Chauvinism - what is it?

Increasingly, in recent years we have come across this term. He appears with an amazing consistency in the speeches of politicians, in discussions about the problems of the people and the country, in public discussions. Often we associate chauvinism with an aggressive form of nationalism. At the same time, chauvinism is a somewhat different phenomenon.

It is interesting that this concept comes from the name of one of the veterans of the Bonapartist army, Nicolas Chauvin. Napoleon saw the glory of the French state as a powerful first of all militarily. In the name of this, he sacrificed a whole generation of Europeans, and especially the French themselves. However, even after the defeats of his commander-in-chief, despite such large-scale sacrifices of his fanaticism, soldiers still remained loyal to him. One of them was Nicolas Chauvin. He so stubbornly and blindly defended the former emperor that his name soon became a household name. Since then, chauvinism is ultranationalist views in which the idea of the superiority of one nation over the others becomes absolute. Today this concept is very often used together with specifying definitions - Russian, German, French. In this sense chauvinism is really the most radical and aggressive direction of nationalism. However, if we look more deeply at the term, we will find out that today it has spread to other spheres of life. In modern times, chauvinism is not only something connected with interethnic relations.

Concept in the public section

For example, we all came across, one way or another, with the notion of male chauvinism. It turns out that it can have different forms and be directed towards simply other social categories. For example, manifestations of chauvinism of men to women, adults to children, young to old people, rich to the poor, healthy to the disabled and so on. All these forms are accompanied by conscious discrimination.

Chauvinism - the importance in biology

It is interesting that there is a place and so-called species discrimination. So determine the infringement of any other type of interests. A vivid example of this form can be the relationship of man to animals. There is also such a thing as carbon chauvinism. And now it has nothing to do with discrimination. The concept is used in the context of the search for extraterrestrial life and in cosmology as a whole. The fact is that absolutely all known forms of life on our planet have carbon as their fundamental basis. Moreover, we ourselves consist of those substances that are most prevalent throughout the universe (carbon, hydrogen, and so on). This factor determines the popularity of the opinion of modern scientists that life forms, if they exist outside the Earth, are also constructed of these compounds. Assumptions about other forms, for example, based on silicon, are discarded. Actually, it was the latter fact that led to the appearance of such a concept as carbon chauvinism.