The Death of Nationality

Two things happened recently, which made me aware of something I'm trying to address with my young adult novel 'Simon & Sally' (working title). The first is the World Cup in South Africa where the Netherlands has consistently been winning matches on, what I think is, sheer luck. Although I am Dutch I find myself routing for the other team, whomever Holland may be playing against. The second was 4th of July. My wife, being American, bought tickets to the Independence Day celebration here in Bangkok, and I found myself being very resistant to going, feeling the event was hypocritical and past the line of indoctrination. Although you would think that the common factor in both these events was my resistance to patriotism and nationality and although this is true, the underlying reason is far more profound. I believe in people, in the collection of skillful, positive traits that supersedes the destructive, negative traits.

When I plotted Simon a long time ago, I found myself tired of reading about heroes and heroines being British and their adventures always taking place in and around London. Although good stories in themselves (Harry Potter, Un Lun Dun, Bartimaeus Trilogy etc.) something irked me about them being so limited to the British Isles. Artemis Fowl and His Dark Materials were already better, traveling across the world, but even they and the slew of American-based novels (Sisters Grimm, Twilight, FabelHaven, Percy Jackson etc.) never failed to root the hero in one culture or the other. I felt Simon and Sally needed to be more global. They would start off in Brookfield and Saxton, two places that could be in either the UK or USA, leaving them nicely nationally ambiguous. Soon they would be swept off into adventures making it irrelevant where they came from. With the lack of commitment towards slang in dialog and usage of either the metric or imperial system of measurements I would not tie myself down to any form of origin country.

But here too, my motivations were not strictly to deny nationality. You can't just be against something, there has to be a reason and then an alternative. Well, the reason was simple. I am a third culture kid originally, so my allegiance to any given country is counter intuitive. I also consider myself intelligent enough to realize that nationality is a man-made way to control individuality and free thinking, just like religion and culture - the reason why I don't integrate these two concepts either in my series. I am amused whenever people state that they sacrifice in name of their country, god or cultural roots, because then I just think: do you even know what they are? And is that relationship mutual? Does your country help you when in need? Or your church?

The more I started traveling the broader my perspective became to include similarities between people across nations, religions and cultures and see the artificiality (and ignorance) of the man-made institutions they claimed to adhere to. Kids understand this. When you ask my kid where he's from he'll just blurt out where he is living at the moment. But his passion and commitment is not to Thailand, or Sri Lanka, or Ireland or Holland. Yes, we lived in all of these places, but who he loves to be is a person made up of positive reinforced values that are rewarded with attention from those around him, not some institution. We all work like that until we raise the flag so much we can only feel good when we see red, white and blue. Or until the only connections we can make is in our local church, mosque and temple. Or until we shop, drink and eat on our holidays and festivals mistaking direct sensory pleasure for a love of culture.

When we grow up and stay inside the same institutional pillars of control, we become extremists. We will defend the values we get bombarded with every day until we are willing to die for them. There is an anti-dote: traveling. Meet new people, new experiences and soften the paradigms we grew up with. And then you see the true factors that unite us: we all dream the same dreams, we all want to be safe, healthy and happy, we want to love and be loved. These are the positive meaningful traits that we all share. The negative destructive traits like greed, hatred, apathy, envy and pride are always self-defeating. They seem strong because they are fanned by the flames of nationality, religion and culture - to serve those who stand to gain from it.

That is why Simon and Sally will battle these forces, in the shapes of Vampyrs, Werwulfs, Djinns, Monsters and Demons. That is why ultimately it matters not if the heroes are from England, America or any other country, we are all guilty in what drives us to be zealots, but we also share the stronger notions of love, friendship, cooperation and hope. I am no longer a Dutch guy living in a Thai culture as a Buddhist. Those are just labels. Like Simon, Sally, Nancy and Alex. Like you and everyone else I am a loving person of planet Earth, one of many, who strives to be compassionate, wise and happy.