Debates about things like CRT are only grasping at secondary phenomena. For example, the debates about whether the US is fundamentally based upon oppression, slavery or racism. Whether the disparities between various demographics are natural, or cultural - equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. These debates can never be resolved, because both sides hold an assumption in common. The very idea of "merit" or "competence" is really a measure of one's propensity to rise to the top of a system of social cohesion whose centre is really maintained by the stability of the nation-state form. What is supposed as "natural" is really the nation-state form, which is supposed as historically immutable. In fact, in the scale of historical time it is relatively recent, and the circle of social structures organised in its image is already quickly receding. Within a few hundred years, the idea that humanity organised its economic systems by bundling groups of people according to hereditary lineages will be a distant memory, and new methods of determining social cohesion will have been formulated. When we ask if various problems are caused by nature, by culture, or by "neoliberalism" or "capitalism" - really these are the problems of an age of transition. The nation-state as the organising principle of geopolitics is breaking up, and is slowly being replaced by a new paradigm. The breakup of the concept of the nation-state will be the deconstruction of the very concepts of race, gender, and class. These tendencies cannot be pinned to any conspiracy of revolutionary college students, greedy capitalists, or any other group - it is a tendency inherent in our social structures, and the attempt to circumvent or avoid it requires increasingly extreme measures, since it is against the fundamental tendency of progress.
The end of the nation-state
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These debates can never be resolved because because they're not based in anything logical instead a measure of selfishness. It's an interesting post though, and I like the age of transition bit. But I don't think the nation-state has anything to do with it.
My annoyance in debating this stuff is the dishonesty in it tbh. One side will deny systemic racism could ever possibly exist where only two generations ago one race was slave to another and racist sentiment is everywhere in present day besides. It becomes not so much argument then as an attempt at civilising resentment or complete self-interest. And not that there's nothing valid in that, but it's strange conversation, half telepathy, half the conversation unspoken.
It's like having an argument with your girlfriend tbh.
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@rbelivb
Please define "nation-state form."
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@Sum1hugme
Please define "nation-state form."
The nation-state as the basic unit of modern geopolitics. Essentially, it is the system in which each state is sovereign, and the territory of each state marks an inviolable border so that after the Westphalian Peace, man is no longer part of an empire ruled by God, but part of a delineated sovereign state, and the international system is in a state of anarchy.
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@badger
they're not based in anything logical instead a measure of selfishness.
I agree, and I would point specifically to the concepts of "merit" and "competence" as ideological phrases often used to muddy those discussions.
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@rbelivb
I still don't get what the nation-state has to do with it. I guess we draw lines through our grievances by it, but the rest seems natural enough.
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@badger
I still don't get what the nation-state has to do with it. I guess we draw lines through our grievances by it, but the rest seems natural enough.
For example take the example of "civic nationalism" - a talking point often used to say that nationality is a totally separate concept from race. This is an ideological abstraction layered on top of reality to obscure the fact that the concepts of nation and ethnicity are closely tied together. The current state-form cannot be independent of ethnicity by its structure.
Anthropologists and historians, [...] see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the 17th century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation, developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined.
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@rbelivb
Ok, I get you. It's interesting. But so what's your politics around it? None?
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@rbelivb
I'm not sure I understand your point in the OP.
I'd argue that the state is a natural step in the evolution of society. Chimps establish sovereign borders. And we have included many nations in the UN, which is a solid step towards a unified humanity.
interesting
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@Sum1hugme
I'm not sure I understand your point in the OP.
His point is that issues are irresolvable because we're trying to make things to fit to something that's wrong.
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@badger
I'm still not sure I understand. We have things like international law to regulate nation's actions.
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@badger
two generations ago one race was slave to another and racist sentiment is everywhere in present day
Your first point is entirely faulty. As a race [and it was settle a little longer ago than two generations, which typically amount to 20 - 40 years, each] there were free Blacks in the North even during American slavery, and were counted as such and allowed to vote, own property, were counted in the Census as of 1790, etc. You think history as taught by CRT and 1619 Project actually happened? It is nothing but academic and journalistic nonsense.
Racism is not everywhere, nor is it systemic. Systemic implies it is legislated and legally approved. Show me the current legislated statute and legally published gov't or private industry policy that foments racism in its published words. Individual attitudes are not systemic; they are individually driven.
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@rbelivb
The current state-form cannot be independent of ethnicity by its structure.
The structure of the United States, at least, is the Constitution. It's words apply across the board of ethinicity. That is independent of ethnicity. Granted, it was not always so, but, even when the Constitution was first ratified in 1788, "slavery," or any of its derivative words were never mentioned. In fact, the word did not appear until abolishment of slavery by the XIIIth amendment's ratification in 1865, barely 3/4 of a century into US existence.
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@Sum1hugme
Although the US tacitly acknowledges the Hague [the International Court, and its laws], and we generally abide by them, the US is not driven by international law.
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@fauxlaw
Your first point is entirely faulty. As a race [and it was settle a little longer ago than two generations, which typically amount to 20 - 40 years, each]
Actually, badger is correct. The struggle for racial equality in the United States of America in the 1960s extended across the nation and was waged from segregated lunch counters to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. It had an impact on every aspect of American life, including the federal government. Because the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) preserves and makes available federal records of continuing value, its holdings are a valuable source of documentation about this era. Federal records can shed light on how and why the struggle was launched, on occurrences during the 1960s that influenced the course of events in America in the following decades, and on the federal government's role in the struggle. During the past ten years, NARA has added to its holdings and, in some instances, made available for the first time records that provide interesting insights into the federal role in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
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@fauxlaw
I'm not sure how you mean "driven" in this context. However, the US generally abides by international law.
