I was born in Fukushima, Japan, from my father and mother with Japanese nationality. Automatically, I had my Japanese nationality. I did not have any right to choose my nationality. Nothing more than a coincidence.
If born in Indonesia from my Indonesian parents, I became an Indonesian. I could not decide to choose the place I was born. If born in the Dutch East Indies 100 years ago, I might have no sense of any nationality. Nothing more than a coincidence.
But, after I was born, I had lived with my family at a place. The place is called as my hometown. My place of birth has had a special meaning for my life. Maybe I has lived in several places other than my place of birth. Those places often have special meanings for my life. There are deep memories of my living there.
Such place is not regarded as the nation, but as the local. I have special feelings on Fukushima as my place of birth, Tokyo as my current living place with my family, Busan as my first visited foreign city in my life, Makassar as my 8.5 year staying and deeply loved city, and Jakarta as my second long staying foreign city in my life after Makassar.
My memorized places are not nations as Japan, Korea, or Indonesia, but cities as my local life. My important places cannot be separated from my memory of living.
Our life first. In our life, there is our society or our community with its own autonomous rules created by peoples there, as the Greek civil society with system of direct democracy.
Not the nation first. Not the nation set or created our community. Not the nation gave us our daily life. The nation came after the local. Before the nation came, there were societies or communities as base of our life.
We must live. We must live under any nation state. We must live and must not stop our daily life even under the dictatorship, the militarism, or the fascism. The nation might force us to obey and be loyal to the nation. We are forced to show our patriotism to the nation.
However, the nation came with shoes to our locals as base of life. The nation might mobilize the local for its ambition with saying to give more prosperous life to the local. Sometimes the nation did not have any intention to look after the local. The local had been often deceived by the nation.
Why is the local deceived? Because the local tends to believe that outsiders (the nation) had more excellent capability and knowledge than the local. The local often forgot to know more local things than outsiders.
Is it true that the nation can always guarantee more prosperous locals? Obedience of the local to the nation is not because of sincere believes to the nation by the local, but of protection of daily life minimally to keep the local societies or communities.
Even if the nation system changes from one to another, we must keep our life in our local society or community. We must start from the local, not from the nation, because locals are our base of life.
We should see the people not from the nation but from the local. The meaning of life is universal and fundamental anywhere in the world, even though the style and customs would be different.
I deeply respect local people who sincerely try to keep and protect their base of life under many kinds of intervention or aggression in the name of the nation. The local exists first, not the nation first.
The storm has always gone. We must survive and stay alive in the local.
Mizubayashi Natural Forest, Fukushima (my hometown)
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