The modern notion of nation States, with clearly defined borders, and mechanisms of violence to enforce them, only arose around the 17th century.
Wolves don’t build border walls, have customs checkpoints, or leave refugees to drown in the Mediterranean.
This isn’t a “science meme”, it’s a falacious attempt to cloak reactionary rhetoric in the garb of scientific rigor.
Might as well show plant tissues with defined cell walls and say “borders are natural”.
Only a half truth. Borders may have been loosely defined but they were absolutely defended with violence. You couldn’t wander in and hunt in your neighbors woods, take their timber or set up a farm too close. Hell, sometimes they even had well defined natural borders or walls (see: Hadrian’s wall, the great wall of China)
Moving through an area in large numbers might draw a violent response and you might be coerced to leave if you spoke the wrong language or dressed the wrong way. If you were an unknown group of strangers they may well let your boat sink or leave you to starve outside their walls. Modern states have simply codified these reactions into law.
Proto-states and the associated mechanisms developed extremely quickly once sedentary agriculture became dominant. If your entire livelihood is tied to a field of grain you no longer get to run or hide from conflict; controlling who can and can’t get near it becomes imperative.
Only a half truth. Borders may have been loosely defined but they were absolutely defended with violence.
Yes, but the means by which that state violence was organized and carried out often looked very different. Obviously there was some sort of distinction between medieval lordships or what have you, but the organizational form of the modern nation state wasn’t codified until the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the 30 years war. This was co-constitutive with the enclosure of common land, and the birth of modern capitalist property relations.
But the nitty gritty details are besides the point. The main thing I’m stating in my comment is that OP is making a falacious appeal to nature. As though a dog pissing on a rock somewhere says anything at all about how humans should conduct border policy.
But you absolutely could just move in to some village in Africa or North America or even some city in Mesopotamia or India for a very long time. At least according to The Dawn of Everything
Borders weren’t even loosely defined.
In 49 BC the Rubicon river was a clearly defined border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy itself. Crossing the river was such a momentus decision that we now have the phrase “Crossing the Rubicon” to mean making a decision that you can’t go back on. So, borders have been clearly defined for at least 2000 years.
Wolves don’t build border walls, have customs checkpoints, or leave refugees to drown in the Mediterranean.
“Sorry sir, we have to deport you back to your impoverished, war-torn country, because wolves pee on trees”.
Very compelling.
Excuse me but the trees get off on it why are we punishing our neighbors for a little harmful fun?
It’s as good an excuse as any 🤷♂️
Yes, exactly what they’re saying. lol
Also, countries need authoritarian governments because lobsters pee on each-other’s faces.
Pretty sure their borders aren’t made up of countries, taxes, and slavery.
and they aren’t forcing other animals to comply and pay taxes for the maintenance of those borders
they aren’t forcing other animals to comply
They might be. It’s still no reason for us to do the same
Aside from like not having a country name or formal procedures, I think you’re probably mostly wrong actually.
oof
You know I’ve been having trouble with a mean outdoor neighbor cat. Even moose pee didn’t scare that fucker away. Maybe I should give myself a uti then go eat some asparagus then go drink some beers and hold it afters so it gets really concentrated and then go let that burning foul probably should have gotten a catheter stream provide an olfactory anti-mean-kitten-defense (but signal to the nice kittens that they are welcome. It will totally work that way somehow) or I can just trap the mean cat, pop out her chip (although these owners…) then either take her to the only-killing shelter or on a midnight drive to see the turbine intakes at the local dam and if she makes her way back she’s earned it.
uh…
you okay?
I just like yelling at clouds
Yes we are primitive animals indeed!
At the end of the day, yes we are.
Return to monkey.
Not just any. Bonobos.
so unnatural sheesh
Wind blows, trees’ branches rub together and snap off twigs growing at the ends, creating gaps. They grow again, next windy day, they break again.
So you’re telling me that border skirmishes are completely natural?
No I’m telling you that if you’re rooted to the ground close enough to a similarly rooted neighbors and the wind makes both of your arms wiggle hard enough, you might lose a finger. People can accommodate neighbors, move freely, and shelter from the winds.
