3 ms·

Thanks to technology our nation states will probably grow bigger. But having no nation states is quite unlikely. The reason why there are states in one form or

by erikb 9y ago

Thanks to technology our nation states will probably grow bigger. But having no nation states is quite unlikely. The reason why there are states in one form or another since forever is that they give people some feeling of unity, not some feeling of exclusion of others. So without nation states people don't suddenly feel all happy, but they don't have any unity that pulls them together.

zanny 9y ago
This implies that thousands of years of human history where people were not members of giant continent spanning countries people had to unity. That is absurd. People can feel a sense of community on many scales, but the extremes are from ones own family to feeling like a citizen of Earth and a part of a global human culture. Nation states are one optional step on that ladder, and it has many more than just three levels in it. Hell, just consider the difference in scale of nation states - from a country like New Zealand that has half the population of the New York Metro Area, to India or China with more than a billion people each. Completely arbitrary, and the size and cultural divides between different countries are massive. You can't even come close to placing all nation states at one tier of social inclusion and absolutely cannot ascribe individual happiness to membership in one.
- erikb 9y ago
  I don't want to argue that nation states are best theoretical models to bring people togehter, but I want to argue that the real states, as sh*tty as they may be, are the result of hard work of many people and one of the features they offer is a higher level of unity than anything that came before them. Just dropping these results of hard work will not end up in more success. I want to argue that you can't win a marathon by stopping to run before the finish line.

3 ms·

Thanks to technology our nation states will probably grow bigger. But having no nation states is quite unlikely. The reason why there are states in one form or

by erikb 9y ago

zanny 9y ago
This implies that thousands of years of human history where people were not members of giant continent spanning countries people had to unity. That is absurd. People can feel a sense of community on many scales, but the extremes are from ones own family to feeling like a citizen of Earth and a part of a global human culture. Nation states are one optional step on that ladder, and it has many more than just three levels in it. Hell, just consider the difference in scale of nation states - from a country like New Zealand that has half the population of the New York Metro Area, to India or China with more than a billion people each. Completely arbitrary, and the size and cultural divides between different countries are massive. You can't even come close to placing all nation states at one tier of social inclusion and absolutely cannot ascribe individual happiness to membership in one.
- erikb 9y ago
  I don't want to argue that nation states are best theoretical models to bring people togehter, but I want to argue that the real states, as sh*tty as they may be, are the result of hard work of many people and one of the features they offer is a higher level of unity than anything that came before them. Just dropping these results of hard work will not end up in more success. I want to argue that you can't win a marathon by stopping to run before the finish line.