NDT the goat of saying rly dumb shit but everyone thinks it’s somehow enlightening. he’s like Jaden smith but Twitter likes him
I mean I agree with him here. It’s ridiculous how we are still this tribalistic species while basically everyone would be better off when we would work together (e.g. climate change would be non-existent)
Passports weren’t a general concept until the end of the 19th century. Before they were mostly to allow passage to certain areas inside one country, rather than for movement between countries. There have been Identifications for Nobels and Diplomats though.
Anyways the whole concept is mostly a concept of modern nation states not of ancient tribalism.
I think the point is that the tribalism led to the creation of the nations/states in the first place. I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
This was also my understanding and I begrudgingly agree with NDT that borders and states and tribalism are bad. I don’t agree with complaining about lines. Damn dude, sucks to have to be a regular participant in society, maybe of bureaucrats got paid better or there were more people working the passport desk.
Or… and i know this is fucking wild, he made up that story because in the US you get passports in the mail. Yeah, you have to maybe wait in a short line for some steps but overall you just send in your info and wait 6 weeks.
The state is formed by the historical mode of production, its like a contradiction that is the resolution to all of the other contradictions present in market social relations. In other words the state is based on how stuff gets made, and who accumulates the value inherent in the stuff, which is in essence the congealed work that went into making that stuff.
Politics and culture is always a factor in what shape the state takes, since politics and culture are social structures and sources of power themselves, but politics is downstream from production
Eh, that’s one view. In The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow propose that the State arises from the intersection of three forms of social power. These are sovereignty (control of violence), bureaucracy (control of information), and politics (control through charisma and culture). Historicaly each of these has existed as the basis for societies alone and in combination without the concept of a state.
The State is a meme, a technology like religion or money, which provides a framework for the distribution and application of those 3 forms of power. It isn’t the only possible framework for that, but it’s outwardly destructive nature and self-propogation have ensured that the modern world is structured around a narrow set of configurations of the State.
I really wanna read that book, maybe this year :) I almost stole it from my wife’s cousin at Thanksgiving this year
I don’t think what you’re saying contradicts me, I agree my explainer is one view, one which addresses political economies, and the GrabGrow view is another more anthropological view. Unfortunately Marx never finished his anthropological works although there are a lot of notes from the end of his life that are worth parsing.
Saying it’s this one thing, when it can be scientifically understood as either or both things, is more like orthodoxy which I try to avoid. Both views help to understand a complicated topic made of historically shifting dynamics and changing aspects.
What your explanation doesn’t address that mine does, is what is the “social power” that congeals into these forms? It takes different shapes throughout history, but can be understood coarsely as “wealth”, which is the accumulated value of human labor. My explanation better reflects the class character of the state. However if we are to try and actually affect the world for the better, as we should, we would be better equipped with both views (and likely a few others) with which to determine truth in the functioning of political economy, than one or the other alone.
Drag has seen criticism of the term “tribalism” as it normalises the idea that tribes were bad. Tribes were actually way more sensible than modern governments. Blaming the unique problems of developed societies on indigenous tribes is kinda messed up. Sectarianism is a better word.
I blame everything on people that speak about themselves in the 3rd person.
Yes, but… did you know, if you kiss a mirror you will always kiss yourself on the lips. How’s that?
actually schizoposting before it was popular
Saying dumb shit with smart words is pretty tight tho.
Wait til you learn that the reason you hate immigrants and immigration is that the wealthy conditioned you to hate them. Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t? This allows the wealthy to profit off of international arbitrage, while regular citizens can’t. A CEO can move a factory to a low cost country to save on labor, but you in a wealthy country can’t move there to save on cost of living. And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages. The corporations get to take advantage of international arbitrage, but you don’t.
Corporations are people except when they’re conveniently not!
This is clearly a completely natural phenomenon, like the weather !
Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t?
Well… some capital. Don’t try to order anything from Cuba or Venezuela or Russia and expect it on your doorstep any time soon.
Possibly Mexico, Canada, or China soon too, if the Trumpies get everything they’re asking for.
And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages.
Best example of this I’ve ever seen (other than Israel/Gaza, which is really more of an interior border) is Haiti/Dominican Republic. The fact that they’re all on the same island but one half looks like the fucking Korean Demilitarized Zone to keep the other half out is bleak af. Particularly nauseating when you’re seeing earthquake relief getting held up by some of the most evil bureaucratic fucks you’ve ever dealt with in your life.
