territoriality: a discussion

It's high time I did some more sententious vaunting. This here's one of my rare opinion posts. Let's begin with a definition:

territoriality

ter·ri·to·ri·al·i·ty [ter-i-tawr-ee-al-i-tee, -tohr-]

noun

1. territorial quality, condition, or status.

2. the behavior of an animal in defining and defending its territory.

3. attachment to or protection of a territory or domain.

And let's follow that up with a basic truth: the concept of territoriality applies to human interaction as well. We build fences around our houses, put up NO TRESPASSING signs, and feel more at home in our native towns, counties, states, provinces, and (naturally) territories than anywhere else.

It's that specific aspect of territoriality I want to discuss, actually.

Traveling and living in foreign countries is a growing experience. It's a baptism by fire, a crash course in open-mindedness, cultural exposure, language barriers, communication disasters, culinary misadventures and homesickness. You feel it the moment you step off the plane. Everything's new, and it's scary. People are talking in tongues you can't understand. The signs are unreadable. Often the people themselves look completely alien to you, and it's a lead-pipe cinch that they'll think and act in different ways. This makes travelers apprehensive and twitchy and throws us all off our chumps. Eventually, with successive jaunts and expeditions, we get used to the otherness and can relax and enjoy our trips with relative ease.

But one fear never goes away.

In addition to the surface nervousness that traveling engenders within us, there is also something more primordial: a creeping, furtive sort of nervousness, an ever-present low-key fear. It's not just the unfamiliarity of our surroundings. It's the simple fact that we're off our home range. We're on someone else's turf, so to speak. We're in a foreign land, with different laws, mindsets, philosophies, mores, and etiquette. We're in someone else's backyard, and they know it like the back of their hand, and we don't. We, the interlopers, won't be torn limb from limb if discovered by the natives, as happens to wild animals who stray too far from their territory. But the inchoate threat of such still lingers in the reptilian parts of the human brain, and we feel that fear whenever a foreign shore heaves into sight on the  distant horizon.

Even after living in South Korea for something like three nonconsecutive years, I still get the willies on occasion. If I could speak the language better, I wouldn't have 'em so often. But even if I was a whiz at Hangul, that primordial fear would still be there. I'm in Asia, where the rules of the game are elementally different from what I know. The sun still rises and sets, and the tides go in and out, but those are the only similarities. The Koreans have their own ideas about commerce, social relations, gratitude, etiquette, politeness, interpersonal nuance, humor, entertainment, morality, fine dining, hard work and whatnot. Furthermore, the Korean civilization is thousands of years old, far outstripping my own country's paltry history. The enormity of those ages weighs upon my shoulders like a millstone at times.

I feel the opposite effect whenever I return home to the States. I exhale literally and metaphorically. Everything makes sense again, imperfect as it may be. The signs are legible. People's slang terms are comforting. That sense of oneness with my surroundings comes flooding back to me. I feel ready to turn and do battle with whatever extraterritorial threats hounded me home. Your turn, you bastards. You're on my block now.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing.

Culture shock, homesickness, and otherness are shoots which spring from the same seed: territoriality. The feelings of attachment or protectiveness we harbor for the land of our birth. It exerts a powerful, formative influence upon us, and rightly so. The stark reality of it is impossible to deny, deeply biological as it is. Americans have their territory, Koreans have theirs. I'm intruding, plain and simple. Never mind that the immigration office stamps my passport and lets me live and work here for a year at a time. I'm an alien freak. I have the children's stares to prove it.

Of course, there are other, darker shoots of that same territorial seed. Things like bigotry, prejudice, and racism are also tendrils of territoriality. But there are positive effects as well: patriotism and nationalism, for example.

Many will disagree with me on this. Some of you may be shaking your heads right now. In your minds, the argument is coalescing: "Some of the most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the names of patriotism and nationalism!"

They have, no doubt. But I still say that devotion to, fondness for and belief in one's country and culture are healthy things for an upstanding, free-minded individual to have. I think that notion of otherness isn't a stumbling block, but rather a step stool. It's a platform with a telescope, a hill to climb, steep and rocky perhaps but a great place to pause and peruse the sunlit uplands beyond.

I believe (especially as an American) that we're sort of shamed into forsaking our nationalities when we're out on the road. We're encouraged to forget who we are and where we came from, and be totally open-minded as we view other countries, cultures and customs. Viewing anything through the lens of the culture we were born into is frowned upon. Bigotry, it's called. Prejudice. Willful ignorance.

I disagree.

I think you have to judge the entire world from the perspective of your own tiny slice of it, because you'd have to be a robot to do otherwise. Only a mindless automaton is capable of ignoring its own heritage and upbringing and judge something with perfect objectivity. As G.K. Chesterton warned, "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." Stay judgmental. Be biased. Cultivate prejudice. You need a basis, a foundation upon which to judge what you see, and your background is well-suited to it. As long as you're a righteous human being (and I already know that you are), then you won't fall into the bottomless pits of prejudice or racism or ethnocentrism. You'll be fine. Rock on. You need that cultural context of yours to form sound opinions of what you see and hear abroad.

D'you see what I'm saying, here?