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@rbelivb
@#1
What you say is 'nothing new at all.
Individual tribes have 'long been fighting other individual tribes close by, only to form into larger tribes, and fight 'other larger tribes, only to merge with the larger tribes and become nations, the nations fighting with other nations until they merge to form a larger nation, the larger nations fighting with other larger nations, until they merge to form an empire, the Empires fighting with other nearby Empires,
And so on.
It's only been Technology and the Entropy of Nations, that has prevented a single country from conquering the globe.
If the Mongols had planes, they could have taken the Earth.
If the British had been more giving of rights to other countries, 'accepting them into it's Empire, as equals instead of vassal resources, they could have taken the world by this time.
If the West had capitalized on the power of the nuclear bomb, been ruthless, the world could have been unified by now.
But instead, the board is equalizing, and such prospects look dangerous,
The current Nation States, 'I expect, will continue on for quite some time,
Unless I misjudge the recklessness of nations (Which I might)
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@rbelivb
I think you've failed to define the subject of your thesis.
The nation-state as the organising principle of geopolitics is breaking up, and is slowly being replaced by a new paradigm.
What is the nature of that new paradigm? Does it have a name?
Debates about things like CRT are only grasping at secondary phenomena.
What are the primary phenomena? How will they break up concepts like gender?
These tendencies cannot be pinned to any conspiracy of revolutionary college students, greedy capitalists, or any other group - it is a tendency inherent in our social structures, and the attempt to circumvent or avoid it requires increasingly extreme measures, since it is against the fundamental tendency of progress.
What are the tendencies of progress inherent in our social structures and if they are so essential to our nature, why haven't they brought about the new paradigm before now?
The very idea of "merit" or "competence" is really a measure of one's propensity to rise to the top of a system of social cohesion whose centre is really maintained by the stability of the nation-state form.
Nonsense. Competence precedes the nation-state necessarily. Merit precedes the nation-state necessarily. There were noble kings and competent generals long before the Treaty of Westphalia.
What is supposed as "natural" is really the nation-state form, which is supposed as historically immutable.
Nonsense. The Declaration of Independence asserts that nations may be formed artificially- that all government really just exists by the consent of the governed and that dissatisfied people may dissolve all prior allegiance to kings and countries and choose instead to pledge our lives, honor, and fortunes to one another.
Lincoln defined this concept most expressly in the Gettysburg Address: govt. of the people, by the people, for the people while simultaneously acknowledging such an enterprise's mortality and so, mutability. ("shall not perish from this earth"). These documents and the American people's expansive allegiance to all comers so inclined refutes your assertion that all nations are predicated on hereditary lineages or geopolitical dependencies.
It sounds to me like you are predicting that there will be American Revolution one day, unaware that we accomplished this fact 250 years ago.
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@badger
Black Nigerian-Americans make more median income than whites.
If anything, Nigerian-Americans have a better case to make for systemic advantages due to their skin color since they automatically get lumped in with the fucked up ghetto culture of Democrat urban utopias and get a ton of unneeded benefits in the name of "equity"
I don't hate the player though. If I was a Nigerian-American, I would scam America to the bone. Every man for himself.
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@badger
But so what's your politics around it? None?
Libertarian politics - open borders, decentralisation.
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@Sum1hugme
I'm not sure I understand your point in the OP.I'd argue that the state is a natural step in the evolution of society. Chimps establish sovereign borders. And we have included many nations in the UN, which is a solid step towards a unified humanity.
In other words, I am pointing to the signs that we are toward the end of a phase in which the boundaries between political "territories" coincide with the boundaries between ethnic groups.
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@rbelivb
I figured as much. I don't see it though. It's interesting to think of how the nation state complicates thing, but it ain't going anywhere lol. I can also think as to a certain order it provides, I think it's integral to the working of capitalism in fact.
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@fauxlaw
The structure of the United States, at least, is the Constitution.
If a nation-state were to take literally and absolutely the principles of liberalism, as its sole foundations - that men have equal rights and ought to be equal under the law - then it would no longer be a nation, since it could not distinguish between who did or did not belong to it - between citizen and non-citizen.
The nation state is a class system enforced by armies. Dispense with it and I'm pretty sure capitalism isn't a thing anymore. Capitalism relies on inequality in mobilising the masses.
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@oromagi
Competence precedes the nation-state necessarily. Merit precedes the nation-state necessarily. There were noble kings and competent generals long before the Treaty of Westphalia.
Nobles or generals may have been seen as superior, or even had certain training as part of their position, but this is different from the modern concept of competence.
The Declaration of Independence asserts that nations may be formed artificially- that all government really just exists by the consent of the governed and that dissatisfied people may dissolve all prior allegiance to kings and countries and choose instead to pledge our lives, honor, and fortunes to one another.
Regardless of what is asserted in liberal documents, any arbitrary mass of people today cannot simply dissolve and form new countries or nations at will, by force of assertion. On what territory would they do so, and by whose authority?
These documents and the American people's expansive allegiance to all comers so inclined
Are you implying that the US has open borders?
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@badger
The nation state is a class system enforced by armies. Dispense with it and I'm pretty sure capitalism isn't a thing anymore. Capitalism relies on inequality in mobilising the masses.
I agree entirely - it's not a term I'm married to. In fact, much like "neoliberalism" I think it obscures more than it clarifies. As you correctly pointed out, the class structure of economics is held in place by the class structure of the state, and not the other way around - which is exactly what terms like capitalism and neoliberalism exist to conceal.
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@rbelivb
So what do you envision besides state or capitalism?