No one should be proud of where they were born
No one should be proud of where they were born
Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one's situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn't a decision nor an accomplishment.
I think the problem is that people conflate being proud of others with themselves. They take on the achievements of others as their own.
This dude was from my place and was great so therefore I'm great.
This is what nationalists, fascists, racial supremacists and other extremists do on the regular. They have no achievements of their own to be proud of so they have to steal somebody else's.
There are two sides to it.
If a childhood friend of yours grows up to be a skilled athlete, you can be proud that someone with a shared downtrodden background as yourself has excelled: it's a shining example to the world that it can't oppress all of us, and there is a sense of genuine communal solidarity in it.
That being said, if you come from a pretty majority background with plenty of opportunities, and you take communal pride in your friends achievements, then there is nothing really won. The world was never trying to keep your community down, your friend just did well and you should be happy for him and that's about it.
Needs to be narrower. Nobody should be proud of being from where they are from because they are from there. It's not inherently good to be from any particular place.
But you're allowed to be proud of your local community because of things they have done regardless of whether you were born there or not.
It’s less about accomplishment and more about being proud of the city or town itself. Proud of the people you called neighbors and their struggles and lives. Proud of the community banding together and supporting each other.
Thats at least how I always saw it
Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as "reasonable self-esteem" or "confidence and satisfaction in oneself". Oxford defines it as "the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance." Pride may be related to one's own abilities or achievements, positive characteristics of friends or family, or one's country.
But it is about accomplishment, pride is directly related to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-satisfaction. In America there are way too many people who are "proud to be American" without really thinking much beyond that.
I think it's okay to be proud of one's own community if they've taken part in shaping that community and made it better in some way.
"Proud to be an American" is a manufactured, measured out, and heavily marketed slogan, not actual pride. Hell, every nation does this. It's only one method of control among many, though.
Secondly, it's wiser to not cite dictionary sources unless your argument is syntactical; socioeconomic strata are very unlikely to be accounted for in whatever abridged morsel those references offer — to say nothing of the psychological variance inherent in such a topic. Furthermore, vernacular morphology is real.
Keep looking for answers, though. (This is less an "Unpopular Opinion", and simply a seedling of a thought needing some attentive guidance.
You can't go with that narrow of a definition. What about a parent being proud of their kid? That's also pride.
Nationalism can easily become a bad thing, I agree. But I can also see why people would feel a certain pride to be a part of a community that accomplished something positive, and while they may have not been around to participate, the pride may be what inspires them to contribute in the future.
Ignorance, and an unwillingness to reflect on your countries recent history while spouting propaganda (i. e. "X is the best country in the world"), yes - that's bullshit.
Came prepared to downvote this for being common sense, but judging by the comments it actually is surprisingly unpopular! Well played.
I don't know if it was intentional on OP's part, but our April Fool's Day rules are in effect at the moment, so posts are expected to be "Popular Opinions" .
Tribalism is mainly emotional rather than rational and, further, humans feel a need to belong, so choosing the logical take on things like national pride (or pride in one's sport's team, political party and so on) is very unusual and when voiced generally receives an intenselly negativelly response from most others as they are heavilly emotionally invested into their love of, and pride in, things like nation, sports team, religion, etnicity, politics and so on.
I think society would benefit if we all felt a sense of pride in our communities and people in a positive aspect
Can we do that on a global scale instead of being restricted to within the borders?
I think we'd need to find aliens first
I can see that. I'm willing to bet the lived experiences of individuals from different communities/tribes/nations/continents/etc. aren't all that different from one another. Typically one of the arguments for tribalism comes from finding community with people who have the same experiences as you.
It starts with finding things that make us the same, not different.
sense of pride
- Sense of community? Yes
- Sense of respect? Yes
- Sense of responsibility? Yes
- Sense of accomplishments? Yes
- Sense of pride? Errrr... Not really.
When people write "a sense of pride in" I think they (and you) are saying "be responsible for X so you can feel good about it". Nothing wrong with that, and I think you're right.
