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Interesting and thought-provoking! But, similar to how he mentions that the predominance of monogamy in the modern world might be a result of cultural evolutio

Interesting and thought-provoking! But, similar to how he mentions that the predominance of monogamy in the modern world might be a result of cultural evolution, this line from the end raises a question: "Perhaps we should accept gracefully the inevitable sundering of ‘national’ cultures, and learn to operate within a truly multicultural world." Well, maybe...or maybe those few national cultures that persist, will find that they can steamroll over the fragmented once-were-nations that cannot muster the joint effort to resist them. There's a reason large states arose in the first place, to displace hunter-gatherer tribes, and it is precisely this. If you don't maintain a national culture, you're not going to have anyone willing to fight to defend it. Which, if every single nation has that happen, maybe that's fine. But if even one persists, it will find itself an elephant in a world of mice, who wonder why no one else is willing to defend them when they are trampled on.

randomluck040 5y ago
Isn’t the „Identity“ situation the reason why Afghanistan went back to the Taliban the moment the NATO left? I‘ve read[0] about it at least and apparently there was no real idea of a country called „Afghanistan“ among the citizens of the country. [0] https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/there-no-afghanistan-daniel-greenfield/#commento https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/there-no-afghanis...
wolverine876 5y ago
The data doesn't support that: The predominant, most prosperous, safest, most free societies have been the internationalist ones, in Europe, the US, Canada, Japan, S Korea, etc etc. There are strong hypotheses to back the data: Nationalism divides people at arbitrary borders, limiting their ability to travel, trade, and work together. Nationalists isolate themselves. We know well from economics that trade is best when it depends on economic merit, not on which artificial border you happen to live behind; it helps buyers and sellers - nobody will buy your goods if you don't buy theirs. Imagine science without internationalism. Imagine the IT industry - FOSS has contributors world-wide; the web was developed in Switzerland by a Brit, and shared by the world. Linux in Finland, etc. In terms of security, the nationalists have only themselves; the internationalists have each other, such as the most successful and powerful alliance in history, NATO. Imagine the Cold War without internationalism in Europe, as the USSR took one small country after another. The free world's enormous advantage in military competition with China is that they have each other, they have allies. Nationalism has a horrible track record, creating war and poverty, and the underlying curse, hate - arbitrarily, purposefully created - often by leaders using nationalism for their own power: 'be loyal to the nation, and I am the nation, I make the decisions'. Many, including Churchill, blamed nationalism for WWII (which is why the survivors built the UN and the predecessor of the EU). The internationalist world has produced freedom, security, and prosperity at orders of magnitude beyond what humanity ever experienced before. It seems bizarre to me to trade that in for the old nationalist ideologies.
- notfromhere 5y ago
  Those states had strong national cultures but an internationalist foreign policy outlook. Most European countries are ethnic national states with one dominant culture. The only real not ethnostates are the UK and maybe...Bosnia? There are Different flavors of nationalism, but I don’t think you can lump them all as isolationist
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Those states had strong national cultures but an internationalist foreign policy outlook. Are you using the past tense for a reason? And don't forget trade, the lack of passports or border controls in the EU, etc. > Most European countries are ethnic national states with one dominant culture. Don't forget Spain, Italy, and I'm sure we can come up with many more. Clearly they all have participated in the EU for decades, as well as many other international groupings. > There are Different flavors of nationalism, but I don’t think you can lump them all as isolationist It depends on how you define it; I was using the (implied, as I understood it) definition in the parent of my comment. If we define nationalism as 'roots for the Olympic team', then we are talking about something completely different.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  What data are you referring to, exactly? I think all the words you use are ill defined. Also, correlation and causation? Strong countries invade other countries and assimilate them, thereby becoming more multi-cultural?
- jollybean 5y ago
  A bit worse than wrong because your postulating 'data' that fairly clearly indicates the opposite of what you are saying. Also there are some serious misunderstandings here. China is 'a free society' and 'internationalist'? (Han) China has always been the opposite of 'free', which of course is a modern concept, that's not a judgement, just what it is. And they have not really ever been 'internationalist' only just recently joining the internationalist order, and vaguely so. But that aside: China, Japan and Korea, if we were to apply our reasoning objectively to them as we do ourselves, are objectively 'far right ethno-nationalist' states. They are technically, quite fascist. I wouldn't want to use that label in normal discussion as I don't want to trigger or flame war, but in all reality, this is the fact. All three have very, very strong national narratives about who they are, their origin, their superiority (to greater or lesser extent). They are ethnocentric culturally (i.e. a Black person in Korea might be very respected, but nevertheless considered 'not Korean'). Their religion, elite, and culture tie together, literally in Japan with the God Head Emperor, and in all three places elite families ruling by long held extra-governmental power networks. 'Samsung' is not a corporate formation that we would understand in North America, though Europeans might understand it a bit. Japan and especially China historically have conquered and assimilated vast territories in the vein of de-facto superiority, some of this goes on today in E. China and Tibet. This is not a condemnation or anything of the sort, it's obviously complicated, it's just what it is. But those nations are the furthest thing from 'internationalist' in anything but the modern, economic sense with respect to trade and some institutions. Europe, historically, has had fuzzy political lines, but they bounce around and generally land along ethnic borders. Yugoslavia did not break up into random political territories, rather, ethnic one's. Same with Hapsburg Empire. Same with Soviets. Etc. Scandinavia is not a hodge-podge: most of the ethnic Swedes live under the same flag. Not all, but most. Obviously, especially on the continent, it's not so clear - yes - German speakers are scattered a bit in Poland, France and Czech - but they are overwhelmingly in Germany/Austria. That there are lot of 'fuzzy lines' doesn't mean lines do not exist. "The internationalist world has produced freedom, security, and prosperity at orders of magnitude beyond what humanity ever experienced before. It seems bizarre to me to trade that in for the old nationalist ideologies." This statement implies a misunderstanding of what 'Internationalist Order' and what it means. The 'Internationalist Order' is literally about 'Nation States' cooperating in some reasonable, common ground for trade and security. If anything, that 'order' is predicate upon the very notion of Nation States, it's literally part of the definition. 