National Identities

I was sitting in the Tuileries Garden, the sun tucked behind puffy clouds yet still radiant, fiery. My friend, donning Ray-Bans, short hair on his cheeks and long hair on his head, was saying something along the lines of:

    "People have died for ideas. But what even is an idea? A nation is an idea. Everything is an idea."

 

I was in France for the first time in August. I quickly noticed a strong reverence for precedent there. Legitimacy is proven by the idea that a place, or food, or ideology, or language, or style, has been tried and tested by a long line of predecessors. An unambiguous pride stems from heritage. I got the impression that the French nation is defined by a lore, a history more than cherished but quite deliberately placed centrally in their society like the Black Stone in the Kaaba; a people who root themselves in camaraderie with the countless that came before. 

 

This sacred historical mythos, the national religion, comes in a different, still patriotic form on this side of the pond. For better or worse, I think ours is more future-oriented with a healthy dollop of underdog, rags-to-riches, land of endless potential rhetoric. Our possibilities unite us, not a shared past. All nations are ideas, after all. 

I also saw that conflict is an essential ingredient to the conception of the nation-state in both countries. At Versailles there's a hall of paintings glorifying the major French battles up to Napoleon. The story of France. In Washington DC, a visitor walks up the National Mall, strolling from Lincoln to the Capitol, through a series of memorials for our 20th century wars. The story of America. 

Deliberate effort is exerted to unite the mass of individuals with a shared idea. A nation is far more capable than the sum of its parts. That seems to be what politics is all about. From my limited exposure, it seems the French have created a sturdy, gravitational, pervasive idea to define themselves; forged through centuries of war and power struggle, but also the stroke of paintbrushes and pens.