Nation States
A country, like a town or province, is
a thing we humans make to fill our needs.
The things we cannot do by just ourselves,
we let the city, province, country do.
Towards these tasks, we pay our taxes and
elect the folk who manage these for us.
So it should be, in sober viewing, yet
we have exalted this and have imbued
a country with the qualities we once
reserved for deities—or kings who claimed
to be appointed by divine decree.
How foolish that appears, and yet we see
our politicians thumping on their chests
and seeking to be kings—and pouring scorn
on anyone who seeks to question this,
as hails and fists are raised for hero-kings.
If these were only carnivals, we then
could simply shrug, as some of us may do
at other spectacles—like all the games
where sport and commerce vulgarly combine.
But hatred, bigotry and all that flows
from human vices—these are tapped, released.
And violence follows swiftly, mounting more
as lies are spread and can’t be questioned, so
we see a spiral that descends to hell.
******
The nation states are birthed and bred in blood,
as empires are—and mass religions too.
And this is so in almost every case—
as each “exception” shows, when opened up.
And yet we yield to tribal impulses
and swear allegiance to a flag and state,
as soldiers march to beating drums, saluting
those who send them out to slay and die.
So also, lines are drawn that may divide
a province or a city. Families flee,
as sorrow turns to anger, then to hate—
and neighbor turns on neighbor in revenge.
What started this and what sustains it still?
At base: survival; economics; those
who strive for power; vice; and ignorance.
One could say more, but let this here suffice.
******
When a person’s life is threatened, then
the person acts and so defends the self.
When he or she is verbally abused,
mistreated or exploited, then again
the “I” awakes and reasserts the self.
And so it often is with nations—these
arise as concepts when oppression reigns
that victimizes humans based on things
that they are born with or acquire in youth—
the marks of races, cultures, which they then
perceive as common and as threatened, so
they band together to defend themselves.
But then in turn, if people then succeed
in overturning orders, so that they
are now within the group that reigns, they then
may often push yet others to despair—
and so another nationhood is born.
And that’s a story that’s repeated, though
it’s hardly all there is to nation-states.
For that, you’ll have to read the books, because
the things we've written here are just a sketch.
So you can read of Europe's wars of sects
that lasted centuries, what issued thence—
and more, to puzzle out yourself the curse
that makes us battle those who're much like us.
******
We humans seek some others, whom we blame
for all the problems that we humans face.
By doing this, we shift the blame and then
rejoice in meting out the punishment.
So all our baser urges then are vented,
as we “unite” against this “proven enemy”.
And knowing human nature, those who strive
for wealth and power utilize these things,
as idiots gather in their mobs and rage
and wars break out—in this and every age.
So also, wealth and power, threatened, seek
deflection of the threats. A foe is found,
perennial or new, that then distracts
the lumpen masses and obscures the truth.
******
The love of the land and people of one’s birth
or domicile is natural. Love is good—
and even better when it is informed,
so knowledge and compassion both are guides.
But blind obedience and belief can lead,
like willful ignorance, to all that’s cursed—
and these together breed the troops that greed
and zealotry require to do their work.
Ambition in a man or woman is
at times a good thing. Often, it is not—
for those of great ambition tend to climb
on others as they drive yet others on,
not heeding all the harm that hubris brings.
******
The tribal folk knew well their tribes, but we
belong to nations that we do not know,
because they were created recently
or are too large for us to know with ease.
Let’s get to know the country where we live—
the land, the peoples and the histories—
for we will find there’s more than one of each.
Let’s learn the names of places, plants and beasts
and speak the tongues in which the people speak.
Let’s sit with common folk and share their food,
the joys and woes that beings always have—
and let us do this, not for just a part
or portion of the land and people, but
as great a fraction as our lives permit.
And if indeed we truly do these things,
we then will surely find there’s much to like—
and also things we might be leery of.
And so it always is, with everything.
******
And if we do this, we will find the lines
that mark the borders—those are meaningless,
for genes and cultures both have flowed across,
as tends to happen when we humans meet.
And so within us are the genes of those
we’re told to view as foes—as enemies.
And in our tongues we find the words as well
that made the journeys over distances.
And so in food and music, so in clothes
and so in arts and crafts and sciences.
So does this mean that passports, visas will
now disappear, along with fences and
the armies and the wars that nations wage?
If it only it were so! But yes—in time.
The cities of a country do not war,
and neither do its provinces—and so
in time the humans of the world will see
a country is the place they chance to be.
******
A city may have quarters, if it’s old—
or even new, where different settlers live.
This should not mean that people do not mix
and over time create such citizens
as view the city as their quarter true.
What mayhem there could be, if one declared,
“Brooklyn is for A’s, Manhattan B’s,
the Bronx and Queens and Staten Island—they’re
reserved for C’s and D’s and E’s.”
Yet that’s the basis for the “ethnic state”—
the worst thing that a nation-state can be.
******
Beware the empire in its red advance.
Beware its reign, with even more of blood—
and know that blood will flow at its collapse.
Resist the empires. These have drained the lands.
But do desist from building blinding walls.
Beware the madness of the nation state
that takes a fiction and creates a tribe—
and even more, beware the state that marks
the “self” and “other” with the stamp of tribe.
Let's love our countries as we do the earth,
but know we share the overarching sky
that sees us insects crawling down below
and claiming this or that as theirs, as if
we ants could own it, through our ignorance.
There is no virtue that a nation owns.
There is no vice that only is a tribe’s.
We’d see the blood on every nation’s hands,
if only we could read the histories
that lie unwritten by the ones who died.
2019, April 6, Sat.
Brooklyn, New York
