7 ms·

Why a Universal Society Is Unattainable

40 points by dnetesn 6y ago

mmastrac 6y ago
Most of what societies give to us are a set of rules to manage scarcity in exchange for the benefits of group membership. We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence for a large number of people but we don't have the systems to distribute it fairly or effectively. Identity is something we fall back on when times are "bad" and we feel like there isn't enough to go around. It's far less important when times are "good" (but humans are hard-wired to survive scarcity rather than abundance). Turchin’s elite overproduction is another, separate issue.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence for a large number of people but we don't have the systems to distribute it fairly or effectively. FWIW: this seems like a poor explanation for the current situation in the US, given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy, and the subjects about which they choose to fight are generally not related to personal wealth or resource distribution.
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    > this seems like a poor explanation for the current situation in the US, given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy How do you know this?
  - everdrive 6y ago
    I think you're generally correct, but there are a few things worth noting: - There's still a lot of frustration in the lower classes: people without college educations, living near the poverty line (either over or under) - A person's sense of poverty is unfortunately relative. 100 years ago, people didn't necessarily have running water, or access to any medical care whatsoever. - There seems to be a lot of frustration with the makeup of the popular culture, and a misguided belief that an election can fix this. (eg, "I hate those elites in Hollywood, we'd better elect someone they disapprove of!")
    - telesilla 6y ago
      I agree about relativity. How poor one feels depends on who their neighbours are. I lived in a gigantic but cheap city and felt like a queen, being able to afford unlimited dinners and taxis, which would have been unobtainable had I lived in Manhattan at the same age.
    - mbg721 6y ago
      Culture in general is the elephant in the room--it's not really about money. Middle-America sees a bunch of obnoxious elites who openly ridicule and hate their values, lecture them about voting against their interests, and hand-wring about how to "educate" them into submission. Resources aren't going to buy happiness in this environment.
  - redleggedfrog 6y ago
    "...given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy..." Fairly sure that's not true. The insurrectionist hew from red states that are lagging the rest of the country hard. Less educated, under or unemployed, very little upward mobility, extreme feelings of powerlessness (hence the gun fetish to feel powerful) and truly are not really represented by anyone in government except their local officials and congressmen/senators. And they get disparaged by the coasts as dumb hicks. You'd be pretty chaffed if you were in their shoes, too. It doesn't excuse their behavior, but it explains it. If you want peace and a thriving nation, those people need their place, too.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Do you have a citation for that? This is a VERY common meme, but it doesn't have much grounding in actual numbers. It's been reported ad nauseum that republican voters everywhere, even in red states, are wealthier than democratic voters. In all demographics, even white voters, wealth correlates with republican lean. And as far as the insurrection at the capitol: almost everyone arrested there has been an employed or retired middle class person, often in a white collar job. Which isn't surprising, of course: most people had to travel to be there.
      - Miner49er 6y ago
        I think you are working with old data. In 2008 that was true, now it's the opposite. The median income of Democrats is higher than Republicans'. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is-becoming-as-stark-as-its-politics.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is... I guess that maybe doesn't take into account cost of living differences and all that, though.
        newacct583 6y ago
        Gah, that's comparing districts, not voters! They're saying not that poor people vote republican, but that poorer areas tend to be red. Even within those districts, poorer folks vote democrat. It also runs afoul of the problem of using median statistics in a distribution that isn't gaussian. In fact per this quick article I found trying to check out the conclusion in your link, it's bathtub-shaped: both the poorest and wealthiest counties trend strongly blue. https://qz.com/1919592/why-joe-biden-will-win-rich-places-but-not-rich-people/ https://qz.com/1919592/why-joe-biden-will-win-rich-places-bu...
- qsort 6y ago
  > We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence What is this supposed to mean? What is 'enough' is relative. Present-day Western society would have looked like the literal garden of Eden to the average human from 2000 BC. There have never been, nor there will ever be, 'enough' resources for everyone: resources are limited, human desires are (thankfully) not.
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    "Enough" for most people seems to be about 75k-95k USD per year equivalent [1]. We _might_ not have enough resources yet to provide that much for UBI [2] but we can drastically raise the baseline level of happiness of the populace. [1] https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-buys-happiness-for-a-certain-amount.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-... [2] More and more automation could get us there
