I am of the view that cultures should not be defined by race or religion, but rather philosophical identities, and those identities should form the basis of wha

I am of the view that cultures should not be defined by race or religion, but rather philosophical identities, and those identities should form the basis of what constitutes a state or nation. Reductive analysis will often find race or religion as a scapegoat for one thing or another, but there are many examples of thriving multicultural nation states, where the key to their success is a strong national identity beyond religion or race. Why is this distinction important? Consider that immigration is a useful tool for statecraft and economies, but how useful it remains in the long term depends heavily on the integration of new members to the existing society; the onus is often put on the newcomers to assimilate, but integration is often lacking. Considering the development of human societies up to this point, it’s evident that some ways of thinking are important to highlight and preserve for future generations, while others not so much. But that doesn’t have anything to do with race or religion, per se. Early human settlements formed around the same idea: groups of people living together to produce a set of functions to contribute to a greater community, for safety and resource optimization. We can assume that these people possessed some degree of like-mindedness towards societal organization, which is why they went on to develop proto-cities etc. When viewed through the lens of a larger historical view, the importance of nation states is not merely about concentration of power or interests of the elites. I think there are more fundamental reasons why groups of humans formed a people, an identity, a culture etc. All of this is our way of stabbing in the darks of uncertainty, and dealing with why we’re here at all.