8 ms·

I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and

• raverbashing 5y ago
  You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example) The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.
  • johnnycerberus 5y ago
    Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.
  • pferde 5y ago
    Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.
• pydry 5y ago
  Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances. Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group. Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.
• daliusd 5y ago
  How do you abolish nation? What's wrong with current EU situation endorsing diversity? You can federate EU and abolish national governments and that's happening slowly.
  • msravi 5y ago
    Even if you were to abolish the national governments you would still need a local government that can always be at odds with the central government, right? But if you abolish these local governments as well, then you're basically imposing central diktats on a population, correct? How do you resolve the dichotomy?
    • daliusd 5y ago
      Kind of correct. E.g. you may eliminate national parliaments and have only EU parliament. Yes, it has problems, but it feels something like that will happen eventually in EU. I am OK that this happens slowly.
• apexalpha 5y ago
  What's the point of becoming one nation if everyone has different languages?
  • adrianN 5y ago
    There are a number of benefits, one that comes immediately to mind is having a common army and saving costs. Another one is that having a common currency, but not a common fiscal policy is not a good idea. I don't think language differences are a problem. There are a couple of nations with multiple official languages.
  • mejutoco 5y ago
    Leverage against common threads or to accomplish common goals. Besides, there are many nations/countries with several official languages already. Having several languages does not invalidate all the advantages.
  • rsynnott 5y ago
    Ask Switzerland, or, on a larger scale, China.
• reader_mode 5y ago
  >Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Because outside of your bubble nobody wants this. A random person from Bulgaria is going to have a very different culture from a random person from Netherlands. What do you think happens with power in such conglomerate ? If you want to see what happens when you create a forced conglomerate of different nations (but still more similar than EU member, languages were way closer and cultures were close as well) into a super state look up Yugoslavia.
  • blocked_again 5y ago
    India does this already. With 3x more population and probably has much more diversity and cultural differences than EU.
    • reader_mode 5y ago
      By that logic India and Pakistan should also merge.
      • blocked_again 5y ago
        No your logic was it's not possible to have a country with so much diversity. I just showed a counter example.
        • reader_mode 5y ago
          I know very little about history of India or the culture, but I guarantee you that creating such entity would result in a civil war, demonstrated throughout European history.
          • blocked_again 5y ago
            Yeah. I also don't think it's probably a good idea for the EU to become a country. Countries have a lot more power, autonomy etc which states lack. I think the current system of EU is pretty good.
• wrnr 5y ago
  Lets merge all soccer clubs into one, then there will no longer be a need for matches since one club just has all the players they don't even need to be the best. Nationalism is a very recent affair, the idea that people and not just the nobility have nations is a 19 century concept.
  • upgrejd 5y ago
    Nationalism may be relatively young but tribalism has existed as long as humans. Nationalism just happens to be the most successful form of tribalism.
  • tome 5y ago
    > Nationalism is a very recent affair, the idea that people and not just the nobility have nations is a 19 century concept. Is that right? Sounds like the opposite to me. The English King, German Kaiser and Russian Tsar during WWI were cousins. https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-kaiser-the-tsar-and-king-george-v-cousins-at-war-in-ww1 https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-kaiser-the-tsar-and-k...
    • boomboomsubban 5y ago
      Yes. The German Kaiser was the result of the nationalist German speaking people uniting under the Prussian King. Russia had steadfastly rejected the ideas of nationalism and maintained the Tsar had the divine right to rule, and the British royalty was already largely a figurehead for the British "nation." There can exist nationalist monarchies, just the thing keeping then bound is not that they are the same rulers subjects.
• paganel 5y ago
  > their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them. Because when the going gets really tough that abstract "human being" from across the Continent won't care at all about you, while at the same time the person geographically closer to you and who might belong to the same nation might prove to be a better ally. Just think of the Greece crisis of 2012 when the "human beings" from The Netherlands were generally just assholes to their fellow human beings who happened to live in Athens or in Thessaloniki.
