Nations are the reason for Wars
If you are somewhat like me, you must be questioning yourself non-stop about various existential, social, and universal concepts, institutes, and other phenomena. Usually, I wander around those ideas as long as I find an answer that satisfies me for that period corresponding to my current state of consciousness. Then I may periodically turn back to those, especially if there is an insightful conversation or potential for a new dialogue to dive into or a thirst for learning.
One of my recent unanswered thoughts was about the Nations. As simple as it is, I think nations are nurtured by separatism, both forced and by choice. In parallel, I thought of all the communities that choose not to be separated from the Whole, in particular, what of small communities that are formed like DAOs both by a group of individuals of the same nationality or by various nations, not supporting all the forced cultural, social, and especially political regimes, and not wanting to leave their territories either, like Christiania, Denmark, or less like El Bolson, Argentina? Although both of them are not quite good examples of what I have in mind. I am also thinking of a Vatican as a type of DAO. Jokes aside, these are “neutral” communities living in certain territories and not engaging in wars whatsoever. But I will pause here for a moment before moving forward.
A little of a background never killed nobody, right? So my questioning ushered in derived from a more painful topic rather than just a disagreement with the system, and believe me, there are wild many. These ideas invaded me because of the War (going on not far from me, both in terms of territory and national belonging). Combating the dilemma of why we have wars and whether they are justified anyhow, I deduced to other concepts and wanted to understand the roots of the problem rather than its cause in the first place. Well, the topic of War may be another problem not having yet settled in my awareness as a goodness to society, and I hope it never will. And of course, on the one hand, it is trivial that War can not just be a rightness in any way. Still, if the context changes a lot, something already happening in these modern times, it may imply a social or political necessity, hence might be justified as an inevitable solution to support the system, more like an evil to save the virtue. But we will come back to this later, in another publication.
Furthermore, starting the internal debate on the topic of wars, I ended up arriving at one of the Nations. Why? Because Nations need to protect their territories perceived as their home, and the only known way to do that when things get ugly is through War. Or, in fact, there are two scenarios to protect the land from being taken by another nation — Diplomacy or a failure of that Diplomacy, which results in War. I would paraphrase this: the ability to arrange things humanly through a concede or savagely by fighting weapons available at a certain period. So do we need to stick to the nations, hence the territories, so there is no way to avoid wars in one way or another, especially when Diplomacy fails, which often does? Or shall I reframe my question: why do we need Nations? Perhaps, they do not serve at all, and we can be one big nation of Humanity, for now, people living on planet earth and the rest we will know, or we will not.
Why Nations?
First off let us define what we mean when speaking of a Nation: it is a large community with racial or genetic, historical, cultural, and social identity. Oxford dictionary defines a nation as a country considered a group of people with the same language, culture, and history who live in a particular area under one government. Wikipedia, however, suggests a slightly different definition: a nation is a community of people formed based on a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, and, or society. In the second denotation component of the area or territory is not highlighted for some reason.
Shall we dig a bit back into the history of a nation and its territorial belonging? First, a nation-state is often associated with the French Revolution (1787–1799). However, some experts also refer to the term mentioning the earlier establishment of the English Commonwealth (1649) as the first nation-state embodiment. Check the source. Does it mean that there were no wars before? Of course, there were, because there were other types of ownership of the territories, not nation owned, but for example, owned by the ideology (communism) or monarchy (Britain) and so on. So the roots of my problem are linked with the issue of the ownership of the territory. This, however, does not exclude the dialogue of nations from the picture.
But at this point, let us talk about ownership a bit, shall we? What a delicate topic, which might touch everyone and everything, but in particular, things we never want to disturb. So the land of the earth is now distributed among the states. I believe there is no unattended territory that does not belong to anyone or no state. So the land is the territory of our planet and is owned by the modern civilization structural units called states or countries. Those are social structures formed by humans and governed by nations. Conclusively, the planet belongs to humans. I am not making a discovery, am I? And humans allow themselves to do whatever they want and whenever they want this with that land, of course, adhering to their national borders.
Now, the big question is: is it right that the land, basically the earth — a star belongs to humans? And why should it? I mean, humans have somehow appeared (no one has to date even answered precisely why and how) here on this planet, and this place has sheltered us and given us a home. However, the same humans conveniently enough usurped this planet, taking advantage of its generous host and claiming territorial ownership. Moreover, it distributed that same claimed land among its different groups — nations. And now what? Those nations will have to at least stick to their existing lands or even take more. It is like in the football (soccer as the American version) game where you have to at least keep your gate safe so that the competitor team does not kick the ball in there, or even better, kick the ball into their territory in which case you score, and finally you win. Perhaps that is why many people, particularly the male population adore football. Because claiming is in human nature? This was a bit mixed with sarcasm, although I have nothing against this beautiful game: moreover, I was a former fan myself having favorite national teams and local clubs on the list.
Utopia
All right, time for some conclusions, but I do not want to quite jump to them. What shall we do as millennials, as younger generations who supposedly have a higher collective consciousness and want to bring in mindful living? Do we change the structure of the World order because that is the only way to deal with the earth's ownership? But if yes, how do we do this? And do we need it? Will it change for the better the world functions now? Will we be able to eliminate wars? And if we do not have the separation of nations, what about the separation of Humanity from nature? So many questions: and the answers are not even closer to a vague understanding of what shall be done. We will not know if we do not try, experiment, and continue to question ourselves.
So, what if new communities are formed and unified by common values, newly born culture, and shared language? We will still have the components of the land and history missing in them. History, theoretically, is a matter of time, so it will be developed. But the land is physical, and its owners cannot be changed over time without war or a conflict, especially if it is in the middle of a nation-state. And my broader idea is to eliminate the concept of land ownership from a community. So that different communities are inhabiting a common land that does not belong to anyone. So the Earth would be populated by one single Nation of Humanity who would consider that as their temporary home kindly provided by the Universe. They would respect and care for it as they would and should if it was theirs.
Too utopistic? I know.
I would like to go back to some existing examples. Patagonia has done something unprecedented in human history I am aware of, announcing that their fund would be benefiting nature earth, trying to somehow transfer the ownership from business owners hence individuals to nature itself: producing from the planet, using its resources, but giving returns to it. If somebody does not know, they are a company producing sports gear and known as one of the pioneers in adopting eco-aware and impact strategies considering nature as part of the acting ecosystem players. In a bold press release, they declared: “Earth is now our only shareholder”. Because of such an approach, I rout for the brand and its ideology. However, the earth, in practice, is still under the ownership of the states or nations, and until it is so, it can not be an equal player. So how do we change this game? I have no clue, but if you do, reach out, I will be excited to learn your thoughts.
P.S. Maybe Network States can be an answer. I have heard of some formations and personally know a few of them. None of which seems to solve the ideological challenges I am facing inside my brain.
So, I yet do not know many things. But I am sure of one thing my country is the Universe, and my capital is planet Earth. So one day, I would love my consciousness to be even beyond the Humanian, and instead to feel like I am Earthian.