Hometown pride. Or maybe not.

When I was in high school, I heard a term the instructor called "geocentrism": a belief in the superiority of one's own geographic-colocated group. Whether he used the term correctly or not, his interpretation was that "geocentrism" loosely translated as "hometown pride."

Growing up in Grand Rapids, I was quite proud of my hometown. New buildings, new companies were moving in all the time. Business was booming, and the changes were good. And people were good. Problems? Those belonged to other parts of the country.

The Italians have a word specifically for this kind of hometown pride: camanilismo.

In 1984, a job change took me from GR to Metro Detroit, and back then... man, my friends and I made fun of our newly-adopted home all the time. Not because we disliked the city...we loved it...but more because we had a kind of reverse pride in the fact that it seemed so reviled by other parts of the country. Like, some crazy kind of over-the-top, can't-get-any-worse-than-this pride. Crack Capital, Murder Capital...hell, at least it was the capital of something!

So when my friends and I heard others make fun of Detroit, we'd usually laugh along with them... no harm, no foul... no contest. Who cared?

In 1990, I moved to Cincinnati, and found a whole other layer of camanilismo...extreme full-body pride in their hometown. So when I did my typical, sarcastic thing and made fun of the city ("Cincinnasti! Cincinnazi! Cincinnutti!" - there was plenty to make fun of, believe you me), I found everything from hateful stares to outright physical confrontation...as if their own persona, their own identity, was being assaulted.

All I could think of was, Christ, it's a town, folks... chill out, already...it's not like I'm telling you your kid is ugly or anything.

I bring this up because I get both kinds of emails from visitors to Michigannative.com. I get the Rah Rah I Love Michigan emails, criticizing me for my sarcastic sense of humor and feeling that I'm somehow picking on them personally. And I get the other kind of emails that, like my friends some 20 years ago, also enjoyed laughing at ourselves.

I guess I would just ask the first group to consider that, you're far more than where you live, folks. You're programmed to dig your own tribe, and that's cool, but the world is such a bigger place than Grand Rapids, or Tawas City, or wherever. Be proud of where you're from, but have a sense of humor as well, and realize that there are thousands of "hometowns" out there... all with their own pros and cons.

I'm in Seattle now, but I'll always be a Michigander, and I'll always have pride in my home state. But I'll also call bullshit on overblown geocentrism when I see it.

Thoughts? Which group do you fall in?