'The International Order' reinforces the notion of Nation State, and indirectly, nationalism. It's literally in the word: 'Inter'+'Nationalist'. Canada, US and Brazil are probably the leading examples of what 'pure' nation states are, i.e. not fully ethnocentric, and culturally more plural. I do believe there are material advantages here, but 'net net' I'm not so sure they are in the long-long term, I think it's more of a wash. But even with that plurality 'Nationalism' is still quite strong: paradoxically (or maybe not) 'Overt Nationalism' is stronger in Canada and the US than it is in Europe, because of weak local social ties, it is actively encouraged in North America. Germans (and Han Chinese, Japanese, Koean) don't need a flag to know who they are, flag waving for them is something completely different as we learned in the last decade or so where they are finally allowing the 'don't wave flags because we don't want to seem like Nazis' taboo fade a bit. I think the OP you are responding to is essentially correct, but the future is so much harder to predict. Even as we travel more and are exposed to more, we have more well-defined and managed borders than ever before, and there are few places to just 'go to', so maybe there will be less diversity in change than there was before? It's so hard to say.
kodah 5y ago
> If you don't maintain a national culture, you're not going to have anyone willing to fight to defend it. I have some doubt to this. As travel increases and salaries normalize across nations cultures are bound to meld whether people like it or not. Maintaining a national culture, at that point, will likely be looked on very negatively.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > Maintaining a national culture, at that point, will likely be looked on very negatively. Only by those making a particular salary, which is ultimately the cause of the great right-wing movements in most parts of the world, America, Europe, Asia, S America, etc. There are two classes forming... a globalist class where there is no national culture, just an international one, and nationalism is a dirty word. And a nationalistic culture of all the 'deplorables', where patriotism is still a virtue.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  There are a lot of cultures around the world that have the same salary and travel as other cultures, and they have not melded. Perhaps it is because culture is something that specifically resists melding. At the same time, some people's idea of what a culture is, or what is "melding" culture, are amorphous and ill-defined. Is McDonalds culture? Are the many regionally-specific dishes at McDonalds around the world a result of "melding" culture? Is the Poutine at McDonald's in Canada a "melding" of culture? Or is it just Canadian culture expressed through a McDonalds? Is the Banana shake at McDonald's in Japan a "melding" of American and Japanese culture? Or is it actually just "McDonald's" culture, since it's offered in Great Britain and Italy? I'll leave you this quote from the 1976 movie Network!: Arthur Jensen: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."
thisrod 5y ago
> There's a reason large states arose in the first place, to displace hunter-gatherer tribes, and it is precisely this That's a big leap, from the paleolithic world of 10 000 BC to the iron age armies of 1000 BC. Other things happened too: sedentism, agriculture, metals, buildings, money, writing, and so on. No doubt being able to feed and pay your soldiers made a big difference to their motivation!
sharikous 5y ago
An organization capable of steamrolling over nations need not be another nation. I could see huge international companies the like of Google having the might to fight nation states.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  True that. If nations have no sense of national culture and identity, then corporations inevitably become more powerful because they are still able to operate in a coordinated fashion, by "virtue" of being directed by a single person. Actually, I suppose a lack of national culture or sense of national identity would also weaken democracies more than dictatorships.
xtiansimon 5y ago
Can’t wait until the aliens show up…
pie42000 5y ago
This is a really silly, outdated world view. You don't need everyone to fight to defend countries now, we have autonomous fighter jets, satellites, nuclear submarines, robots that can do parkour while carrying hundreds of pounds of gear (machine guns, rocket launchers), remote control drones that can deliver predator missiles to targets across the globe. You don't need everyone to fight to defend countries anymore. You just need a faction of the population to be into militarism and nationalism and they'll be the warrior class that commands the robot armies that will wage the warfare of tomorrow. And looking even more forward, as corporations replace/control the government (basically already happening), the corporations will mediate armed conflicts and facilitate global cooperation in the interest of global profits. Warfare will be waged via tariffs, sanctions, and embargoes.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Thanks for the optimistic world view! :) Well, if warfare does become entirely automated, I think you would still need a nation willing to pay for that, and also willing to run the risk of it when, say, another nation tries to pick off Hawaii or whatever. Plus, warfare waged via tariffs, sanctions, and embargoes, by throwing it back into economics, would definitely require a feeling of national solidarity to stand up to it. If a supplier of oil, coal, lumber, iron ore, etc. declares an embargo until your country changes some policy, do voters tell their leaders to cave in to keep the supply coming, or do they tell them to be uncompromising and tighten their belts? If they have no real sense of national identity anyway, I think it would be harder to get them to tighten their belts.
account_c 5y ago
"Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, Western and European countries... for everyone!" European/Western countries are the only ones being denied a homeland and the preservation of their culture. European cultures are systematically being dismantled and black/brownwashed out of existence. It's reverse-colonialism.
eru 5y ago
> There's a reason large states arose in the first place, to displace hunter-gatherer tribes, and it is precisely this. Aren't you skipping quite a few steps here? Hunter gatherers have been out of the picture in most of Eurasia for thousands of years. Nation states are at most a few hundred years old.

