Quote Originally Posted by Innocentius
The original thread got locked pretty immediately, so I'm trying a more diplomatic approach here.

As the topic indicated; why nationalism? Not a nationalist myself, I'm having difficulties understanding what makes a person love his or her country simple because. What triggers this? Is it a need for security and the feeling of belonging somewhere? To me it's just a geographic area inhabitated by certain people that happened to end up there thanks to history.

To not make this a thread entirely for nationalists to write in, it'd be interesting to see some kind of debate also. What is good and what is bad with this social phenomena? My, rather biased, opinion - that got the first thread locked - can be read in the link at the top of the post. It's all yours.
History, is a strong word, people have connections with history. Some increadibly personal, this a natural thing and no phenomena. If you want to question that then you'll be questioning strongly ingrained assumptions of the Human mind. Nations are far more than a Geographical area inhabited by certain people. In some countries there are more than just a certain type of people, but they are usually of the same nationality. I assume you are in fact talking about nation-states/ states? The Kurds consider themselves a nation but they are not a state. It is natural for people to group together, ever since the dawn of history. We have seen a general progression in the size of these groupings, thus history tells us they will only get bigger. Eventually I reckon the Earth will be our only gouping, but it takes time, evolution rather than revolution.