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Borders (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by [M] to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 34 points 4 months ago (19 children)

those aren't borders, those are territories arrived at by wolves interacting with each other and deciding to keep the peace. has nothing to do with formal borders imposed on us by states

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  • [–] 51 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You just described a border.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Hint : the important part here is deciding, instead of imposed. If i go camping in a field, there is no border between me and my neighbor, but we will tend to hang around our own tents more. This is built on nothing more than will, as opposed to borders.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Now imagine that 8.3 billion people are trying to pitch their tents all around you. You're going to have to work out something formal with your neighbors to make sure all these tent groups fit.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Heh, debatable. Depends on the surface available, how many of them are already organized in campers groups, the definition of formal, etc. But i'll concede you the point, for it's not the matter here anyway, neither in the meme nor in the comment.

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  • [–] 40 points 4 months ago* (10 children)

    has nothing to do with formal borders imposed on us by states

    You mean the territories arrived at by entities who interact with each other and decide to keep the peace as an abstract representation of those residing within them?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    so the borders of the US were agreed upon by entities who decided to keep the peace, not established by war and genocide? the borders of several African states were not set by colonial violence? the border between Russia and Ukraine is being "renegotiated" and not fought over? Israel "renegotiating" with Lebanon?

    there's a big difference between populations who come to agreements with each other and states who do things for power.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

    Why are you acting like I said the word "negotiate"? I said "arrived at"; the means – friendly cooperation, terrain, a myriad individualist agreements, threat of brutal violence – are irrelevant to the overall point that the wolves have very obviously formed borders. Israel and Russia are no longer keeping the peace, hence they're actively dissolving the borders and redrawing them to whatever they can arrive at through military and geopolitical force.

    I'll be one of the first people who'll tell you that animals experience real thoughts and emotions and have real, deep, complex bonds with their fellow animal. I'm sure these wolves' borders developed along natural formations, inherent population limits, intimidation, etc., and you'd have to be delusional to think these are totally divorced from the means by which states form borders.

    You're treating this as an argument that borders are inherently good when the argument is that no true Scotsmanning the wolves is fucking bullshit. And if "keeping the peace" involves no (relatively) small-scale, cross-border violence, then I'd like to raise a point about wolves.

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    you said "decide to keep the peace" which I provided counterexamples against. I shorthanded that as "negotiate" but you can just sub in your exact language and the point stands.

    i don't deny the social abilities of wolves. i don't even claim that there are zero similarities between social boundaries and formal borders. what im doing is pointing out that borders formed by the institution of the state are fundamentally different from social boundaries adopted by people, wolves, or any being capable of negotiating them.

    my motivation here is to undermine the idea that national borders are "natural", which tends to legitimate them in many people's minds, like the meme in this post tries to do. I want to undermine that because i believe it isn't true and because there are fundamentally better ways to organize society.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    which I provided counterexamples against.

    Your counterexample showed two countries deliberately not keeping the peace by actively disrespecting and changing the borders what the fuck are you talking about. Borders are dynamic (do I even need to say that? are we in 4th grade here?), and they're extremely often created through violence; nevertheless, borders stabilize when the parties decide to stop fighting. Even the DMZ dividing North and South Korea is static on the basis that total war awaits the country that violates it. Two parties do not have to be content with a border for it to be a border.

    If I meant "keeping the peace" in some kumbaya fantasy sense with no skirmishes or threat of violence, then there would be no parallel to the wolves, because need I reemphasize: we are talking about wolves.

    my motivation here is to undermine the idea that national borders are "natural"

    And clearly the fuck they are, because here we are in a reality where borders exist and are enforced. Humans are not separate from nature. The meme is making fun of an appeal to nature, but it's nevertheless not accepting it as a precondition to support borders. It's saying even if your argument is stupid enough as "it's unnatural", it still makes no sense on its own terms. If you want to argue borders are bad, make an argument that borders are bad; if you want to make an argument that they're unnatural, 1) you're provably wrong and 2) even if you weren't, you're doing nothing to support your case to anyone rational.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    i cited wars as counterexamples against peace. if that doesn't make sense to you, im not sure we can have a productive conversation.

    i completely agree that humans are part of nature. So if you like, everything we do (and everything that occurs ever) is "natural" because everything is part of nature, but that's a fairly useless definition. we also do some relatively unique stuff, too, that is not mirrored by other animals. Nation states are not the same as wolf packs or bonobo societies or whale pods.

    the most important difference here is that nations have institutions (such as a border) that exist despite the actual relationship of the people on those borders. the people on both sides of the Berlin Wall didn't want it to be there. The people who live in Beebe Plain, a town divided by the US-Canada border, have much more in common with their neighbors than the politicians in Washington DC and Ottawa who make decisions for them. this is not the same as pack membership setting territory boundaries, this is control from a distance by strangers.

    anyway this has been interesting, im gonna get on with my day.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    i cited wars as counterexamples against peace.

    If your argument is that borders are unnatural because they're dynamic according to a complex web of interactions, then I'd like to sample whatever meth your ecology professor has been sharing with you.

    If your argument is that an uneasy peace enforced by threat of violence isn't keeping the peace, then I'll point you back to what the other person initially said about wolves "keeping the peace".

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    While it is nice in theory to eliminate all national borders, it's not one wolf but a wolf pack. The pack is deciding democratically to respect the border of another pack.

    Saying borders are "imposed by the state" is like a cub who ignores the pack, wanders into America and gets torn apart by nasty Americans.

    The "state" is people.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    the state is an organization that includes a tiny minority of people who get to command and control the greater population. you can argue that its power is legitimate because of elections if you want, but it is not the same as the people. meanwhile, the wolves don't experience that kind of government.

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