How belonging to a nation can save us from the meaninglessness of modern life
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Do you mean meaninglessness? The title makes no sense.
I’m not sure about this. You can’t replace religion with nationality.
I guess it very much depends on how you personally define religion and nationality.
Whereas I think religion and nationality get mixed up in terms of things like queen and country etc, I think they have fundamental differences – a nation is not a God (or is it?). A nation however is not a secular thing in my opinion either – you have to have belief in a nation for it to exist and this belief is then used to further sustain its social structures and to somehow form diverse justifications for actions linked to it.
The idea of nationalism filling a spiritual void left by increasing secularisation or anything that might lead down a path towards the replacement or merger of the unquestionable authority of an infallible deity or some universal principle with the authority of earthy leaders and ideologies would worry many. I don’t think this is the best starting point to argue for an independent Wales. An argument- an internationalist one, that has more appeal to me, would be that Wales needs to take the full powers of an independent nation in order to be best placed to organise itself and to have… Read more »
I am ashamed not to have heard of J R Jones but not surprised that such an interesting book Yr Argyfwng Gwacter Ystyr was written in a department that also contained such an eminent philosopher as Rush Rees. This forthcoming conference seems to discuss the central issue that deals with the apparent consequences of the presumed lacuna in the heart of Liberalism (and the realisation that the Death of God might imply the Death of Man.) There is a dissonance and tension between Wales as an actual and potential linguistic ( moral?) community and the fragmented conflicting political identities physically… Read more »
I’m not to sure about the religion aspect in all of this, tending to see religion itself, and certainly the Christian religion as being part of the problem, and not the solution. I would suggest that the death of god and the death of man, are interlinked though, as concepts, as after all godheads are made by people in their own image. There is certainly something missing in the ideas of materialism and it’s inablity to satisfy deep human needs, and obviously it’s something that has been written about a lot. Oscar Wilde wrote about ‘Socialism and the Soul of… Read more »
The article makes some interesting points but predictably ignores the elephant in the nationalist room – I.e. that more than 90% of the Welsh population also regard the United Kingdom as their “nation”
Really? Care to enlighten us as to where you found that statistic? According to Wikipedia, the 2001/02 Labour Force Survey, showed that 87% of Welsh born people regarded themselves as ethnically Welsh, which kind of blows your figure out of the water.
Different surveys give different results according to how the question is posed. The biggest source of evidence comes from the 2011 census. Then 58% of people in Wales recorded their national identity as just Welsh and 7% said they were both Welsh and British. However, as the ONS’ own research found, the way the question was worded (a list of options with the invitation to tick all that apply) encouraged in practice people to just tick the first box they saw that applied. The first option was Welsh. It’s probable that many did not read on. In contrast, using a… Read more »
Whilst we desperately need independence, please, please, please do not fall into the idolatry of putting nationalism above God. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”
But nationalism exists, God doesn’t! No Gods, No Masters!
Well Huw, you’ve done it again.
Said it how its is and even though I may not quite see eye to eye on certain little things, you had me at “How belonging to a nation can save us from the meaninglessness of modern life”.
Anyone who argues, is either a unionist, British llackey or simply just doesn’t get it!
However, keep up the good work!
Diolch yn fawr iawn Huw!