It's interesting to me, because the tendency to view the nation-state as the standard political unit, and to interpret all of our interactions with other cultures and political bodies through the lens of the nation-state seems to be a major limitation on our ability to understand what's going on in the world around us. To take one example, the word "draconian" is the corruption of the name Draco, who instituted the first laws regarding murder in ancient Athens. He was so disliked for ending a policy of tribal revenge killings that his name still exists some three thousand years later as an adjective to describe repression. Tribal revenge killings are still standard practice in some parts of Afghanistan.
The entire concept of a tribe, and relationship between an individual and his or her family in some cultures is incomprehensible to us. Talking to a Saudi once, I was informed that his father had the absolute right to kill his children without being prosecuted for murder. There have beens studies that noted a close correlation between less powerful Pashtun tribes and Taliban membership. Apparently in setting up the government in Southern Afghanistan, long standing tribal conflicts spanning millennia have been reinforced, which fuels the violence.
Never mind that Afghanistan as a state is basically a fictitious political concept that is used to describe an area that can't effectively be controlled by any other political entity. Afghanistan's borders are porous because all of its major ethnic groups have extended relatives across the borders. The border between the Pashtun parts of Afghanistan and the Pashtun parts of Pakistan are mostly fictitious, especially because a large number of Pashtuns, including many members of the Taliban, spent large portions of the lives in refugee camps or living with relatives in the Pashtun parts of Pakistan.
A Nigerian that I once lived with told me that he was family friends with Chinua Achebe. I became very excited, until I realized that he had never met Chinua Achebe. His extended family was friends with Chinua Achebe's extended family.
We have similar trouble with the role patronage systems (also known as corruption) plays in the political institutions of most countries. The idea of government by nepotism and personal loyalty, by blind tribal loyalty, with actions dictated by centuries long tribal grudges is unimaginable.
When dealing with Western European nations, at least our political and socioeconomic planes of immanence at least intersect at some points. When dealing with absolutely alien cultures, they might as well be in another dimension. Meaningful dialogue about issues that inspire strong popular opinions on both sides is nearly impossible.
The attempt to transpose political institutions like democracy onto other cultures, or for those cultures to freely adopt such institutions, ends in strange outcomes. Democratic Japan, democratic Russia, democratic France, democratic America, and democratic South Africa are all very different places. South Africa still lacks effective AIDS policy because of weird, jingoistic tendencies to claim it's a plot by the white devils, compounded by the role played by virile masculinity in their cultural fabric.
I've also recently stumbled across several articles in which female Muslims advocate veils as a means of self-empowerment and pride in their cultural identity.
What I'm getting at is the world is a strange and complicated place, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on in it in the grand scheme of things. This makes me want to learn new things constantly, and one of the things that I'd like to learn about is the Middle Ages, which seem like a riot of polyglot heterogeneity, tribal allegiances, religious conflicts, mystery, squalor, grandeur, violence, death, despair, chivalry, love in a pure and unimaginable sense,et cetera ad infinitum.
Also, I've gotten a little bored of advocating a community of nations, human rights, and communal interests. I needed to post something different just to change the pace.
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