland or, more appropriately, the Netherlands and one wonders where Flanders would come into the equation here. Anyway, the Dutch seem to manage quite fine as do the Danes, the Swedes, the Finns, the Swiss and umpteen other "small" and, by implication, "insignificant" nations and I can even perceive a development of a healthy nationalism in Ireland too, which due to historical reasons was inhibited for some time. However, I am digressing again. Let's get back to the point.Which German, who was around at the time, doesn't remember Willy Brandt's "Spruch" in 1989, when the wall fell; ""Nun wächst zusammen, was zusammengehört ("things that belong together are now growing together")?" If the German SPD had jumped on the nationalist bandwagon when they voted for war credits in 1914 , it was more than inevitable that they would do so again in 1989. There appeared to be no alternative to "reunification" and if Gregor Gysi put his nationality into some sort of perspective by ranking it as almost insignificant to his identity as a human being, he was in a minority. The cry was out, "wir sind wieder wer" ("we are someone again") or was it, "wir sind wieder mehr"("there are more of us again"). The obsession with being big, with being "somebody important". How simple it is for the powers that be to motivate and use that obsession. How easy it is to play on the insecuritiy of people. However, believe me, because I lived there, the Federal Republic was a wonderful place to be before 1990. Alright, it is still not a bad place to be and I was in my heyday then but wouldn't it just have been better for all concerned if we had brought the GDR into the European Union, ifwe had have cultivated their identity and helped them hold on to that identity in a common European house? It was never going to happen, of course!

Today, walking down Xing Hai Jie, I stopped and took a photograph of the car pictured above. There is this obsession in China of being strong, of being big and I don't even have to think too much about where it can take us. The portents are there and I am just left to think, wouldn't the world be a much better place if it were made up of small to medium sized countries all working together for the benefit of everyone? It is quite remarkable that we are not capable of creating this world and the fear is that we never will be.
The pictures is, of course, a bit strange; what does the reference to Tibet have to do with the five Olympic rings? Another example of the Chinese not getting it quite right.