    - matz1 6y ago
      > More and more automation could get us there The only thing that can work is if technology/automation is advance enough that everybody can live happily without depending on other people at all. That even 'other people' can be replaced by virtual people that indistinguishable from real one. The problem is if everybody live like this, can it be still called society ?
    - qsort 6y ago
      Quoting from your own link: "And, there was substantial variation across world regions, with satiation occurring later in wealthier regions for life satisfaction," Jebb said. "This could be because evaluations tend to be more influenced by the standards by which individuals compare themselves to other people." Sure, it's 75k now. Is it guaranteed to stay at 75k? There isn't a universal constant by which you can assert "okay, this level of wealth is, and will always be, enough for everyone". > We _might_ not have enough resources yet to provide that much for UBI. That's... way more than the US GDP per capita...
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
dusted 6y ago
meh, it's time mankind grew up, anyone stating to be "proud to be a/an `nationality`" is just another simpleton, it's the belief that someone, because they just so happened to be born where they did, are inherently better or more than someone who arbitrarily was born somewhere outside some geographical area. That's BS to such a degree that it's amazing we're not actively making an effort to denationalize peoples of the world. There's nothing more damaging than having such beliefs (religion maybe, but I think I'll fold religion and nationalism into one since nationalists are often the ones to insist that a true scotsman has some specific religion). Sure, there are differences, but they are differences that are taught and indoctrinated, not something we're born with, and we can "simply" stop doing that.
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  This is such an HN comment. For 95% of the people alive right now, it matters very much where they live and what nationality they are. See: every migrant crisis. Or people who have a bank account insured by their government. Or anyone on any kind of social security. etc etc etc The 0.1% can get in their jet and go to New Zealand, or buy a Swiss passport with BTC...so sure, place is irrelevant to them. Not so for everyone else.
  - dusted 6y ago
    The idea of escaping from whatever is currently a dirty hellhole to the magical land of X where everything is better, is exactly the same kind of backward thinking, what you're describing with the 0.1% is no different than all other migration towards greener pastures, and it shows why we can't continue like this.. More or less the entire world is going to turn into a trashfire unless we unite and fix it, so that everywhere is a nice place to live, nationalism won't fix it, it prevents it from being fixed, because we've divided the globe into more and less desirable geometric shapes, it didn't work, next.
    - anewaccount2021 6y ago
      You've been watching too much Star Trek.
hehehaha 6y ago
Sooner rather than later political borders will be meaningless. Not because of some altruistic social movement but purely due to necessity for survival.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  History suggests that the people on the survivable side of the border might not like large numbers of migrants coming across from the other side. Exhibit A: Europe and the problem of migrants from Africa.
kyleblarson 6y ago
It seems awfully presumptuous to assume that a universal society is desirable in the first place.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  That was exactly my thoughts. The article comes to a conclusion I agree with (a universal society is unattainable) from a starting point I completely disagree with (a universal society is desirable). I was caught off guard by how it takes for granted its initial position with statements like this > While the erasure of borders may be laudable, Just last year we saw how the lack of strong borders can lead to fatal consequences if no entity has the authority or power to restrict movement and travel. Within the US alone, we've seen countless cases of people spreading the coronavirus simply by going to visit family, attend some political event, going on vacation, and it's all because of this universal free movement.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    Don't those consequences follow from precisely the impossibility of a universal society? Why have borders otherwise? It seems very hard to disagree with, in principle, either premise: "universal" or "multipolar"; if the premise is granted its relevant impossibilities. Would you prefer to live in a world which is necessarily maximally particular; or necessarily maximally universal? Well, in either world, there would be no human beings. And whatever species would exist there could be designed to be maximally happy, flourishing, etc.
  - francisofascii 6y ago
    A universal society may not be desirable, but the freedom of movement is desirable. It is certainly high up the list of desired human rights.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    This is a very common miscommunication regarding idealistic goals. When somebody has an idealistic goal, they don't mean that they think the practical downsides are worth living with forever. The implication is that they want to overcome those downsides. E.g. getting rid of the poisons of nationalism without getting rid of the differences in culture, or getting rid of the restriction of movement based on national borders without getting rid of the ability to restrict movement during a viral outbreak. These types of goals sound almost impossible, at least until a far flung future, but that's why we say these are ideals. Colloquially, "idealism" implies "almost impossible". The misunderstanding comes when one person speaks under the assumption that these downsides are surmountable, and the other person speaks under the assumption that these downsides are insurmountable, when really they should be arguing more directly about how to achieve the goal or how achieving it is unrealistic, instead of Team Idealism just saying "think about this future, wouldn't it be great?", and Team Realism just saying "we haven't achieved it yet, so I think it's impossible".
bwestergard 6y ago
For such a tendentious article, the citations to opposing viewpoints are fairly lacking. > A review of both the psychology literature and anthropological research on societies ranging from the ethnolinguistic groups of hunter-gatherers to tribes, chiefdoms, and states (less formally, “nations”),3 reveal that a universal society is unattainable. Big if true! The key supposition here is that the concept of a "nation", and thus an analysis of "nationalism" applies across human history (even pre-history!) and in all different localities. Contrast this with the view that what we think of as nationalism is a distinctly modern phenomena, an outgrowth of the rise of capitalist social relations and print as a mass medium. On this view, nationalism is initially a curiously European phenomena and later spreads outward with the march of "print-capitalism". I find this analysis much easier to square with the early modern history of Japan or China, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  The article does a lot of cherry-picking papers, adding in some unspoken assumption and then jumping to conclusions. The biggest one is that it constantly confuses nationality with social affiliations.
jeroenhd 6y ago
"The European Union offers no grand foundation story, no venerable symbols or traditions." Doesn't it? The origins of the EU were founded to end the endless wars between Europe's powerful nations and we haven't had a Franco-Germanic war since its inception. The wealth across the entire EU has increased with initiatives like the Schengen acquis, international relations are closer than ever and the freedoms European citizens have gotten out of it are unlike anything imaginable before. Many people inside of the EU are identifying themselves more as "European citizens" than as "German/Spanish/Polish" citizens. It's fair to say that the EU has no traditions outside those necessary for keeping the government running, but traditions form over lifetimes and even just the origins of the EU are little more than 60 years old. Give it some time and humans will create their silly little traditions. The EU's origin is not one of conquest, but one of peace and prosperity. If people cannot stand behind the EU because it was not formed by violence, then the problem is not with the symbols or stories themselves but with people's tendency to value righteous conquest over peace and prosperity. Several countries, including my own, have always kept at a distance because they did not want to be dissolved into an overarching government or because they wanted to keep their cultural independence. The UK is one of the most extreme examples of those; they've tried to fight EU legislation tooth and nail against the union they've voluntarily joined. The way Britain behaved in the EU makes me feel that they should have stayed out and signed agreements like Norway and Switzerland signed instead, though I suppose the limitations of the power they could exercise to neighbouring states would not have been enticing.
- DamnYuppie 6y ago
  Not all conquest requires a clash of armies. It can be a forced conquest using financial pressure and adherence to less than ideal social ideologies. This of course happens more slowly.
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  > Many people inside of the EU are identifying themselves more as "European citizens" than as "German/Spanish/Polish" citizens. I'd be very surprised if that were the case. Have any studies been done on that?
- svara 6y ago
marcus_holmes 6y ago
> Ironically, Britain’s relations with the EU unraveled when its self-identity was under stress, with Northern Ireland and Scotland increasingly likely opting to secede from the UK, a fracture along ancient cultural lines that’s the norm for modern societies. This isn't a symptom, it's the cause (imho). Brexit was only popular with nationalist English people. Because England has been submerged into Britain the longest (to the point that being English is almost synonymous with being British), and actually having any kind of English nationalism is actually pretty new. The UK was always a reluctant, annoying member of the EU, because we basically thought of ourselves as The British Empire and the EU as a trade treaty and nothing more. Germany and France make no secret of their desire for political union, and that's not really compatible with the British. We have to get rid of the British Empire before we can properly join the European one. So I believe that the UK will break up in the next 10 years or so. Scotland will be the first to go, and rejoin the EU immediately. That will trigger Northern Ireland (re)joining Ireland as it becomes clear the UK isn't actually a thing any more. The Welsh will take a good long look at themselves and decide to stay with England after all. Then England-and-Wales (just "Britain" again I guess - the old Roman territory) will rejoin the EU. Now that the English are free of the dreams of Empire and are no longer submerged into Great Britain, we'll be able to contribute to the European Adventure and stop being such awkward holdouts. That's my take on Brexit, anyway. I'll be fascinated to see how it all goes. Especially since I'm living in Berlin and it's starting to matter ;)
