Re: Re: Easter I916 Commemorative Military Parades to return to Dublin

@jimg wrote:

You still have the option of following a football team if you need a dose of flag waving, emblems and feeling part of an arbitrary group.

You make some salient points, jimg. As regards your last remark regarding football – most cultural commentators see the fanaticism of some football supporters as a modern expression of a primitive need to belong to a coherent and like-minded social group. In short, it is modern tribalism (that occasionally leads to low-scale violence in its own right). From the sociological point of view, most would agree that the concept of the nation is a social construct that is considerably more sophisticated and complex than the tribe. Personally, I would rather submit myself to the basic human desire of identifying myself with a larger social grouping on the basis of my socio-cultural and ethnic identity than on the basis of which team wears a red-shirt.