Are there realistic alternatives to Nationalism? Are "Nations," bad things?

[Macaquerie]

You know, speaking of the Nazis, it just dawned on me that Hitler DID have some good ideas. Like, it was his idea to shoot himself right? That was pretty sweet.

[Theodarzna]

...... I will cease any and all disagreements with you Yvaelle, here and in all future threads.

I sincerely apologies for any and all disagreement with you and anyone of your stature.

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You know, speaking of the Nazis, it just dawned on me that Hitler DID have some good ideas. Like, it was his idea to shoot himself right? That was pretty sweet.

Why the subtle innuendo of implying I want to wipe people out or start wars then? Wouldn't it be simpler to avoid beating around the bush and just simply accuse me of being a Nazi? Even though by ethnicity I would never pass for "Aryan," and generally I believe the Nazi's did consider the Celtic cultures of Britain inferior?

I will also state that it seems the Anarcho-Primitivist commenters very easily grasped what I was talking about and was able to have a conversation with me without going in after strawmans or subtly implying I am in favor of things I did not mention.

My point is that you and others are asking me to argue for something I didn't argue for and hold up a position I am not supporting.

[Yvaelle]

...... I will cease any and all disagreements with you Yvaelle, here and in all future threads.

I sincerely apologies for any and all disagreement with you and anyone of your stature.

My stature? I know I'm tall but we should still be in earshot

I'm the priest and pvp forum moderator - I have no more power here than you do - and you're welcome to defend nationalism and even to imply that anyone who disagrees with you is calling you a nazi, as far as I'm concerned

I just think the thread may be improved at this point with some SS cosplay photos! ^.^

[Theodarzna]

My stature? I know I'm tall but we should still be in earshot

I'm the priest and pvp forum moderator - I have no more power here than you do - and you're welcome to defend nationalism and even to imply that anyone who disagrees with you is calling you a nazi, as far as I'm concerned

I just think the thread may be improved at this point with some SS cosplay photos! ^.^

I would rather have Kill la Kill cosplay, though I must confess now I see a terrible Irony that my avatar is Satsuki, and Kill la Kill does have themes of Fascism within it.

I think the "sins of nations," are more accurately not the sins of having a national identity or a sense of nationality but the sin of Autarky which is the belief in self sufficiency or "economic independence or self-sufficiency." This is functionally achievable without tremendous sacrifice, and because no state is willing to endure that sacrifice for Autarky, the inevitable result is war for resources and domination of the THINGS people want. Hitler and the State apparatus of Japan both were engaged in Autarky, and its unfortunate conclusion, since neither had the resources necessary to sustain their other ambition of world power and glory, war was inevitable from that ideological commitment. Hitler himself even called it "Living Space."

The point of pursuing Autarky is to remind those who follow that road that it comes at great cost and requires sacrifice for that to be a goal, otherwise only war and misery can follow.

However autarky is not necessarily the result of the group dynamics that form national communities. Autarky can exist within say a corporation, seeking to monopolize and exercise the maximum level of power over an economic resource. Even humans individually can adopt an autarkic mindset, even if its totally delusional. No person is an island unto themselves, King, Castle and Kingdom, is not something one man can be. Nor can one group of people make and produce every single thing they might desire.

As me and another poster mentioned, a core problem in any solution or attempts to mitigate human misery is "power lust," and to some degree autarky. One solution might be leadership chosen from ostensibly Taoist minded leaders. People whom do their job then retire from it. But the problem of Power Lust may be just an endemic and unsolvable problem to our human existence.

My defensiveness is primarily that I have already been directly accused by one person of being a Nazi, have tried to curate the discussion away from "racial realism," and other jargon of the nazi variety and yet still MANY people are content to accuse me of proposing Nazism through indirect innuendo via implying a support for ethnic cleansing, war, racism or what have you. Okay maybe its indirect but accusing me of wanting to do or be for all of the horrors of WW2, but not outright saying "YOUR A HORRIBLE MEGA HITLER!" is not much of a difference.

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Yeah need more Taoists to be in charge.

"Do your job, then step away."

Expanding on this and reflecting on Chinese history, perhaps it is best for leadership to be selected from people both strong in merit and capable, but also finely educated in the classics, with a heavy emphasis on Taoism. While Taoism is not necessarily perfect, A Taoist minded leader whom will do their job but largely exercise restraint and wisdom while largely allowing people to govern themselves is ideally desirable, even if plausibly entering the realm of utopia.... if only standing at the borders of it.

