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> nation state identity is equally as arbitrary and artificial as a continent identity. It's not though. A person in Stockholm has lot more in common with a pe

> nation state identity is equally as arbitrary and artificial as a continent identity. It's not though. A person in Stockholm has lot more in common with a person in Malmo than he does with a person in Sofia. Nation-states spring from a collection of ethnically similar tribes in proximity. In most cases the tribes volunteer to be a part of a nation (those that don't end up creating new nations or separatist movements). It may be 'artificial' but it's certainly not arbitrary.

DubiousPusher 8y ago
They can be fairly arbitrary. There are many places in this world where peoples separated by a border, even a very old border, look more like each other than either looks like the people in their respective national capitals. Sure, a modern resident of Stockholm will fit in better with a group from Malmo than Sofia. But what about a city like St. Petersburg which was long thought too Russian by Europeans and too European by Muscovites. What of cities that have long sat across a border from each other or which have been long divided? Are their residents less similar to each other than they are to cities hundreds of miles away? Now unwind the clock a bit. Go back to 1500 when in most places, people 100 miles apart didn't speak the same language, before national campaigns to settle the language, the grammar, the history, the traditions (many traditions we hold dear come from pro nationalist propaganda campaigns). You're looking at people after 200-300 years of shaping with a nationalist's chisel. Again, my point is not that nations are bad or that multi-national powers are good, it is only that many of the criticism thrown around about multi-national governments were also employed against nationalism in another time. National identity isn't totally arbitrary, in some places it has alonger history than others but the strident form we know of it today is invented and lots of people didn't think in terms of it before or during its emergence.

DubiousPusher 8y ago

They can be fairly arbitrary. There are many places in this world where peoples separated by a border, even a very old border, look more like each other than either looks like the people in their respective national capitals. Sure, a modern resident of Stockholm will fit in better with a group from Malmo than Sofia. But what about a city like St. Petersburg which was long thought too Russian by Europeans and too European by Muscovites. What of cities that have long sat across a border from each other or which have been long divided? Are their residents less similar to each other than they are to cities hundreds of miles away? Now unwind the clock a bit. Go back to 1500 when in most places, people 100 miles apart didn't speak the same language, before national campaigns to settle the language, the grammar, the history, the traditions (many traditions we hold dear come from pro nationalist propaganda campaigns). You're looking at people after 200-300 years of shaping with a nationalist's chisel. Again, my point is not that nations are bad or that multi-national powers are good, it is only that many of the criticism thrown around about multi-national governments were also employed against nationalism in another time. National identity isn't totally arbitrary, in some places it has alonger history than others but the strident form we know of it today is invented and lots of people didn't think in terms of it before or during its emergence.