The right kind of patriotism

[Music]

what does patriotism mean

to many it’s the pride or confidence you

have in a particular nation

territory region or country it’s kind of

like

school pep but on steroids but in the

same way that you don’t really get to

choose

what school you go to your parents make

that decision for you

you don’t really get to decide where

you’re born your parents make

that decision for you too and their

parents made that decision for them

but nevertheless you still end up going

to high school football matches and

shouting go wild cats

or you end up breaking into god save the

queen at grand state occasions

but if the genesis of patriotism is

something so arbitrary where you were

born it has nothing to do with your

capabilities or ability

does it really have any use today many

people would say yes

and they’d point to some of history’s

greatest leaps forward as evidence

they have been attributed to patriotism

for example let’s cast our minds back to

the u.s sent a man to the moon and this

was following a period of intense

rivalry between america and the soviet

union

both were vying for dominance here on

earth but also in space

and as a byproduct patriotism was able

to fuel some of the greatest leaps

forward

that mankind has seen in technology

space travel

and sadly warfare so where is that line

between patriotism

and something slightly more nefarious

see

the example that i’ve just given

obviously advanced the entirety of

mankind

not just america or the ussr the great

leap forward

was for all of us but something else is

present in this example

and countless other examples where

patriotism is evidenced as a fuel for

progress the presence of war because

pride in one’s national identity has all

too often let

ego overpower the desire to strive for

the common good

now let me pose a counterfactual which

sounds ridiculous but

how much sooner would we have landed on

the moon if

americans and russians had worked

together now it even sounds preposterous

to say but i think the answer is

of course much sooner years ago

under monarchs many sacrificed their

lives for petty squabbles between two

rulers

war was prioritized over progress but

one could level the accusation

the same accusation for the modern age

that we live in

we don’t have to look too far into

history to think of a good example of

the opposite force

in action the benefits of international

collaboration

one of the very first coronavirus

vaccines was engineered by an ethnically

turkish couple

working in a german laboratory in

conjunction with an austrian professor

the coronavirus did not discriminate

along the lines of national borders or

religion or ethnicity

and clearly the same can be said about

the solution

it could not have been achieved if only

people from one group

locality or one country was allowed to

work on the

issue in fact scientists have found that

collaboration is key

recent studies have shown that diversity

and experience and opinion

leads to significantly faster problem

solving

psychologists conducted a study where

they presented a few problems and

puzzles

to individuals grouped together by

ethnicity

age gender it was found that groups with

the most

similar demographic characteristics were

the least efficient at problem solving

and the more diversity there was in a

group the more efficiency there was and

the quicker they were to solve those

puzzles

so i think it’s fair to conclude that if

we did not have the serendipity of

having

turkish german scientists working with

an austrian professor in a german

laboratory

we would not have had the breakthrough

that we did as quickly as we did or in

the way that we did

cooperation should definitely not dilute

patriotism

but should accentuate it collaboration

is now

skeptics at this junction might say hang

on a second

the reason why america and russia did

not collaborate had nothing to do with

the ego

it was because of completely distinct

value systems

and this is something that you hear of

more and more in the news

british values american values indian

values french values

but when you deconstruct those

rhetorical tools

you begin to understand that indian

russian and american politicians

claim to stand for the same things

freedom liberty

equality justice there can be no

monopoly by one nation on any of these

values and in fact

the fact that so many politicians are

using them should prompt us to

understand

how much we actually share how much we

have in common but where does this leave

us in regards to our main question

what is the right kind of patriotism and

this brings me to a situation from the

early 2010s

there was a great debate in new york

about whether a mosque

should be built in the vicinity of

ground zero where of course uh the 9 11

attacks

occurred and there were fierce arguments

on both sides

i remember thinking to myself what would

be the biggest victory for america in

this particular situation

would it be showing that they are indeed

a land of pluralism

that they do not shun any religion or

community and they will tolerate

freedom of religion and expression even

when it’s politically contentious

or would they rather send a signal a

very clear signal

that america is not compatible with a

certain group of people

i think enemies are more often defeated

with acts of compassion than with drones

or missiles

and in that particular instance the

american politician

politicians definitely chose compassion

in recent years some have diminished

patriotism to simply be about territory

language or ethnicity

however i believe not only is this too

simple a definition

