How nationalism keeps us divided | Dominic Bryan | TEDxQueensUniversityBelfast

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:07]People are amazing. Working together as part of social groups, human beings have created an enormously dynamic connected world. We've become the species that has been most successful on this planet. And we do so because we cooperate. We work within societies.

[00:00:30]However, you may have noticed. We live in a world full of conflict. We live in a world which has a depleted environment. We have a world of increasing inequality and millions of people migrating to try and find a better life.

[00:00:51]Now, the political environment which this all takes place in is what we call nationalism. We all live in these things we call nations which creates a sense of us and them. We live within borders and we have a sense of self-interest and we are told we need armies to protect us through all of this. I want to ask a tricky question. I want to ask is nationalism good for you and is nationalism good for this world? Now I'm a social anthropologist. What we do is we look at how society works. We look at social cohesion. Why is it you feel you're part of one group and not another sort of group? And of course, if we're interested in social cohesion and groups, we are inevitably also interested in conflict.

[00:01:46]Now, the most amazing groups in a way are nations. These are groups of millions of people who all feel that they're in some way the same. So it's important that we critically understand how nations work and what their impact is. So firstly, I'm probably going to surprise some of you with some something. You may think that your nation is hundreds and hundreds of years old. I have to tell you that's almost certainly wrong.

[00:02:19]uh human beings through their existence have lived in a whole range of different sorts of political systems. But broadly speaking, the group that was most important to you would have been your kith and your kin, the family you were born into, your clan or your lineage.

[00:02:37]Now, as societies got more complex and you got hierarchies um with with leaders and monarchies, uh society formed through what we call the state. But through most of that history, your kith and your kin, your family would still have been the most important group in your life. They would have placed you in the society that you're in. you would have had rituals and symbols, religion and myth that would have given you a form of social cohesion.

[00:03:10]Social and political scientists broadly agree that the modern nation only really comes in um and around the 19th and into the 20th centuries. That's a sort of a populist ethnational group. This is after the reformation and the enlightenment, industrialization, urbanization, democratization and the tensions between social classes that we start to develop a sort of large cohesive sort of compliant social group. And this may sound strange, but nations are pretty much all the same. They're a group of people who claim a particular territory and they have a history that legitimizes that with a narrative of continuity over time, usually connected to a language or religion or some element of their social identity.

[00:04:10]And that that history usually contains stories of suffering particularly around battles and wars and is full of heroes and martyrs that the stories are told of. And then you build statues to all the heroes and martyrs and you come up with flags and you have anthems. And then you have playwrights and actors and musicians who all start to present emotionally how that nation hangs together.

[00:04:42]Um and and the people in that nation are usually told and think that somehow they are braver or better than other nations and then occasionally you have a leader who gets up and tries to persuade you that they are the greatest nation. Okay.

[00:04:58]And part of that you stereotype all of your neighbors nations, right? We're all very familiar with that sort of thing.

[00:05:06]And that comes about because of what we sometimes call everyday nationalism. How do you become part of these identities? You're sort of born into it. You're given a name. All around you are lots of street names and and and building names which all connect you to this history. You end up going to school when you're taught a particular history. And what's more, you're told it's your history, right? And then there are commemorations. There are museums which will tell you about what your history is. There's memorials. There's memorial days. All right? But more than that, there's events in your life. The sporting events where you remember the great wins or the great losses that your nation has. And there are dramas on the TV when all of this is explained to you.

[00:06:00]And that's because the nation is reproduced in our everyday life. Or to put in another way, the nation is a social construction.

[00:06:11]So that your sense of self is intimately linked to the group and it's emotionally linked. It's been part of your life.

[00:06:21]It's been part of your family's life.

[00:06:23]It's part of your family's history. So in that way, the idea of the nation is linked to something which is very close to you. And that will make people do inspiring things, amazing things. It makes people go and die in wars for this huge large groups. That's actually really quite an extraordinary thing to think about. It's made people fight in revolutions. This emotionalfilled idea has also helped us build and define rights for citizens and make citizens feel protected so that the well-being of the individual appears to be linked to the well well-being of this large social group. And I tell you who knows how this work. Politicians know how this work.

[00:07:12]Because when they want to get elected, they will stand by the flag and they will tell you that they best represent your nation and they will make your nation great again.

[00:07:26]But there's another story to be told about nations and nationalism.

[00:07:32]The violence of the 19th and 20th century saw millions and millions of poor people die in the name of defending their nation.

[00:07:44]Ideas of superiority around race and gender were built into nationalism and empire.

[00:07:54]European empires stormed across the globe, invading other places and spaces.

[00:08:00]And in fact oppos often inventing new countries and often inventing new countries we'd have complicated ethnicities in which were almost inevitably going to end in many of the civil wars that we see today. Those countries were exploit exploited um in forms of extraction so that the empires could survive. That is a complicated and difficult world. So how do we remember that history? Well, ironically, we sort of remember the wars of that time in a heroic sort of way. We put up memorials and commemorate our people that have died for that empire.

[00:08:51]All right? We we we thank our forefathers for the work that they have done. This I suggest you is the politics of the dead. We don't actually remember a lot of other amazing things like you scientists trying to cure malaria or or or overcoming famine or the rights we've managed to give to people or the literacy we've spread around the world.

[00:09:19]The stories of war seem more powerful than all of this.

[00:09:25]So I want to suggest something. Suggest something a bit radical.

[00:09:30]The debt we owe is not to the past. The debt we owe is to the future. The debt we owe is to the living and those yet to come about. The debt we owe is the future of our children.

[00:09:48]Now, I can see a problem here, and you can probably see a problem. You're going to see to me, right, these nations are just going to disappear in this amazing world that I'm suggesting we could have.

[00:10:00]Well, it is, of course, very, very difficult. But there are things that suggest that we might be up to that challenge. We know humans are very good at cooperating and very good at creating solidarity. If you ask most people in this room, they would accept that all human beings, it should have basic human rights.

[00:10:25]Many of you will be part of enormous generous processes to try and help people in other parts of the world in humanitarian projects. And we know we have a common interest with people. We experienced COVID. We're experiencing everything that takes place in the environment. All right? So we know we need to work with the world in creating a different place and we also know that we're capable of organizing this because ironically nations and world religions work on a global scale. So we know we can do these things. So I've got a few suggestions.

[00:11:06]Look again at nationalism.

[00:11:09]Ask where it came from and when. and don't get too sucked in to the myths and the stories about your nation.

[00:11:20]Secondly, I think we need to lose the militarization our nations appear to have been built upon and we need to think about some core values that we can share across humanity. And I'm thinking of trust and partnership. I'm thinking of reciprocity and generosity. And I'm thinking of the values of equality, justice, and human rights.

[00:11:50]Maybe we could have a few statues and songs that remember humanity and cooperation.

[00:12:01]Nationalism, I think, is a uniquely dangerous form of political organizing.

[00:12:10]We need to understand it.

[00:12:13]We need to build new bonds of solidarity beyond the nation. And we need to do so because we owe it to our children.