"God forbid we feel any natural affinity towards our fellow countrymen"
Such an affinity is not "natural" because no one is born with any sort of innate ability to distinguish among nationalities, much less feel any affinity towards certain nationalities.
Any such distinctions and feelings are taught through indoctrination such as nationalistic rituals, media, and the attitudes of those around you.
A nationality is a legal fiction which changes absolutely nothing about who a person really is or what they do.
Nationalism and group affiliation have been the causes of some of the worst atrocities in history, so we should be very wary of encouraging either.
Regardless of their nationality, I personally feel much more affinity with someone who is helping others over one who is hurting others.
I say national but I mean local as opposed to global. My town is more important than my county which is more important than my state, etc.
my philosophy also extends to animals and plants, meaning it’s not a human-centric view but biocentric. It’s doesn’t seem natural to care less about local Bird/insect populations and local ecosystems as much as human poverty on the other side of the planet.
There is a good and perfectly natural reason to favor people from our own country: they have to live under the same system as us. They have skin in the game on our team. Someone acting in our country but operating out of a different one can exploit the difference in rules to our detriment (e.g. a Chinese company competing in Western markets, but with the finger of state backing pushing on the scales). On a large enough scale it's a threat to democracy etc. if our group decides that groups no longer matter, and another group doesn't.
You can iteratively, conservatively try to approach an equilibrium where borders and divisions no longer matter and all of humanity joins together in enlightenment. That seems to be the general direction we're going and it's a good thing. What you can't do is unilaterally make a cooperative system out of a competitive one. If you go all at once by yourself you just get killed.
Nationality is a big (and in some cases literal) Chesterton's Fence. It is somewhat arbitrary, but that doesn't make it meaningless.
Such an affinity is not "natural" because no one is born with any sort of innate ability to distinguish among nationalities, much less feel any affinity towards certain nationalities.
Any such distinctions and feelings are taught through indoctrination such as nationalistic rituals, media, and the attitudes of those around you.
A nationality is a legal fiction which changes absolutely nothing about who a person really is or what they do.
Nationalism and group affiliation have been the causes of some of the worst atrocities in history, so we should be very wary of encouraging either.
Regardless of their nationality, I personally feel much more affinity with someone who is helping others over one who is hurting others.