After the fall of comunism in '89, the national pride fell sharply in Eastern Europe and in my particular case, in Romania.
If before '89 the propaganda led people to believe that you live in best country of the world, and it would be better if the imperialist enemy would not sabotage our efforts to create a better world, now people are depressed by the comparisons with western Europe, and they have an underdeserved low self esteem.
Some people argue that if we will rebuild our esteem and national pride, we will be mobilize together our energies and we will change things.
I don't agree with this because as the proverb says:"Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.", this will makes us arrogant, and not willing to change.
Usually the pride comes after a success and before a long slow fall, and not before a success.
Spaniards conquered America, and they became proud and arrogant and they didn't adapt, then they lost Holland, who became succesfull in creating an comercial empire. Then Holland became proud and arrogant and lost it's empire to the british.
France under Napoleon conquered half of Europe, became proud and arrogant, and then lost all.
Britain freed from the problems with France, created it's empire, became proud and arrogant, and lost all.
Germany became proud and arrogant, and lost 2 world wars.
Now USA is proud.(Not the proudest, as you will see below.)
But many nations remained just proud without any significant success.
Some will argue, maybe the spaniards,the netherlanders,the british,the french,the germans were proud before and that drived their expansion.
If the national proud is the main driver for the economical development, then we should see a direct corelation between and economic indicator such as GDP per capita and national pride.
I started to search some data, and I found a study from University of Chicago regarding the national pride.
Then for each country I have search the GDP per capita, and Gini index.
(I wanted to use Gini index of inequality of incomes to compensate for GDP information.)
And the prize for the proudest nation on Earth goes to (drum beat): Venezuela.
If before '89 the propaganda led people to believe that you live in best country of the world, and it would be better if the imperialist enemy would not sabotage our efforts to create a better world, now people are depressed by the comparisons with western Europe, and they have an underdeserved low self esteem.
Some people argue that if we will rebuild our esteem and national pride, we will be mobilize together our energies and we will change things.
I don't agree with this because as the proverb says:"Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.", this will makes us arrogant, and not willing to change.
Usually the pride comes after a success and before a long slow fall, and not before a success.
Spaniards conquered America, and they became proud and arrogant and they didn't adapt, then they lost Holland, who became succesfull in creating an comercial empire. Then Holland became proud and arrogant and lost it's empire to the british.
France under Napoleon conquered half of Europe, became proud and arrogant, and then lost all.
Britain freed from the problems with France, created it's empire, became proud and arrogant, and lost all.
Germany became proud and arrogant, and lost 2 world wars.
Now USA is proud.(Not the proudest, as you will see below.)
But many nations remained just proud without any significant success.
Some will argue, maybe the spaniards,the netherlanders,the british,the french,the germans were proud before and that drived their expansion.
If the national proud is the main driver for the economical development, then we should see a direct corelation between and economic indicator such as GDP per capita and national pride.
I started to search some data, and I found a study from University of Chicago regarding the national pride.
Then for each country I have search the GDP per capita, and Gini index.
(I wanted to use Gini index of inequality of incomes to compensate for GDP information.)
And the prize for the proudest nation on Earth goes to (drum beat): Venezuela.
As you can see from the graphic below the people from Venezuela are a little bit prouder that the USA despite the fact that they produce per capita 4 time less.
As the study says: "National pride is shaped by the unique societal and historical circumstance existing in each country and by ones socio-demographic position within each society." (In Venezuela case: who wants to leave a warm climate country filled with beautiful women?)
But if we explore the boring data's we observe that to the same GDP per capita, Hungary,Uruguay and Russia are more proud than Latvia.
Also Austria,Canada and Denmark are more proud than Germany,France and Sweden at the same GDP.
Why Austria is more proud than the Germany? And why Denmark is more proud than Sweden?
It is clear that not the economic differences are determining these differences.
The diagram of proudness vs inequality index shows that national pride increases a little bit with income inequality:
In conclusion the national pride doesn't ensure economic welfare. So fuck off nationalistic politicians, try to come with some solutions not with demagogic speech.
And romanians,keep the low esteem, this will not affect the economy but it wil determine you to change.
In order to survive you must adapt and change.
PS.The data I used for diagrams, you can find it under the following link.
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu