NDT the goat of saying rly dumb shit but everyone thinks it’s somehow enlightening. he’s like Jaden smith but Twitter likes him
I mean I agree with him here. It’s ridiculous how we are still this tribalistic species while basically everyone would be better off when we would work together (e.g. climate change would be non-existent)
Passports weren’t a general concept until the end of the 19th century. Before they were mostly to allow passage to certain areas inside one country, rather than for movement between countries. There have been Identifications for Nobels and Diplomats though.
Anyways the whole concept is mostly a concept of modern nation states not of ancient tribalism.
I think the point is that the tribalism led to the creation of the nations/states in the first place. I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
This was also my understanding and I begrudgingly agree with NDT that borders and states and tribalism are bad. I don’t agree with complaining about lines. Damn dude, sucks to have to be a regular participant in society, maybe of bureaucrats got paid better or there were more people working the passport desk.
Or… and i know this is fucking wild, he made up that story because in the US you get passports in the mail. Yeah, you have to maybe wait in a short line for some steps but overall you just send in your info and wait 6 weeks.
To be fair, trusting mail with my passport still terrifies me, even though it maybe shouldn’t
The state is formed by the historical mode of production, its like a contradiction that is the resolution to all of the other contradictions present in market social relations. In other words the state is based on how stuff gets made, and who accumulates the value inherent in the stuff, which is in essence the congealed work that went into making that stuff.
Politics and culture is always a factor in what shape the state takes, since politics and culture are social structures and sources of power themselves, but politics is downstream from production
Eh, that’s one view. In The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow propose that the State arises from the intersection of three forms of social power. These are sovereignty (control of violence), bureaucracy (control of information), and politics (control through charisma and culture). Historicaly each of these has existed as the basis for societies alone and in combination without the concept of a state.
The State is a meme, a technology like religion or money, which provides a framework for the distribution and application of those 3 forms of power. It isn’t the only possible framework for that, but it’s outwardly destructive nature and self-propogation have ensured that the modern world is structured around a narrow set of configurations of the State.
I really wanna read that book, maybe this year :) I almost stole it from my wife’s cousin at Thanksgiving this year
I don’t think what you’re saying contradicts me, I agree my explainer is one view, one which addresses political economies, and the GrabGrow view is another more anthropological view. Unfortunately Marx never finished his anthropological works although there are a lot of notes from the end of his life that are worth parsing.
Saying it’s this one thing, when it can be scientifically understood as either or both things, is more like orthodoxy which I try to avoid. Both views help to understand a complicated topic made of historically shifting dynamics and changing aspects.
What your explanation doesn’t address that mine does, is what is the “social power” that congeals into these forms? It takes different shapes throughout history, but can be understood coarsely as “wealth”, which is the accumulated value of human labor. My explanation better reflects the class character of the state. However if we are to try and actually affect the world for the better, as we should, we would be better equipped with both views (and likely a few others) with which to determine truth in the functioning of political economy, than one or the other alone.
Drag has seen criticism of the term “tribalism” as it normalises the idea that tribes were bad. Tribes were actually way more sensible than modern governments. Blaming the unique problems of developed societies on indigenous tribes is kinda messed up. Sectarianism is a better word.
I blame everything on people that speak about themselves in the 3rd person.
I typically read your comments in Barney’s voice
In tribal times, there were no maps and the borders moved a lot, but when you crossed them, you generally got driven back or killed.
This goes back to before there were humans, and all other territorial animals do it, too.It is possible to agree with something and still believe it is terribly presented.
Bold claim stating that climate change wouldn’t be real if we just worked together. As if we didn’t live in an ice age as the same species we are now.
Just evolve into a homo without tribalism then and outbreed the rest of us
Yes, but… did you know, if you kiss a mirror you will always kiss yourself on the lips. How’s that?
actually schizoposting before it was popular
Saying dumb shit with smart words is pretty tight tho.
Expressing the basest of notions with the loftiest of words is the pinnacle of wit.
We live in a society
We live in a patchwork of societies, I think is the thing
Bottom text
Sadly.
Wait til you learn that the reason you hate immigrants and immigration is that the wealthy conditioned you to hate them. Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t? This allows the wealthy to profit off of international arbitrage, while regular citizens can’t. A CEO can move a factory to a low cost country to save on labor, but you in a wealthy country can’t move there to save on cost of living. And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages. The corporations get to take advantage of international arbitrage, but you don’t.