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Sorry to say that, but deriving real life philosophy from virtual worlds just shows that you disconnected from real life way too much.

To be very honest, I play WoW in two hour increments every other week and actually only occupy an RP-PvP server.

[Yvaelle]

Expanding on this and reflecting on Chinese history, perhaps it is best for leadership to be selected from people both strong in merit and capable, but also finely educated in the classics, with a heavy emphasis on Taoism. While Taoism is not necessarily perfect, A Taoist minded leader whom will do their job but largely exercise restraint and wisdom while largely allowing people to govern themselves is ideally desirable, even if plausibly entering the realm of utopia.... if only standing at the borders of it.

I'm not sure I see how Tao (lovely concept though it is) better prepares leaders to resist the urge to use their power to effect changes they want to see in the world: which is what all leaders do, even the mad kings and tyrants. Power corrupts - the only solution isn't less corruptible leaders, it's better controls on the capacity for corruption: transparency and limits on power.

Why not just elect Ubermensch as leaders? I propose we make Chris Hadfield the leader - he's fit, smart, courageous, and good-tempered - obvious ubermensch is obvious

[Theodarzna]

Perhaps this topic was a poor choice...

As even Wikipedia notes; "Nation," is a social concept with no uncontroversial definition, but that is most commonly used to designate larger groups or collectives of people with common characteristics attributed to them—Often this is linguistic, cultural, historical, and or geographic. Scholars of the subject that generally these collectives are defined by their limited space (The dichotomy between what is the nation and what isn't or the fact that the nation is defined as much by what it is as what it isn't). Collective solidarity among members. And as Benedict Anderson puts it, a Nation often involved selective forgetting of differences and remembering commonality. Past sins and transgressions are forgotten and ignored, commonality reinforced and the group solidarity forms.

A key issue in this thread I think is that people...
1) Want me to be arguing for Nation-States or some specific type of government structure. Nations are Not States, States are not Nations.
2) Want me to be arguing for some form of ethnic determinism or purity of bloodline/ethnicity.
3) Want me to be arguing for a specific KIND of Nation. Some nations have odd character (Switzerland has several languages and ethnicity but one Nation, Wales has generally a Welsh ethnicity and language but no State. ect)
4) Want me to be a eugenicist, white supremacist, neo-nazi, or essentially for those sorts of things.

[Damajin]

I'm not sure I see how Tao (lovely concept though it is) better prepares leaders to resist the urge to use their power to effect changes they want to see in the world: which is what all leaders do, even the mad kings and tyrants. Power corrupts - the only solution isn't less corruptible leaders, it's better controls on the capacity for corruption: transparency and limits on power.

Why not just elect Ubermensch as leaders? I propose we make Chris Hadfield the leader - he's fit, smart, courageous, and good-tempered - obvious ubermensch is obvious

Both are applicable, your transparency and limits on power and the notion of wise, discretion oriented leaders who do just enough. Going to have to agree with William Blake here: "you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough" and I think humanity at this point has had quite enough examples of more than enough. Bottom line is nations need leaders who act in the best interests of the nation, its culture and people but also act with restraint and awareness that their position is the equivalent of a bulldozer. In tandem with that we need to take as much fuel, power and capabilities out of that bulldozer as possible and make it static, predictable and limited in domestic capabilities, dynamic enough in foreign activities to preserve the domestic interests of the nation.

Taoism as a practice is incredibly able to prepare people for leadership, as it is a viewpoint of doing just enough, being present and mindful. Limited for governing, infinite in self improvement. Lao Tzu and Chaung Tzu knew what the deal was for sure.

[Theodarzna]

Both are applicable, your transparency and limits on power and the notion of wise, discretion oriented leaders who do just enough. Going to have to agree with William Blake here: "you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough" and I think humanity at this point has had quite enough examples of more than enough. Bottom line is nations need leaders who act in the best interests of the nation, its culture and people but also act with restraint and awareness that their position is the equivalent of a bulldozer. In tandem with that we need to take as much fuel, power and capabilities out of that bulldozer as possible and make it static, predictable and limited in domestic capabilities, dynamic enough in foreign activities to preserve the domestic interests of the nation.

