Compassion Fatigue & Resurgence of Ethnocultural Centrism

[A disclaimer: I know the following is simplistic but my goal is not to be 'right' but to add to the emergent dialog that exists. I try to assess things realistically rather than solely idealistically.]

Across cultures, national identity is often inseparable from religious mythology: the narrative systems that supply moral legitimacy, shared destiny, and collective cohesion. When historical events violently contradict these founding myths, nations frequently incur a form of collective psychological injury. Rather than producing reflective integration, this rupture tends to evoke defensive consolidation—efforts to preserve moral innocence and identity coherence in the face of disconfirming realities.

Imperial Japan’s civilizational mission collapsed after World War II in precisely this manner. The dismantling of its sacralized national purpose created enduring difficulty in fully acknowledging wartime atrocities committed in Korea and China, because comprehensive moral admission would further destabilize an already wounded national narrative. Partial historical reckoning thus functions psychologically as a protective dissociation rather than as genuine integration.

Postwar China followed a different but related trajectory. After suffering both Japanese imperial aggression and long-term Western colonial intrusion, the Chinese state prioritized the creation of a unified national identity as a bulwark against further foreign domination and internal fragmentation. Cultural and ideological homogeneity became psychologically synonymous with survival. This helps explain strong resistance to external religious influences and “foreign values,” framed as threats to civilizational coherence. However, this cohesion has been destabilized more recently by internal stratification: the rise of extreme wealth inequality has undermined the collective social contract, exposing fissures within the national myth of shared hardship and unity. China’s crackdown on billionaire elites thus functions not only as economic regulation but as symbolic defense of national cohesion itself.

The United States exhibits a parallel wound. Rooted in a Protestant-influenced myth of benevolent exceptionalism, U.S. national identity endured deep destabilization following Vietnam and later Afghanistan—conflicts that exposed contradictions between the self-image of moral protector and geopolitical outcomes experienced as morally ambiguous or catastrophic. This unresolved psychic injury created fertile ground for reactionary identity movements such as MAGA, which mobilize nostalgia and mythic restoration to patch over collective disillusionment. The promise is less political than psychological: the recovery of perceived moral coherence and ontological security. (Interestingly Canada has addressed some of the dimensions of post colonialism by recognizing the indigenous people as 'First Nation' people. Obviously this doesn't reverse or reconcile the devastating impact of the European colonists but it is a psychosocial admission of origins and heritage.)

Europe’s post-colonial rupture expresses itself differently. Shaped by Christian humanitarian ethics layered atop secular guilt, many European states responded to global displacement crises through large-scale refugee intake motivated by moral redress. Yet insufficient cultural foresight and inadequate integration infrastructure produced new identity tensions between secularized host populations—already uncertain about their civilizational core—and migrant communities often grounded in religious collectivism. Crucially, refugees themselves are also profoundly psychically injured. The loss of homeland, kinship networks, political belonging, and historical continuity generates deep identity destabilization. For many displaced communities, intensified religious attachment becomes a functional substitute anchor—preserving coherence where national belonging has been severed. While psychologically protective, this consolidation can heighten cultural boundary tensions in host societies struggling with parallel identity fragmentation. (Much of the Russian situation is in large part a reaction to what is perceived as 'The West's' lack of adherence to post Armistice agreements not to violate the sovereignty of the USSR. One has to be curious about the historical back story to Russia's behavior; tyrants, oligarchs, fascists and dictators are born of circumstances not genetics. They step into the opportunity which they believe 'history' has provided them. DJT is a prime example, he convinced a nation that although his history clearly states he has never been of service, has readily had his family help him avoid service, has always without disguise followed a family legacy of being self serving, and yet none the less managed to push all the right collective buttons to get elected.)

Israel illustrates the most concentrated fusion of religion and nationhood. Founded upon survival theology and collective trauma rooted in historical victimhood, the Israeli national myth centers moral legitimacy on existential defense. As international scrutiny increasingly frames Israeli actions in Gaza as perpetration rather than protection, profound tension emerges between sacred self-narrative and geopolitical reality. This dissonance destabilizes both domestic and international moral frameworks surrounding the state, exemplifying the conflict that arises when trauma-derived identity confronts ethical contradiction.

Across these contexts, the resurgence of nationalism and religious assertiveness functions less as ideological hatred than as collective trauma responses. Both host populations and displaced groups mobilize identity—national, cultural, or religious—as mechanisms to reclaim coherence, dignity, and moral wholeness following rupture. What appear externally as mutually antagonistic movements are, psychologically, parallel efforts to repair damaged social meaning. For host countries there are movements which beg "integrate or repatriate". Fundamentally it seems evident that Countries with Judeo-Christian and Buddhist orientations are fearful that the intent of 'Islam' is to 'take over' their nation or exert influence upon what they have hereto held dearly as their national ethos or identity and where Muslims seemingly remain 'apart' due to language barriers and customs they become easy targets of those who fear 'cultural' annihilation.

From this vantage point, repatriation paired with serious reconstruction can be more socially and psychologically reparative than indefinite displacement. Long-term exile sustains a state of psychic liminality for refugees—permanent partial belonging that inhibits stable identity reintegration. Simultaneously, it strains host-nation cohesion by intensifying already frayed cultural boundaries. Redirecting the substantial resources devoted to sustaining permanent diasporas toward the stabilization and redevelopment of origin countries addresses underlying causes rather than perpetuating symptomatic management.

However, repatriation must remain ethically conditional, not coercive. It requires demonstrable security guarantees, political stabilization, effective anti-corruption safeguards, credible economic infrastructure, and continued asylum protections for those facing genuine persecution. When these criteria are met, repatriation becomes not an act of exclusion but one of restoration—restoring displaced peoples to sovereign continuity and enabling host nations to re-equilibrate their own civic identities. In such conditions, religion and nationalism can return to their healthy cultural functions—sources of meaning and cohesion—rather than remaining defensive instruments of collective trauma management.