  • greendesk 5y ago
    Or just think of the mirror statement. It is a practice to reverse a statement, to see if it logically consistent. Here, it will go: Or think of the Greece crisis of 2012 when the “human beings” from Greece were generally just assholes to their fellow human beings who happened to live in Slovenia, Munich or Denmark. Note that the Greek crisis included a transfer from poorer Slovenia to the richer Greece. Note that Greeks as a nation has a high savings - the money has been within Greece jurisdiction all along. Note that Greece has a high corruption rate. While the first statement stands, the use of Greek crisis of 2012 signifies the authority different jurisdictions have in aiming for effective administration.
    • paganel 5y ago
      > Note that Greece has a high corruption rate. Merkel actively lobbied for the corrupt Wirecard company in front of China officials while the company had been under investigation, afaik the highest Greek official has done no such vile and corrupt things. Unfortunately what Merkel did does not get counted in various "corruption charts" for various reasons (Orientalism being just one of them).
• seaknoll 5y ago
  Isn’t it all just a question of what scale is the “best”? I agree with your premise but in practice, determining the best policies on trade - much less issues like education and poverty - on a smaller scale is much more tractable than thinking in terms of ever larger subsets of the human race. We should be just as saddened by civilians dying in Iraq as the US, but that doesn’t mean we know what’s best for them in terms of any of the above. Any grouping of people advocating for themselves ultimately needs an organizing body, and the cycle of tribalism continues.
• jeroenhd 5y ago
  People are tribal by nature. They will get into fights because their neighbour supports the "wrong" sports club, and you can extend that up to any level. Within a country there's city vs city, city vs countryside, and above country level there's EU vs US, or "the west" vs "the east". People group together with others that share certain cultural values. Ever since borders, passports and standard languages have been the norm, this has only been reinforced. I don't feel culturally similar to many other European countries, most notable Hungary, Poland and some other countries that have been sliding towards the far right. I wouldn't want the people who voted Orban into power to outvote me, either. Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes. There are very practical reasons against the North American Alliance; for example, Canada has socialised healthcare, while you can't even get the suggestion off the ground in the US. Such political differences don't just disappear. I don't want a European superstate because I disagree with most people that would live in it. My ideals would no longer be represented by my government. I think that's enough reason not to go for complete European unification. Opinions can change, so maybe some day we can all agree, but with Hungary fighting the free press and its people cheering Orban on, I can't say I expect this situation to change any time soon.
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    > People are tribal by nature. Maybe, but what "tribe" are you part of is completely fluid. Your tribe can be extremely inclusive or exclusive. > Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes. And it is quite of inevitable as communication and travel becomes cheaper. > I don't want a European superstate because I disagree with most people that would live in it. My ideals would no longer be represented by my government. I think that's enough reason not to go for complete European unification. That is easily an argument against any form of government. No country would exist this way for good or bad. But they exists. As you said, bigger communities are a matter of time. What it would have been an impossible union 100 years ago it makes a lot of sense today.
    • rorroe53 5y ago
• tiborsaas 5y ago
  > Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? With the borders opened, it's very similar to what you describe. It just takes lots of time and stability which Orban and friends undermines all the time. That's why we can't have nice things. Don't underestimate the power of cultural diversity, it's not like the US where everybody speaks English and you can fit in quite easily if you move a state or two.
• visarga 5y ago
  Playing devil's advocate for a second: be careful what you're saying: some will interpret your call as an attack on their identity and attempt at hiding historical injustice. Same happens with people who say "I see no color" believing this is a good approach to nondiscrimination. I think emphasizing differences at the expense of commonalities is a huge mistake, just as much as disregarding those differences. Diversity in unity and unity in diversity, always a difficult balancing act.
• rorroe53 5y ago
  There are many practical problems to actually implementing this idea. First, money. Some parts of the EU are way richer than others, with superior welfare systems. If every EU citizen is to be truly equal, then that would mean same standards of government services and welfare everywhere, which would be costly to the richer states. Of course, alternatively we could lower standards everywhere, but that's not good for people. Then there's cultural, economic, geolocial differences in general, higher corruption in many members states of east/south... Plenty of things to consider. Leaders in some parts of the EU really won't understand the situation in other parts, which makes any kind of centralized government problematic. Perhaps a very decentralized model could work though, but then again that's not much different from what we have now. Also, nationalism is hardly "an ancient mentality". Healthy nationalism, a common idea and identity is something pretty much all well-functioning countries have. United States of Europe would never work without a common European identity, and controlled outer borders. Cultural differences between different parts of the world are still way too large for anything like democratic one world government to work.
