back in the saddle
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| my city is still breathing back in the saddle |
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004 I've been giving a lot of thought to the end of nation-states lately. How long can they really last? I mean, even Switzerland, one of the oldest apparently, has only been around 500 odd years (I know someone's going to correct me on this - I can't remember the exact year anymore, although 1394 comes to mind) and even then, the current borders of Switzerland have not been around that long. So really, its not as if the nation-state is the be all end all of society. What I've been thinking about, though, is where its going to go. I can't seem to decide if we're going to start getting smaller and smaller, splitting up into smaller, more homogeneous groups (see the former Yugoslavia) until we've basically become city-states, or will we have some globalised society with an overarching government like in Huxley's Brave New World without all the cloning and what not? I think the best bet is a combination of the two: something like a federation of loosely connected, largely autonomous city-states, with an overarching, possibly global seat of governance. And I don't know how I feel about this. Whatever.. this all began when I was flying to Victoria last weekend reading the National Post (courtesy of West Jet). I can't remember what I was reading about, but the idea of sovereignty came up. And I started thinking, will sovereignty even be an issue in a couple hundred years? When did the idea of a sovereign nation come into being (something tells me the British have something to do with it, although I'm sure it was earlier)? And isn't that what many regimes seem to be striving for increased interdependence (and therefore decreased sovereignty)? I really don't know where I'm going with this.. I should sleep. Or edit myself so this makes some sense to someone (including myself). Possibly tomorrow. Likely not. posted by kim | 11:56 p.m.|
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