randomluck040 5y ago

Isn’t the „Identity“ situation the reason why Afghanistan went back to the Taliban the moment the NATO left? I‘ve read[0] about it at least and apparently there was no real idea of a country called „Afghanistan“ among the citizens of the country. [0] https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/there-no-afghanistan-daniel-greenfield/#commento https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/there-no-afghanis...

wolverine876 5y ago

The data doesn't support that: The predominant, most prosperous, safest, most free societies have been the internationalist ones, in Europe, the US, Canada, Japan, S Korea, etc etc. There are strong hypotheses to back the data: Nationalism divides people at arbitrary borders, limiting their ability to travel, trade, and work together. Nationalists isolate themselves. We know well from economics that trade is best when it depends on economic merit, not on which artificial border you happen to live behind; it helps buyers and sellers - nobody will buy your goods if you don't buy theirs. Imagine science without internationalism. Imagine the IT industry - FOSS has contributors world-wide; the web was developed in Switzerland by a Brit, and shared by the world. Linux in Finland, etc. In terms of security, the nationalists have only themselves; the internationalists have each other, such as the most successful and powerful alliance in history, NATO. Imagine the Cold War without internationalism in Europe, as the USSR took one small country after another. The free world's enormous advantage in military competition with China is that they have each other, they have allies. Nationalism has a horrible track record, creating war and poverty, and the underlying curse, hate - arbitrarily, purposefully created - often by leaders using nationalism for their own power: 'be loyal to the nation, and I am the nation, I make the decisions'. Many, including Churchill, blamed nationalism for WWII (which is why the survivors built the UN and the predecessor of the EU). The internationalist world has produced freedom, security, and prosperity at orders of magnitude beyond what humanity ever experienced before. It seems bizarre to me to trade that in for the old nationalist ideologies.