Corporations are people except when they’re conveniently not!
This is clearly a completely natural phenomenon, like the weather !
Notice how capital can cross borders, but people can’t?
Well… some capital. Don’t try to order anything from Cuba or Venezuela or Russia and expect it on your doorstep any time soon.
Possibly Mexico, Canada, or China soon too, if the Trumpies get everything they’re asking for.
And the citizens in a poor country can’t move to a wealthy country to earn better wages.
Best example of this I’ve ever seen (other than Israel/Gaza, which is really more of an interior border) is Haiti/Dominican Republic. The fact that they’re all on the same island but one half looks like the fucking Korean Demilitarized Zone to keep the other half out is bleak af. Particularly nauseating when you’re seeing earthquake relief getting held up by some of the most evil bureaucratic fucks you’ve ever dealt with in your life.
Well… some capital. Don’t try to order anything from Cuba or Venezuela or Russia and expect it on your doorstep any time soon.
This is a pretty interesting exception. The reason why Cuban or Venezuelan or Russian capital isn’t very available internationally is because of embargoes. These embargoes and sanctions operate for the benefit of western imperialism, itself just another form of capitalism.
So the reason why national capital isn’t available to international capital is because international capital prevents it from being available. Compare this to many post-colonial African and south american nations. The ones that towed the line of western imperialism, who politically nurtured a national ruling class to benefit and oversee the exploitation of the vast majority of their population in order to provide cheap labor and commodities, have “open” economies. Countries that attempt to provide for the social welfare of the masses (Cuba, Venezuela) or countries who pursue their own internationalist, “imperialist” agendas counter to the western consensus (current Russia) face embargo and sanction.
This is not to deflect any and all criticism from Cuba, Venezuela or historic Soviet Russia. It is an interesting condition to think about.
Oh definitely. But I’ve noticed that America’s failure to impose post-Soviet neoliberal capitalism on big parts of the periphery has resulted in more and more countries getting flagged for embargo and sanction. This has resulted in neighboring countries forced into some hard choices - Germany losing access to cheap Russian natural gas, the Philippines and Australia alienating itself from economic superpower China, Mediterranean shipping coasts skyrocketing after the Gulf of Aden becomes a free-fire zone due to the Americans’ ongoing feud with Iran.
The Cuban embargo can only function if it is isolated from the rest of the Caribbean nations. But putting all of Latin America on the shit list just means they trade with each other while you effectively embargo yourself.
Yeah its been interesting to see the development of the BRICS coalition as a counter to US trade hegemony. It makes one optimistic, but there’s still so much uncertainty. Venezuela’s economy is imploding due to some amount of mismanagement by Maduro’s admin, and not diversifying their economy like 10-15 years ago. And some very recent and concerning chatter coming from international contacts who would be fairly in the know and historically over optimistic about the tenacity of the Cuban revolution, are signalling that the Cuban government is extremely close to collapse (although we’ve been hearing the same from bourgeois media for 60 years, so its kind of hard to swallow.) Columbia is more social democratic than it has been in decades, Argentina is more exploited, Brazil is doing a wild flip from one extreme right wing president to a moderately progressive labor president. And developments on the African continent such as trans-national coalitions are reclaiming the Sahel. The US lost much of its ideological lustre it enjoyed during the cold war, but it makes up for that with naked violence. Our flagging superpower is still like historically the most powerful force in history, even as the international ruling class strips every last stick of profit out of our deeply paralyzed and ineffective political system. And our brainworms are still our #1 cultural export.
Its gonna be a crazy ass decade
Or mostly anywhere really. The EU exists for all that to be easier within the EU.
This dude really is a pompous ass sometimes.
Agreed he can be pompous but I think since he’s an astronomer he is making the point that if you were in space and looked at earth you would wonder why are there borders
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There are heaps of examples of those that aren’t political borders, though. I live between a river and some mountains. The other side of the river is another county but still the same country, and the other side of the nearest mountains isn’t even another county. Egypt is on both sides of the Nile and also on both sides of the Africa-Asia border, Russia is on both sides of the Urals and the Europe-Asia border (wherever you draw it, if you draw it at all), America is on both sides of the Rockies and so on
El Paso?
