"I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalise the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have shocked Dante, though. Dante places brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome." -a passage from E.M. Forster
my argument...I agree with Forster's view, however thinking that his assumption of a reader that would stretch out his "patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police" is rather melodramatic when applied to this generation. In a time when the people are most often dissatisfied with the condition of their country, the efficiency of their government, and overall lacking the sense of unity between individual in such a multicultural community as the one we live, the cracks created by these problems no longer portray a place where someone can easily feel proud to be a member of. There fore, if I were put on the spot to betray my friend or my country, I would much rather back stab my country without a doubt than even consider back stabbing my friend.
Such a decision is not light. But in a period where anarchy is glorified, racism still raging, and people becoming more and more misanthropic with every glare, I can't help but tell myself that this place is not worth sacrificing anything for. Had I died for my country, the majority of the people wouldn't even give a thought to my selflessness, and think of me as merely some altruist living in the heroic past. Why should I then throw myself to this unrecognized cause instead of keeping relations with someone that actually care if I lived or died?
I suppose if everyone in a country felt a special tie to the land in which they dwell, then the appreciation for an act of patriotism would be noted and respected. Yet the sad fact remains that this is not the case, and it is futile to waste away in the attempt to rejoin the chaotic pieces. Frankly speaking without shame for my philosophy, I live for myself, and my survival stands the most important in an abyss of essentials. The friends I have are a part of that survival critical in a world where not many would listen to my problems, comfort me in times of hardship, or even speak out for me in defense. Any amount of help I can get, I gladly welcome and reciprocate. It is then that one realizes we are not designed to perform as one mass, we cannot uphold such a structure, but we can form manageable bands where communication, understanding, and support are achieved in this solidarity.
We, as a whole country, may never learn to act like a functioning ant colony. Betraying it or being loyal to it by one person can hardly make a scratch on the surface of grand proportions; that is merely a drop of water in a vast ocean. Yet betraying a friend is a much smaller scale where the drop may cause the equivalent of a tsunami in effect of both my life and my friend's. Putting a scrape on a car is nothing relative to putting a scrape of the same size on a model of a car, which may utterly destroy its appearance.
My friend is a part of my life that I chose to co-operate with, my friend is someone I have emotional feelings for, and plan to engage in an ongoing relationship with. On the other hand, my country is only a blur with which I share a mutual feeling of apathy -it does not shake me traumatically so long as my friend and I are safe from the epicenter of the distress.
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