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It can be helpful to look at a map of the world with no borders drawn on it and remember that (apart from natural boundaries such as oceans) border lines are en
by TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
It can be helpful to look at a map of the world with no borders drawn on it and remember that (apart from natural boundaries such as oceans) border lines are entirely arbitrary with no inherent meaning.
And also to look at past maps of the world when the borders looked quite different.
- DanAndersen 8y agoWith that mindset, what makes oceans "natural boundaries" with any meaning? It's all just collections of atoms that humans socially assign meaning to.
- mijamo 8y ago"meaning" is always socially assigned (or god's design for those you believe it). But there is a huge difference between natural boundaries and human boundaries: one can be measured and objectively represented. You can measure heights and make a map of the earth with different colors for mountains, oceans etc. It could all be done by a machine without any human intervention, and represents useful physical differences on Earth. On the other hand nobody could draw a map of countries' borders without talking with human societies, and no map can be objective or exact. In addition, those borders often are not even visible on the field, and in most border you can just cross and not even realize you are in another country (on roads you have border control, but most borders are just rivers, forests, fields, mountains, deserts without any remarkable feature).
- sonnyblarney 8y agoMan-made boundaries can be objective, factual, reasonable.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"border lines are entirely arbitrary with no inherent meaning." The have plenty of meaning. Nations are not plots of geography - they are groups of people.