In being a child of immigrants to the United States, and having the opportunity to travel around the world during my time studying abroad, my beliefs about nationalism have been reinforced even more.

To me, the idea that your ethnic group or country is the best that the world has ever seen is abhorrent. It’s actually quite easy to understand how pride in our “tribes” or land comes about. Having a common language or set of behaviors and norms within a confined space makes us unify under the idea that we are the same. This sort of unification has its benefits, especially since we’re evolutionarily programmed to bind together with our families, and over time, with others in our natural vicinity. Yet today this has been manifested and twisted into nationalism, a political disease which I feel has caused many of the problems people around the world have had to deal with since the formation of the modern nation-state.

War, slavery, racism, economic oppression; all of these things have their roots in nationalism. You would never genuinely call yourself the best person in the world, nor would you purport to have the best family in the world. If this is the case, then how do we as humans, specifically those from the U.S., have the hubris to collectively tell ourselves and everyone else on an even grander scale that we have the best country in the world? What is it exactly that makes the U.S. great? Is it our stellar health care system? Our education system? Our egalitarian economic policies? Our concern for the less privileged at home and abroad? No, the only measure of greatness that I can think of is the bloated size of our military-industrial complex, ready to crush anyone who stands in the way of spreading “democracy” and “free trade.”

I criticize the U.S. the most because its own nationalism has had the greatest effects on the world around it because of its economic and military influence, and also because I happen to have the legal documentation stating that I have been accepted into the “clan,” designating me as “American.” There are obviously some countries with better social and political climates than others, but pushing the recognition of this towards a concrete mentality of division, one which recognizes the place you live in as better, and your status as a human being higher than others around the world, is what keeps this world divided.

Nationalism, I believe, comes from an internal, existential understanding of our smallness within the universe. As humans in certain regions of the world, we see the state, and our national mentality, as our god on earth, a thing we can conceptualize and feel present with us in the here and now so that we can adhere to and enjoy it.

If we can have something bigger than ourselves tangible amongst us, then we won’t feel so small anymore. My hope is to have a day where everyone comes to reject the idea of national citizenship, and learns to see themselves as citizens of the world, united together with others in their common humanity, rather than citizens under a government with control inside artificial borders. But that’s just a dream.