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Comment by bwb | Hacker News Reader

I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces?

Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more.

I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?

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>Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces?

Because outside of your bubble nobody wants this. A random person from Bulgaria is going to have a very different culture from a random person from Netherlands. What do you think happens with power in such conglomerate ?

If you want to see what happens when you create a forced conglomerate of different nations (but still more similar than EU member, languages were way closer and cultures were close as well) into a super state look up Yugoslavia.

India does this already. With 3x more population and probably has much more diversity and cultural differences than EU.

By that logic India and Pakistan should also merge.

No your logic was it's not possible to have a country with so much diversity. I just showed a counter example.

I know very little about history of India or the culture, but I guarantee you that creating such entity would result in a civil war, demonstrated throughout European history.

Yeah. I also don't think it's probably a good idea for the EU to become a country. Countries have a lot more power, autonomy etc which states lack. I think the current system of EU is pretty good.

You are comparing uncomparable, the population of India and EU are composed of very different people with different mindsets, expectations, opinions. Indians are generally much more docile (spent 6 months backpacking all around that place, it is really different in this regard).

Also, comparing diversity is tricky - natives from Lappland have 0 in common with say Greek or Spaniards. Same would go for india's extremes, its rather impossible to say who is more different (personally I would still say Europe, since ways of life are almost the same if you look on India east, south, north, west, very similar cuisine etc... not so much in Europe).

We have proven track of how it doesn't work here in Europe, no need to spin another set of wars to re-confirm it.

Also, India sees quite a bit of domestic terrorism in its eastern parts exactly due to mindsets like yours. Not something we like to see here in Europe.

I never said EU should become a country. I just showed an example of a country with more population and more or less the same diversity which made it work. Obviously there are pros and cons with both approaches. And I think EU is better off the way it is now.

The world's second largest standing army that can be called to crush insurgencies also helps.

India and USA are often cites as examples of federations than EU should look to implement but that comparison is not valid.

The US were a blank page, with roughly the same crowd starting with the same common goal and aspirations. Europe comes with 15centuries of nationlike structures and history. Latin and AngloSaxons have very different approaches on life and work (particularly visible in the “PIGS” recent controversy...).

As someone said, you cant make the european omelette with nations hard boiled eggs.

The mere facts that the euro bank notes has zero european symbol (because they couldnt find one) speaks for itself. So they put bridges and windows... India has Gandhi.

Both India and the US also had their bloody moments to make it happen, in the Partition (and then Bangladesh Liberation War) and Civil War respectively.

True, but there have been many attempts to create Europe in the past, the 3rd Reich being one of them, Napoleon, and others before. Europhiles dont like that reminder but people at the time used the same rethoric of “building the great Europe”, “nations are too old etc”, I can give you references of actual political figures of the 30s and 40s who had that speech and led their country to collaboration with the nazis in the name of “Europe”.

> I can give you references of actual political figures of the 30s and 40s who had that speech and led their country to collaboration with the nazis in the name of “Europe”.

I would love to (interested in the topic)

Check out a guy called Laval in france, leader of collaboration, with his famous speech “i wish germany’s victory”.

First national exhibition hosted by the Vichy government during occupation: “la France europeenne”. Showing maps of future europe, where nation-states would have disappeared.

French far-right at the time was also calling England, “the enemy of europe”, for instance on a book from M. Déat, another politica leader from the 40s.

I think those comparisons are unhelpful. The idea of closer integrity in Europe is not what is unsavoury in those examples, it is the manner in which it was attempted. The EU is an attempt at democratic and mutually agreed union, celebrating differences. Napoleon and the third reich were conquest, bloodshed and forced change.

I think that's partly parent's point: that integration between disparate cultures has mostly been (and maybe can only be) accomplished with force and bloodshed, however high minded the ideals might seem to its drivers.

And in contrast, this thread's point: that attempts to unify disparate cultures via democracy and mutual agreement, celebrating differences, have difficulties and failures when constituents decide to abandon good faith.

Agreed, but it's not like europe was all nation-centric politics before. Europe was divided into provinces within empires. Ottoman, Russian, Austro Hungarian... most of Europe was part of a multinational empire, most of the time.

The idea that nation states are old, and multinationalism is new is fallacious. It's only post WWII that borders, political control, and ethnic homogeneity are strongly national... Yugoslavia being the most recent example.

