Saturday, June 19, 2010

Patriotic Competition

President Obama made his first speech to the nation from the Oval Office this week and his closing remarks made me think. He discussed that lawmakers must push for energy reform the in the US and inaction will cost us, and the environment, more in the long term than it could possibly in the short term. Obviously, it’s going to be tough and it could end up being just hot air, but it really struck a chord with me. Given the US’s constant desire to be the best, I feel like the US could lead in clean energy if we push hard enough.

However, this feeling of pride in the US’s desire to be the best was recently challenged. It was the attempt of others to show that my pride in my birthplace is not just pointless, but actually counter-productive. I was told that we should be trying to worry about it globally, making sure everyone is advancing rather than just our home country.

While there is some truth to this, the fact that my pride of my homeland was challenged bothered me and I wondered why. Not only did I wonder why I was bothered, I wondered why I had pride for where I was fortunate enough to be born, since it was just random luck to be born here. Then I realized that being proud of anything is the same concept. Everything in this world is random chance. The world is chaotic in nature, therefore everything you could possibly be proud of came about by random chance. If you’re an artist and you’re proud of it, then you’re proud that your brain was randomly wired a certain way.

Now that I was assured that being proud of my fortune wasn’t actually silly, I wondered what exactly I’m proud of. I realized that, more than anything else, I’m proud of what this country was founded on and what this country means to the world. I wouldn’t be alive if this country wasn’t what it is. My family comes from literdally two ends of the planet and yet they came together here because they felt the US was a better life than what they had. I am part of a country with an enormous immigrant population and a large amount of immigrants their families have gone on to do amazing things in this country because of the resources and the ability to be great if you work hard. I am proud of that.

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