notfromhere 5y ago
Those states had strong national cultures but an internationalist foreign policy outlook. Most European countries are ethnic national states with one dominant culture. The only real not ethnostates are the UK and maybe...Bosnia? There are Different flavors of nationalism, but I don’t think you can lump them all as isolationist
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Those states had strong national cultures but an internationalist foreign policy outlook. Are you using the past tense for a reason? And don't forget trade, the lack of passports or border controls in the EU, etc. > Most European countries are ethnic national states with one dominant culture. Don't forget Spain, Italy, and I'm sure we can come up with many more. Clearly they all have participated in the EU for decades, as well as many other international groupings. > There are Different flavors of nationalism, but I don’t think you can lump them all as isolationist It depends on how you define it; I was using the (implied, as I understood it) definition in the parent of my comment. If we define nationalism as 'roots for the Olympic team', then we are talking about something completely different.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
What data are you referring to, exactly? I think all the words you use are ill defined. Also, correlation and causation? Strong countries invade other countries and assimilate them, thereby becoming more multi-cultural?
jollybean 5y ago
A bit worse than wrong because your postulating 'data' that fairly clearly indicates the opposite of what you are saying. Also there are some serious misunderstandings here. China is 'a free society' and 'internationalist'? (Han) China has always been the opposite of 'free', which of course is a modern concept, that's not a judgement, just what it is. And they have not really ever been 'internationalist' only just recently joining the internationalist order, and vaguely so. But that aside: China, Japan and Korea, if we were to apply our reasoning objectively to them as we do ourselves, are objectively 'far right ethno-nationalist' states. They are technically, quite fascist. I wouldn't want to use that label in normal discussion as I don't want to trigger or flame war, but in all reality, this is the fact. All three have very, very strong national narratives about who they are, their origin, their superiority (to greater or lesser extent). They are ethnocentric culturally (i.e. a Black person in Korea might be very respected, but nevertheless considered 'not Korean'). Their religion, elite, and culture tie together, literally in Japan with the God Head Emperor, and in all three places elite families ruling by long held extra-governmental power networks. 'Samsung' is not a corporate formation that we would understand in North America, though Europeans might understand it a bit. Japan and especially China historically have conquered and assimilated vast territories in the vein of de-facto superiority, some of this goes on today in E. China and Tibet. This is not a condemnation or anything of the sort, it's obviously complicated, it's just what it is. But those nations are the furthest thing from 'internationalist' in anything but the modern, economic sense with respect to trade and some institutions. Europe, historically, has had fuzzy political lines, but they bounce around and generally land along ethnic borders. Yugoslavia did not break up into random political territories, rather, ethnic one's. Same with Hapsburg Empire. Same with Soviets. Etc. Scandinavia is not a hodge-podge: most of the ethnic Swedes live under the same flag. Not all, but most. Obviously, especially on the continent, it's not so clear - yes - German speakers are scattered a bit in Poland, France and Czech - but they are overwhelmingly in Germany/Austria. That there are lot of 'fuzzy lines' doesn't mean lines do not exist. "The internationalist world has produced freedom, security, and prosperity at orders of magnitude beyond what humanity ever experienced before. It seems bizarre to me to trade that in for the old nationalist ideologies." This statement implies a misunderstanding of what 'Internationalist Order' and what it means. The 'Internationalist Order' is literally about 'Nation States' cooperating in some reasonable, common ground for trade and security. If anything, that 'order' is predicate upon the very notion of Nation States, it's literally part of the definition. 'The International Order' reinforces the notion of Nation State, and indirectly, nationalism. It's literally in the word: 'Inter'+'Nationalist'. Canada, US and Brazil are probably the leading examples of what 'pure' nation states are, i.e. not fully ethnocentric, and culturally more plural. I do believe there are material advantages here, but 'net net' I'm not so sure they are in the long-long term, I think it's more of a wash. But even with that plurality 'Nationalism' is still quite strong: paradoxically (or maybe not) 'Overt Nationalism' is stronger in Canada and the US than it is in Europe, because of weak local social ties, it is actively encouraged in North America. Germans (and Han Chinese, Japanese, Koean) don't need a flag to know who they are, flag waving for them is something completely different as we learned in the last decade or so where they are finally allowing the 'don't wave flags because we don't want to seem like Nazis' taboo fade a bit. I think the OP you are responding to is essentially correct, but the future is so much harder to predict. Even as we travel more and are exposed to more, we have more well-defined and managed borders than ever before, and there are few places to just 'go to', so maybe there will be less diversity in change than there was before? It's so hard to say.