> Latin and AngloSaxons have very different approaches

"Anglo-Saxons" are not part of the federation anymore, and stuff like "PIGS" is simply casual racism. Do Northern European countries have a casual-racism problem? Very much so. Would that stop a federation from working in the long run? I doubt it very much. Otherwise Texas and New Jersey would have parted ways a long time ago.

Indian content has a very long history of common governance in the region and very few opportunities for clear cut delineation. A few, but not many.

Or Switzerland or Belgium. I'd argue that, by now, there are more differences (cultural, economic, political...) between parts of the countries, like cities vs countryside, than between countries.

Isnt belgium unable to form a government for years? I don't know that Belgium is a diversity succeess story.

What's wrong with not having the government? It looks like Belgium functions quite well on an administrative level that it doesn't really need a "government".

A lot of countries would have loved to be Belgium, I agree. But we're making the case whether national diversity is good or not. If Belgium would have split to the flemish and french parts - why would that have been worse?

Why would that be better if they split. Maybe they would have been swallowed by big neighbours and end up being a poor provinces.

Same for Switzerland, I just can’t imagine they would have it better if they split to four national states.

At least in those two cases national diversity worked great.

It's up to the citizens to decide if it works out great, not up to you or I. So far they grudgingly continue with how things are but at least in Belgium it seems to me to be more about inertia and fear of change than anything else. You can check out this entertaining video (english subs) to see the current state of things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4go1RXOBF0s

Not really... take a look at the average salary in Romania and compare to France of Luxembourg ...

As a euperson i want it. And i know many more that would like the same. The bubble may be bigger than you think.

I think it doesn't matter how big the bubble is - you saw what happened with Brexit (and it got validated by EU handling of COVID crisis), now imagine what happens when the only option to leave is succession/civil war.

There are independence tensions within European countries (eg. Spain/Basque, UK/Scotland).

You have to be a blind idealist to think this would work. There are going to be a lot of crisis scenarios for EU in the next few decades, refugees being the looming one EU failed to reach a consensus on and botched previously (that helped radicalise parts of it like Hungary and further alienated UK). The pending post COVID inflation/economic shock could also storm the Euro zone, Greece is still devastated from the "bailouts" in the financial crisis.

What is wrong with the EU handling of COVID crisis? We have vaccinated more people than the US and there was no major breakout since summer 2020. In constrast with the UK where restrictions have been draconic.

EU botched acquiring vaccine compares to most developed countries by months, in no small part due to the retarded mindset that pharma companies shouldn't profit off of this and trying to renegotiate prices forever (overriding some countries who tried to acquire it individually and would have gotten it faster).

Measures were not dictated by EU, each country decided it's own policy.

The only large countries that did better were the UK and US due to banning the export of vaccines. It's mainly the UK trying to spin this as a propaganda win after BREXIT.

What other comparable developed countries are there ? Australia had it's own isolation thing so it's a different context entirely.

Russia had vacation faster, China as well.

Japan and South Korea for instance, but what's your point?

That some EU members had deals for faster delivery and got overturned by EU causing a worse situation for those countries, just like UK would if it was a part of EU.

Von der Leyen even said so herself, and she still believes it was the right thing to do to stifle the big countries in order to maintain the EU.

If Germany or the Netherlands decided to ban exports on vaccines they'd probably have had the highest vaccination rates on the planet. But that would just be selfish. Stifling big countries in favor of a fair distribution of vaccines WAS the right thing.

What if some US state with most of the vaccine manufacturing had stopped the export of vaccine over state borders? Would that be fine by you because it's in their self interest?

Hardly Japan (it being a disconnected island nation)

Norway, Canada, Switzerland etc.

> Russia had vacation faster, China as well.

No, they did not. Here's a site where you can see the share of people vaccinated against COVID-19: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

> Russia had vacation faster, China as well.

... Wait, what makes you think that? Per OurWorldInData, except for a brief period in early January, EU total doses per capita have always been ahead of Russia and China, until June, when China drew ahead (Russia is still _far_ behind). And even then, that wasn't supply-driven; if you consider EU countries with high vaccine acceptance (Ireland, Germany, Denmark etc), those are still ahead of China; China overtook the EU as a whole due to vaccine reluctance in parts of the EU.

