ABSTRACT
Nationalism can be defined, roughly speaking, as the powerful emotional attachment people have towards the country, and its history, institutions, and core values, in which they are born and grow up. In his book, The Culture Code, Clotaire Rapaille explains that children between the ages of one and seven are “imprinted” with their culture and these imprints shape their behavior to a considerable degree. He writes (2006:22):
Most of us imprint the meanings of the things most central to our lives by the age of seven. This is because emotion is the central force for children under the age of seven…most people are exposed to only one culture before the age of seven. They spend most of their time at home or within their local environment.…The extremely strong imprints placed in their subconscious at this early age are determined by the culture in which they are raised. An American child’s most active period of learning happened in an American context. Mental structures formed in an American environment fill his subconscious. The child therefore grows up an American. This is why people from different cultures have such different reactions to the same things. Let’s take, for example, peanut butter. Americans receive a strong emotional imprint from peanut butter. Your mother makes you a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich when you are young, and you associate it with her love and nurturance.
