Irreconcilable Differences

The notion of a nation-state is a relatively new concept – it really didn’t emerge until the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Before that, you had kingdoms, dukedoms, tribal divisions, etc. and areas simply defined by their geography (picture an island or a land surrounded by ultra-high mountains). People also didn’t travel much until this more modern era, and political divisions were much more likely to be highly localized. But long before this more recent phenomenon, as religion swept across the world, as languages carried commonality in certain regions, the world had already witnessed the spread of a bigger notion – civilization. Islam, Christianity, etc. And they have been clashing ever since.

With the fall of monarchs (or at least the imposition of limits on their authority) and the end of colonization, new borders of new nations were created. When the definition of “a country” rose from within the nation itself, a cohesive identity of statehood evolved straight and strong. In the 19^th century and beyond, Germany, despite Hitler and notwithstanding a temporary division between East and West, remained culturally and nation-wise, Germany. The language was German, the culture steeped in Teutonic tradition and the weltanschauung deeply communal, from work ethnic to economic proclivities.

When the notion of statehood was imposed from the outside, however, without regards to cultural identity, the resulting nations have been less than successful. The British amalgamation of Muslim and Hindu cultures in the South Asian subcontinent unraveled into the modern hostilities that define and separate India and Pakistan.

Iraq is another rather clear example of this anomaly. Born of a 1916 carve-up of the Ottoman Empire by Western powers (the Sykes-Picot accord), Iraq’s new borders contained an unhealthy mix of unfriendly tribes, religious groups that truly despised each other (Sunnis and Shiites) and a sizeable ethnic minority of Kurds with absolutely nothing in common with the rest of the nation. It took a brutal dictator to hold these uncomfortable groups into a single nation, and with every Sunni bombing of a Shiite mosque, with every repressive decision of a Shiite majority against Sunni citizens, you have clear evidence of the misfit… and understand that the Kurdish region in the north has pretty much made itself autonomous.  

Why this step back into history, Peter? Look around you. Even within the U.S., there are growing secessionist movements in our some of our red states, traditionally white and rural enclaves of fairly conservative voters, who do not like the demographic shifts toward more liberal, urban and non-white minorities becoming the American norm. Reminiscent of the Civil War in so many ways. South Sudan seceded from Sudan. Catalonia is talking about leaving Spain, Scotland is considering separating from the UK, Quebec seems to hate Canada, and the wondrous European Union is splintering between the economic haves and those have-nots.

The UK’s David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel have declared that multiculturalism within their national borders is dead, just as France passed laws banning religious garb, face-covering and other statutes rather unsubtly aimed at its growing Muslim population. The best intentions – to unify Europe to avoid the conflicts that gave rise to WWI and WWII, to create an economic power to balance American economic hegemony – don’t seem to be able to overcome the cultural, economic and stylistic differences that have defined the individual nations comprising the EU.

All over Afghanistan and Africa, tribal rivalries still seem to define the political landscape, fomenting violence and conflict.  War lords and religious fanatics have carved up the Afghan countryside, virtually ignoring the central government. Look at the current fierce battles in the Congo and Nigeria, without even revisiting the not-too-distant horrors of Rwanda or Sierra Leone. What’s going on here? Are we narrowing and returning to some form of modern tribalism? Are modern pluralistic societal combinations unsustainable in the long run? The United States is a lettuce bowl of ethnic and racial diversity, the grandest multi-cultural experiment ever.

The big questions that I would like to pose include: Are we contracting back into smaller and more culturally defined nations? Are attempts to merge diversity into single states or larger political units becoming a vestige of the past? Does this just happen when countries have too many people or too much diversity? Is humankind’s proclivity to create self-identity at a micro-level growing to defeat recent historical trends toward larger political units? Are we fracturing into increasingly antagonistic nation-states? How will environmental degradation accelerate these cross-border hostilities and fights for increasingly limited resources? How much of this disruptive reality is function of the global economic downturn, which does seem to have brought out the worst in everybody, and how much of these trends are simply culturally based? What do you think the macro trends are? Do you think if the world moves back into a more balanced economic state, we will live better with each other, even in pluralistic societies?

I’m Peter Dekom, and every once and a while, it is good to step back and try and see the big – okay the biggest – picture of who we are as human beings.