Not UK’s fault if whatever the EU does ends up a mess, whether trying to name a corridor in a Brussels building, or trying to have The European GPS up and running.

Normal, with 27 participants all responding to different national and political interests. Try having a flatshare with 27 families and agreeing on how to paint the wall.

Pharma companies should not profit off pandemics. It is an ethical thing to do. And beside that, I know that drug companies are heavily subsidised by state and their research is mostly done with tax-exempt money.

Profit is the strongest market incentive, you want them to profit and invest full on in this kind of research. And pharma profits insanely is still negligible to the loss due to delaying vaccine deployment, spending any nin-trivial amount of time negotiating prices is full on retarded from that perspective, not to mention protecting vulnerable groups ASAP.

> EU botched acquiring vaccine compares to most developed countries by months, in no small part due to the retarded mindset that pharma companies shouldn't profit off of this and trying to renegotiate prices forever

Eh, that's a dubious narrative. In practice, Europe made an at the time fairly reasonable-looking bet on the wrong horse; significant production problems were expected with mRNA vaccines, while no-one really expected big problems with viral vector vaccines.

As it turned out, mRNA production went amazingly smoothly (to the point that overdelivery by Pfizer/Biontec largely saved the EU programme) while viral vector production was a _disaster_. If AZ and J&J had been able to deliver what they planned, or even modestly underdeliver, the issue of contracts would not have arisen.

> There are independence tensions within European countries (eg. Spain/Basque, UK/Scotland). > You have to be a blind idealist to think this would work

You are confusing independence from nationalism. They are very different things and you can have the first without the second.

I would not overemphasize the cultural differences between the Balkan people and call Yugoslavia a super state. The history of the people there is intertwined and national divisions are very much superimposed by ideologists.

> Because outside of your bubble nobody wants this.

This is just dismissively asserrting your opinion as if it were fact. Where are your statistics on this?

> A random person from Bulgaria is going to have a very different culture from a random person from Netherlands.

And somehow me, a person from Denmark, has more cultural overlap with a hacker hipster from Mexico than most of my childhood classmates. And somehow I still coexist peacefully with my neighbors.

The internet and global travel are breaking down the national cultural barriers (largely induced/imposed by mass media). Meanwhile, power imbalance and widening gaps in the social fabric are increasing issues globally, even in monocultures and regardless of immigrants.

I think the points you raise are orthogonal. Except that you're most likely right that most people don't want this - because the illusion of the shared nation-culture and history has been so deeply imprinted in us by propaganda from the education system, the government, advertising, and media.

It requires people to become more than what they are now, the same as when we didn't have nationalism and people made that leap "up"...

People need to think beyond these tribes and up it a level. A random person from Bulgaria is very similar to a random person from Netherlands. I welcome the day that our tribe is Earth...

I belive there is a serious confusion here concerning the terms of nation, country, culture.

EU is made of countries and having countries merged does not mean that cultures has to be, actually hundrends of cultures and subcultures live together with other cultures in present countries, even as parts of nations, even inside cultures (subcultures).

It is a basic human need and necessity to collaborate, everybody wants and needs that!! (except those living in a lone grumpy bubble) Those not doing it are not really viable: see Yugoslavia. : )

The EU - and in fact many many countries with hudreds of years of success - is made of and founded by former arch enemies btw....

People are tribal by nature. They will get into fights because their neighbour supports the "wrong" sports club, and you can extend that up to any level. Within a country there's city vs city, city vs countryside, and above country level there's EU vs US, or "the west" vs "the east".

People group together with others that share certain cultural values. Ever since borders, passports and standard languages have been the norm, this has only been reinforced.

I don't feel culturally similar to many other European countries, most notable Hungary, Poland and some other countries that have been sliding towards the far right. I wouldn't want the people who voted Orban into power to outvote me, either.

Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes. There are very practical reasons against the North American Alliance; for example, Canada has socialised healthcare, while you can't even get the suggestion off the ground in the US. Such political differences don't just disappear.

I don't want a European superstate because I disagree with most people that would live in it. My ideals would no longer be represented by my government. I think that's enough reason not to go for complete European unification. Opinions can change, so maybe some day we can all agree, but with Hungary fighting the free press and its people cheering Orban on, I can't say I expect this situation to change any time soon.

> People are tribal by nature.