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intrepidhero 6y ago
People are hard-wired to form tribes and self segregate into groups. I don't think we're going to grow out of that behavior anytime in the next 1000 years. But the author makes a leap from there to "nationalism is inevitable." There is an entire spectrum of organizational bodies and humans need not (and probably cannot) abolish all of them to form some sort of universal civilization. Surely there are ways we can retain regional cultural uniqueness and small group identities while gaining the ability to cooperate and share values?
- deleted 6y ago
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- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >People are hard-wired to form tribes and self segregate into groups. I don't think we're going to grow out of that behavior anytime in the next 1000 years. Into classes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society Marx and communism has everything do to with classes. That is to say in order for communism to work you must have a classless society. Soon as you have inequality based on anything, 2 classes form. Those with and those without. It comes down to even a surplus of production. We could theoretically have the same job but I work 40 hours/week and you work 20 hours/week. I will therefore be in a class higher than you. If I am not in a higher class, then I won't work those 40 hours and I'll go down to those 20 hours. OR I try to force you to work 40 hours. >There is an entire spectrum of organizational bodies and humans need not (and probably cannot) abolish all of them to form some sort of universal civilization. Surely there are ways we can retain regional cultural uniqueness and small group identities while gaining the ability to cooperate and share values? That adds a significant level of complexity.
  - intrepidhero 6y ago
    I wasn't thinking about classes when I wrote the comment but I agree they are fundamental axis along which people divide themselves. I think class differences are an underappreciated source of conflict in our world today and there are inequities that we should be working hard to correct. That said, my point was we need not abolish all the many ways that people differentiate themselves in order to have (more) universal cooperation: involving mostly everyone and mostly everywhere, not necessarily on everything. And we need higher levels of cooperation to address the biggest challenges humanity faces. > That adds a significant level of complexity. Any system that aspires to unify a wide swath of humanity with all it's diversity and frailties will be tautologically complex.
jkingsbery 6y ago
In focusing on Brexit (and possible secession of Northern Ireland and Scotland from the UK), the author seems to equate "society" with a political entity. The author never defines what he means by society, but it seems like perfectly good definitions ("the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" is the definition Google gives) mean that society is something not just political. Other definitions ("a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests" is the definition given by https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society) make the concept of a "Universal Society" an oxymoron - we cannot have a universal society until we have, among other things, universal traditions. > "But what might happen if people could forgo those traits that “mark” their identities or somehow put aside the drive to categorize each other by means of such labels—to separate us from them based on language, clothing, gestures, or religious beliefs?" This line of questioning trivializes what religious belief means for many of us. I don't know much about the author, but there is an idea among many who are not religious that religion is an arbitrary "mark." While it certainly can be that and has often played that role in history, this oversimplifies differences in world view. I belong to a Catholic parish not out of accident but because of choice, and I seek friendship within my Catholic parish because our shared world view gives us a basis for understanding that I don't share with my non-Catholic and non-Christian coworkers. ------ > "its [the EU's] members have a history of conflict dating from the Middle Ages" Perhaps this is a nit-pick, but sentences like this seem to reinforce that the Middle Ages was when conflict began in Europe. Europe had lots of conflict before the Middle Ages. Further, what fighting happened in Europe during the Middle Ages usually happened despite a stronger sense of a universal community (membership in the Christian church) then existed for hundreds of years later, demonstrating a counterexample of the author's hypothesis about some general trend toward universalization of society.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Curious. I'm just reading Sapiens and there the author presents the exact opposite thesis - that if you take a high-level view of history, there's a clear trend towards unification. Cultures meet, mix and merge. And I find this view easier to square with reality. Especially in the last century, we can see how the "western culture" - which is better called universal culture - has reached and embedded itself in pretty much every nation on the planet. Almost everyone respects the dollar. Almost everyone has a McDonald's. As the economies of nations became deeply intertwined, we've entered the world where everyone's tools, foods, entertainment and habits start to look alike. I think it's just a matter of time before what we consider "local culture" will finally get reduced to a mere curiosity.

