8 ms·

The EU is a novelty in human history. The desire for independence, for better or worse, is human nature.

fao_ 10y ago
I guess only old Welsh people have "human nature" then...
bryanrasmussen 10y ago
Right, this is why there have never been empires, kings, large nations or organized groups that have subsumed smaller groups around them, the United States, Great Britain itself, or any organization of peoples greater than just one lone man standing in a field bellowing 'ME!' at the emptiness.
- coldtea 10y ago
  "Independence" it's not about some lone man bellowing "ME". It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point), over a hodge podge of states being united by sheer power or top-down dictum. Empires and kings ruled thanks to tons of bloodshed and continued vigilance and stomping of revolts. The "Great Britain" itself is a bad example -- it lost colony after colony due to wars for independence, and even sibling states like England, Ireland and Scotland have either split, or want to split. And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example. It looks like it's going to take Brexit for Scotland to leave the UK. Politically, Scotland and England have very little in common yet they are handcuffed together by "sheer power of top-down dictum"
  - untog 10y ago
    > It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point) But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other. It's just an excuse for people to cite the opinion they already had and make it sound historically relevant. (and of course, has been the reasoning behind anti immigrant sentiment since time immaterial)
    - unethical_ban 10y ago
      Everything is wishy-washy. If you don't believe in complete individual sovereignty (no State) or in complete governmnent ownership and control of all production and thought, then you believe there are lines between individual freedom and societal coherence. So wishy-washy! It's ALWAYS about the line and where it is. I think sharing a language is an important factor in the ability to share culture and values. So I might put the line closer to the UK than to the EU in your example.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other. Well, it's up to what the majority likes. Everything is wishy-washy in human affairs -- because opinions differ, people value this or that more etc. But in the end, it's also people who get, or should get, to decide what they want to do.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        Majorities often shift, and depend on other changes. E.g. Brexit probably means the end of the UK as we know it - it substantially increased the odds of Scottish independence, as England is far more right wing, but have been held in check by EU law. It may even mean a unified Ireland, as there's been a solid shift towards the Republican side in Stormont, and even some unionists seem to be disillusioned by how the concerns of Northern Ireland gets ignored at Westminster. Meanwhile London has demanded more devolved powers (partly because Manchester recently got lots of power devolved). More demands will follow. The UK has been fracturing since the way it was created, and the cracks are getting deeper and deeper, and Brexit looks set to accelerate that process sharply.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    There's nothing that says that "top-down dictum" doesn't work for nation building. Indeed, looking at history, it's the only thing that ever did. From a purely bottom-up approach, your feeling of connection to someone else would be a linear function of distance to them. In such a world, it would be impossible to have a border between two people just a mile from each other, with people on each side speaking different languages. Indeed, the whole concept of the nation-state was a top-down inventions. And possibly not the best, especially when some borders were famously drawn by British people with too much gin in their blood.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I wonder if the "desire for independence" is simply born out of the usual ingroup/outgroup dynamics - convince people they're being ruled by an outgroup, and suddenly they want to be independent. The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  It's a balance thing, you cannot survive without your environment, but you have to find a suitable one to avoid dying too.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated. Not that flexible -- it takes long, historical processes to change them. People were living within the same "unified" culture, state mandated et al, forced to be together in USSR and Yugoslavia for 50 to 80 years -- and yet those states exploded into multiple national countries as soon as they had the chance. Some borders are organic (based on culture, shared history, geographical boundaries etc) and some are not (based on colonial rules drawing lines in a map which include groups with different cultures which have historically been enemies in the same "country": the British have done this time and again, and is also the most common cause of tension in Africa etc).
  - osullivj 10y ago
    The USSR was a re-implementation of the Tsarist Russian empire by another name. The peoples yoked together in the USSR had been absorbed by Russian expansion in the 18th & 19th centuries. Yugoslavia was a variation on the same theme. The north had been part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the south part of the Ottoman Empire.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      That's what I write. Merely getting people to live together under one "union" doesn't mean it will stick, or that they like it, or that they'll identify with it over their prior and existing identities. Nor (as happened in both cases) that they wont split on the first chance they get.
fredley 10y ago
Independence from what? Should England be an Independent state? London? The City of London?
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Kensington and Chelsea. Definitely!
  - louisswiss 10y ago
    Kensington High Street for the inhabitants of Kensington High Street!
    - mpweiher 10y ago
      You can keep your stinkin' High Street. We Chesterton Roadies don't want any part of it!
      - g_k_chesterton 10y ago
        "Do you really mean that you are -- God help me! -- a Notting Hill patriot; that you are --?" from The Napoleon of Notting Hill https://books.google.com/books?id=KajPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA111 https://books.google.com/books?id=KajPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA111
- skylan_q 10y ago
  It is a serious question worth asking. To just discard the desire for independence as backwards and stupid is to go too far.
- stuaxo 10y ago
  There should probably autonomous regions, the West and the North are neglected, they could have their own governments (but still be part of England).
- dalore 10y ago
  Each British homeowner should be independent. A man's house is his castle. The could all be lords of their own empire but band together when needed to fight common enemies. Perhaps they could all group together money to help pay for common services like roads etc.
CPLX 10y ago
It's really not. The American states were a loosely organized confederacy at outset as well. India has multiple languages. And of course the long history of empires, like the Ottoman, or Spanish control of Latin America. Yes they rise and fall, but often over the course of centuries and well out of the observational abilities of the human lifespan. There's nothing inevitable about the EU, in either direction.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  America, as well as all empires in history, were created and then kept together via military force. In contrast, the EU started out peacefully as a trade organization. Membership in it is purely voluntary. This makes it quite unique.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    The original decision by the various states to join together was not at all accomplished by armed conquest.
    - 27182818284 10y ago
      >The original decision That's true but blatantly ignores things like, oh, you know the Civil War that tore the US apart
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > Membership in it is purely voluntary. This makes it quite unique. NATO arose from the ashes of conflict but membership is entirely voluntary, and unlike leaving the EU there is no talk of 'punishing' those who no longer wish to remain. For example France left the NATO integrated military structure in 1996 and rejoined in 2009 without penalty.
    - jbmorgado 10y ago
      What exactly are to "punishments" the EU is giving the UK that you are talking about?
dalore 10y ago
The USA is a novelty in human history. The desire for independence, for better or worse, is human nature.
vidarh 10y ago
I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence. As for novelty, apart from drawing parallels to the establishment of the US, consider also the African Union. The African Union includes every country on the African continent - 55 of them (as of Morocco joining/rejoining in January), and includes far more people, and is on a course towards similar levels of integration, with several free trade areas established and gradually coalescing, and several monetary unions being used to gradually pare down the number of currencies with the goal of a single African currency. It has a long way to go to reach EU level integration, but considering how bad their starting point was (starting, in the form of the OAU with a continent that still had numerous wars and civil wars and independence struggles), what they've achieved is quite impressive.
- ForRealsies 10y ago
  >I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence. Explaining the state of the EU to any politician in the 1940s, the 1840s, or the 1740s would assume Germany is positioning to make a financial conquest of the entire continent.
ionised 10y ago
This is a gross oversimplification.

