LOL
Comment on Borders
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 hours agohas nothing to do with formal borders imposed on us by states
You mean the entities who interact with each other and decide to keep the peace as an abstract representation of those residing within them?
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 hours ago
Yeah it’s the abstract representation that’s the problem. I didn’t consent to this BS.
the_abecedarian@piefed.social 4 hours ago
so the borders of the US were agreed upon by entities who decided to keep the peace, not established by war and genocide? the borders of several African states were not set by colonial violence? the border between Russia and Ukraine is being “renegotiated” and not fought over? Israel “renegotiating” with Lebanon?
there’s a big difference between populations who come to agreements with each other and states who do things for power.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Why are you acting like I said the word “negotiate”? I said “arrived at”; the means – friendly cooperation, terrain, a myriad individualist agreements, brutal violence and intimidation – are irrelevant to the overall point that the wolves have very obviously formed borders. Israel and Russia are no longer keeping the peace, hence they’re actively dissolving the borders.
I’ll be one of the first people who’ll tell you that animals experience real emotions and have real, deep, complex bonds with their fellow animal. I’m sure these wolves’ borders developed along natural formations, inherent population limits, intimidation, etc., and you’d have to be delusional to think the wolves’ borders are totally divorced from the means by which states form borders.
the_abecedarian@piefed.social 3 hours ago
you said “decide to keep the peace” which I provided counterexamples against. I shorthanded that as “negotiate” but you can just sub in your exact language and the point stands.
i don’t deny the social abilities of wolves. i don’t even claim that there are zero similarities between social boundaries and formal borders. what im doing is pointing out that borders formed by the institution of the state are fundamentally different from social boundaries adopted by people, wolves, or any being capable of negotiating them.
my motivation here is to undermine the idea that national borders are “natural”, which tends to legitimate them in many people’s minds, like the meme in this post tries to do. I want to undermine that because i believe it isn’t true and because there are fundamentally better ways to organize society.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Your counterexample showed two countries deliberately not keeping the peace by actively disrespecting and changing the borders what the fuck are you talking about. Borders are dynamic (do I even need to say that? are we in 4th grade here?), and they’re extremely often created through violence; nevertheless, borders stabilize when the parties decide to stop fighting. Even the DMZ dividing North and South Korea is static on the basis that total war awaits the country that violates it.
If I meant “keeping the peace” in some kumbaya fantasy sense with no skirmishes or threat of violence, then there would be no parallel to the wolves, because need I reemphasize: we are talking about wolves.
And clearly the fuck they are, because here we are in a reality where borders exist and are enforced. The meme is making fun of an appeal to nature, but it’s nevertheless not accepting it as a precondition to support borders. It’s saying even if your argument is stupid enough as “it’s unnatural”, it still makes no sense on its own terms. If you want to argue borders are bad, make an argument that borders are bad; if you want to make an argument that they’re unnatural, 1) you’re provably wrong and 2) even if you weren’t, you’re doing nothing to support your case to anyone rational.