I'm starting to think I'm the last person on the planet who feels that way. The paradigm is shifting. The world shrinks, technology advances, airplanes and boats and cars and trains move faster and with less energy, and the information superhighway reaches ever deeper into our lives. As the lines between cultures and continents begin to blur, the zeitgeist has changed. In talks with many of my more liberal friends, they have expressed nothing but disdain for the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. They shake their heads and say things like, "Murrica! F*** yeah!" in satirical tones. Some of the more extreme among them have expressed outright approval for a sort of "world culture," in which national boundaries are swept aside, the myriad cultures of the globes are integrated and amalgamated, and a sort of homogeneous global culture ensues, freeing humanity forever from the damnable vices of bigotry and racism.

Phooey to that, I say.

I don't know about you, but the whole notion of a "world culture," gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should take pride in your homeland. You should have some prejudice in its favor. You should be leery of the way other people do things. You should believe your country's the best in the world simply because you were born in it, as George Bernard Shaw once so scathingly wrote.

"Why?" I hear you ask. "Aren't you being an arrogant, ethnocentric pig? Won't people hate you for thinking that way? Aren't you being close-minded? Shouldn't you travel with an open mind?"

To which my answers are: No, yes, no, and yes.

Being territorial—feeling uncomfortable in another country and safe and secure in your own, cleaving to an intrinsic, instinctive, subconscious kind of nationalism—isn't arrogance. It's only natural to believe that your country's the best. You did grow up in it, after all. But it's not just natural—it's evolutionary. This is your territory. It's your home, and it's a part of you, from the tip of your hairs to the marrow of your bones. You were fed on it, suckled by it,  knocked about by it in your youth. You've breathed it, swam in it, tasted it and slept in it your whole life. It knows you and you know it, and you have each other's backs. You should love it to death. Stepping out of your territory is frightening, strange and potentially life-threatening. That makes the challenge—and rewards—all the greater.

People will hate you for feeling that way. They'll call you a racist pig, a jingoistic idiot, an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded fool. Don't listen to 'em. You know in your heart that you're not a racist. You know people are people, no matter where they're from. You know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and you don't attribute either of those things to a human individual just 'cause they're from a particular place. And as long as you know it, no one can touch you or make you feel like you're a bad person.

You're not being close-minded. You're open to new experiences. In fact, that is the whole point of traveling: to get out of your comfort zone. To leave your territory, those familiar shores and welcoming skyline, and venture into the unknown. There's the rub. Be territorial. Love your homeland, be wary or even leery of other people's, but don't let that stop you from going. Go there and find out how it really is. Then you can decide whether or not your preconceptions were accurate. What you're doing, if you're doing it right, is giving other people's cultures and societies the respect they deserve without fawning over them, worshiping them, or paying them lip service for political correctness's sake. By the Great Green Arkleseizure, folks, you're allowed to have an opinion. Just make sure it's founded on your own experience and a thorough knowledge of circumstance, not sweeping generalizations or assumptions. Just look at Paul Theroux. That's precisely how he writes his travel books. He's judgmental as hell. He'll lampoon anybody, be they an individual or a government, foreign or American. The point is to go and see, and then judge harshly...based on what you know is right.

That, my dears, is how you travel with an open mind. You have a context to work with: your culture. Hold that culture close to yourself, cherish it, be proud of it, but keep your heart and mind open. Let the ambient weirdness trickle in. You'll learn some startling things. Some of them will be as stupid or wrong or yucky as you always suspected. Many of them, however, won't be as bad as you thought—and more than a few will be the exact opposite. You'll see sights you never dreamed existed, taste the milk of human kindness, add more capital to the bank of experience than you ever thought possible. But don't forget where you started. Don't lord it over anybody, don't put anyone else down, but for Pete's sake, don't be afraid to flaunt it. You are who you are. Be proud. Don't skulk about. Tell people. Everyone's just as curious about you as you are about them, or ought to be. They're all nationalists at heart, too. They may dislike you just because of the color of your passport. But you can forgive them for that, 'cause deep down you're judging the hell out of their clothes, their dirty fingernails and their country's cockeyed ways, and you can laugh inside at the crazy two-way nature of the universe. 

But how would this priceless sensation, this ability to learn about others, to understand how things are done on the far side of the world, down in the dust or up in the snow, on top of the mountains and in the deepest valleys and over the silvery lakes—how would it be possible if we had one world culture? Where would your identity come from? What would you take pride in? How would you build that base, that context, from which to travel and peer into other people's lives? How could you judge their shortcomings—and their wonders? What use would travel be if everyone else thought and slept and breathed and loved the same way that you do? 

It wouldn't, and that's the truth. It wouldn't be any use at all.  

I don't want a world that's all the same. I don't want a world where I never feel ill at ease or out of place. I want a world full of mystery and weirdness and otherness to explore. And I want a patch of dirt that I can come back to and feel at home in, unconditionally—but with a host of foreign friends and experiences rattling around in my head, heart and soul. I think it's grand that we're all different from each other, and that we have a little fear and perhaps aversion to one another (and our respective nations). Just because we travel and learn about the world doesn't mean we should lose faith in who we are and where we came from, or our belief in our own greatness. I think that sort of national pride fosters healthy competition, self-confidence, cultural self-esteem, and most importantly, our curiosity about each other. It makes the sun brighter, the water clearer, the air fresher and our friendships warmer. 

But maybe that's just me.

Patriotic enough for ya?