Maybe, but what "tribe" are you part of is completely fluid. Your tribe can be extremely inclusive or exclusive.

> Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes.

And it is quite of inevitable as communication and travel becomes cheaper.

> I don't want a European superstate because I disagree with most people that would live in it. My ideals would no longer be represented by my government. I think that's enough reason not to go for complete European unification.

That is easily an argument against any form of government. No country would exist this way for good or bad. But they exists. As you said, bigger communities are a matter of time. What it would have been an impossible union 100 years ago it makes a lot of sense today.

I would argue that a tribe at least need some kind of a common identity to remain strong, which by nature excludes it from people who lack that identity. An extremely inclusive tribe probably won't be a strong one with a sense of community. An example could be citizenship - we may not relate that much with someone just because he happens to live in the same country, compared to him being also our neighbour or colleague.

"Maybe, but what "tribe" are you part of is completely fluid"

There is a lot of friction when changing tribes. Especially if it means changing your religion, language and culture. Few people can make that jump.

I would not call this "completely fluid".

On the contrary, studies clearly show that people are aligning themselves more and more with "tribes" that are based on a geographic area.

Cheap travel and social networks made it possible.

We are doing it right now on HN.

This only really concerns highly educated professionals who can speak fluent English or other lingua franca. We on the HN are precisely such a self-selected subset.

But European electorates as such (and we are talking about the EU here) do not, in the big picture, resemble this self-selected elite, and elected politicians must take that into account or risk growth of populist parties thriving on topics where the general population and the elite disagrees.

> People are tribal by nature

This is "appeal to nature" nonsense. Tribalism, just like every other social behavior, can be learned and unlearned.

Imagine if someone was getting tribal along odd VS even apartment number or floor number. It would be seen as ridiculous just because it's not in line with the social construct indicating what to be tribal about.

> People group together with others that share certain cultural values.

By this logic, relocating across countries should be made illegal to prevent diluting culture. This would be ultranationalism.

> I don't feel culturally similar to many other European countries

Societies are not countries and are not people. We can be feel very disconnected from some societal values and yet find similar minded individuals in it.

> Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes.

Citation needed. Humanity has never seen the level of culture and information sharing that is happening now.

For the first time in history some 15 years old girl in Vietnam can watch at a viral meme put on social media by an equally young boy from Canada. Practically for free and with no effort.

> Such political differences don't just disappear.

History shows otherwise. Big, unexpected grass-root social changes happen. Especially under the pressure from climate collapse and so on.

> People are tribal by nature.

By nature or not by nature — they are in fact very tribal.

But I see this as an argument for the United States of Europe. Let's give tribalism to the people in the USE. Big _cultural_ autonomy for all the regions! The government should fund all the locals' funny dances, clothes, and rituals.

Having regional culture makes the average tribalist more happy than having nation wide culture, I believe.

As someone who moved countries within the EU, I started looking at things from global perspective, and what matters today is the power balance between EU, US, China. Whereas within EU most countries still look at their own interest, fueled by politicians and their 4-5 years election periods. This is really sad, because the EU is digging their own grave.

Re: your comment, it's not only on nation level. People have tendency to form groups and build their identity on "us vs them" basis. That's why you have rivalries between football clubs from different cities etc.

Anyway, language and culture/history is a powerful thing that people can't get over in us-vs-them thinking. There's also business in play which collides with politics a lot. For example Germany are fine doing business with Russia, while for Poland, Lithuania and other Russia-bordering countries, RU is #1 evil and existential threat.

> their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them.

Because when the going gets really tough that abstract "human being" from across the Continent won't care at all about you, while at the same time the person geographically closer to you and who might belong to the same nation might prove to be a better ally. Just think of the Greece crisis of 2012 when the "human beings" from The Netherlands were generally just assholes to their fellow human beings who happened to live in Athens or in Thessaloniki.

Or just think of the mirror statement. It is a practice to reverse a statement, to see if it logically consistent. Here, it will go:

Or think of the Greece crisis of 2012 when the “human beings” from Greece were generally just assholes to their fellow human beings who happened to live in Slovenia, Munich or Denmark. Note that the Greek crisis included a transfer from poorer Slovenia to the richer Greece. Note that Greeks as a nation has a high savings - the money has been within Greece jurisdiction all along. Note that Greece has a high corruption rate.

