nation states. chomsky

 Europe for centuries was the most savage place in the world. The level of savagery was so extraordinary that they developed both the means and the culture to conquer the world. And a large part of the reason for the savagery was the attempt to impose the nation-state, which is extremely unnatural; it breaks up people who have natural connections, it imposes unity on people who are not unified, whether by language or culture or anything else. It takes a lot of violence and brutality to impose a rigid frame on complex, fluid organisms like human societies. That ended in 1945, not because the conflicts were over, but because Europeans realized that the next time they played their favorite game of slaughtering one another, they’d destroy the world. 

Of course this same pattern has extended all over the world. I mean, wherever European colonialism went, nation-state systems were established with the same savagery and violence, and in fact most of the major conflicts in the world now flow directly from European—and I’d include North American here—efforts to impose highly unnatural nation-state systems. And this is the case also in the Levant. So I don’t think there are any natural lines you can draw in the Levant that make any sense from the point of view of people’s lives. 


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