fao_ 10y ago

I guess only old Welsh people have "human nature" then...

Right, this is why there have never been empires, kings, large nations or organized groups that have subsumed smaller groups around them, the United States, Great Britain itself, or any organization of peoples greater than just one lone man standing in a field bellowing 'ME!' at the emptiness.

coldtea 10y ago
"Independence" it's not about some lone man bellowing "ME". It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point), over a hodge podge of states being united by sheer power or top-down dictum. Empires and kings ruled thanks to tons of bloodshed and continued vigilance and stomping of revolts. The "Great Britain" itself is a bad example -- it lost colony after colony due to wars for independence, and even sibling states like England, Ireland and Scotland have either split, or want to split. And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > And of course it took some wars (and a lot of resentment) to bring down the Scottish into the UK's stable for example. It looks like it's going to take Brexit for Scotland to leave the UK. Politically, Scotland and England have very little in common yet they are handcuffed together by "sheer power of top-down dictum"
- untog 10y ago
  > It's about like-minded people sharing a common culture (as developed historically up to some point) But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other. It's just an excuse for people to cite the opinion they already had and make it sound historically relevant. (and of course, has been the reasoning behind anti immigrant sentiment since time immaterial)
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    Everything is wishy-washy. If you don't believe in complete individual sovereignty (no State) or in complete governmnent ownership and control of all production and thought, then you believe there are lines between individual freedom and societal coherence. So wishy-washy! It's ALWAYS about the line and where it is. I think sharing a language is an important factor in the ability to share culture and values. So I might put the line closer to the UK than to the EU in your example.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >But it's that "some point" that makes everything wishy washy. If I'm in favour of Scottish independence I cite common Scottish culture. If I'm in favour of the UK I cite the hundreds of years of shared culture. If I'm in favour of the EU I cite decades of shared culture. None of these are wrong, despite being in clear disagreement with each other. Well, it's up to what the majority likes. Everything is wishy-washy in human affairs -- because opinions differ, people value this or that more etc. But in the end, it's also people who get, or should get, to decide what they want to do.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Majorities often shift, and depend on other changes. E.g. Brexit probably means the end of the UK as we know it - it substantially increased the odds of Scottish independence, as England is far more right wing, but have been held in check by EU law. It may even mean a unified Ireland, as there's been a solid shift towards the Republican side in Stormont, and even some unionists seem to be disillusioned by how the concerns of Northern Ireland gets ignored at Westminster. Meanwhile London has demanded more devolved powers (partly because Manchester recently got lots of power devolved). More demands will follow. The UK has been fracturing since the way it was created, and the cracks are getting deeper and deeper, and Brexit looks set to accelerate that process sharply.
- matt4077 10y ago
  There's nothing that says that "top-down dictum" doesn't work for nation building. Indeed, looking at history, it's the only thing that ever did. From a purely bottom-up approach, your feeling of connection to someone else would be a linear function of distance to them. In such a world, it would be impossible to have a border between two people just a mile from each other, with people on each side speaking different languages. Indeed, the whole concept of the nation-state was a top-down inventions. And possibly not the best, especially when some borders were famously drawn by British people with too much gin in their blood.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I wonder if the "desire for independence" is simply born out of the usual ingroup/outgroup dynamics - convince people they're being ruled by an outgroup, and suddenly they want to be independent. The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated.