No, I’m in Scotland. Isn’t the other side of the river from El Paso across the Mexican border anyway?
Part of the other side of the river is Mexico, another part is New Mexico, the nearest mountains have Texas on both sides—it just happened to also fit your description. Kind of wild that there is a part of Scotland that has the same unusual artificial and natural barriers.
Your point is?
Earth is beautiful!
What about this tweet reads as pompous to you?
“If everyone was as wise as me, I wouldn’t suffer this tiresome charade”
Well, he’s ridiculing the fact that everything we have setup for governance is, in fact, made up. I don’t see why that’s pompous. I know his tweets tend to be a bit too pedantic for certain topics, but that is his persona. He is one of the few peopeople responsible for this generation finding science cool. He’s allowed that much.
It’s sophomoric.
If you close your eyes and imagine a future Star Trek utopia, are you still imagining borders? It’s a pretty standard opinion that borders are an outcropping of our worse natures and should eventually be left behind.
Borders are absolutely in the star Trek utopia. Everything has borders. What we do about those borders is the difference.
Each quadrant, solar system, etc has borders. These are even more arbitrary as the current state, county, and country borders across our world tend to follow natural terrain or longitude and latitude. None of these exist in space. But the quadrant borders are as easy to cross as for me to drive to my next US state. However, the Kardassian border is not so easy to cross, just like it’s not so easy for me to cross into North Korea.
Borders are not the inherent issue here. Conflict is the inherent issue, and borders are how we try to minimize that conflict.
They should really issue some sort of identification showing to which quadrant you belong so that friendly quadrants will accept you as a visitor with open arms.
Had to put on pants to go outside due to artificially created laws.
Facts 😢
I dunno I kind of hate sitting where someone else’s sweaty ass has sat on first. I’ll let this one slide.
Just don’t sit then, ever again!
Not so much me. It’s, in fact, my fetish.
But you take them off when you kiss a mirror on the lips
I think it actually is interesting if you’re going to call out humans as a species of animal!
All across species from unicellular to megafauna, from plants to fungus, you can find mechanisms used to defend an individual’s physical territory. Ants and bees from the same species will fight and kill others colony members of they stray into their territory. Bears will fight and kill other bears. Our closest relatives, chimps, will go to war with neighboring chimp bands.
Artificial borders are humans way of saying “this is my territory enter at your own risk”. The REALLY interesting thing is that we have established systematic exceptions to the behaviors we see in nature. “Ask us before you come and you can visit and be safe here from those that enforce our territory.”
The temporary nature is unique, many social animals will permanently adopt an outsider into their group on occasion, equivalent to immigration, but I’m not aware of any that have pre-agreed temporary violations of group territory.
I guess you can draw that comparison, but then human territories are exponentially bigger than anything an equivalent social animal might claim as “enter at your risk” area. A traveling pack of dogs can just go around another pack’s territory. We can’t do that, we’re boxed in. There’s no neutral space left. I guess you could argue there’s international waters, but that’s practically inaccessible to most people.
okay I don’t know how to articulate this properly but i’ll try;
fukn get rekt ngt
Only plebs wait in line. I put my request in an envelope, a government servant picks it up at my door and takes it to more government servants who do all the work before hand delivering it back.
And you wait 6 months.
Well I don’t plan my trips last minute like some harlot.
Black science man always talks like he’s done weed for the first time and is trying to impress his nephew’s friends.
I fucking hate this guy so much. He wants to be carl sagan or stephen hawking so badly, but hes ignorant as fuck and all his ‘deep thoughts’ are shallower than a puddle.
It would be fine if he didn’t talk with such a pretentious tone.
He would be fine if he only talked pretentiously in the fields he actually knows stuff about. He’s earned it for astrophysics. But its the everything else…
Yes borders are bullshit, but he really doesn’t have to come across all high and mighty about it
I’m not convinced that he knows how to come across in any other way
Imagine what it would be like having a disagreement with him
He would be absolutely insufferable
In fact, forget the disagreement
It’d be like arguing with a lemming, soooo smug and self-important.
Hits the joint “borders man”
This is not interesting.
I’m not saying NDT isn’t a smart guy, but yeah he does tend to do that thing a lot where you describe a normal concept in a sort of detached anthropological way so it sounds profound even if it isn’t.
