Being Frank / Soyons Francs

[fare]

I'm François from France. My name is Old French for "Frenchy", back from the time when "French" used to mean "German". Are you confused yet?

The Franks were a coalition of german tribes that conquered Roman Gaul

Comments

Self-identification

[hodja]

Over time, I developed serious doubts about our ability to understand how people in earlier ages self-identified. This particular issue has been subjected to so much intentional disinformation (including both destruction and fabrication of evidence) that the truth may well have been lost for all practical purposes.

Another very interesting and relevant phenomenon affecting the confusion in this area is the well-documented feature of the human mind called Stockholm-syndrome. The most amazing characteristic of it being that in most cases it is entirely honest and sincere on the subjective level. First, people have one loyalty, then a bit later they have the opposite loyalty and also sincerely believe that they have always had the loyalties that they currently have. We are quite capable of retroactively re-construing our enthusiastic and loyal service in the past as reluctant submission or even skillful deception. The evolutionary pressures that resulted in this behavior are not very difficult to identify and they are quite strong.

Case in point: what looks like being a turn-coat from the outside might have a very different subjective perception.

Thus, when asked about past tribal loyalties, people are not only prone to lie, but what they believe to be true might also not be correct. And that's just one person's lifetime. Over generations, it's even more muddled up. Asking people about the tribal loyalties of their parents and grandparents is an absolutely pointless exercise.

Then you can add to that mix the constant pressure from tribes for the incorrect use of the plural first-person (and second-person) pronoun and all the emotional and moral mishaps that result from it: most demand that you refer to members of the same tribe -- past, present and future -- as "we", even if the past is a myth and the future is fiction (both full of wishful thinking). It is always entertaining to listen to young Americans (especially 1st-gen immigrant kids) enthuse about how "they" kicked British ass in the late eighteenth century. This is by no means innocent: this same mechanism is essential in getting people all worked up for a good ethnic cleansing or even outright genocide.