Flag-waving... Shudder.

The apartment block opposite me is situated on a busy corner, with only an outward facing front yard. The residents seem to enjoy the publicness of their garden and love public displays of festivity. At Christmas their strobing fairy lights and animated santa were so bright they lit up my living room.

So, on Australia Day I looked out my window and saw the horror. Flag-Waving Patriotism, out loud and proud. A giant Australian flag tied to each corner fence. Little Australian flags festooned all over their front garden.

I had to quickly look away.

There were probably about thirty news articles in the paper that day on the topic of our controversial flag: Opinions on what it should look like; its history; what it means or doesn't mean; how, contrary to popular opinion, the Anzacs were not at all "fightingfor our flag" because our current flag was not finally decided upon and adopted until 1954.

I think my disapproval of flag-waving patriotism might have reared up when I visited the USA not long after September 11. The stars and stripes flew from every pole, was strung up in every window. Out in the suburbs and rural areas people had erected flagpoles in their front yards – sometimes unfeasibly enormous ones – and it struck me as something unseen in Australia. At the time I was glad we Aussies weren't like that. It seemed somehow – um... racist. The flag said to me "We are American, we are the best. You are other, you suck."

So when the flag-waving trend crept into Australia, my heart sank. There should be nothing wrong with being proud of the country you live in, but in a world already so polarised it feels even more polarising to be brandishing banners that define your tribe, that separate 'us' from 'others'.

If I had a flag it would be the flag of planet earth, for my tribe: the Human beings.

Oh, and the animals and plants too. And the microbes, and...

Okay, The Union Flag of all earthly life-forms.

Fat chance. Can you imagine getting everyone on earth to agree on the design?