However I don't like the phrase. Pride is the wrong emotional target. It brings with it a sense of superiority in some. There's a reason it's one of the deadly sins.
Fair, but I think we agree with the sentiment of what I meant.
I looked up pride and one of the definitions was: *Pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association. *
For example: parental pride. Many parents are proud of their children regardless of the achievements or personal decisions. Pride can, I believe, sometimes be tied to a love for something/someone.
So being proud to come from some place is to me, saying: I love that I came from this place or "I'm thankful that I was born here"
This is coming from someone that doesn't really care much for his birth city nor country.
Agreed. Also genetic heritage. I literally didn't have any choice in any of it. And to pretend my genetic heritage is somehow something to be more proud of than any other genetic is literally racist.
This applies to all races equally.
I’d rather not be born in a place where this opinion is unpopular.
I feel lucky about where I was born. I won a birth lottery, but I believe there are other places that have bigger lottery jackpots.
Is this actually an unpopular opinion?
I'm almost certain if you shared this opinion in most places in the US, or if the US president said something along these lines, it would be taken very very badly. Unpopular on Lemmy? Probably not, but Lemmy is mostly far-left Progressive Liberals.
Hi OP, just a gentle reminder about Rule 1 (No Politics). In future please try and refrain from using adjacent terminology in this community, as present in the latter portion of this comment, as this may incite violations of other community rules within the replies
That's not compelling "proof", this assurance that you (an internet stranger) are "almost certain", to be entirely fair — and the fallback on hyperbole is a dead giveaway for how your own confidence in that statement is lacking. All due respect.
What is a "far-left progressive liberal?" Liberals are, by definition, right-wing, as they focus on Capitalism as their mode of production, as opposed to Socialism. The most progressive among liberals are probably Social Democrats, which I wouldn't quite consider liberal. Social Democrats are people in support of Scandinavian style Capitalism, with generous social safety nets, and thus Center-right.
That's to say nothing of Lemmy, which is definitely further left than that, ie Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists, the only far-left being Anarchists and Communists.
Same thing when I see people crying over their country's team winning an Olympic medal.
Get a grip - You didn't do anything except be born in the same geopolitical boundary as the actual athletes. Perhaps one 50th of a penny of your tax dollars contributed to the team athletic funding.
Fun fact, a major contributor for funding training US Olympic athletes comes from the Department of Defense, and it's about 200 million per year. Unless it's an Olympics year and then costs skyrocket.
I get so annoyed with people who are on tv shows, (like competitions, or reality shows) who claim they want to "make my country proud" and they don't want to let them down. Did everyone in your country send you there? Was there a vote? Are they paying you? No. You made a choice to be on the show, your entire nation is unlikely watching or cheering you on. When you lose Joanne, and you will, no one will care then either. And the people watching the show will not suddenly start calling people from your country losers, they will only know that you, Joanne are the loser, not all the other millions of citizens of your nation. **Joanne is a generic contestant for the purpose of this rant.
I told my children that pride is a product of hard work; in life, there's nothing worth boasting about unless you've earned it through effort.
I mean there are different types of pride. Being lgbt isn't a decision either, yet we have Pride, because being proud of who you are is often about more than just accomplishments, for many people it's about accepting and embracing the parts of you that you can't change. Just because you don't personally like that it includes that definition, it doesn't erase the fact that that is a part of the definition and has been for a long time.
In an ideal world LGBT Pride would not need to exist because all sexual orientations would be treated as absolutelly normal, so one's sexual orientation, no matter which one, would be as deserving of pride as, for example, one's eye color, i.e. not at all unless one is some kind of narcissist. LGBT Pride is really just a response to a World that in most places sees minority sexual orientations as "wrong".
I suppose you could divide that pride into two parts, one deserving of as much pride as one's land of birth and another really deserving of pride:
- The first, pride in one's sexual orientation (be it LGBT or any other including the majority one), is as deserving of pride as the nation one was born into, which is not at all because one does not choose how or where one is born and hence, not being an actual personal choice, it's not something deserving of pride.
