this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Territory is a concept that transcends the human species; it's not all that weird. We simply don't do it by rubbing our scent glands on stumps and rocks.
To say that there's no difference between France and Spain is a bit disingenuous. Outside of colonialism, the lines are less arbitrarily drawn and moreso organically evolved along with language and culture in a context where wide communication is rare. That and fighting for control, of course.
It sucks that we don't have universal peace such that borders are unnecessary, but that's life down to the simplest organism. Governments need borders, and shitty as they are it's our only path toward societies that are more fair than pure natural competition.
Not just territory, but social stratification and ingroup-outgroup dynamics are present in nearly every social species of animal. Some are more strict and/or violent about it, but everything from fish to birds to other primate species have social hierarchies, a concept of territory, and a willingness to fight over both. Great apes have been documented conducting violent wars with other troupes over territory and resources.
I have to say that I've always found the argument that "X is an tool of control by the rich!" to be reductive. The implicit (or sometimes explicit) corollary is that "X" is therefore arbitrary, artificial, and bad, whereas I tend to think that usually inverts cause and effect. "X," whether it's social hierarchies, the concept of property ownership, or in this case territorial boundaries, are more often than not rooted in some innate social instinct that can often be found not just in people but throughout the animal kingdom. The powers-that-be may well be manipulating those behaviors to their benefit, but that doesn't mean that the solution is to deny that they are innate and claim that we can make a better society if we could only ignore them hard enough. You have to make changes keeping in mind the limitations of the human mind and behavior if you want to create a viable real-world solution.
Not only is it reductive, but it’s also a rather lacking analysis in terms of richness.
As you say, territorialism and social hierarchies is common.
Animals don’t value each other on the basis of their bank accounts, and neither did humans.
Money and wealth are fairly modern concepts. So are nations, but the point I’m trying to make is that we divided land into territories long before wealth had anything to do about it.
And while having territories definitely cause some issues it also creates a common cause. If it’s your household, your neighborhood, your municipality, your county, your nation, or your continent.
But as always, the further close to home the more engaged we are. You are more invested in keeping your house clean than the street outside of it.
Democracy works the same, and it works better on lower levels. On national levels it seems to work less and less.
you've explained why borders exist at all, but their current configuration is still arbitrary and mutable and that's part of the point. we're watching right now in Ukraine proof that, with sufficient blood and treasure, anyone is capable of looking at the current configuration of borders and saying "nope!". We watched it happen in 2016 too, when Russia bit off Donetsk and most of the world acted like the new borders were actually the correct borders for all of history and that the theft by violence of huge chunks of land was us just helping transition to the natural state of things. When this war ends and the dust settles between Ukraine and Russia we will treat those borders as though they are ordained by god, too, even though we just watched them change.