40 points by dnetesn 6y ago

Most of what societies give to us are a set of rules to manage scarcity in exchange for the benefits of group membership. We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence for a large number of people but we don't have the systems to distribute it fairly or effectively. Identity is something we fall back on when times are "bad" and we feel like there isn't enough to go around. It's far less important when times are "good" (but humans are hard-wired to survive scarcity rather than abundance). Turchin’s elite overproduction is another, separate issue.

newacct583 6y ago
> We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence for a large number of people but we don't have the systems to distribute it fairly or effectively. FWIW: this seems like a poor explanation for the current situation in the US, given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy, and the subjects about which they choose to fight are generally not related to personal wealth or resource distribution.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  > this seems like a poor explanation for the current situation in the US, given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy How do you know this?
- everdrive 6y ago
  I think you're generally correct, but there are a few things worth noting: - There's still a lot of frustration in the lower classes: people without college educations, living near the poverty line (either over or under) - A person's sense of poverty is unfortunately relative. 100 years ago, people didn't necessarily have running water, or access to any medical care whatsoever. - There seems to be a lot of frustration with the makeup of the popular culture, and a misguided belief that an election can fix this. (eg, "I hate those elites in Hollywood, we'd better elect someone they disapprove of!")
  - telesilla 6y ago
    I agree about relativity. How poor one feels depends on who their neighbours are. I lived in a gigantic but cheap city and felt like a queen, being able to afford unlimited dinners and taxis, which would have been unobtainable had I lived in Manhattan at the same age.
  - mbg721 6y ago
    Culture in general is the elephant in the room--it's not really about money. Middle-America sees a bunch of obnoxious elites who openly ridicule and hate their values, lecture them about voting against their interests, and hand-wring about how to "educate" them into submission. Resources aren't going to buy happiness in this environment.
- redleggedfrog 6y ago
  "...given that the people most angry with the direction of society are disproportionately wealthy..." Fairly sure that's not true. The insurrectionist hew from red states that are lagging the rest of the country hard. Less educated, under or unemployed, very little upward mobility, extreme feelings of powerlessness (hence the gun fetish to feel powerful) and truly are not really represented by anyone in government except their local officials and congressmen/senators. And they get disparaged by the coasts as dumb hicks. You'd be pretty chaffed if you were in their shoes, too. It doesn't excuse their behavior, but it explains it. If you want peace and a thriving nation, those people need their place, too.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Do you have a citation for that? This is a VERY common meme, but it doesn't have much grounding in actual numbers. It's been reported ad nauseum that republican voters everywhere, even in red states, are wealthier than democratic voters. In all demographics, even white voters, wealth correlates with republican lean. And as far as the insurrection at the capitol: almost everyone arrested there has been an employed or retired middle class person, often in a white collar job. Which isn't surprising, of course: most people had to travel to be there.
    - Miner49er 6y ago
      I think you are working with old data. In 2008 that was true, now it's the opposite. The median income of Democrats is higher than Republicans'. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is-becoming-as-stark-as-its-politics.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is... I guess that maybe doesn't take into account cost of living differences and all that, though.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        Gah, that's comparing districts, not voters! They're saying not that poor people vote republican, but that poorer areas tend to be red. Even within those districts, poorer folks vote democrat. It also runs afoul of the problem of using median statistics in a distribution that isn't gaussian. In fact per this quick article I found trying to check out the conclusion in your link, it's bathtub-shaped: both the poorest and wealthiest counties trend strongly blue. https://qz.com/1919592/why-joe-biden-will-win-rich-places-but-not-rich-people/ https://qz.com/1919592/why-joe-biden-will-win-rich-places-bu...
qsort 6y ago
> We've got more than enough resources to ensure a good and happy baseline existence What is this supposed to mean? What is 'enough' is relative. Present-day Western society would have looked like the literal garden of Eden to the average human from 2000 BC. There have never been, nor there will ever be, 'enough' resources for everyone: resources are limited, human desires are (thankfully) not.
- mmastrac 6y ago
  "Enough" for most people seems to be about 75k-95k USD per year equivalent [1]. We _might_ not have enough resources yet to provide that much for UBI [2] but we can drastically raise the baseline level of happiness of the populace. [1] https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-buys-happiness-for-a-certain-amount.html https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-... [2] More and more automation could get us there
  - matz1 6y ago
    > More and more automation could get us there The only thing that can work is if technology/automation is advance enough that everybody can live happily without depending on other people at all. That even 'other people' can be replaced by virtual people that indistinguishable from real one. The problem is if everybody live like this, can it be still called society ?
  - qsort 6y ago
    Quoting from your own link: "And, there was substantial variation across world regions, with satiation occurring later in wealthier regions for life satisfaction," Jebb said. "This could be because evaluations tend to be more influenced by the standards by which individuals compare themselves to other people." Sure, it's 75k now. Is it guaranteed to stay at 75k? There isn't a universal constant by which you can assert "okay, this level of wealth is, and will always be, enough for everyone". > We _might_ not have enough resources yet to provide that much for UBI. That's... way more than the US GDP per capita...
- Ericson2314 6y ago