Taoism as a practice is incredibly able to prepare people for leadership, as it is a viewpoint of doing just enough, being present and mindful. Limited for governing, infinite in self improvement. Lao Tzu and Chaung Tzu knew what the deal was for sure.

I freely accept hitches will occur, as in leaders might become megalomaniacs, or seek the cause of Empire. But leaders seeking personal vainglory at the expense of the people exists now in our supposed Post-National paradise.

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These are things that evolved over tens of thousands of years. It's pointless to even discuss whether there are "alternatives" or whether they're a "bad" thing. They simply are, and what comes next will come out of the natural evolution of societies, not because someone somewhere deems it's a "better way".

Insults noted, but for those believing in a Progressive Narrative of History, such as yourself, let me ask how when where and why?

Core to the Nationalist - Internationalist dialog is the fact that much of the people with institutional power are very INTERNATIONAL in outlook and seem interested in dissolving nationality as a thing as much as possible.

Mostly this is done with the hope that everyone will simply become "My fellow Earthicans!" or something that is in all behavior a nation except they believe or seem to believe that its a universal identity being created all humans will adopt it as their new Identity and simply act as if they are all part of one global solidarity community, when what I am arguing is simply that that is a doomed to fail project. Nations work primarily because of their negative aspects, In Group Out Group dynamics and competition is an indivisible part of the package.

Trying to create this new Nation without it is like trying to create a Cell without a membrane.

Why I think this will lead to Human suffering:
An observable phenomena in history is that when powerful, semi-idealistic, and power interested peoples come together to try and "civilize," or "Improve the world," or "bring them into the future/light/civilization," and "Out of their backwards, rustic, barbarian," ways they often encounter resistance. Of course people will likely not accept this and don't want to be reforged in the idealistic image of these global do-gooders. This is best illustrated by the attempts of the English during the Plantagenet Kings to "civilize," or "Make English," the Celtic speaking areas on the Isles and in Brittany. Which quickly were met with revolt and violence by the locals. To which the English became bitter and vicious towards "the savages that don't want our civilization!" and great cruelty and violence ensued. The same story was played out between Europeans and the Native Americans, the Natives did not wish to become European and their rebellions were met with cruelty and violence. My fear is the the high minded dreams of the Internationalists/Globalists will without doubt be met with resistance and I've found there is ample historical precedent in High minded dreamers becoming bloody tyrants and monsters when their dreams of Utopia are shattered.

[Slant]

You know, speaking of the Nazis, it just dawned on me that Hitler DID have some good ideas. Like, it was his idea to shoot himself right? That was pretty sweet.

Actually, they did have a lot of good ideas. Fun fact, after WW2 the allied forces discussed scrapping the entire German law system and beginning from scratch. Since that would've been a mighty undertaking, they settled on inspecting each law and seeing if it has merits on its own if you remove any discrimination in it. Turns out, the vast majority of laws passed under the Nazi regime actually did make sense.

One example: Jews were very successful in the legal sector. So what happened was that jewish lawyers' businesses were closed and their legal licenses revoked. But the Jews continued giving legal advice for money. The only thing they couldn't do was represent you in court (without those licenses). At that point, the Nazis went one step further and made a legal license a requirement to give legal advice, otherwise you're automatically liable for any damages coming off your advice, regardless of blame or not. Clearly, this made giving out legal advice without a license a rather unattractive career move.

Now, that's a sad story for the Jewish lawyers, but once you think about it... it's actually not a bad idea to require someone who wants to give out legal advice that could easily destroy families, cost you millions or guides people into making wrong life decisions to actually have a law degree and be a certified lawyer with a license. While the origin of this legislation was purely antisemitic, they pretty much kept all of it because it includes a pretty good protection for the layman against dubious people claiming they know something about the law when they really don't. The thing that the post-war German gouvernment fixed was that licenses couldn't be withheld based on discriminating reasons, like religion. Once that bit was fixed, it was a perfectly fine ruleset.

So make fun of Hitler all you like, I agree with you in particular on the suicide, but you're right on them having some (accidental) good ideas that just needed a bit of tweaking.

[Theodarzna]

I would not say the actions of any one man is entirely substantively core to the discussion. Hitlers actions, inactions, and sins are not the thread topic.