- On the other hand the other part, that of an LGBT person having pride for having fought for and manage to living life as they are in an environment which discriminates against non-majority sexual orientations, is indeed real, deserved pride (IMHO), as it's pride in one's achievements.
Anyways, my point being LGBT Pride as openly celebrated isn't pride in the common sense of the word, but quite a lot more than that.
I kind of agree, that it's idiotic to be proud in the sense of accomplishment, but I don't think that was the intended meaning when the term was originally used in this context. GRSM people say they're proud to be queer, because pride can also mean a rejection of shame. Of course there are people who will take genuine pride of accomplishment in their place of birth, but I ifgure those folks don't have a lot else going for them in terms of accomplishment, or perhaps don't understand the concept of accomplishment to start.
Doug Stanhope had a great bit on this in his 2008 special, No Refunds.
I would have expected to agree with you, but in thinking it through, I am proud of things I didn’t do, but not for myself, if that makes sense. I’m proud of my mom for getting through grad school with a small child (my sister, I wasn’t even born yet), and I’m proud of my dad for quitting drinking a decade before. Those are both very difficult things and I feel positive about them in a way that feels similar to how I feel when I understand a new aspect of my field and the same as how I feel when my niece learns a new thing. I would call it more of an indirect pride, I guess.
I can see extending that to more distant ancestors, especially if there’s been a consistent threat and various ancestors were instrumental or inspirational against that threat. It’s not a requirement to feel any sort of way about your forebears, but I don’t think it’s out of line to feel pride or shame. I also don’t think it really makes a difference if you’re blood related to the people or just culturally related (or anywhere in between), so I guess it would apply to a culture at large as well (generally geographically related).
Agreed. Nobody should be proud of their height, their skin color, eye color, anything they didn't work for. Happy, sure. Proud? No.
I dunno... Being the first person born in space ought to come with some bragging rights.
You can be proud about your country. You can be proud about everything that makes your country special. Your food, your traditions,... Why shouldn't you.
Because you did nothing to create any of that. Appreciating one's country especially certain aspects of it seems like a good idea. Being proud of it makes no sense. Most countries have some ugly shit in their past. Proud of that too? Not sure you get to pick and choose.
Yeah, if you’ve got no own accomplishments to be proud of, I guess you can do that.
Sorry you are from a miserable area that has nothing to enjoy and take pride in. I'm from St. Louis originally, and despite it's many faults, history of racism, and 2 centuries of shooting otself in the foot i still am proud to be from there. The sports teams are my favorite, the Arch is a beautiful monument, and the free services such as the zoo, Art Museum, and Muny theater are all amazing municipal achievements that took the whole community to accomplish.
You can be proud of where you are from and be open about the faults and problems of that place. Civic pride isn't blind nationalism.
Ooh, ooh! There's a song for that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kjBNy5AlNQBeing born in <insert random country here> doesn't make you more successful, more hard working, etc.
So I shouldn’t proud of my personal identity and my roots? Which literally plays a huge part of who I am today and especially, where I was brought up cuz without it, I wouldn’t be me and I wouldn’t have an identity without it.
But ok then go off……..
You still have your identity without having to feel proud about it.
My country sucks big time. Should I feel ashamed even though I contributed nothing to its suckiness?
You nailed it. Most correct and succinct comment in the thread.
Not really. We all came from somewhere. We all have an identity. Unless you worked hard for it, you shouldn't feel pride in it. Someone else worked hard for it, THEY should feel pride for it. You should feel humble, grateful, or lucky that you are able to enjoy it (assuming they're good "roots"). You shouldn't feel pride in having won the lottery.
Yep. People watching the Olympics while being obese sitting on a sofa eating big macs with extra cheese. The athletes did all the hard work, and the audience at home take the pride for whatever reason.
Humans have not evolved beyond tribalism. They still think in terms of borders instead of the planet.
Hah why are you down voted. You made fun of fat people, okay well its like their own fault for being fat for 99% of them.
But then how do I do jingoism? /s
People who are proud to be born in their country are nazis and this is a very bad thing to be. At least we have been told so.