dusted 6y ago

meh, it's time mankind grew up, anyone stating to be "proud to be a/an `nationality`" is just another simpleton, it's the belief that someone, because they just so happened to be born where they did, are inherently better or more than someone who arbitrarily was born somewhere outside some geographical area. That's BS to such a degree that it's amazing we're not actively making an effort to denationalize peoples of the world. There's nothing more damaging than having such beliefs (religion maybe, but I think I'll fold religion and nationalism into one since nationalists are often the ones to insist that a true scotsman has some specific religion). Sure, there are differences, but they are differences that are taught and indoctrinated, not something we're born with, and we can "simply" stop doing that.

anewaccount2021 6y ago
This is such an HN comment. For 95% of the people alive right now, it matters very much where they live and what nationality they are. See: every migrant crisis. Or people who have a bank account insured by their government. Or anyone on any kind of social security. etc etc etc The 0.1% can get in their jet and go to New Zealand, or buy a Swiss passport with BTC...so sure, place is irrelevant to them. Not so for everyone else.
- dusted 6y ago
  The idea of escaping from whatever is currently a dirty hellhole to the magical land of X where everything is better, is exactly the same kind of backward thinking, what you're describing with the 0.1% is no different than all other migration towards greener pastures, and it shows why we can't continue like this.. More or less the entire world is going to turn into a trashfire unless we unite and fix it, so that everywhere is a nice place to live, nationalism won't fix it, it prevents it from being fixed, because we've divided the globe into more and less desirable geometric shapes, it didn't work, next.
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    You've been watching too much Star Trek.

hehehaha 6y ago

Sooner rather than later political borders will be meaningless. Not because of some altruistic social movement but purely due to necessity for survival.

KineticLensman 6y ago
History suggests that the people on the survivable side of the border might not like large numbers of migrants coming across from the other side. Exhibit A: Europe and the problem of migrants from Africa.

kyleblarson 6y ago

It seems awfully presumptuous to assume that a universal society is desirable in the first place.

silicon2401 6y ago
That was exactly my thoughts. The article comes to a conclusion I agree with (a universal society is unattainable) from a starting point I completely disagree with (a universal society is desirable). I was caught off guard by how it takes for granted its initial position with statements like this > While the erasure of borders may be laudable, Just last year we saw how the lack of strong borders can lead to fatal consequences if no entity has the authority or power to restrict movement and travel. Within the US alone, we've seen countless cases of people spreading the coronavirus simply by going to visit family, attend some political event, going on vacation, and it's all because of this universal free movement.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  Don't those consequences follow from precisely the impossibility of a universal society? Why have borders otherwise? It seems very hard to disagree with, in principle, either premise: "universal" or "multipolar"; if the premise is granted its relevant impossibilities. Would you prefer to live in a world which is necessarily maximally particular; or necessarily maximally universal? Well, in either world, there would be no human beings. And whatever species would exist there could be designed to be maximally happy, flourishing, etc.
- francisofascii 6y ago
  A universal society may not be desirable, but the freedom of movement is desirable. It is certainly high up the list of desired human rights.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  This is a very common miscommunication regarding idealistic goals. When somebody has an idealistic goal, they don't mean that they think the practical downsides are worth living with forever. The implication is that they want to overcome those downsides. E.g. getting rid of the poisons of nationalism without getting rid of the differences in culture, or getting rid of the restriction of movement based on national borders without getting rid of the ability to restrict movement during a viral outbreak. These types of goals sound almost impossible, at least until a far flung future, but that's why we say these are ideals. Colloquially, "idealism" implies "almost impossible". The misunderstanding comes when one person speaks under the assumption that these downsides are surmountable, and the other person speaks under the assumption that these downsides are insurmountable, when really they should be arguing more directly about how to achieve the goal or how achieving it is unrealistic, instead of Team Idealism just saying "think about this future, wouldn't it be great?", and Team Realism just saying "we haven't achieved it yet, so I think it's impossible".

