Individualism, nationalism and global, mutual responsibility

Question from the Internet:

“What is the significance of nationalism in the issue of freedom vs societal responsibility?”

Nationalism, individual and group identity are part of our DNA. If it is not nationalism, then we choose religion, culture sport or political ideologies to identify the group of people to belong to, and of course, one can have many such identities.

This is something we cannot suppress or erase as it is part of who we are.

On the other hand, we also belong to “global humanity”. This is not something we chose or developed, we evolved into a globally integrated and fully interdependent world as Nature’s evolution and Nature’s laws of integration dictated so.

And this global integration and interdependence make all of us 100% responsible for the whole collective as if we are all individual cells of the same living organism.

Our 100% mutual responsibility and our individual, national and group identities do not contradict each other. We can consciously and purposefully learn how to build a “Nature-like”, seamlessly and mutually integrated global human society, where each individual, nation or group can find their most optimal, mutually responsible and mutually complementary place and role for the wellbeing and optimal development of the whole.

Then — just like the myriads of diverse cells, elements, organs and systems in our own biological body — we can effectively use our diversity, unique abilities to create a completely different, qualitatively much higher “collective Human life” that is beyond everything we can comprehend and imagine from within our present isolated, egocentric, individualistic existence.