but the topic under discussion is place of birth, isn't it, rather than country of birth? i don't think the two are interchangeable, which is rather the point i'm making. is the country of england defined by the set of grid references within its borders, or what one imagines the shared assumptions of its people? if england and spain, say, were to suddenly switch populations, in their entirety - what would one call the nation on the kind of triangular-ish land mass twenty miles off the coast of the great big landmass?
and if people really do adore the geography of their birth, are they in love with the scenery per se, or with the lifetime of emotions it triggers within them - the fact that it tells them that they are, in some evanescent way, home? and what, if anything, does that imply about their emotional attachment to the prevailing government, and its preferential treatment of those born onto that scenery?
too many concepts are being conflated here, and then not-quite-appropriate metaphor is being heaped on to confuse the picture even further. social units, jumbled up with love-based relationships, intertwined with landscape paintings...
before we can talk sensibly about any of this, we need to try and sift out what is being talked about. which pseudomonas tried to do, pretty well i think; and which sea_bright seems to have gone some way to undoing again with a false equivalence.
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but the topic under discussion is place of birth, isn't it, rather than country of birth? i don't think the two are interchangeable, which is rather the point i'm making. is the country of england defined by the set of grid references within its borders, or what one imagines the shared assumptions of its people? if england and spain, say, were to suddenly switch populations, in their entirety - what would one call the nation on the kind of triangular-ish land mass twenty miles off the coast of the great big landmass?
and if people really do adore the geography of their birth, are they in love with the scenery per se, or with the lifetime of emotions it triggers within them - the fact that it tells them that they are, in some evanescent way, home? and what, if anything, does that imply about their emotional attachment to the prevailing government, and its preferential treatment of those born onto that scenery?
too many concepts are being conflated here, and then not-quite-appropriate metaphor is being heaped on to confuse the picture even further. social units, jumbled up with love-based relationships, intertwined with landscape paintings...
before we can talk sensibly about any of this, we need to try and sift out what is being talked about. which