kodah 5y ago

> If you don't maintain a national culture, you're not going to have anyone willing to fight to defend it. I have some doubt to this. As travel increases and salaries normalize across nations cultures are bound to meld whether people like it or not. Maintaining a national culture, at that point, will likely be looked on very negatively.

iammisc 5y ago
> Maintaining a national culture, at that point, will likely be looked on very negatively. Only by those making a particular salary, which is ultimately the cause of the great right-wing movements in most parts of the world, America, Europe, Asia, S America, etc. There are two classes forming... a globalist class where there is no national culture, just an international one, and nationalism is a dirty word. And a nationalistic culture of all the 'deplorables', where patriotism is still a virtue.
throwaway984393 5y ago
There are a lot of cultures around the world that have the same salary and travel as other cultures, and they have not melded. Perhaps it is because culture is something that specifically resists melding. At the same time, some people's idea of what a culture is, or what is "melding" culture, are amorphous and ill-defined. Is McDonalds culture? Are the many regionally-specific dishes at McDonalds around the world a result of "melding" culture? Is the Poutine at McDonald's in Canada a "melding" of culture? Or is it just Canadian culture expressed through a McDonalds? Is the Banana shake at McDonald's in Japan a "melding" of American and Japanese culture? Or is it actually just "McDonald's" culture, since it's offered in Great Britain and Italy? I'll leave you this quote from the 1976 movie Network!: Arthur Jensen: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."

thisrod 5y ago

> There's a reason large states arose in the first place, to displace hunter-gatherer tribes, and it is precisely this That's a big leap, from the paleolithic world of 10 000 BC to the iron age armies of 1000 BC. Other things happened too: sedentism, agriculture, metals, buildings, money, writing, and so on. No doubt being able to feed and pay your soldiers made a big difference to their motivation!

sharikous 5y ago

An organization capable of steamrolling over nations need not be another nation. I could see huge international companies the like of Google having the might to fight nation states.

rossdavidh 5y ago
True that. If nations have no sense of national culture and identity, then corporations inevitably become more powerful because they are still able to operate in a coordinated fashion, by "virtue" of being directed by a single person. Actually, I suppose a lack of national culture or sense of national identity would also weaken democracies more than dictatorships.

xtiansimon 5y ago

Can’t wait until the aliens show up…

pie42000 5y ago

This is a really silly, outdated world view. You don't need everyone to fight to defend countries now, we have autonomous fighter jets, satellites, nuclear submarines, robots that can do parkour while carrying hundreds of pounds of gear (machine guns, rocket launchers), remote control drones that can deliver predator missiles to targets across the globe. You don't need everyone to fight to defend countries anymore. You just need a faction of the population to be into militarism and nationalism and they'll be the warrior class that commands the robot armies that will wage the warfare of tomorrow. And looking even more forward, as corporations replace/control the government (basically already happening), the corporations will mediate armed conflicts and facilitate global cooperation in the interest of global profits. Warfare will be waged via tariffs, sanctions, and embargoes.

rossdavidh 5y ago
Thanks for the optimistic world view! :) Well, if warfare does become entirely automated, I think you would still need a nation willing to pay for that, and also willing to run the risk of it when, say, another nation tries to pick off Hawaii or whatever. Plus, warfare waged via tariffs, sanctions, and embargoes, by throwing it back into economics, would definitely require a feeling of national solidarity to stand up to it. If a supplier of oil, coal, lumber, iron ore, etc. declares an embargo until your country changes some policy, do voters tell their leaders to cave in to keep the supply coming, or do they tell them to be uncompromising and tighten their belts? If they have no real sense of national identity anyway, I think it would be harder to get them to tighten their belts.

account_c 5y ago

"Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, Western and European countries... for everyone!" European/Western countries are the only ones being denied a homeland and the preservation of their culture. European cultures are systematically being dismantled and black/brownwashed out of existence. It's reverse-colonialism.

eru 5y ago

> There's a reason large states arose in the first place, to displace hunter-gatherer tribes, and it is precisely this. Aren't you skipping quite a few steps here? Hunter gatherers have been out of the picture in most of Eurasia for thousands of years. Nation states are at most a few hundred years old.