Or mostly anywhere really. The EU exists for all that to be easier within the EU.
We live in a society
We live in a patchwork of societies, I think is the thing
Bottom text
I take it you’re not from the US, as we’re trained from birth to be overtly hostile to the concept, as well as each other.
There’s no team in I, and society would be a slippery slope to evil socialism.
But hey, we are oh so very free… to die in the gutter alone as other Americans tell us to hurry up as our continued existence is negatively impacting their property values.
Sadly.
I love all the posts calling him arrogant and elitist for pointing out something, in a critical manner, that by their nature are arrogant and elitist: nation state borders.
Those things that make people who’ve done nothing feel entitled to more resources than other people by virtue of where their mother was hanging out when she popped them out.
I think dwelling on their artifical, self-serving nature is healthier than taking them seriously in any other sense than the threat of state violence for failing to pretend that they’re sacred.
Humanity, not to be confused with your own individual greed or birth lottery results, would be far better off abolishing them. They bring nothing to the table but dehumanization, death, and inequity. Most, even most who consider themselves to be on the privileged side of the imaginary line in the dirt, have far more in common with the people trying to get to the privileged side than the miniscule populations of sociopath humans that use them to secure and metastasize their ego score hoards, the entire point of them.
I wish I could upvote you a thousand times.
Yes and no.
Borders may not mean a lot when you just pop out of your mother.
But when you have worked 30-50 years building a place in a certain way you may actually have some legit entitlement on all that you built and worked for.
It’s a complex issue. We’ve seem some countries have bad issues because bad inmigration politics.
I know it’s against the dogma to even dare to talk about inmigration policies with anything that’s not “open borders”. It’s a sin and the inquisition will promptly come after me for just mentioning that massive inmigration did not improve one particular country. And that a too “welcoming” policy was a proved failure.
But reality beats any kind of dogma, propaganda or illusion. And as rational thinking human beings, when the dogma fails we are required to actually notice it and act accordingly.
Only plebs wait in line. I put my request in an envelope, a government servant picks it up at my door and takes it to more government servants who do all the work before hand delivering it back.
And you wait 6 months.
Well I don’t plan my trips last minute like some harlot.
This dude really is a pompous ass sometimes.
Agreed he can be pompous but I think since he’s an astronomer he is making the point that if you were in space and looked at earth you would wonder why are there borders
Because it turns out sociology, anthropology and politics also exist.
If you were in space and looked at Earth you wouldn’t see any people.
EDIT: Crap, someone is going to point out that you can see lights at night, aren’t they? This thread is for pedants and now I’ve started a conversation about biomarkers you can see from orbit.
I’m going to point out that you edited without editing.
Next level pedantry.
You probably would though, there are no single manned space missions far as I know.
But you can see lights on the dark side!!
You know continents, rivers and mountain ranges exist?
There are heaps of examples of those that aren’t political borders, though. I live between a river and some mountains. The other side of the river is another county but still the same country, and the other side of the nearest mountains isn’t even another county. Egypt is on both sides of the Nile and also on both sides of the Africa-Asia border, Russia is on both sides of the Urals and the Europe-Asia border (wherever you draw it, if you draw it at all), America is on both sides of the Rockies and so on
El Paso?
No, I’m in Scotland. Isn’t the other side of the river from El Paso across the Mexican border anyway?
Part of the other side of the river is Mexico, another part is New Mexico, the nearest mountains have Texas on both sides—it just happened to also fit your description. Kind of wild that there is a part of Scotland that has the same unusual artificial and natural barriers.
Your point is?
Earth is beautiful!
What about this tweet reads as pompous to you?
“If everyone was as wise as me, I wouldn’t suffer this tiresome charade”
Well, he’s ridiculing the fact that everything we have setup for governance is, in fact, made up. I don’t see why that’s pompous. I know his tweets tend to be a bit too pedantic for certain topics, but that is his persona. He is one of the few peopeople responsible for this generation finding science cool. He’s allowed that much.
It’s sophomoric.
