[BDiddy]

In several threads, over the last few weeks, I have noticed a number of individuals posting that they feel the idea/role of nation-states needs to be altered/elminated in order to provide for a "war-free" world. I would like to hear what you folks have to say on the idea that the elimination of nation-states can lead to a more peaceful world, and what you think the best alternative might be.

[Nonsuch]

The obvious first step is to get every citizen of this planet into matching jumpsuits.

[MacManMikeOSX]

Originally posted by Nonsuch:
The obvious first step is to get every citizen of this planet into matching jumpsuits.

I'll take mine in "harvest gold", please.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by BDiddy:
In several threads, over the last few weeks, I have noticed a number of individuals posting that they feel the idea/role of nation-states needs to be altered/elminated in order to provide for a "war-free" world. I would like to hear what you folks have to say on the idea that the elimination of nation-states can lead to a more peaceful world, and what you think the best alternative might be.

I don't recall reading anyone offer that proposition.

I have posted that war and military solutions only tend to beget more miliatry solutions instead of avoid war, as people like to claim.
I have posted that I prefer peace to war.
I have posted that I don't like Hegemony.
(using myself as an example only because I"m more familiar with what I have posted.

But to the point: I don't think elimination of nation states is necessary. In fact, to achieve that would be world domination by one nation, which I don't personally think is a great idea.
The answer is not a popular or easy one: we need to invest at least as much time, effort and dollars into finding ways to advance diplomacy and peace as we do to fomenting war as a solution to problems. Even if we allocated one tenth of what goes to the military industrial complex to developing proactive peaceful resolutions to international problems, we'd be light years ahead of where we are now.

There needs to be a committed effort towards peace, instead of stopgap halfhearted token attempts.

How do we get there? it would be difficult, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. We needed a stealth bomber, it was difficult but billions of dollars and several years of research and engineering brought it about. What if that same amount of resource was brought to bear in the Middle East as conflict resolution?

As a species, we've trained ourselves to be efficient warriors, but we are clumsy peacemakers. If you look at the relative investment on the two methods of resolution, its no wonder.

But I contend that if we honed our proactive diplomatic and peaceful conflict resolution skills, we'd find that we wouldn't need as much investment in our war machines.

[Face Ache]

Originally posted by Nonsuch:
The obvious first step is to get every citizen of this planet into matching jumpsuits.

Thanks for that. Made me smile.

Someone on TV here noted that there are no patterns in space. James T. Kirk never wore paisley.

[BDiddy]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
I don't recall reading anyone offer that proposition.

Read the "Peace...a postive thread" thread again.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by BDiddy:
Read the "Peace...a postive thread" thread again.

oh! thanks. I'd missed that the first time around.


ok, put me down for matching jumpsuits..but only if its like "Fantastic Voyage" and I get to put Raquel Welch in hers...or get her out.

")

[Sven G]

Well, nation-states in their traditional meaning have obviously been one of the main causes for wars in the past centuries - so trying to let them evolve towards something more decentrated and manageable from a grassroots level - and upwards - wouldn't be a bad thing at all, IMHO.

Of course, personally, I would prefer to see, in the future, a federation of regional self-governments, built from the bottom up, rather than some form of monolithic "world government" built from the top down.

And what about the so-called globalization (or neo-liberalism, as it's also called from an economic point of view)...? Certainly it's lessening the importance of the "classic" nation-states - but where is it conducting the world's population as a whole? Towards decentralization or centralization (see the so-called "world government")? Maybe also a combination of these two aspects?

Time - and, above all, people's aspirations and actions - will tell, of course...

P.S.: These "unisex" wearing styles of the '60s and '70s science fiction films (see some above comments) are rather interesting, in my opinion: and I don't think they were envisaged as forced "uniformity", but rather as some form of basic, shared simplicity, on which the unavoidable individual differences could then express themselves in more authentic manners (that is, not just as "fashion for egotistically showing oneself", as often happens today). Anyway, de gustibus...

[BDiddy]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
oh! thanks. I'd missed that the first time around.


ok, put me down for matching jumpsuits..but only if its like "Fantastic Voyage" and I get to put Raquel Welch in hers...or get her out.

")

mmmmmmmmmmm......yummy.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Sven G:
Well, nation-states in their traditional meaning have obviously been one of the main causes for wars in the past centuries...

Oh, really? Kindly show how this is the case. It is true that nation-states have been the major participants in wars in the past centuries, but that alone does not prove any kind of causative effect.

Plenty of social groups have made war on each other, from nation-states to city-states to nomadic tribes. Even smaller groups still make war today; there is a reason, for example, that the official term for a fight between rival gangs is called a "gang war". This phenomenon is not exclusive to humans, either; ants are the popular example of another species which makes war, but some species of apes do as well.

If there truly is a general cause for war, I would say that it's not nation-states at all, but rather the concept of a state at all, the very fact that man has power over man. I don't think it is any accident that the most effective armies have strict chains of command, where each person serves under others, and perhaps over others as well. Only when humanity evolves beyond the need for government will war disappear, and I very much doubt that this will occur during our lifetimes.

I deplore violence and war. However, I do recognize that pacifism as a philosophy has a critical flaw: it requires that all people be pacifists. Any dissent breaks the system, and pacifism is by its nature more vulnerable to this phenomenon than most other utopian philosophies, because it has no mechanism by which dissent can be crushed.

[Sven G]

... And I certainly said one of the causes!

Yes, I think that the nation-state (and, of course, its predecessors) has also been a cause for destructive things such as imperialism, colonialism, and so on: would those "achievements" (!) have been possible without the nation-states as a base for the expansionist greediness of the rising - and, at the same time, challenged by the revolutionary movements of the time - capitalist class? I doubt that. The nation-state (and the state in general, as you pointed out) has always been, contradictorily, both a rival and an indispensable ally of the big capitalists, who have often used the state as a means to force their unjustifiable ends.

Of course, you are right that to go beyond the state we need to evolve from an ethical point of view: but I don't think this is so difficult a thing, as many forms of self-government already exist (also, potentially, in a quite evolved form) in everyday life, and have always formed a "parallel reality", which is only waiting for us to apply it more effectively in our lives...