agumonkey 10y ago
It's a balance thing, you cannot survive without your environment, but you have to find a suitable one to avoid dying too.
coldtea 10y ago
>The problem with this being that group borders are petty flexible and easily manipulated. Not that flexible -- it takes long, historical processes to change them. People were living within the same "unified" culture, state mandated et al, forced to be together in USSR and Yugoslavia for 50 to 80 years -- and yet those states exploded into multiple national countries as soon as they had the chance. Some borders are organic (based on culture, shared history, geographical boundaries etc) and some are not (based on colonial rules drawing lines in a map which include groups with different cultures which have historically been enemies in the same "country": the British have done this time and again, and is also the most common cause of tension in Africa etc).
- osullivj 10y ago
  The USSR was a re-implementation of the Tsarist Russian empire by another name. The peoples yoked together in the USSR had been absorbed by Russian expansion in the 18th & 19th centuries. Yugoslavia was a variation on the same theme. The north had been part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the south part of the Ottoman Empire.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    That's what I write. Merely getting people to live together under one "union" doesn't mean it will stick, or that they like it, or that they'll identify with it over their prior and existing identities. Nor (as happened in both cases) that they wont split on the first chance they get.

fredley 10y ago

Independence from what? Should England be an Independent state? London? The City of London?

mpweiher 10y ago
Kensington and Chelsea. Definitely!
- louisswiss 10y ago
  Kensington High Street for the inhabitants of Kensington High Street!
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    You can keep your stinkin' High Street. We Chesterton Roadies don't want any part of it!
    - g_k_chesterton 10y ago
      "Do you really mean that you are -- God help me! -- a Notting Hill patriot; that you are --?" from The Napoleon of Notting Hill https://books.google.com/books?id=KajPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA111 https://books.google.com/books?id=KajPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA111
skylan_q 10y ago
It is a serious question worth asking. To just discard the desire for independence as backwards and stupid is to go too far.
stuaxo 10y ago
There should probably autonomous regions, the West and the North are neglected, they could have their own governments (but still be part of England).
dalore 10y ago
Each British homeowner should be independent. A man's house is his castle. The could all be lords of their own empire but band together when needed to fight common enemies. Perhaps they could all group together money to help pay for common services like roads etc.

CPLX 10y ago

It's really not. The American states were a loosely organized confederacy at outset as well. India has multiple languages. And of course the long history of empires, like the Ottoman, or Spanish control of Latin America. Yes they rise and fall, but often over the course of centuries and well out of the observational abilities of the human lifespan. There's nothing inevitable about the EU, in either direction.

enraged_camel 10y ago
America, as well as all empires in history, were created and then kept together via military force. In contrast, the EU started out peacefully as a trade organization. Membership in it is purely voluntary. This makes it quite unique.
- CPLX 10y ago
  The original decision by the various states to join together was not at all accomplished by armed conquest.
  - 27182818284 10y ago
    >The original decision That's true but blatantly ignores things like, oh, you know the Civil War that tore the US apart
- dingaling 10y ago
  > Membership in it is purely voluntary. This makes it quite unique. NATO arose from the ashes of conflict but membership is entirely voluntary, and unlike leaving the EU there is no talk of 'punishing' those who no longer wish to remain. For example France left the NATO integrated military structure in 1996 and rejoined in 2009 without penalty.
  - jbmorgado 10y ago
    What exactly are to "punishments" the EU is giving the UK that you are talking about?

dalore 10y ago

The USA is a novelty in human history. The desire for independence, for better or worse, is human nature.

vidarh 10y ago

I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence. As for novelty, apart from drawing parallels to the establishment of the US, consider also the African Union. The African Union includes every country on the African continent - 55 of them (as of Morocco joining/rejoining in January), and includes far more people, and is on a course towards similar levels of integration, with several free trade areas established and gradually coalescing, and several monetary unions being used to gradually pare down the number of currencies with the goal of a single African currency. It has a long way to go to reach EU level integration, but considering how bad their starting point was (starting, in the form of the OAU with a continent that still had numerous wars and civil wars and independence struggles), what they've achieved is quite impressive.

ForRealsies 10y ago
>I'd say the desire to build empires is a far more dominant part of human history than fights for independence. Explaining the state of the EU to any politician in the 1940s, the 1840s, or the 1740s would assume Germany is positioning to make a financial conquest of the entire continent.

ionised 10y ago

This is a gross oversimplification.