If you close your eyes and imagine a future Star Trek utopia, are you still imagining borders? It’s a pretty standard opinion that borders are an outcropping of our worse natures and should eventually be left behind.
Borders are absolutely in the star Trek utopia. Everything has borders. What we do about those borders is the difference.
Each quadrant, solar system, etc has borders. These are even more arbitrary as the current state, county, and country borders across our world tend to follow natural terrain or longitude and latitude. None of these exist in space. But the quadrant borders are as easy to cross as for me to drive to my next US state. However, the Kardassian border is not so easy to cross, just like it’s not so easy for me to cross into North Korea.
Borders are not the inherent issue here. Conflict is the inherent issue, and borders are how we try to minimize that conflict.
They should really issue some sort of identification showing to which quadrant you belong so that friendly quadrants will accept you as a visitor with open arms.
To judge others so, you must be the personification of kindness and benevolence. Surely?
Black science man always talks like he’s done weed for the first time and is trying to impress his nephew’s friends.
I fucking hate this guy so much. He wants to be carl sagan or stephen hawking so badly, but hes ignorant as fuck and all his ‘deep thoughts’ are shallower than a puddle.
It would be fine if he didn’t talk with such a pretentious tone.
Yes borders are bullshit, but he really doesn’t have to come across all high and mighty about it
I’m not convinced that he knows how to come across in any other way
Imagine what it would be like having a disagreement with him
He would be absolutely insufferable
It’d be like arguing with a lemming, soooo smug and self-important.
In fact, forget the disagreement
PSA: If all you have to do is wait in line, you’re privileged af
Ok?
Hits the joint “borders man”
This is not interesting.
Maybe it’s because I know autistic people, but NDT’s obtuse starry-eyed splaining never triggered me as much as it seems to others.
He’s an astrological trapped on a planet. What do you expect
it’s worth noting when the hate against NDT started and who was the most vocal about it.
Cosmos aired, and the christians flipped their shit. At the time, it was hilarious. Now it’s kinda sad.
Personally, I find him irksome because I get a strong vibe from him that he thinks of himself as a very smart person, looking down on the intellectual peasants. Part of why I perceive him that way is because this is how I used to think, as an autistic nerd who built much of my identity up around being smart. That’s also why behaviour of the sort that shows up on /r/iamverysmart (such as many of NDT’s posts) makes me cringe so much.
Dissecting this a bit further, it’s not necessarily that I think he thinks he’s better than other people — rather the opposite: some of the most intellectually arrogant people I have known are, at their core, deeply insecure and feeling the need to justify their interests by presenting themselves in a certain way.
Yeah that’s exactly the vibe I get but for some reason it makes me feel more charitable towards him. Maybe because it doesn’t trigger like an echo cringe in me because I’m not like that.
(I’m just like directly insecure lol)
I think about this a few times a year and I become sad each time. We only get this one planet in the whole ass universe. And we can barely see all of it, unless we’re lucky and/or rich (at least moreso than most of humankind).
It’s profoundly ridiculous.
Mobility is better now than it has ever been, so don’t get too sad about that.
You’re totally right about this. I find it frustrating in a different way that the ability to travel is easier and possible, which hasn’t been the case for the majority of humanity, but (generally) artificial restrictions prevent it from happening.
I’m from Canada and my partner was born in Europe. When I hear how easily she was able to travel by train and plane, it makes me sad that we don’t have a similar system. Even airfare is significantly cheaper there because trains are a worthy competitor.
A friend of mine who has relatives in China has talked about how people my age (university age) have been using the new train system to see so much of their country than they otherwise would be able to.
I hope that eventually there will be a similar transit system in Canada that allows poor people to see the country they live in. And I understand that by even living in Canada I don’t really count amongst the global impoverished population. I understand the privilege.
If I said the shit that fart smeller says people would literally say “shut up stoner” to me.
You have to have an advanced degree, wealth and celebrity in order to publicly proclaim something that an introspective 12 year old would yell at his friends at 4 in the morning after completing a dare that he could gulp down a whole cup of sugar without coughing or puking
This needs one of those bell curve memes.
As if humans weren’t fiercely tribalistic forever. Other species beat each other to death, too.
The post may be right, but getting a bunch of homo sapiens from far away not to club each other to death is, historically, a hard problem, and countries and passports are kinda a stepping stone.
