Originally published in Spanish. Aurelio Arteta. El País.
It’s not true that national feeling is not debatable. If political sympathies were immune to criticism, they would all be equal in value. To nationalists, the end-all of politics is to preserve that which is theirs and draw borders between themselves and others.
Among our most widespread and unquestioned current agreements (or rather prejudices) is the notion that the world of feelings is part of an individual’s intimacy, which no one must trespass upon and everybody must respect. It is indeed presumed that feelings are practically innate, immune to reason and its arguments. Transferred to politics, such premises may reluctantly allow for attempts to persuade opponents through better reasons, but will force a stop as soon as their emotions are even lightly brushed. This is the threshold that must not be crossed, lest feelings be hurt. Shall we put these notions to the test, for instance, in our response to the challenge mounted by Catalan nationalists?
The occasion presents itself thanks to recent considerations regarding the conflict that hangs over us all today. The thesis is that democracy is a principle that can be rationally defended, while nations are not. Nations are a matter of affect, grounded in the deepest layers of emotion. ‘This is thus a matter of feelings. And feelings can only be respected, never debated’. I beg to differ completely on such an emphatic thesis. If nobody’s national feelings can be questioned, then all are admissible — and even those in direct conflict with one another are of equal value. There is simply no way to assess the appropriateness or inappropriateness of emotions which inevitably lead to confrontation. Ultimately, those unleashing the most intense feelings — that is, the zealots or the brutes — will manage to impose their own. And the cowardice, idleness or incapacity for criticism of many will remain hidden under the dignified mask of respect.
But the thing is these feelings are not the ultimate, irrefutable facts of the problem. Or should we not ask where such feelings originate? We can hardly rule out the possibility that they may be grounded in unfounded obstinacy, a result of bringing up generation after generation in pure nonsense, whether at home or in the broader society. It would likewise be normal for such convictions to have been imposed or simply transmitted by the majority. Or they may have built up in connection with other feelings, such as a fear of the loneliness befalling those who dissent from the group’s dominant dogmas. Or they may be based on made-up facts about one’s nation or imagined ethnic community — often quite different from the real one. And in the case of present-day Catalonia, just how many lies have been told by its political leaders, promoting an arrogant national consciousness? How much weight is carried by decades of education in the hands textbook nationalists? Does anyone really believe that the moral atrocity of linguistic immersion does not entail the transmission of purportedly unquestionable nationalist beliefs?
Aside from being a result of such factors, emotions also cause or drive private and public action. Feelings generate convictions and desires, which in turn constitute calls to action. How can we not be able (indeed obligated) to assess the consistency of such individual or collective intentions, the public policies they lead to and the rights they generate? It seems obvious that their measure lies in the degree of justness of the political cause they promote given the peculiarities of the moment and circumstances to which they apply.
It’s not true, then, that all feelings are legitimate and worthy of respect, a notion as absurd as the nonsense that all opinions are respectable. It’s disheartening to have to repeat this yet again. Subjects will always be worthy of respect, but this may not always be the case with their feelings. Better yet: subjects will often be respectable despite their particular feelings. Because it must be acknowledged that the same value cannot be assigned to love and hate, admiration and envy, benevolence and vengefulness. And it’s not true either that practical reason must abstain from questioning the quality of feelings in dispute and, where applicable, attempting to transform or eradicate them. Don’t certain feelings lead to certain political action, and others to its opposite? It’s equally false that reason has no power to fight them, as if there were no connection between what we think and what we feel, or between what we feel and what we choose to do. Or would a change in convictions leave our emotions intact? In sum, we are responsible for our own feelings because we are responsible for cultivating or rejecting the ideas that foster those feelings and their consequences.
Hence any verdict on the justness (or lack thereof) of the pro-independence process and the coherence of the emotions surrounding it will vary depending on one’s beliefs. A given belief entails a given idea of justice and a given set of national feelings. How can we move beyond this relativism regarding opposing passions and opinions, if we fail to use arguments to assess how well founded they are? It’s not enough for a subject to feel that his People are being denied their purported ‘right to decide’, because we must first establish whether such a right exists. Just like the emotion preached a few years ago by a Basque (nationalist) Bishop, i.e. ‘the warm awareness of being part of the same People’ wasn’t enough either. The truth is, as long as we cultivate different feelings and national aspirations, we won’t be one people, and it would be impossible to become so. We are rather a culturally and politically diverse society. And such a society can only live at peace if it establishes political pluralism and tolerance for the various ideologies –the tolerable ones, that is– of its members.
In the nationalist worldview, the feeling of belonging to a nation is the primary –untouchable– political passion. In case anyone didn’t know, nationalism declares that politics is above all a matter of wrapping oneself in the nation’s flag, and therefore a constant fight between nationalist interests, ideologies and passions. You say this contradicts the meaning of democracy? That’s just your opinion, the fanatic will say — I have the right to feel (and think) whatever I want. Surely you daren’t try to convince me. Reasons count for nothing, and rational deliberation cannot hold its own against national liberation. ‘Nationalism is the indignity of having a soul controlled by geography’, as the philosopher Santayana concluded. In short, to nationalists the end-all of politics is to preserve that which is theirs and draw borders between themselves and others. To a democrat, by contrast, any individual feeling of belonging –whether to an ethnicity, a church or a party– is secondary to shared citizenship. And the only political feelings which are universally respectable are those born from the awareness that we are all equal in rights.
