At the opening lecture six students turned up, two of whom promptly rose and left, explaining that they had wandered into the wrong classroom. Just as birds chase away other birds that encroach on their nesting and feeding area, and primitive hunters and food gatherers drive out, if they do not kill, trespassers, so do otherwise civilized people assault and murder those whom they perceive as encroaching on their territory.įorty years ago, I offered a course on Soviet nationalities at Harvard-the first of its kind at my university and probably in the country. People identify with their homeland because it nourishes them. Survival depends on the bounty of nature: among nondomesticated animals totally, among humans in part, depending on the level of economic and scientific development. Mass education further promotes ethnicity because, being geared to a lower level than elite education and having more pragmatic aims, it stresses the local and familiar at the expense of the universal.Īt a deeper level, national conflict is but one expression of the “territorial imperative” that distinguishes the behavior of all creatures, from protozoa to primates. The principle of popular sovereignty in and of itself institutionalizes national differences. The universal franchise has shifted the center of decision-making to the regions, giving rise to local politics which, in areas inhabited by ethnically diverse populations, assume ethnic forms: conflicts which in nationally homogeneous societies express themselves in social terms, here take on an ethnic coloring. One explanation lies in the triumph of democracy and the attendant spread of mass education. For liberals, nationalism was doomed by the operations of an integrating world market for socialists, by the brotherhood of the international proletariat. Marx and Engels had no patience with the claims of the small nationalities inhabiting the great European empires, whose destiny it was, they believed, to assimilate and vanish. Socialists, in particular, regarded nationalism as a by-product of capitalist competition for markets and a weapon which capitalists used to divert the working class from its true international interests. In the 19th century, it was generally expected that the amalgamation of the world’s economies would cause nationalism to subside and ultimately to disappear. Moynihan’s purpose is both to censure the shortsightedness of the world’s leaders for failing to foresee this turmoil and to warn of its abiding dangers. In Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s latest book, it designates the ethnic turmoil engulfing the world in the 20th century. ![]() Pandaemonium, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, is the capital of hell. This film is well worth your time and isn't the boring, stodgy take on biography that some might be fearing.Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics. Also, the scene with frost forming on the window while Coleridge cares for his son Hartley, leading to one of his more memorable early poems, is a standout. The film is a bit odd at times, with jet trails moving across the skies of the 18th century, but it does a great job of getting at the creative impulse, showing the feverish bouts of imagination that gave rise to Coleridge's _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and the fragment _Kubla Khan_ (interesting that it shows an interruption by Wordsworth as the cause of STC losing his train of thought). ![]() I was reminded of a similar film, _Haunted Summer_, which portrays the meeting of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Then, suddenly, _Lyrical Ballads_ is finished and published and filled with Wordsworth's poetry! The performances are excellent, particularly Linus Roache as Coleridge and Emily Woof as Dorothy Wordsworth. Wordsworth goes to visit Coleridge and to collaborate with him, but can't seem to put a single word to paper. Wordsworth comes off very badly-he gives up on his revolutionary principles, marries a shrewish wife, and seems only interested in how he will be viewed by posterity. The film sure is biased towards Coleridge. I guess I thought Wordsworth and Coleridge were more friendly than this (and maybe they were) in reality. ![]() I saw the movie on DVD and really enjoyed it.
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