• biscotte_ 5y ago
  So if the concept of nation is ancient why do you want to create an EU... nation ????
• sharken 5y ago
  I am not at all surprised by the popularity of Orbán. An important part is the strong resistance to migrants, which would mean a great influx of mainly Arabs with an incompatible culture and religion compared to Europe. Look to Sweden to see how it goes when you allow too many migrants into a European country. On the other hand there are many serious problems with Orbáns rule, e.g. trying to control the free press, not respecting the rights of LGBT. But to many hungarians it is better to have a controlled migration than all the listed downsides.
  • turbinerneiter 5y ago
    This is what people in Austria said when the Hungarian people were allowed to work here. It was all hate and "they took our jobs". Many people in the west saw and see the eastern Europeans just as the eastern Europeans see the "Arabs". I'd honestly rather see my tax money spent on helping a refugee from Africa than see it funneled to corrupt Orban in Hungary.
• jakub_g 5y ago
  As someone who moved countries within the EU, I started looking at things from global perspective, and what matters today is the power balance between EU, US, China. Whereas within EU most countries still look at their own interest, fueled by politicians and their 4-5 years election periods. This is really sad, because the EU is digging their own grave. Re: your comment, it's not only on nation level. People have tendency to form groups and build their identity on "us vs them" basis. That's why you have rivalries between football clubs from different cities etc. Anyway, language and culture/history is a powerful thing that people can't get over in us-vs-them thinking. There's also business in play which collides with politics a lot. For example Germany are fine doing business with Russia, while for Poland, Lithuania and other Russia-bordering countries, RU is #1 evil and existential threat.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• poisonborz 5y ago
  While this is a very simplistical and easy to rebuff argument as other replies did, a non-national "country" could be theoretically doable - save for the landmass, which is all occupied by existing ~national countries. Culture has not that much to do with national borders anymore. Just think about a "nation" of Elon Musk Followers, a nation of LGBTQ+ supporters, Real Madrid fans, or admirers of Oprah Winfrey. Whenever we will be able to colonize landmasses like the Moon or Mars, it would be possible that these kind of artificial communities could flurish. Colonisation will most likely be done by market-driven corporations, which could allege with these communities based on donations/taxation.
• jollybean 5y ago
  Why not abolish the EU? EU nationalism is actually stronger than local nationalism in many circles - I rarely see comments defending any nation state here (except the Swiss, cough, cough, mostly kidding) but any criticism of the EU is met with zealotry. More pragmatically, the EU makes little sense as anything but an economic block. The notion that Germans and Greeks are going to accept real transfer payments, common taxation, common fiscal policy and similar rights to healthcare quality is basically ... bonkers. Germany would be the first to split.
• swiley 5y ago
  When you get big enough it's hard to hold people accountable. The US federal government is almost too big already.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > Nationalism is an ancient mentality Not just nationalism, but tribalism. That's why the US has such an appalling record of bias. Each new wave of immigrants (not to mention the ones that were here, to start with, and those that were dragged over, against their will) has been met with torrents of hatred, abuse, and state-sanctioned terror. In most cases, it had little to do with skin color, and everything to do with cultural differences. When I lived in Africa, I saw tribalism writ large. It gets bad. If we think it's only in the developing world, then we simply need to look at what happened to Yugoslavia, after Tito died. I think that tribalism is in our DNA, and it takes a real, concerted, conscious, effort to fight it. That's hard, humbling, work, and most folks aren't up for it. Externally-imposed structure (Tito) works, but it's a temporary band-aid.
