It’s been said, and for the most part I agree, that people who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have them. Australians did their best to confirm this theory last week, on National be a dickhead day. Acland Street was full of people trying to park their Cadillacs and waving things they’d just bought from the Two Dollar shop, made of Chinese plastic. Writing in the Brisbane Mail, John Birmingham identified a new shift in Australia’s attitude to being a dickhead:

“One of the things I really like about Australia, or I used to anyway, was our quiet reluctance to wave the flag in everyone's face; a reluctance which has gradually given way to an uglier, brutish readiness to paint the flag on our arses and sit on the face of anyone who looks even remotely disinclined to play along.”

As a quick glance at the primary policies of the Australian Protectionist Party will attest to, most of this Fascist flag waving stems from a fear of strangers common to humans during the rudimentary stages of their evolution, The Middle Paleolithic Era, at least 40 000 years ago. The Protectionists, (and you can blink disbelievingly at their website here) are actively working for:

“…sensible immigration programmes that will be geared towards accepting into our country only those people who will readily fit into our society, primarily from traditional sources such as Europe and Britain.”

In direct opposition to this sort of grunting, the philosopher and historian Theodore Zeldin is explicitly concerned with expanding the way in which we identify our roots, or our socio-historical origins. In his groundbreaking study of human emotions An Intimate History of Humanity, Zeldin claims:

“The mind is a refuge for ideas dating from many different centuries, just as cells of the body are of different ages, renewing themselves or decaying at varying speeds. Instead of explaining the peculiarity of individuals by pointing to their family or childhood, I take a longer view: I show how they pay attention to – or ignore – the experience of previous, more distant generations, and how they are continuing the struggles of many other communities all over the world, whether active or extinct, from the Aztecs and the Babylonians to the Zoroastrians, among whom they have more soul-mates than they might realize.”

According to Zeldin, fear has historically been overcome by one of two methods. The first is by replacing the old fear with a new, slightly more hopeful fear. The second is through curiosity, and a willingness to learn and be surprised by what is different or unknown.

Reading Zeldin, whilst at the same time being attacked with Australianess ads and barbeque propaganda has prompted in me the desire to perhaps declare complete and sacred independence from Australia, at least for one day a year. And since furthermore, and against the odds, I do actually enjoy waving a flag, albeit in a kind of pathetic way every night before I go to bed, I am now calling for a new day, on which we can each declare our independence, not just from Australia, but from all nations, organizations, political parties, violent gangs, scout clubs, reading groups, artist collectives, mother’s committees and trout farms. Xenization Day, which is the catchy title I’ve settled on, celebrates the process of being a stranger everywhere, holds sacred our own essential loneliness, promotes the creation of flimsy handmade individual independence flags and encourages adventure to foreign lands where, with every new encounter we might meet a new race of person who will not will readily fit into our society. As Bjork declared on her most recent album, Volta:

Start your own currency Make your own stamp Protect your language Declare independence!