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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Anger on nationalism

I just have to write it.

Someone told: "Don't think too much. Then life will seem easier". Indeed, sometimes you just start to think over something and realize how much s**t is there and then you regret that you started to touch this s**t in your thoughts, becuase it stinks...

I watch TV extremely rarely. It usually happens in few cases: 1) I watch the news; 2) I watch interesting documentary; 3) I watch movie I wanted to see for some time already; 4) I am so tired that my brain does not want to bother itself with something more demanding than switching the channels.

Few days ago mixture of 2) and 4) happened. I was watching one historic documentary about the tensions between Hinduists and Muslims in India. There were for example such facts brought our that during the separation of India and Pakistan from British empire in late-1940s over 1 million (!) people have been slaughtered in inter-ethic tensions. Ghandi was killed, because he believed that richness of India lies in its multiculturality, not superiority of Hinduism.

In 2002 (4 years ago that means!) thousands of extremist Hinduists destroyed the mosque built in 17th century, because they claimed that this is holy place for Hinduists. In turn, Muslims made an explosion in the train full of Hinduists and killed few hundreds people. In turn, Hinduists slaughtered few thousands Muslims in their houses... Whose turn next?

After this documentary has ended, I started to watch news on BBC. A bomb explotion in Baghdad. 60-70 Shi'a Muslims killed next to their mosque. Extremist Sunni Muslims were accused. Experts are afraid of Iraq stepping deeper and deeper into the ground of civil war.
When I was working in Berlin, I visited remains of Berlin wall. It is full of graffity of different painters from beginning of 1990s. One painting was especially memorable - people are destroying the wall brick-by-brick and there is a big slogan: "There won't be any walls anymore!".

Another news after Baghdad - report on building the beton wall which would physically separate Israelis and Palestinians. Jews don't want to let Muslims to explode bombs against them.

Very memorable has been visit to Bosnia few months ago - I got to know a lot about how Bosnian Serbs (Orthodox), Croats (Catholic) and Bosniaks (Muslims) slaughtered each other and destroyed their own country.

F**k nationalism! F**k the ones who use religion AGAINST someone else!
Having been brought up in multicultural environment - mixed origin of Russian and Setu (small nationality similar to Estonians), two languages to be used etc - I learned a lot about nationalism in my own country.

One Estonian Russian guy told me couple of years ago - "Estonians are just a small angry nation which cannot even be compared with great culture of Russians". F**k your chauvinism!

There are plenty of Estonians that I know who say something like - "I know few cool Russians, I had realations with Russian girl, I have good Russian neighbour. But all in all, I don't like this nation".

"I eat apples time-to-time. I like to eat oranges when I am ill. But all in all I don't like fruits." Similar? That's what I am saying - f**k narrow-mindedness!

Go to hell with your comments like "I am patriot of my country. I am proud of my nation." Have you ever tried to live and work in other country like local people do without judging them and comparing them to your environment? Have you ever called someone "friend" who does not share your native language? Have you ever loved someone who has not seen the same cartoons as you in the childhood? If not, f**k your damn patriotism and please don't tell me that you have right to call yourself like that!

Sometimes I just have to agree with John Lennon who dreamt: "Imagine there's no countries. And no religion too."

Anyway, I will continue to believe that love and mercy don't have borders. And I will continue to live according to these principles - to have business with, to be friend with, to love people notwithstanding the fact whether they are Jews, Arabs, Hinduists, white, black, pink, gays, small brothers of Mother Teresa or grandchildren of Jossif Stalin.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean. But those people don't read your blog, I guess:-( And there's a hell lot of them living around us. If you really want to f**k their nationalism, you'd be very tired at the end;-)

Anonymous said...

I still think being a patriot is somewhat necessary - it keeps the feet on the ground and us in touch with what we are. There is the question of extent though... We will always (consciously or not) compare other cultures/countries to ours, but we just need to understand that other people stick to their values as strongly as we do. Would say "easy as that", but I know it isn't...

PS: really glad to see you're doing well back home!!!

Carry said...

Tunnista nüüd üles, et sa käisid salaja mu pisikese peakese sees sobramas ja kriblasid kõik sealsed eileöised jäänukmõtted seie blogisse üles! =) No kuidas saab nii täpselt? No KUIDAS, ahh?

Mida ma oskan selle peale öelda? Ilmselt seda, et ma ei häbene neverever näpuga sinu peale osutada ja kõva häälega öelda, et vaadake! see ongi see noormees, kellesse ma kunagi kõrvuni ära armusin. Nagu ühes laulus lauldakse: You are, you are...a wonderful-wonderful person!

Ära mitte iialgi muutu!
Muidu teen sust rosolje või kuidas see salmike oligi...

Deniss Rutseikov Ojastu said...

Hey Maarika and the others!

Glad to have received some interesting feedback from you.

I actually did not mean that patriotism is bad per se. I consider myself as a patriot of Estonia. I love my country. I really do. But I would never say that Estonia or Estonians are somehow better than the others.

My patriotism is based on the fact that there are many dear places, many dear people, many dear memories in this country for me. I like language, culture, society order of this country. But there is nothing in this list which does not apply for me to Croatia, for example. The difference is that extent of these dear things is just much larger in Estonia than in Croatia due to the fact that I have lived here for abour 22 years, not 5 months.

One Polish girl said to me once - "Why should I claim that I love Poland? I love my friends there, I love my dog back home, I love my books from childhood in Polish. The rest is just an order of streets, towns and people that I don't really care about" It may sound a bit extreme, but isn't there at least part of true in these words?

The border between patriotism "My country/nation/religion is great, I am proud of it" and expressions like "Let's beat/kill/rape the OTHERS" is really slight. The history has shown it thousand of times.

Andrej - I know cruel reality of this word. But I think that my expression of these thoughts is one really little, but significant step in making something. Why? Because lack of action and silence may be much worse than action itself.

Deniss

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree with you more Deniss and that's why I put something similar on my blog: menso.wordpress.com. Feel free to comment! See ya!

Chris

Anonymous said...

Jah, minu poolest võiks ka rahvused ja religioonid olemata olla......oleks palju vähem vaenu ja idiootlikkust!

Siiri
http://terapeut2003.livejournal.com

Anonymous said...

Kusjuures, Deniss, Sina ja Nastja muutsite mu arvamust vene noorte osas väga palju......nende 3 päevaga Viinistus..!


Siiri