While the first statement stands, the use of Greek crisis of 2012 signifies the authority different jurisdictions have in aiming for effective administration.

> Note that Greece has a high corruption rate.

Merkel actively lobbied for the corrupt Wirecard company in front of China officials while the company had been under investigation, afaik the highest Greek official has done no such vile and corrupt things. Unfortunately what Merkel did does not get counted in various "corruption charts" for various reasons (Orientalism being just one of them).

There are many practical problems to actually implementing this idea.

First, money. Some parts of the EU are way richer than others, with superior welfare systems. If every EU citizen is to be truly equal, then that would mean same standards of government services and welfare everywhere, which would be costly to the richer states. Of course, alternatively we could lower standards everywhere, but that's not good for people.

Then there's cultural, economic, geolocial differences in general, higher corruption in many members states of east/south... Plenty of things to consider. Leaders in some parts of the EU really won't understand the situation in other parts, which makes any kind of centralized government problematic. Perhaps a very decentralized model could work though, but then again that's not much different from what we have now.

Also, nationalism is hardly "an ancient mentality". Healthy nationalism, a common idea and identity is something pretty much all well-functioning countries have. United States of Europe would never work without a common European identity, and controlled outer borders. Cultural differences between different parts of the world are still way too large for anything like democratic one world government to work.

>> Nationalism is an ancient mentality

In some sense, maybe... The foundations are ancient. But...

The "world order" where the globe is divided into nation states is quite new. Before that, multinational empires were the dominant mode. We tend to think of west european empires as the canonical: french, british and spanish. These empires had clear "home countries," so the dynamic was "nation ruling other nations."

Other empires were more ambiguous. EG the Austro Hungarian Empire & the Ottoman empires. They had capitals, centres of power and such. But, geographic and ethnic national boundaries were much fuzzier within these empires.

The border changes, forced migrations and ethnic cleansing that created the modern nation state world happened mostly within the last 100 years. Take Warsaw, for example. Before WW2, ethnic Poles were about 50% of the population. Jews & Germans were the next biggest groups. This was typical of european cities. After the war, Warsaw and Poland within its new borders was/is >90% Polish. Also typical. Meanwhile, countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland & Belgium that didn't fit into the "nation state" template were pretty unstable.

The USSR's dissolution pretty much cemented a world order where nation states dominate. That's recent.

What you are advocating for is, by some definition, the establishment of an EU Empire. Maybe a democratic empire is possible, but we don't really have example to draw on.

Lets merge all soccer clubs into one, then there will no longer be a need for matches since one club just has all the players they don't even need to be the best.

Nationalism is a very recent affair, the idea that people and not just the nobility have nations is a 19 century concept.

Nationalism may be relatively young but tribalism has existed as long as humans. Nationalism just happens to be the most successful form of tribalism.

> Nationalism is a very recent affair, the idea that people and not just the nobility have nations is a 19 century concept.

Is that right? Sounds like the opposite to me. The English King, German Kaiser and Russian Tsar during WWI were cousins.

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-kaiser-the-tsar-and-k...

Yes. The German Kaiser was the result of the nationalist German speaking people uniting under the Prussian King. Russia had steadfastly rejected the ideas of nationalism and maintained the Tsar had the divine right to rule, and the British royalty was already largely a figurehead for the British "nation."

There can exist nationalist monarchies, just the thing keeping then bound is not that they are the same rulers subjects.

> Nationalism is an ancient mentality

Not just nationalism, but tribalism.

That's why the US has such an appalling record of bias. Each new wave of immigrants (not to mention the ones that were here, to start with, and those that were dragged over, against their will) has been met with torrents of hatred, abuse, and state-sanctioned terror. In most cases, it had little to do with skin color, and everything to do with cultural differences.

When I lived in Africa, I saw tribalism writ large. It gets bad. If we think it's only in the developing world, then we simply need to look at what happened to Yugoslavia, after Tito died.

I think that tribalism is in our DNA, and it takes a real, concerted, conscious, effort to fight it. That's hard, humbling, work, and most folks aren't up for it.

Externally-imposed structure (Tito) works, but it's a temporary band-aid.

Agreed, it is going to take time to change this cultural response to what is different/new. We are not purely slaves to our DNA, but it will be an upward battle. Government and business can improve this and have. As does time :)

Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances.

Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group.

Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.

Why not abolish the EU?

EU nationalism is actually stronger than local nationalism in many circles - I rarely see comments defending any nation state here (except the Swiss, cough, cough, mostly kidding) but any criticism of the EU is met with zealotry.

More pragmatically, the EU makes little sense as anything but an economic block.

The notion that Germans and Greeks are going to accept real transfer payments, common taxation, common fiscal policy and similar rights to healthcare quality is basically ... bonkers. Germany would be the first to split.

> Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces?

I can think of a few reasons.

- It would erase culture, a slow process already ongoing. National identity, regional culture, etc would all go. - You'd have to reconcile the differences in rules, culture and law. Take drugs; the Netherlands is liberal with soft drugs, Portugal is more liberal with hard drugs, other countries still put you in jail for having any of those. Which one will it be? Who will pick what option? - Wealth disparity. Euro-skeptics have long complained about how much money the wealthy countries pay to Europe, and how much is funneled to the poorer countries. Make it one nation and every city, every farm, every individual will instantly demand to receive and be paid the same amount. Same complexities with health care / insurance, government stipends, benefits, taxes, etc.

Just abolishing nations is infeasible. Europe as it is is slowly turning its members into a more uniformized whole, but it can't be an overnight thing. And we have made some really big steps towards erasing borders; see the Schengen accord, removing border posts and customs between member states. See the Euro, removing barriers for moving money from one country to the next. And see the UK, who decided that was not to their benefit and removed themselves from the EU again.

It wouldn't erase culture in anyway... just help us remember we are all earthlings. You can still be french, french-basque, etc etc.

Abolishing nations is totally feasible, what it is replaced with is just democracy on a local to global level.

It will take time but I have high hopes it will get there.

> Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces?

With the borders opened, it's very similar to what you describe. It just takes lots of time and stability which Orban and friends undermines all the time. That's why we can't have nice things.

Don't underestimate the power of cultural diversity, it's not like the US where everybody speaks English and you can fit in quite easily if you move a state or two.

We barely trust 'our' own representatives and you want us to trust those other guys?

In all seriousness, the issue is trust. And I have no idea how we could possibly get there as a human kind.

I trust my reps to be human, and I trust anyone else to be human as that is what they all are :)

It might take a hundred or a thousand years, but that is where I'd like to see us go. And, it seems like that is where we are going given the global nature of business. Do you think people working at FB or Google who are working with people in 15+ countries don't realize how similar we all are? And, that this entire concept of nations is largely a farce?

I like that optimism and am hoping.

To your point:

But what kind of human are they? Do they share belief A? Do they use position B on Tuesdays? Do they not associate with Cs? Do they have righteous gene D?

Ya agreed, it is going to take some time but a good place to aim for :)

I'd like to see a shared believe that we are all human beings who are not that different in the grand scheme of things. And that everyone is worth a base level of respect. That seems like a good place to aim for.

And... still thinking on this one... but I think that the quickest way to lose that base level of respect is if you are someone who advocates that someone else is not worthy of that base level of respect. I am blown away by how many people define themselves by who they hate/dislike/don't-understand, and somehow that becomes a rally cry for their identity. It is a weird mentality.

The conflict between being in society and an individual is a hard one. I always like to imagine a global system where you opt into a legal system / social contract of your choice. I'll take Shite law, or I'll take the American society contract, or I'll take Chinese CCP contract, or Nordic contract....

Playing devil's advocate for a second: be careful what you're saying: some will interpret your call as an attack on their identity and attempt at hiding historical injustice. Same happens with people who say "I see no color" believing this is a good approach to nondiscrimination.

I think emphasizing differences at the expense of commonalities is a huge mistake, just as much as disregarding those differences. Diversity in unity and unity in diversity, always a difficult balancing act.

Isn’t it all just a question of what scale is the “best”? I agree with your premise but in practice, determining the best policies on trade - much less issues like education and poverty - on a smaller scale is much more tractable than thinking in terms of ever larger subsets of the human race. We should be just as saddened by civilians dying in Iraq as the US, but that doesn’t mean we know what’s best for them in terms of any of the above. Any grouping of people advocating for themselves ultimately needs an organizing body, and the cycle of tribalism continues.

I am not at all surprised by the popularity of Orbán.

