Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Necessary Illusions in the Global Village – The birth of an imagined community – part 2

Like with myths we tell our children, the nationalist myth holds within it a set of assumptions that its followers adopt. Children are very open to myths, legends and narratives that every society creates and in which children are born into. These myths are created by myth-makers and adopted over and over again by individuals of a society who retell them to every new generation. The myths get adopted and so sustain time and space.

One thing that is specific about myths is that they are a product of our imagination. And since children seems to have a shire unlimited imagination they are most open to stories of this kind. But the point is that even if some aspects of a myth is true, what is true about it is not the myth itself. Myths are by definition not Truth. They may have some liability in past happenings but are in themselves a product of our imagination. One of the myths that is omnipresent is the nationalist myth.

The nationalist myth argues, that there is some objective reality out there, that we can call a serbian nation or an Kosova (or Kosovo) nation. That the nation state is the norma, normal and healthy form of development in the world. And that every nation ought to have its own state.

Especially the media is engaged in the manufacturing of such myths to a wider audience. Like parents tell myths to there children, journalists are engaging broad debates over every aspect and implication of the nationalist myth. Its Past, History and even its future implications are so widely disseminated that the scope of debate seems almost limitless.

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