Ask Lemmy

You have to actually justify the things you say.

A state cannot possibly exist except when enforced through violence. That's why it's still bad, that's why it's still wrong. The existence of any state, any government, any hierarchy is inherently an act of violence ... almost always against people who did not consent to it and are unable to escape it.

Read Hegel’s Philosophy of Right or any Winfield and you’ll immediately realize how philosophically incoherent your position is.

Now who's not justifying the things they say? If their arguments are too complicated to present in a Lemmy post, they're too complicated to be bothered with. "Read theory" is a thought-terminating cliche.

Presumably, if you're recommending them, you understand them well. So feel free to present the relevant part of their ideas right here, in your own words.

I wonder if this somehow inevitably transforms into national identity!

This 'inevitably' of yours is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And hasn't been at all justified.

'Others you relate to' are not a nation. You'll very rarely find two people who relate to the exact same set of other people. Every individual has their own unique connections, their own unique set of 'people you relate to', who they can choose to share an identity with. Even for two people who have the same connections and relations, each of them may choose differently when it comes to choosing which ones they identify with the most.

Trying to force people into a national identity, though, ignores that. It pretends that you only relate to people of your own 'nation', and that nobody in your nation relates to anybody outside of it. It's drawing hard lines on a spectrum and trying to define portions of that spectrum as homogeneous groups, entirely distinct and different from others just on the other side of that line. It's artificial classification and division, trying to create cultural borders right along with the nation's geographical borders. It's nonsense, and -- at best -- a waste of everybody's time. (At worst, of course, it divides people into 'us' and 'them', fueling tribalism and conflict.)

Also, and this is a bit outside the point, but I very much don't like the idea of a 'national identity' being forced on me. If you couldn't tell already, I'm from the US -- a nation with a, shall we say, very tarnished national identity. I was born into it. No choice in the matter. And despite doing what I can to fight against it, despite most of those acts being done by people I have absolutely no relation to, I'm supposed to accept it as my identity? I don't want to be part of this nation -- I don't want to be part of any nation. I'm a human. I live on earth. My identity is my own. If anything, I identify more as a furry than as an American. I'm responsible for my own mistakes and my own shortcomings, not the mistakes and shortcomings of my 'nation'. I celebrate my own strengths and my own accomplishments, not the strengths and accomplishments of others who happen to share the same nation. I may have much more in common with some people of other nations than I do with some of the people in my own nation.

This 'national identity' was put upon me without anyone asking whether I wanted it, just because of where I happened to be born. It makes no more sense than astrology, really -- by the accident of when I was born, that makes me an "Aries". Should I share an 'astrological identity' with all other Aries and consider us all the same? Should I consider everyone with different astrological signs to be foreigners I don't identify with? It's utter nonsense. It's a convention that's only kept in place because the tribalism and division it produces benefits the ruling class.

Edit: I understand, though, why you might resist the idea of giving up national identity. A world without national identity is a messier, more complicated world. You can't neatly and easily categorize people anymore. You can't say people of one nation are good and people of another nation are evil. You can't say that people of one nation are oppressors and people of another nation are oppressed. You can no longer assume whether someone is with you or against you just because of where they're from. Without these artificial distinctions, you have to address the whole spectrum of human experience, you have to asses each person's identity based on their own individual connections ... and that's just impossible to do, certainly in any succinct way. It's giving up a (seemingly) useful tool for understanding the world. But the tool was never useful, not really. The understanding it offered was flawed. Because it wasn't based in reality, and only ever mattered as much as the people subject to it believed that it mattered.