Excessive Nationalism is bad

Nationalism is necessary, it keeps people together & things organised.

Excessive Nationalism is bad. It causes altercations over things like music & dance.

Imagine if National Geographic did a video of a jazz band in Japan & if America thought it was a tourism video by the Japanese government and then accused the Japanese of stealing their culture. Imagine if the Americans started doing things like burning the Japanese flag and small groups in America started calling for war with Japan.

Sounds impossible? But something similar did happen, right here in SE Asia.

All of us in ASEAN are brothers & sisters and we are in this together

We must celebrate and share our culture. We should be proud when we see elements of our culture being adopted by other countries. Like the way the Brazilian Capoeira has ignited across the world, or the way jazz is loved in every corner of the world.

We must use our music, dance and arts to build bridges across our cultures and not use elements of our culture as reasons to argue and fight.

Things have cooled down between the two countries in question, but we must create more understanding between our brothers and sisters in ASEAN so that this kind of misunderstanding will cease to happen.