Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one’s situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn’t a decision nor an accomplishment.
I think the problem is that people conflate being proud of others with themselves. They take on the achievements of others as their own.
This dude was from my place and was great so therefore I’m great.
This is what nationalists, fascists, racial supremacists and other extremists do on the regular. They have no achievements of their own to be proud of so they have to steal somebody else’s.
Needs to be narrower. Nobody should be proud of being from where they are from because they are from there. It’s not inherently good to be from any particular place.
But you’re allowed to be proud of your local community because of things they have done regardless of whether you were born there or not.
It’s less about accomplishment and more about being proud of the city or town itself. Proud of the people you called neighbors and their struggles and lives. Proud of the community banding together and supporting each other.
Thats at least how I always saw it
Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as “reasonable self-esteem” or “confidence and satisfaction in oneself”. Oxford defines it as “the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s own importance.” Pride may be related to one’s own abilities or achievements, positive characteristics of friends or family, or one’s country.
But it is about accomplishment, pride is directly related to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-satisfaction. In America there are way too many people who are “proud to be American” without really thinking much beyond that.
I think it’s okay to be proud of one’s own community if they’ve taken part in shaping that community and made it better in some way.
“Proud to be an American” is a manufactured, measured out, and heavily marketed slogan, not actual pride. Hell, every nation does this. It’s only one method of control among many, though.
Secondly, it’s wiser to not cite dictionary sources unless your argument is syntactical; socioeconomic strata are very unlikely to be accounted for in whatever abridged morsel those references offer — to say nothing of the psychological variance inherent in such a topic. Furthermore, vernacular morphology is real.
Keep looking for answers, though. (This is less an “Unpopular Opinion”, and simply a seedling of a thought needing some attentive guidance.
You can’t go with that narrow of a definition. What about a parent being proud of their kid? That’s also pride.
Nationalism can easily become a bad thing, I agree. But I can also see why people would feel a certain pride to be a part of a community that accomplished something positive, and while they may have not been around to participate, the pride may be what inspires them to contribute in the future.
Ignorance, and an unwillingness to reflect on your countries recent history while spouting propaganda (i. e. “X is the best country in the world”), yes - that’s bullshit.
I think society would benefit if we all felt a sense of pride in our communities and people in a positive aspect
sense of pride
- Sense of community? Yes
- Sense of respect? Yes
- Sense of responsibility? Yes
- Sense of accomplishments? Yes
- Sense of pride? Errrr… Not really.
When people write “a sense of pride in” I think they (and you) are saying “be responsible for X so you can feel good about it”. Nothing wrong with that, and I think you’re right.
However I don’t like the phrase. Pride is the wrong emotional target. It brings with it a sense of superiority in some. There’s a reason it’s one of the deadly sins.
Fair, but I think we agree with the sentiment of what I meant.
Came prepared to downvote this for being common sense, but judging by the comments it actually is surprisingly unpopular! Well played.
I don’t know if it was intentional on OP’s part, but our April Fool’s Day rules are in effect at the moment, so posts are expected to be “Popular Opinions” .
Are comments in April fool’s mode too? Seems like all the communists took a day off and all the nationalists showed up. The comments here are very unexpected.
Lol. Only the post submissions are expected (though not required) to be Popular for today. Comments, as usual, are open season.
Lol I didn’t even see that, fair enough 😄
Tribalism is mainly emotional rather than rational and, further, humans feel a need to belong, so choosing the logical take on things like national pride (or pride in one’s sport’s team, political party and so on) is very unusual and when voiced generally receives an intenselly negativelly response from most others as they are heavilly emotionally invested into their love of, and pride in, things like nation, sports team, religion, etnicity, politics and so on.
I looked up pride and one of the definitions was: *Pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association. *
For example: parental pride. Many parents are proud of their children regardless of the achievements or personal decisions. Pride can, I believe, sometimes be tied to a love for something/someone.