but it stunts the progress of the very

group or country that you’re trying to

protect

or improve now if we name just a few

examples the albert einstein

sigmund freud malala yousafzai these are

all people that arguably found their

greatest voice in countries where

they were not born i believe that the uk

and the us were better off for their

inclusive vision of patriotism

now if we had simply viewed patriotism

to mean you can only be part of our

group if you look this way

speak this way dress this way then we

would have lost

the theory of relativity leaps forward

in psychology

and a powerful advocate for women’s

rights

so what i am suggesting is that we

should flip the whole debate

on its head patriotism should be about

inclusion

and not exclusion for example i was born

in britain

attended a very british school sang

hymns every morning and had fish and

chips

every friday lunch as a school meal but

as you might have guessed my ancestors

were not from anywhere near here

or anywhere near hertfordshire where my

school was in fact they are from

4 000 miles away the first person in my

family to make that 4 000 mile voyage

were my grandparents they both went to

medical school in india

then they came to the uk where my

grandmother worked in the nhs and my

grandfather

taught at oxford and then they

eventually settled in pakistan a few

years later where they founded a

hospital that served the city of karachi

for over 30 years now the simple

question at hand is

does india britain or pakistan have to

shun

any of their achievements do their

contributions mean less

simply because they were elsewhere at a

different time in a different context

i would argue the answer is a resounding

no

in my experience at the european

parliament where i was lucky enough to

be

working on behalf of british political

parties

i was concerned with of course advancing

british interests on a day-to-day basis

however one week there was a trade

delegation from pakistan

and having a pakistani heritage allowed

me to strike up a very natural

conversation with them

because of my affinity with their

background and their culture

and as they had never been to the

european parliament before

i shared some of my very few insights

about how the institution worked where

certain offices were

and i hoped those tidbits of information

proved useful to them

and in achieving their goals in small

moments like this

not grand moments small moments we

realize that very few of us

are so monolithic that we can only

attribute our ancestry or lineage or

background to a set

place or a set language if we could we’d

all be more boring for it

patriotism is not about choosing what

part of your identity to bolster and

what part of your identity to diminish

patriotism is about finding the harmony

within yourself

to be the best contributor you can

wherever you can do it

by helping a different group you don’t

necessarily

do it at the expense of the group that

you already belong to

this riff this fact reminds me of an

episode of an american talk show where a

white nationalist member

enthusiastically took a blood test

trying to establish

the purity of his bloodline so sure that

it would come out as he expected

but it turned out that he was part

african-american

and that illustrates how we have to

accept diversity it’s not an option

it’s who we are the world is no longer

if it really ever was a collection of

monolithic tribes where language

ethnicity or religion

could tightly unify populations of

course it’s an intoxicating idea

if i speak a certain way or live a

certain way

it’s very tempting to try and preserve

that way of life because

that’s all i’ve known and that’s all my

parents knew and that’s all my

grandparents knew

however just as we have all grown to

learn whether we’re students

working in jobs in academia success lies

outside your comfort zone

the world is full of 7 billion unique

stories

it would be conceited and arrogant to

assume that by

cordoning off these 50 million people

we’re serving that group the best

the best way to serve any smaller group

is by opening the doors to the best

and the brightest ideas and people of

the remaining 6 billion 950 million

people

a project that i’ve started seeks to do

just that by allocating human capital as

efficiently as possible around the world

we do this simply by taking talent from

one country and deploying it in

companies

or organizations in other countries who

have a shortage of similar

talent in local areas our ethos is very

simple

just as most problems are not unique to

individual countries

solutions are very rarely found in a

specific place

many of the problems that developing

countries face can be solved by acumen

and capital being moved from

more developed countries to them and

conversely

many problems within developed countries

are solved on a day-to-day basis

by human capital that has actually been

imported from developing countries

the typical model for the first

iteration is of course charity

people view charity as a quick and easy

way of alleviating many of the

developing world’s problems

by simply shifting money or financial

capital from the rich

to the poor however my project believes

that

a more sustainable way of looking at

this is by saying that

this is not an us and them issue it’s

not merely the rich

giving to the poor and we have to stop

dealing with global challenges through

the lens of narrow patriotism

that will allow us to become much more

innovative with our solutions

right now the most pressing challenges

facing both developing and developed

countries

