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