  • bwb 5y ago
    Agreed, it is going to take time to change this cultural response to what is different/new. We are not purely slaves to our DNA, but it will be an upward battle. Government and business can improve this and have. As does time :)
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? I can think of a few reasons. - It would erase culture, a slow process already ongoing. National identity, regional culture, etc would all go. - You'd have to reconcile the differences in rules, culture and law. Take drugs; the Netherlands is liberal with soft drugs, Portugal is more liberal with hard drugs, other countries still put you in jail for having any of those. Which one will it be? Who will pick what option? - Wealth disparity. Euro-skeptics have long complained about how much money the wealthy countries pay to Europe, and how much is funneled to the poorer countries. Make it one nation and every city, every farm, every individual will instantly demand to receive and be paid the same amount. Same complexities with health care / insurance, government stipends, benefits, taxes, etc. Just abolishing nations is infeasible. Europe as it is is slowly turning its members into a more uniformized whole, but it can't be an overnight thing. And we have made some really big steps towards erasing borders; see the Schengen accord, removing border posts and customs between member states. See the Euro, removing barriers for moving money from one country to the next. And see the UK, who decided that was not to their benefit and removed themselves from the EU again.
  • bwb 5y ago
    It wouldn't erase culture in anyway... just help us remember we are all earthlings. You can still be french, french-basque, etc etc. Abolishing nations is totally feasible, what it is replaced with is just democracy on a local to global level. It will take time but I have high hopes it will get there.
• bluthund 5y ago
  What a sick mentality. Globalism and mass immigration is the destructor of culture. Nationalism is the only rational mentality for long term sustainability. A people should never be ruled by those who have no blood in the soil or by those who don't serve the needs of that people. Nationalism is what makes great nations. You can forget about that for a while and play the game of the inevitable failure of multiculturalism, but it will always fail, you will always destroy society, and from the ashes, a cohesive, homogeneous people will reemerge to build back from the ashes of your stupidity as has always been done
  • nameequalsmain 5y ago
    > Globalism and mass immigration is the destructor of culture. In what way? It might change the cultural landscape but that happens all the time, even the most nationalistic state does not have the exact same culture it did 100 years ago. Old culture will go away to make place for a new one, or rather, culture is always evolving. > You can forget about that for a while and play the game of the inevitable failure of multiculturalism, but it will always fail, you will always destroy society, and from the ashes, a cohesive, homogeneous people will reemerge to build back from the ashes of your stupidity as has always been done Do you have any examples?
  • bwb 5y ago
    Eh? What a weird response and I can't tell if you are a troll given the age of your account... Globalism is one of the best things to happen to our planet. I look forward to the next 1,000 years and hopefully reaching a point where everyone realizes we have a responsibility to every other person on this planet, as well as the planet itself. And, that a base level of respect and acceptance should be granted to every person on this planet. Nationalism is an interesting step on which we climbed. But, it is an arbitrary marker to divide people and I look forward to history washing it away in xxx years. I do not think people should be ruled, I think people should rule themselves through some form of democracy. Are you advocating something other than democracy?
• dalbasal 5y ago
  >> Nationalism is an ancient mentality In some sense, maybe... The foundations are ancient. But... The "world order" where the globe is divided into nation states is quite new. Before that, multinational empires were the dominant mode. We tend to think of west european empires as the canonical: french, british and spanish. These empires had clear "home countries," so the dynamic was "nation ruling other nations." Other empires were more ambiguous. EG the Austro Hungarian Empire & the Ottoman empires. They had capitals, centres of power and such. But, geographic and ethnic national boundaries were much fuzzier within these empires. The border changes, forced migrations and ethnic cleansing that created the modern nation state world happened mostly within the last 100 years. Take Warsaw, for example. Before WW2, ethnic Poles were about 50% of the population. Jews & Germans were the next biggest groups. This was typical of european cities. After the war, Warsaw and Poland within its new borders was/is >90% Polish. Also typical. Meanwhile, countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland & Belgium that didn't fit into the "nation state" template were pretty unstable. The USSR's dissolution pretty much cemented a world order where nation states dominate. That's recent. What you are advocating for is, by some definition, the establishment of an EU Empire. Maybe a democratic empire is possible, but we don't really have example to draw on.
• workallday21 5y ago
  You are naive.
• A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  We barely trust 'our' own representatives and you want us to trust those other guys? In all seriousness, the issue is trust. And I have no idea how we could possibly get there as a human kind.
  • bwb 5y ago
    I trust my reps to be human, and I trust anyone else to be human as that is what they all are :) It might take a hundred or a thousand years, but that is where I'd like to see us go. And, it seems like that is where we are going given the global nature of business. Do you think people working at FB or Google who are working with people in 15+ countries don't realize how similar we all are? And, that this entire concept of nations is largely a farce?
