Is the US great? is it the greatest nation in the world?

I haven't met a Canadian other than my dad that likes America. Both my friends and my teachers don't seem to understand my viewpoints, what do you think.

I think people like their gilded cages

Humans have a strong biological herd instinct, which is why Nations and borders are necessary.

America is neat

Different viewpoints is because they don't really see what you see. 

Stick to foundations. No point talking about advanced topics with them.

Hopefully from this you understand their position is better than yours but it might be the case their foundation is worse than yours. 

Humans also have an instinct to explore, expand, negotiate, socialise and make peace. Checkmate, stop the 'it's natural so it's right' arguments please, it's tiring to hear from both sides of the spectrum. Natural has nothing to do with 'right'. It's natural for rabbits to eat their own young, it's also natural for coyotes to eat eggs of other creatures. I guess then that abortion is okay to you? 

Nature has zero percent to do with morality, other than that we evolved to have morals since psychopaths tend to abuse their children and neglect their overall wellbeing, meaning even though they charm and fuck better than most that they usually don't pass their genes very far. Sociopaths, on the other hand, compete well if/when they have children to make their children strong but in general are shit at the charming and committing long-term part of relationships and raising children.

The Sociopath is the less disciplined one, the Psychopath is the careful, methodical one who is dead inside more so than the sociopath is. If you were curious of the difference and why most say 'sociopaths are less dangerous' it's because while the sociopath will more likely hurt you harder in one event, the psychopath will better get away with it if/when they do and will hurt you in legal ways far more efficiently than the sociopath ever will. Hybrids exist, it's a spectrum not a 'this or that', so yeah some people will fit both. 

There is no such thing as mystical theoretical morality, only pragmatic functional utility, which includes chemical biology.

No. The biology of the brain has indeed evolved morality and tendencies, due to the natural selection of sociopaths and psychopaths being low in the genepool for the aforementioned reasons. Regardless, 'natural is good' is total and utter nonsense, rather the need for 'good' is what naturally evolved and only that is true if we deal in objective facts with scenarios like this.

Whether we live in a hyper-isolationist world or an entirely one-world-nation world, there can absolutely be equal bad and good in those worlds because it's all completely subjective where you draw lines or what you say is best vs worst for all in net-benefit vs net-loss.

There is no such thing as "good"...only pragmatic functional utility.

What is pragmatic, functional or maximising utility about a world where because someone was born in one place, they have no capacity to interact with you, born in another? 

I will stick to what I said in that debate with you. The US is great because countries choose to submit to it. If it wasn't for the countries like Canada that ally with and submit to US, it would begin to have a lot of trouble maintaining its greatness because pressure would begin to build within the nation to stay peaceful and gamble less and less with the world. It's because it stemmed from Europeans pillaging and abusing the natives that the entire western Europe and Canada decided to fully ally it. South America and 'mid America' (Mexico etc) remained neutral, thanks to the Spanish and Portuguese who conquered it having a very neutral stance with the Italians, British, Irish, French and whoever else that invaded the US and Canada. This original alliance and willing submission to the domineering US is why it was able to over time snowball via calculated aggression while the rest of the world didn't ever have quite enough allies to truly unite against it but due to this, it's made enough enemies that if it ever truly tried to conquer a nation that has more than 2 specific allies, it's extremely likely the US would be ganged upon, especially here in 2019 post-Iraq-and-Afghanistan. Syria isn't a victory, it's only working because UK helped convince Europe to side with the US on it. Most of the EU nations want pure neutrality with Syria (I am not saying this is completely correct, especially with how horrific Assad has been, but I am stating the facts of why US is able to do it despite what I just said before).

So, yes, the US is probably the single greatest nation on Earth at this point because it's allowed to be by nations that enable it via wilful submission.

I 100% agree, your wilful submission point is very accurate. That's largely why I'm scared of China's growing influence in Europe, America isn't perfect but it doesn't execute political opponents like China and they certainly don't put the religious in internment camps. However, I'm not sure if China's economic influence in Europe will translate to moral influence.

Due to the biology of this. 

Herds are completely unable to expand past the biological barrier and remain fully functional.

As a thought exercise, ask 10 random people what it means to be American (in the American herd) and compare answers.

That is hilarious. Humans have been the single most expansive species other than viruses/bacteria (we're even more geographically expansive than insects, though they're almost equal) and yet we're thwarting all of them in such extreme degrees across the board in all ways other than physical dominance via our body.

On top of that simple concept, note that the more developed we've become over time, the more globalist we've evolved politically. It is completely and utterly directly proportional, we have functioned, are functioning (despite Trump's bullshit) and will function as the world's war makers and peacekeeper for pretty much the entirety of the Earth's remaining time unless and alien species invades. Even if we evolve into somehow another creature or two, they will work with humans purely out of 'pragmatism' as you put it, there's too many of us and we're far too useful to waste, even for overlord AI.

It's a point of fact without an existential boogeyman (like Russia or Trump or whatever) that large nations have no sense of unifying purpose, and that is directly attributed to the biology of Dunbar's number. For a nation to survive, boogeymen must be manufactured.

The larger the herd, the bigger the boogeyman is needed to keep them unified.

Ask 10 random people what it means to be Canadian (part of the Canada herd) and compare answers.

How about the boogeyman of war, lack of advancement, failure to progress etc? Do you really think social democracies only unite against a common enemy? That's truly absurd, since they are very anti-war overall (no, Europe was not a social democracy during WW2, don't even go there). If you bring up Iraq etc, yeah Britain was involved I get it. Who exactly made the whole thing happen? If you say Blair and not Bush, idk what to tell you other than really it was oil companies most of all.

Like I said, ask any 10 random people what it means to be a part of their national herd, and you will immediately recognize the problem of Dunbar's number.

Progression to what end though? All of our "progressions" are made to satisfy biological impulses of survival and procreation.

Herd mentality. This is why AI will give us a purpose for progression.

I g2g for now and frankly I'm losing interest in this as I know you will just keep bringing up the same thing again and again to trigger me so I'll leave it at this:

Flip your concept via inversion.

It's the biggest herd that definitely has the biggest boogeyman.

You are saying the effect/result is the cause, think about it and realise that the psychological 'we need an enemy to unite' concept doesn't actually mean that the bigger enemy is needed for the bigger herd at all, it means the biggest herd by definition has the biggest enemy. If that enemy is made to be the very concept of not uniting, advancing and progressing, we have achieved the goal I set for society to achieve. It's the last I'll say on this, feel free to smear campaign me further.

Lol, feel free to ask 10 random people what it means to be American.