Also sprach Hugo of St. Victor, a 12th-century monk from Saxony:
It is, therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about invisible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.
Sounds a bit like a Buddhist approach. Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism are both based on emotion, while the "perfect man" lives on curiosity, which is an intellectual category.
Posted by: Peter on April 28, 2009 11:23 AMI would rather consider the entire land as my own home, than foreign to me.
Posted by: Mahakal on April 28, 2009 12:43 PM