Gerrit Kuehn wrote to Dennisk <=-
Hello Dennisk!
07 May 20 22:50, Dennisk wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:
Evolution works on groups, so if you don't work for your group, you
are out.
So where does it say how large this group has to be? In previous times
the typical group size people lived in was something like 100 people
(give or leave 50). That's the size where you can still know everybody personally. Beyond that size, the game is different. However, plenty of our mind is still working in this archaic mode, and the more crowded
and the more connected and entwined the world gets, the lesser this
fits reality and life.
I don't know exactly, but 150 is based on personal interactions with no political/social infrastructure or technology. I've worked in companies with more than 150 people on site, and human society has existed in groups larger than 150 from the neolitic era. These things sort themselves out organically. We can see the China must use force and coercion to keep the country together, otherwise it would fracture. Clearly here, we can say that China as a political entity is encompassing more people than it should as some, such as the Tibetans, would prefer to be under their own political entity. Same for the Kurds. One could argue that the USA itself is seperate nations held together.
The problem I have, is this assumption of "archaic". Such a statement needs explanation, otherwise it is just an arbitrary assertion, a prejudice. We also eat and love, these are "archaic" too. We have families, this is also "archaic". To use the term in a negative manner and to imply that an idea must go, one has to make a case for why it is no longer relevant. The Western belief in the inevitability of an "one world" seems rooted in fancy, in fiction and idealism, rather than a sober analysis of reality. It is not an empricial observation. What needs to happen, is usually different to what is assumed would happen.
There is a conflict between ideals and the hard, physical reality of nature.
An interesting note here might be that we all have ideals, we all have ethics, religion and so on. These are there to make large groups of
people work. Without them, our societies would fall apart into clans or tribes of around 100 people like it used to be.
I agree. I do not advocate tribalism. However, these religions, these large groups need some sort of anchor, some uniting commonality that makes the enterprise valid. At some level, I need to be able to work with others and we must have some agreement as to whom the political/economic enterprise is for. If we are completely nationless, without group belonging, this is hard to do.
As for what has Nationalism done? Well, the assertion of national sovreignty
liberated many countries from their colonial masters, it helped drive
the break
up of Communist states and helped drive a political alternative to
monarchy and
absolutism. I would also argue that Nation states based on heredity
are best
situated to offer people freedom, rather than "propositional" states,
which
must impose their propositions on the population.
That's one side of the coin, although I don't see how you are going to proof you last statement, but well.
If membership of your country is based on shared principles only, then you cannot be free to disagree or change, because then you are no longer "one of us". If membership is based on shared national identity, then you CAN disagree, but you are still "one of us". The political division in the USA is a good example of where shared values are deemed more important than shared nationality. It is clearly toxic. No longer is your neighbour still "one of us" just because he happens to vote Trump or Biden.
I have observed that the more and more our society talks of "Values" being what unite us rather than shared nationality, the more and more laws and limitations to speech are brought in and more and more retribution against "wrongthink" there is. That is not freedom.
You may be under the impression that Nationalism is just Nazi Germany
and
Mussolini, but that position doesn't hold water. I take Nationalism
in its
literal sense, that is, the organisation of political and economic insitutions
around a nation of people, FOR a nation of people. That gives the institutions
and economic a locus, a focus, a definite people to which they must
serve.
You're able to think like this because you live in a nation that hasn't been plagued by bloody wars for centuries. Wars that have primarily
been caused and fed by nationalism of one or the other colour. Even the colonialism you said above to be ended by nationalism is usually driven
by it.
Perhaps. And I don't deny that it can't turn pathological, and certaintly national chauvinism IS a pathology, this idea of national superiority. But what I'm saying, is not so much that ending nationalism is not desirable, but more not practical. Much in the same way that removing money isn't so much not desirable, but not practical. We certaintly can work towards better political and cultural systems, but the idea that humanity will dissolve into one people is dangerous, and it simply will not happen.
country exists by the people, of the people, FOR the people, is the
best system
that we have. And that essentially is a Nationalistic position,
because it is
a recognition that we, the identifiable group of people, create the
state for
*our* posterity and wellbeing.
Limited to people living in that particular country and given their
share in wellbeing. Wellbeing for people in a system like that is essentially created by other people being not-so-well off. These can be outside your country, or even inside.
A nation is not an island, and it nowadays hardly can exist without the rest of the world around it. That's part of the game change I was
talking about earlier. The whole planet has become so "global" in the
20th and 21st century, why should we run it with concepts mainly
invented in the 18th/19th century? Concepts that /brought/ us wars, racism, colonialism, and slavery (to name just a few) in dimensions
never seen before.
Nationalism requires to divide people into more or less arbitrary
groups, you said it to be based on "heredity". What sense does that
make? I can look back in my ancestry, and just by going back 4
generations I'll find people from more or less all over Europe. So what sense does it make that I am "German", a nation mainly invented about
150 years ago by the warlords of that time on their recently conquered territory that used to consist of around 40 countries 200 years ago
(and hundreds of these before that)?
What is the alternative? Beaurocracies at the top, where the
instution, not a
people, is the focus of human enterprise? Where we exist to serve
some
abstract entity, rather than those entities serving us?
Nope, but that is just /how/ a country is run, not /why/.
Lastly, in my lifetime, the number of nation states has increased, not decreased. Countries have broken apart, some have gained
independence. I
haven't seen any mergers, and experiments such as the EU, are looking
very
shaky indeed.
How old are you? FRG and GDR merged in 1990. North and South Vietnam merged in 1976.
But "mergers" are usually driven by a powerful player (see my comment
on German history above), often under the claim of "forming a nation". Europe has seen plenty of it, and the EU has been formed to overcome exactly that. Up to now it worked out pretty well on that part.
Russia merging with Crimera, or China with with Tibet or HongKong (or maybe soon with Taiwan) are perfect examples of the road nationalism
goes.
China is an empire I would argue. The Han Chinese are a nation, but they have incorporated others. But the very fact that people even say Tibet, or recognise that it exist, means there is some type of Tibetan nation, even if they don't have a state.
Jews didn't have a country until the 1940's, but they clearly existed as a people before that. Kurds don't have a state, but they clearly exist as an identifiable group. If nations didn't exist, these terms would be met with confusion, but they aren't, so these terms mean something. There clearly are Kurds, and if they had a state which encompassed them, that would be a nation-state. Now, it is possible for them to propser within a larger political apparatus, as long as that apparatus acknowledges and protects their existence.
And EU, which acknowledged and protected the existence of the identifiable groups within it, could function. But all to often, this idea of a one world also means the dissolution of these groups.
Regards,
Gerrit
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