So being proud to come from some place is to me, saying: I love that I came from this place or “I’m thankful that I was born here”
This is coming from someone that doesn’t really care much for his birth city nor country.
I’d rather not be born in a place where this opinion is unpopular.
Same thing when I see people crying over their country’s team winning an Olympic medal.
Get a grip - You didn’t do anything except be born in the same geopolitical boundary as the actual athletes. Perhaps one 50th of a penny of your tax dollars contributed to the team athletic funding.
Fun fact, a major contributor for funding training US Olympic athletes comes from the Department of Defense, and it’s about 200 million per year. Unless it’s an Olympics year and then costs skyrocket.
I told my children that pride is a product of hard work; in life, there’s nothing worth boasting about unless you’ve earned it through effort.
I feel lucky about where I was born. I won a birth lottery, but I believe there are other places that have bigger lottery jackpots.
Is this actually an unpopular opinion?
I’m almost certain if you shared this opinion in most places in the US, or if the US president said something along these lines, it would be taken very very badly. Unpopular on Lemmy? Probably not, but Lemmy is mostly far-left Progressive Liberals.
Hi OP, just a gentle reminder about Rule 1 (No Politics). In future please try and refrain from using adjacent terminology in this community, as present in the latter portion of this comment, as this may incite violations of other community rules within the replies
That’s not compelling “proof”, this assurance that you (an internet stranger) are “almost certain”, to be entirely fair — and the fallback on hyperbole is a dead giveaway for how your own confidence in that statement is lacking. All due respect.
You can be proud about your country. You can be proud about everything that makes your country special. Your food, your traditions,… Why shouldn’t you.
Because you did nothing to create any of that. Appreciating one’s country especially certain aspects of it seems like a good idea. Being proud of it makes no sense. Most countries have some ugly shit in their past. Proud of that too? Not sure you get to pick and choose.
Yeah, if you’ve got no own accomplishments to be proud of, I guess you can do that.
Sorry you are from a miserable area that has nothing to enjoy and take pride in. I’m from St. Louis originally, and despite it’s many faults, history of racism, and 2 centuries of shooting otself in the foot i still am proud to be from there. The sports teams are my favorite, the Arch is a beautiful monument, and the free services such as the zoo, Art Museum, and Muny theater are all amazing municipal achievements that took the whole community to accomplish.
You can be proud of where you are from and be open about the faults and problems of that place. Civic pride isn’t blind nationalism.
…April fool’s…?
Not sure if you’re being serious, but if you are, you’re perfectly proving my point.
LGBT+ people celebrate pride month for how they were born. Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass,and Malcolm X all took pride in looking like their parents. Ukrainians are proud of their country in the face of Russian invasion. Were all those people dumb for taking pride in something they had no control over?
It just seems to me that you are ashamed of wherever you are from and can’t understand someone else having prode in their home
Agreed. Nobody should be proud of their height, their skin color, eye color, anything they didn’t work for. Happy, sure. Proud? No.
I dunno… Being the first person born in space ought to come with some bragging rights.
I would have expected to agree with you, but in thinking it through, I am proud of things I didn’t do, but not for myself, if that makes sense. I’m proud of my mom for getting through grad school with a small child (my sister, I wasn’t even born yet), and I’m proud of my dad for quitting drinking a decade before. Those are both very difficult things and I feel positive about them in a way that feels similar to how I feel when I understand a new aspect of my field and the same as how I feel when my niece learns a new thing. I would call it more of an indirect pride, I guess.
I can see extending that to more distant ancestors, especially if there’s been a consistent threat and various ancestors were instrumental or inspirational against that threat. It’s not a requirement to feel any sort of way about your forebears, but I don’t think it’s out of line to feel pride or shame. I also don’t think it really makes a difference if you’re blood related to the people or just culturally related (or anywhere in between), so I guess it would apply to a culture at large as well (generally geographically related).
Doug Stanhope had a great bit on this in his 2008 special, No Refunds.
