National identity

I read that Australians (we Australians) are having an Identity Crisis.  Not another one!  We were having one when I lived there in the late 1970s and early ’80s.  We Aussies had, as I understood it then, been pretty well grounded during the 19th century, quarrying a distinctive role in the great British Empire, little Aussie battlers.  Decades passed; then giant corporations toppled Gough Whitlam from power and we rolled over and submitted to American hegemony and of course we were soul-searching again.  There’d been various straws in the wind: for example, a film from after the Whitlam era, Gallipoli, attempted to stir up ancient grievances (even as it tweaked history) – a sure sign of introspection.  However, by the time I left Australia in 1983 we seemed to be sorting ourselves out.  (This despite having, after a referendum – an ill-timed arbitrary glimpse of opinion, like all referenda – adopted our own National Anthem.  To my mind the wrong choice, but that’s another matter). 

What’s the latest Crisis about?  Rolling over to Chinese hegemony?  I guess I’ve lost, through my exile, any right to pontificate.

Yet Identity Crises follow me around.  For some time after the loss of Empire the arrogant English (we English, I should say, now that I’ve got citizenship) seemed to avoid contracting one – no call for such if you’re top dog.  For decades we carried on as if we still ruled the world blandly (perhaps because it’d always been a conjuring trick).  In point of fact, we were suffering from memory loss.  And now we English (I won’t say British) feel we need an Identity again.  All sorts of bizarre myths have been constructed but, because they’ve little basis in history (and because we’re such a divided bunch anyway), they feel strained and where they do take root they bloom as petulant prejudices.

No, I don’t think we’re unique.  Our addled attitude is merely an exceptionally tawdry case of a widespread Western ailment.

Now the Rhodesians of yore (we Rhodesians) couldn’t afford the luxury of an Identity Crisis.  Go-getting, careless, we sailed along merrily (an odd but aptly unrealistic metaphor for a landlocked and beleaguered culture), until abruptly, in the space of twenty years, we didn’t have a country to identify with any more, because someone else was shaping it and we’d missed the chance of sharing in the enterprise. 

All this is irrelevant in the era of individual identity.