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You ever think about how borders and countries are just some extreme rich guy shit that we've all been trained to believe are real? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Like, the only reason countries exist is because some rich guys decided that they ruled this chunk of land, and everyone else just kinda said "Yeah, whatever, I don't really give a shit, just let me farm and leave me the fuck alone".

Then the rich guy on the next bit of land said "I want a bit of what he's got going on", and before we knew it, all the bits of land were ruled by people who's only claim to them was that they were the first to have the idea.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and some of the bits of land are ruled by people who wear gold hats and spout a load of bollocks about divine right, while some of the bits of land are ruled by people who convinced the rest of the people to let them do it, and really, there's no difference between, like, France and Spain, but some old dudes drew a line and said "Nah, that bit speaks this version of a language, and that bit speaks another version of it".

You ever think about that?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been very slowly reading a book called "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. It has mostly covered agriculture so far, and has challenged the idea that caveman is less than hunter gatherer which is less than farming. But it has also noted how evidence shows just how fluid people were with where they lived for so long.

For so much of humanity people have just decided that they weren't happy with where they were living and would just up and leave or travel or visit distant people who recognized them as relatives. For some reason in the time since we have culturally decided that money and property are paramount and that dedication to accumulation of things makes us less able to move around. Hard governmental borders and property existed then too, it just wasn't the nearly universally agreed upon method of existing.

I've enjoyed the book so far and I would recommend it if you are open to reading non-fiction, I think it gets pretty close to this topic and might even cover it too

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, it certainly challenges many aspects of how I think about the very-long-ago past. Looking at the contents of the book and the work of David Graeber in general, this just became the book I will start reading after I finish the current one. Thanks for the very interesting suggestion!