An important part is the strong resistance to migrants, which would mean a great influx of mainly Arabs with an incompatible culture and religion compared to Europe.

Look to Sweden to see how it goes when you allow too many migrants into a European country.

On the other hand there are many serious problems with Orbáns rule, e.g. trying to control the free press, not respecting the rights of LGBT.

But to many hungarians it is better to have a controlled migration than all the listed downsides.

This is what people in Austria said when the Hungarian people were allowed to work here. It was all hate and "they took our jobs".

Many people in the west saw and see the eastern Europeans just as the eastern Europeans see the "Arabs".

I'd honestly rather see my tax money spent on helping a refugee from Africa than see it funneled to corrupt Orban in Hungary.

What's the point of becoming one nation if everyone has different languages?

There are a number of benefits, one that comes immediately to mind is having a common army and saving costs. Another one is that having a common currency, but not a common fiscal policy is not a good idea.

I don't think language differences are a problem. There are a couple of nations with multiple official languages.

Leverage against common threads or to accomplish common goals. Besides, there are many nations/countries with several official languages already. Having several languages does not invalidate all the advantages.

Ask Switzerland, or, on a larger scale, China.

How do you abolish nation? What's wrong with current EU situation endorsing diversity? You can federate EU and abolish national governments and that's happening slowly.

Even if you were to abolish the national governments you would still need a local government that can always be at odds with the central government, right?

But if you abolish these local governments as well, then you're basically imposing central diktats on a population, correct?

How do you resolve the dichotomy?

Kind of correct. E.g. you may eliminate national parliaments and have only EU parliament. Yes, it has problems, but it feels something like that will happen eventually in EU. I am OK that this happens slowly.

You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example)

The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.

Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.

Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.

While this is a very simplistical and easy to rebuff argument as other replies did, a non-national "country" could be theoretically doable - save for the landmass, which is all occupied by existing ~national countries. Culture has not that much to do with national borders anymore. Just think about a "nation" of Elon Musk Followers, a nation of LGBTQ+ supporters, Real Madrid fans, or admirers of Oprah Winfrey.

Whenever we will be able to colonize landmasses like the Moon or Mars, it would be possible that these kind of artificial communities could flurish. Colonisation will most likely be done by market-driven corporations, which could allege with these communities based on donations/taxation.

So if the concept of nation is ancient why do you want to create an EU... nation ????

When you get big enough it's hard to hold people accountable. The US federal government is almost too big already.

On the contrary I think people would be happier in the US if it did split into multiple nations.

Would people be happier if they never faced any loss or conflict? I think the answer to that question is clearly no. Forget about the deeper question of what is real "happiness" and is that a meaningful goal in life...

We are resilient and these current conflicts are merely the by product of growth, learning, and building a stronger community and culture.

What a sick mentality. Globalism and mass immigration is the destructor of culture.

Nationalism is the only rational mentality for long term sustainability.

A people should never be ruled by those who have no blood in the soil or by those who don't serve the needs of that people.

Nationalism is what makes great nations. You can forget about that for a while and play the game of the inevitable failure of multiculturalism, but it will always fail, you will always destroy society, and from the ashes, a cohesive, homogeneous people will reemerge to build back from the ashes of your stupidity as has always been done

> Globalism and mass immigration is the destructor of culture.

In what way? It might change the cultural landscape but that happens all the time, even the most nationalistic state does not have the exact same culture it did 100 years ago. Old culture will go away to make place for a new one, or rather, culture is always evolving.

> You can forget about that for a while and play the game of the inevitable failure of multiculturalism, but it will always fail, you will always destroy society, and from the ashes, a cohesive, homogeneous people will reemerge to build back from the ashes of your stupidity as has always been done

Do you have any examples?

Eh? What a weird response and I can't tell if you are a troll given the age of your account...

Globalism is one of the best things to happen to our planet. I look forward to the next 1,000 years and hopefully reaching a point where everyone realizes we have a responsibility to every other person on this planet, as well as the planet itself. And, that a base level of respect and acceptance should be granted to every person on this planet. Nationalism is an interesting step on which we climbed. But, it is an arbitrary marker to divide people and I look forward to history washing it away in xxx years.

I do not think people should be ruled, I think people should rule themselves through some form of democracy.

Are you advocating something other than democracy?

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