Comment on Disgusted
hansolo@lemmy.today 18 hours agoPutin would just be some powerless random guy
This pretty much ignores all of human history, though. We create leaders and territory needed to farm food since before we could write about it.
So those human tendencies you’ll just… What? Say are illegal with no government to enforce it? It just makes no sense in practical terms.
cabbage@piefed.social 17 hours ago
Yes, it intentionally breaks with human history, which has been largely built around and fought over borders for a really long time. What people argue is that it’s not human nature but learned. We organize ourselves locally and in communities, there’s nothing natural about patriotism and nation states.
I personally think they are correct in fundamental parts of their criciticism, but that doesn’t make it a realistic goal work towards any time soon. What we can do is to question the premises we are trained to accept and to think critically about how we should structure our societies going forwards.
Arguing we can’t abolish borders because of Russia and America is a bit like arguing nukes can’t be abolished because of the need for nuclear deterrence. It might make some degree of sense as a practical argument, but not as a normative stance.
hansolo@lemmy.today 15 hours ago
I’m certainly not saying that Putin keeps borders in place. I’m explaining why borders are used to define the conflict. Otherwise you’re taking about a full census and genetic testing to figure out which households are Ukrainian, and thus likely not willing to submit to the force on someone that just showed up from somewhere else wanting to tell people how to live.
Borders came from agriculture. Farmland. Who gets to feed their children the food they grow. Who can graze livestock where. Case in point, herder-farmer conflict is a huge problem across Africa. Because there are no real borders for Fulani herders, or fences for farmers.