PSA: If all you have to do is wait in line, you’re privileged af
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I think about this a few times a year and I become sad each time. We only get this one planet in the whole ass universe. And we can barely see all of it, unless we’re lucky and/or rich (at least moreso than most of humankind).
It’s profoundly ridiculous.
I was flying to south East Asia, looking at the digital map of the plane. From above, you can kinda see the country lines.
What made me feel that incredible sadness is that within a 1000 mile radius, a child born might live in a world where they struggle with starvation and have worms in their stomach, or wake up each day with anime and toys. Some countries have so much wealth and resources. Where others barely have anything. I think about all of that as I fly to my vacation destination, having been incredibly lucky to have been born in a pretty wealthy country.
One could argue that you can be poor/abused anywhere. But there’s a clear difference in quality of life here.
One could argue that you can be poor/abused anywhere. But there’s a clear difference in quality of life here.
Very true. You’ve captured my exact sentiment here.
And also, the very fact that you can be poor even in rich countries is an even greater failure of the system. Nobody in a “rich” country should be impoverished. There are plenty of resources there to take care of everyone as long as we all work together. But the system rewards only those who work for themselves.
Hell, no one in the world would need to work more than 10hr a week if it was our goal and we just decided to equitably and efficiently share resources.
That would be pretty sweet if accurate. Just satisfy the bare necessities and be free the rest of the time. Exploring other topics, for fun and benefit.
If we can supply this many people with the basics necessary for survival and work under our current extractive systems, and these systems concentrate resources in the wealthy few, then we clearly have enough to raise the standard of living worldwide. All the while reducing individual labor requirements,
Mobility is better now than it has ever been, so don’t get too sad about that.
But only for the rich. If you don’t have money, you can’t
escapeleave your country. Barely even travel in your own country. Society has broken our nomadic heritage. We did it to ourselves eons ago when we started cultivation of the land, but with the modern borders and stuff, it’s just been made so much harder.Cool, just down vote instead of having a conversation…
You’re totally right about this. I find it frustrating in a different way that the ability to travel is easier and possible, which hasn’t been the case for the majority of humanity, but (generally) artificial restrictions prevent it from happening.
I’m from Canada and my partner was born in Europe. When I hear how easily she was able to travel by train and plane, it makes me sad that we don’t have a similar system. Even airfare is significantly cheaper there because trains are a worthy competitor.
A friend of mine who has relatives in China has talked about how people my age (university age) have been using the new train system to see so much of their country than they otherwise would be able to.
I hope that eventually there will be a similar transit system in Canada that allows poor people to see the country they live in. And I understand that by even living in Canada I don’t really count amongst the global impoverished population. I understand the privilege.
Maybe it’s because I know autistic people, but NDT’s obtuse starry-eyed splaining never triggered me as much as it seems to others.
He’s an astrological trapped on a planet. What do you expect
Personally, I find him irksome because I get a strong vibe from him that he thinks of himself as a very smart person, looking down on the intellectual peasants. Part of why I perceive him that way is because this is how I used to think, as an autistic nerd who built much of my identity up around being smart. That’s also why behaviour of the sort that shows up on /r/iamverysmart (such as many of NDT’s posts) makes me cringe so much.
Dissecting this a bit further, it’s not necessarily that I think he thinks he’s better than other people — rather the opposite: some of the most intellectually arrogant people I have known are, at their core, deeply insecure and feeling the need to justify their interests by presenting themselves in a certain way.
Yeah that’s exactly the vibe I get but for some reason it makes me feel more charitable towards him. Maybe because it doesn’t trigger like an echo cringe in me because I’m not like that.
(I’m just like directly insecure lol)
it’s worth noting when the hate against NDT started and who was the most vocal about it.
Cosmos aired, and the christians flipped their shit. At the time, it was hilarious. Now it’s kinda sad.
I’m not Christian, haven’t seen the show, and still think he’s a pompous ass.
He somehow managed to make border abolition sound uncool. Many people don’t agree with it for many reasons, none of which were it being uncool until this tweet
If I said the shit that fart smeller says people would literally say “shut up stoner” to me.
You have to have an advanced degree, wealth and celebrity in order to publicly proclaim something that an introspective 12 year old would yell at his friends at 4 in the morning after completing a dare that he could gulp down a whole cup of sugar without coughing or puking
