National Identity is the unity of the different. It forms, over the years, through a process of assimilation and rejection, in which what is assimilated, in its original form or transformed, is deposited, given body. It is a continuous process, that passes from generation to generation, and that makes identity a living thing, always being enriched. Every country has its own, which makes it different from the rest.
To be different from the rest is not to be unique, but to constitute an element that taken as a whole expressed the character of a geographic region. So we can talk about a western identity or an oriental identity, one that is European and another American, of a Latin identity of Slavic, and so on. It is always produced in a process of uniting, where the different sheets fit together like a puzzle, giving a whole vision, without which it would be incomprehensible.
When, in supposed defense of national identity, attempts are made to isolate the country from the world, and to close the paths that continuously nourish the country with every kind, what results is social paralysis and the establishment, first, of immobility, and later of involution, losing the previous gains without access to the new.
To act in this way constitutes, more than a mistake, an economic, political and social suicide. It’s to condemn the nation to misery and tie its hands and feet, to prevent reacting to and resolving an absurd situation, that can only lead to its demise as such.
National identity is defended by allowing the active participation of all citizens, without exception, in the creation and realization of a national project, rooting out forever intolerance of any kind and adding instead of subtracting.
February 10 2011
