It represents an extension of the belief that blood creates a community, a fellowship, moral links of responsibility and shared destiny. It is implicitly assumed that individuals bear certain common features and characteristics that may be transmitted from generation to generation. These characteristics can no more be altered, shed or denied in much the same way as we cannot deny the existence of our own corporeal reality and its limits. Because the concept of ethnicity is based on an absolute, it is well suited to expressing the notion of an inalterable, qualitative difference. It acts as a cohesive force, one that is said to transcend all other considerations such as the arbitrary frontiers drawn by politicians in the midst of power plays.
Organic unity is indeed one of the assumptions held to be true in a worldview founded on ethnicity.
In Hungary, national identity has been based to a large extent on an ethnocentric approach. Language is the door Language has indeed occupied a privileged position in Hungarian self-understanding. There are various reasons for this. In general, language is the primary vehicle of expression, far more than a mere tool of communication. Language grants access to culture, culture provides a shared interpretative and experiential framework - which has, incidentally, not been undermined in recent decades by television or even the Internet, though both have established a global, parallel culture which is gaining in stature and importance every day.