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      I like that optimism and am hoping. To your point: But what kind of human are they? Do they share belief A? Do they use position B on Tuesdays? Do they not associate with Cs? Do they have righteous gene D?
      • bwb 5y ago
        Ya agreed, it is going to take some time but a good place to aim for :) I'd like to see a shared believe that we are all human beings who are not that different in the grand scheme of things. And that everyone is worth a base level of respect. That seems like a good place to aim for. And... still thinking on this one... but I think that the quickest way to lose that base level of respect is if you are someone who advocates that someone else is not worthy of that base level of respect. I am blown away by how many people define themselves by who they hate/dislike/don't-understand, and somehow that becomes a rally cry for their identity. It is a weird mentality. The conflict between being in society and an individual is a hard one. I always like to imagine a global system where you opt into a legal system / social contract of your choice. I'll take Shite law, or I'll take the American society contract, or I'll take Chinese CCP contract, or Nordic contract....
• fallingknife 5y ago
  I am always amazed how many people say things like this while comfortably living behind the economic walls of their rich nation typing on a phone made by near slaves on the other side of it.
  • bwb 5y ago
    I am always amazed by the assumptions people make :) What do you disagree with? I have family living in China, and I live in Portugal. Why do you like nationalism so much and feel so threatened by the loss of your nation as an identity? Why is it not enough to just be human surrounded by other humans who are identical to you?
    • no_time 5y ago
      Because the average western urbanite that would become the majority in a federal EU thinks vastly differently from me. I identify with a lot of groups other than my nationality but I always felt 0% European mainly because of the amount of insanity going on to west of where I am. As far as I'm concerned I can't wait for this whole shitshow to end up on the chopping block.
      • bwb 5y ago
        How do they think differently than you?Where are you based? My guess is you want to live in an unpolluted environment where the land/water doesn't make you sick, eat food that doesn't kill you, if you want/have kids to know they will have the chance of a good life and good education, have a government free from corruption, know that your legal system treats everyone as fair and equally as possible as a goal, have fair labor practices, and generally be treated with respect. etc... We are all the same, the differences are amplified to a crazy amount and they shouldn't define us.
        • no_time 5y ago
          >How do they think differently than you? Answering this to the fullest extent may or may not get this account banned. Since I intend on keeping it, let's just say my views differ on almost all currently controversial social issues and some but not all economical ones. >Where are you based? Rural Hungary. Contrary what you may be thinking right now, I'm not an Orbán voter. >My guess is you want to live in an unpolluted environment where the land/water doesn't make you sick, eat food that doesn't kill you, if you want/have kids to know they will have the chance of a good life and good education, have a government free from corruption, know that your legal system treats everyone as fair and equally as possible as a goal, have fair labor practices, and generally be treated with respect. etc... Indeed. I just do not think the EU helped any of these issues on a level that requires greater coordination than a nation state can provide. To give you some examples, They failed to grow a spine and stand up to the US in any way. Big Tech,espionage,military and the general economic grip the US has are great examples of this. Another structural problem I have is the endless bureaucracy that corrupts the whole machine from top to bottom. The other day I attempted to interpret a directive amendment I have read conflicting news about and I gave up halfway through because the whole thing is so verbose and unintelligble (+ riddled with basic logical problems) I just gave up. I'm not a law expert by any means(though I can interpret Hungarian law mostly fine on my own) but if a person like me can't parse the drivel they spew endlessly, how could the average citizen meaningfully engage with the process? I think we need less complexity in the chain of command not more. Lastly, they are so damn far away. How are we supposed to drag EU bureaucrats out to the streets when they become lamppost positive? This might be a minor thing but I can't imagine this very "safe" distance between us the people and them is healthy for democracy.
• bagacrap 5y ago
  On the contrary I think people would be happier in the US if it did split into multiple nations.
  • bwb 5y ago
    Would people be happier if they never faced any loss or conflict? I think the answer to that question is clearly no. Forget about the deeper question of what is real "happiness" and is that a meaningful goal in life... We are resilient and these current conflicts are merely the by product of growth, learning, and building a stronger community and culture.