have nothing to do with national borders

or the color of your passport

the coronavirus pandemic global warming

mass poverty

viruses and famines do not ask for your

passport before

delivering punishment onto you that’s

why we should not think that

passports or nationalities can include

or exclude us from being part of the

solution

one example from the work our

organization does

is a textile company in rural pakistan

which creates jeans and clothes that we

wear on a day-to-day basis

they supply for some of the major brands

in europe

the retailers that buy clothes and

garments from them had demanded that the

factories that run in pakistan

reduced their carbon emissions by 25

within the next five years

if they wanted to continue being a

supplier now of course

that was prompted by european

legislation so the retailers acted in a

way

that all retailers would in that

situation they did not have regard for

the context that those suppliers in

pakistan were in

for example some key questions they no

doubt didn’t ask were

where would they get the expertise to

reduce the carbon emissions

how would the company in pakistan fund

it and more importantly what if the

unemployment caused by it

so this is where our organization steps

in

we were actually able to get expertise

from across the world from california to

pakistan

to solve a problem that the factory was

having with a retailer in france

the expertise that we found was able to

build a sustainable plan for the factory

allowing them to reduce their carbon

emissions whilst maintaining a similar

level of employment

and it did not jeopardize their capital

reserves which was of course

a key aim of this so what began as a

problem for a french retailer

was solved by american expertise in a

very pakistani context

and because the solution was actually

reducing carbon emissions

it actually helped us all by striving

for the most efficient allocation of

human capital

we are not solving only local or

national problems although it seems so

we are solving global problems in the

process we don’t need to be less proud

of great french retailers

american know-how or pakistani

manufacturing they are all working in

tandem

and in symbiosis i think this type of

thinking is the future

and that’s something we need to adopt to

tackle the world’s most pressing

problems

the problem with attributing patriotism

to simple characteristics like skin

color or language or religion

is that this will leave us fundamentally

ill-equipped for the future

because that’s not the direction of

history if i created a typewriter

company in the 1930s

i might have made a steady income for

the next 40 years

but eventually i would have gone

bankrupt if i continued selling

just typewriters we need to know when

simplistic ideologies that class us by

race

or language or ethnicity have become

bankrupt

far into the future there will be no

such thing as a majority white or a

majority black country

human nature will ensure that all our

distinct lineages and heritages

will be mangled and cross-wired and the

only thing that unites us is our

diversity

as well as our motivation to solve

global problems

the future will belong to those

countries that prepare for this

eventuality

by attaching their patriotism to the

idea of inclusive and compassionate

growth

not simply exclusion if we don’t

voluntarily change our opinion on what

patriotism is

and start adopting this inclusive vision

there is no doubt

it will be changed for us just as at the

turn of the 19th century

religious institutions were being

overcome by national state structures

we’re now seeing that state indoor

structures are being overcome by

technological platforms

that frankly don’t care what your races

your languages your background is

or where you were born let’s think about

it for a second

facebook twitter instagram linkedin

are probably all more powerful in their

reach and

impact than most national structures

around the world

they don’t need a national identity card

or a passport to sign on to any of these

platforms

and in many ways states are becoming

very different to their power

there are a few trends that are making

this more and more evident

the first is something that we’ve

recently seen borderless

cryptocurrencies that are thriving

without the endorsement of

any major institution major any major

bank

any central bank the fact that social

media has become the major forum for

public discourse

and has no national eligibility

requirements

and on a broader point our digital

identity is now almost more important

than our real identity

and again there’s no need for a passport

when you’re googling yourself

what’s more important to employers a

reference that you’ve cherry picked to

give a

great review of your character or a

quick google search of who you really

are

so we all now face a choice either we

put up the drawbridge and try to wind

back the clock so that we can live

how our ancestors supposedly did

millennia ago

or we can forge an inclusive brand of

patriotism that is fit for purpose for

the rest of the century

a patriotism that embraces the

commonality of human

human beings rather than dwelling on

small differences

that appear much bigger than they are

especially when deployed in political

speeches

there is no issue with remaining

attached to the beauty of the lake

district or the taste of yorkshire

piving or lancashire hot pot

or even the achievements of individual

british people where you’re from

but by trying to forge a patriotism

which suggests that global problems

have narrow local solutions defined by

borders

we will all lose out thank you