bwestergard 6y ago

For such a tendentious article, the citations to opposing viewpoints are fairly lacking. > A review of both the psychology literature and anthropological research on societies ranging from the ethnolinguistic groups of hunter-gatherers to tribes, chiefdoms, and states (less formally, “nations”),3 reveal that a universal society is unattainable. Big if true! The key supposition here is that the concept of a "nation", and thus an analysis of "nationalism" applies across human history (even pre-history!) and in all different localities. Contrast this with the view that what we think of as nationalism is a distinctly modern phenomena, an outgrowth of the rise of capitalist social relations and print as a mass medium. On this view, nationalism is initially a curiously European phenomena and later spreads outward with the march of "print-capitalism". I find this analysis much easier to square with the early modern history of Japan or China, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community

eeZah7Ux 6y ago
The article does a lot of cherry-picking papers, adding in some unspoken assumption and then jumping to conclusions. The biggest one is that it constantly confuses nationality with social affiliations.

jeroenhd 6y ago

"The European Union offers no grand foundation story, no venerable symbols or traditions." Doesn't it? The origins of the EU were founded to end the endless wars between Europe's powerful nations and we haven't had a Franco-Germanic war since its inception. The wealth across the entire EU has increased with initiatives like the Schengen acquis, international relations are closer than ever and the freedoms European citizens have gotten out of it are unlike anything imaginable before. Many people inside of the EU are identifying themselves more as "European citizens" than as "German/Spanish/Polish" citizens. It's fair to say that the EU has no traditions outside those necessary for keeping the government running, but traditions form over lifetimes and even just the origins of the EU are little more than 60 years old. Give it some time and humans will create their silly little traditions. The EU's origin is not one of conquest, but one of peace and prosperity. If people cannot stand behind the EU because it was not formed by violence, then the problem is not with the symbols or stories themselves but with people's tendency to value righteous conquest over peace and prosperity. Several countries, including my own, have always kept at a distance because they did not want to be dissolved into an overarching government or because they wanted to keep their cultural independence. The UK is one of the most extreme examples of those; they've tried to fight EU legislation tooth and nail against the union they've voluntarily joined. The way Britain behaved in the EU makes me feel that they should have stayed out and signed agreements like Norway and Switzerland signed instead, though I suppose the limitations of the power they could exercise to neighbouring states would not have been enticing.

DamnYuppie 6y ago
Not all conquest requires a clash of armies. It can be a forced conquest using financial pressure and adherence to less than ideal social ideologies. This of course happens more slowly.
davidivadavid 6y ago
> Many people inside of the EU are identifying themselves more as "European citizens" than as "German/Spanish/Polish" citizens. I'd be very surprised if that were the case. Have any studies been done on that?
svara 6y ago

marcus_holmes 6y ago

> Ironically, Britain’s relations with the EU unraveled when its self-identity was under stress, with Northern Ireland and Scotland increasingly likely opting to secede from the UK, a fracture along ancient cultural lines that’s the norm for modern societies. This isn't a symptom, it's the cause (imho). Brexit was only popular with nationalist English people. Because England has been submerged into Britain the longest (to the point that being English is almost synonymous with being British), and actually having any kind of English nationalism is actually pretty new. The UK was always a reluctant, annoying member of the EU, because we basically thought of ourselves as The British Empire and the EU as a trade treaty and nothing more. Germany and France make no secret of their desire for political union, and that's not really compatible with the British. We have to get rid of the British Empire before we can properly join the European one. So I believe that the UK will break up in the next 10 years or so. Scotland will be the first to go, and rejoin the EU immediately. That will trigger Northern Ireland (re)joining Ireland as it becomes clear the UK isn't actually a thing any more. The Welsh will take a good long look at themselves and decide to stay with England after all. Then England-and-Wales (just "Britain" again I guess - the old Roman territory) will rejoin the EU. Now that the English are free of the dreams of Empire and are no longer submerged into Great Britain, we'll be able to contribute to the European Adventure and stop being such awkward holdouts. That's my take on Brexit, anyway. I'll be fascinated to see how it all goes. Especially since I'm living in Berlin and it's starting to matter ;)

