Nature’s Comment on the Concept of Nations
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I took Covid-19 as a signal that, considering that we are all bound by a common fate – jointly facing poverty, pandemics, global warming, depletion of the water table and shrinking biodiversity – the division of humankind into self-aggrandizing nations competing and warring with each other makes no sense whatsoever.
I thought, naively, that the pandemics might cause us to re-think the organization of the world we inherited from the rubbles of the 20th century. That time certainly gave pause for reflection on the wisdom of the existing order of fragmentation and extreme inequality. But nothing like that happened; instead, the division grew worse.
When we talk about nations we think of foundational myths, divine interventions in the distant past, often involving bloody wars, sacrifices of unimaginable scale, all forcing the populace into a consensus of uniqueness and the justification for hostility to others, those outsiders who dress differently, speak differently, behave strangely.
Rome, it now turns out, was founded long before the Romans arrived by the Etruscans, and the Romans took over every spark of their culture without giving them one iota of credit, instead came up with a couple of babies fed by a wolf bitch. America’s origins were in a furious bloody struggle for liberation of the Colonies from the Yoke of the English King, but the celebrations of the 250 years are quiet about the essential contributions of the French and the terrible human costs – the genocide inflicted on the Native Americans.
Politicians have the job of keeping these myths and sentiments alive; the entire government is constructed to give the uniqueness shape—exceptionalism in the USA, divine providence in Hitler’s Germany and the 14th century bloody battle of Kosovo in Milošević’s Serbia. The populace, depending on their state of informedness and capacity for critical thinking, follows the politicians, if necessary over a cliff.
To an outsider the face of a nation is represented, manifested by the physical implements of the immigration authority at the border, and the officers manning them. There are places that look benign, like extended gas stations; others are monumental, like those on China’s borders, projecting the vast unquestioned authority of the State. I went through one of those several times between Mainland China and Hongkong: getting out of the car, going up two or three levels on escalators, lining up for an interrogation and a stamp, descending at the other side by escalators to the other territory where our driver has moved the car.
How ironic then to see the videos of one of those buildings at Gyirong Port – a five story one at that – wiped out in a matter of seconds by a towering water wave running down Nepal’s Trishuli River. It was as though nature itself had suddenly joined the conversation –
Abolish borders!
Silly divisions of the planet!
Unite to solve our common problems!
Who needs passports with the faces of kings and general party secretaries?
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