Just what is a 'country' anyway?

a group of people that doesn’t like otther groups of people.

or the collective human instinct to piss on a tree.

Yes, it is artificial.

No, we don’t need to live in a country, but at the moment, we have little choice about that.

Countries are political organizations. What does that mean? It’s a very long conversation, but as simply as I can say it, it’s about people saying “this is us, and that isn’t.” “Us” lives within these boundaries and not-us lives elsewhere. Countries are a way of establishing sovereignty over territory. This is ours, and not yours.

It’s artificial in the sense that it’s arbitrary. It’s not defined by anything other than what humans agree it is defined by. That’s why we fight wars over it. It’s a way of coming to agreement about where the lines should be drawn.

The only way to eliminate countries is to unite them. If we can all learn to cooperate and trust each other, we may, indeed, be able to eliminate national borders. The world is making progress in this way, although it’s two steps forward, one step back. Europe has joined, but the US has made crossing borders more onerous.

The emotions come because every group of people (whether neighbors or a tribe or a religion or a country) needs a way of identifying themselves. “We, the people.” Every people calls themselves “the people;” the chosen ones.

So we build a myth around our history and values, and then we celebrate these stories and ideas until they become a much deeper, emotional thing that is infused in (most of) our personalities. We need this emotion in order to drum up the will to fight to preserve the boundaries. Without it, we might just compromise or give up our power to others.

So, did you ask this because you really didn’t know, or just to make a point?

My country has a set of rules that citizens agree to follow. If I don’t like the rules I am free to look elsewhere for a country that Has rules I like.
My country, while not perfect, has rules that control the economy, trade, defense, personal freedoms, and all sorts of things – even lead in my kids toys.
My country allows me to own property.
My country handles social security and disaster relief and prevents some people from other countries from making my life here miserable.
For all these services I pay taxes, a good percentage of which are actually used for their budgeted purpose .
I wish my country would provide health care now instead of waiting until I am 65…Sigh.

There are 4 criteria for a nation:. territory, population, government, sovereignty.

Remember the chapter test is on Tuesday and will include thr 4 theories of of how government brings about the state. and the 6 purposes of the Constitution as enumerated inthe Preamble.

Aside from some of the technical explanations above, it seems most people like to feel a part of a group, so identifying with a country can satisfy this need. Generall I am not a “joiner” so I love the idea of an open planet where we can venture wherever we want, be citizens of the world. Yet still, even if this was the realty, various regions would have their own personalities I think.

Yo teach! Wannanapple?

You have a good hunch because countries are an unnatural, illegal entity. Politically speaking they are composed of a people, a political boundary or border, sovereignty and an area. A country with an area but no political boundary, a people but no real sovereignty are a nation.

Eventually, global human society should evolve to reject the nation-state system and realize humanity as one whole. But that’s a very optimistic theory. Check out Noam Chomsky for more.

There is something of the conspiritorial ‘Area Franchise’ about them, with each country’s rulers/elites as the ‘Franchisees’, exploiting the inhabitants of their patch and turning a blind eye to (or at best paying lip service to) the abuses of other ‘Franchisees’ in other ‘Areas’.

The analogy of ‘Farms’, ‘Farmers’ and ‘Livestock’ is also apt.
@atlantis ”..humanity as one whole” sounds good to me.

If you be in the UN, you be a country. If not, PREPARE TO DIE! YARGHHHH!!!!

I think we have little influence to what could be considered a country as compare to the old days, where explorations are still necessary. We can only hope those guys made the right decesions to what a certain area/island/territory/country of which they might have colonized or not, can be consider one country, resulting to one government, to which becomes the central decision maker.

In Europe the term country seems to lose some of its meaning.

@mattbrowne That is interesting. Do you think the Euro helped this attitude along?

@JLeslie – To a certain extend, yes. But above all it’s travel, both business and pleasure. When I was a kid it was, hey, vacation in Italy. There were still border controls of course. Today it’s more like, next week I got this meeting in Milan. I think the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

has a far greater effect than the euro.

It makes sense. I find that people who travel often do not see borders the same way people who rarely travel do.

That might explain why Americans aremore likely to be narrow in our thinking, we can travel for 3000 miles and still be in the same country.