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intrepidhero 6y ago

People are hard-wired to form tribes and self segregate into groups. I don't think we're going to grow out of that behavior anytime in the next 1000 years. But the author makes a leap from there to "nationalism is inevitable." There is an entire spectrum of organizational bodies and humans need not (and probably cannot) abolish all of them to form some sort of universal civilization. Surely there are ways we can retain regional cultural uniqueness and small group identities while gaining the ability to cooperate and share values?

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sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>People are hard-wired to form tribes and self segregate into groups. I don't think we're going to grow out of that behavior anytime in the next 1000 years. Into classes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society Marx and communism has everything do to with classes. That is to say in order for communism to work you must have a classless society. Soon as you have inequality based on anything, 2 classes form. Those with and those without. It comes down to even a surplus of production. We could theoretically have the same job but I work 40 hours/week and you work 20 hours/week. I will therefore be in a class higher than you. If I am not in a higher class, then I won't work those 40 hours and I'll go down to those 20 hours. OR I try to force you to work 40 hours. >There is an entire spectrum of organizational bodies and humans need not (and probably cannot) abolish all of them to form some sort of universal civilization. Surely there are ways we can retain regional cultural uniqueness and small group identities while gaining the ability to cooperate and share values? That adds a significant level of complexity.
- intrepidhero 6y ago
  I wasn't thinking about classes when I wrote the comment but I agree they are fundamental axis along which people divide themselves. I think class differences are an underappreciated source of conflict in our world today and there are inequities that we should be working hard to correct. That said, my point was we need not abolish all the many ways that people differentiate themselves in order to have (more) universal cooperation: involving mostly everyone and mostly everywhere, not necessarily on everything. And we need higher levels of cooperation to address the biggest challenges humanity faces. > That adds a significant level of complexity. Any system that aspires to unify a wide swath of humanity with all it's diversity and frailties will be tautologically complex.

jkingsbery 6y ago

In focusing on Brexit (and possible secession of Northern Ireland and Scotland from the UK), the author seems to equate "society" with a political entity. The author never defines what he means by society, but it seems like perfectly good definitions ("the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" is the definition Google gives) mean that society is something not just political. Other definitions ("a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests" is the definition given by https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society) make the concept of a "Universal Society" an oxymoron - we cannot have a universal society until we have, among other things, universal traditions. > "But what might happen if people could forgo those traits that “mark” their identities or somehow put aside the drive to categorize each other by means of such labels—to separate us from them based on language, clothing, gestures, or religious beliefs?" This line of questioning trivializes what religious belief means for many of us. I don't know much about the author, but there is an idea among many who are not religious that religion is an arbitrary "mark." While it certainly can be that and has often played that role in history, this oversimplifies differences in world view. I belong to a Catholic parish not out of accident but because of choice, and I seek friendship within my Catholic parish because our shared world view gives us a basis for understanding that I don't share with my non-Catholic and non-Christian coworkers. ------ > "its [the EU's] members have a history of conflict dating from the Middle Ages" Perhaps this is a nit-pick, but sentences like this seem to reinforce that the Middle Ages was when conflict began in Europe. Europe had lots of conflict before the Middle Ages. Further, what fighting happened in Europe during the Middle Ages usually happened despite a stronger sense of a universal community (membership in the Christian church) then existed for hundreds of years later, demonstrating a counterexample of the author's hypothesis about some general trend toward universalization of society.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Curious. I'm just reading Sapiens and there the author presents the exact opposite thesis - that if you take a high-level view of history, there's a clear trend towards unification. Cultures meet, mix and merge. And I find this view easier to square with reality. Especially in the last century, we can see how the "western culture" - which is better called universal culture - has reached and embedded itself in pretty much every nation on the planet. Almost everyone respects the dollar. Almost everyone has a McDonald's. As the economies of nations became deeply intertwined, we've entered the world where everyone's tools, foods, entertainment and habits start to look alike. I think it's just a matter of time before what we consider "local culture" will finally get reduced to a mere curiosity.