If we were hunter gatherers I might believe you. People are just as rooted as trees. Almost nothing that sustains our civilization is mobile. Crops, forests, water supplies, minerals, etc…
This just in, Lemmy user doesn’t understand that analogies are imperfect.
Just noticed this isn’t the shitposting community
Yeah but we’re not wolves 😄🏴
And yet, we have had countries, kingdoms, territories and empires for thousands of years.
At times all defended by literal walls as to keep people out.
How are people pretending they do not know this?
Just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. Actually, the appeal to nature “argument” against borders does, IMO, provide evidence that the conclusion (borders are evil and should be dispensed with) holds, but it is not an argument in itself.
IMO a better argument is the reality of the misery and oppression that borders create: they cage humanity and the ecology and thus limit our potential, and they only serve to benefit the local capitalists, and proletarians pay the price in blood and tears for those who try to assert their right to move. And then to this, we append the positive examples from nature as empirical evidence that suggests the conclusion, with the caveat that just because something is natural does not mean it is optimal or good.
some leftists are furries though
What my first 3d print looked like
Borders are trees covered in pee.
Sigh Unzip. If that’s what I’ve got to do to carve out some space, then so be it!
Welcome to Border Peetrol.
Paw Peetrol
Maintaining healthy trees with urine covering with federal employee benefits and a government pension sounds like a dream job.
No doubt they’d find a way to make it a bureaucratic nightmare of a job. But I’m down.
In that case, is it even a border if people aren’t frequently peeing all along it?
I guess that’s why Parisians are so patriotic.
Why do you think I drink so much water?
Be careful with that water stuff. Have you seen what it does to the bottom of boats?
Surveyor stakes are the equivalent to peeing on a tree these days.
And at our core for millions of years we have been pack animals like the wolf or lion or sheep. Lemmy is filled with packs and tribes that will defend their “territory” by expulsion anyone that disagrees with the pack strongly enough. Just as humans have done for those same millions of years.
I read a study that showed that behavior varies by sex. Women are more likely to exclude an individual from a group while men are more likely to accept almost anyone into the group but just force the ones they view as undesirable to the bottom of the social hierarchy
The draft but you’re sent to the Canadian/Mexican border to pee on the border line
“… and that’s how I got arrested by border control.”
Checkmate, anarchists!
why?
It is a mutual agreement between wolves and other wolves, in order to manage territory and avoid over hunting. They don’t force other animals to comply. they don’t force other animals to pay taxes to maintain it. There isn’t one king wolf drawing those borders.
This is actually fascinating because it demonstrates a social construct created by animals. Not all animals have the same intelligence, and in nature intelligence is typically found among animals living in groups. It requires intelligence to live and cooperate with others. To me it seems that these animals actually used their intelligence to preserve socially constructed zones for the general good of multiple groups of wolves, likely by staying where the right smell is and not going where the wrong smell is. Hopefully none of the wolves discover the prisoner’s dilemma and become a wolf emperor by suddenly invading and enslaving their unprepared neighbors.
I’ve read that humans, chimpanzees and wolves are the only animals that have shown a capacity for genocide.
Dolphins will get there one day too.
I must have totally forgotten that I’m a Wolf. I’ve always thought that I’m a Human. Crazy. Good to know that now. But I want that Friedrich Merz pisses on all of them trees at the German Border, because thats how the natural way to mark ur territory just works. And everything from nature is always the perfect and correct bahaivor for eveyone!
Exactly. Wolves are also one of the species that practice infanticide. Clearly there is no point in being better, and we should just replicate everything we see in nature.
Whenever someone makes an appeal to nature, you know you’re in for a treat.
I pissed in my neighbor’s garden, got his wife pregnant and then ripped apart his newborn with my bare teeth and now my neighbor just wanders in the communal parking lot. At first I felt like the bad guy but his wife starts snarling at him whenever he gets close to the house.
Sometimes life surprises you.
Human communities have borders and territories though
Turns out humans like borders too
Good to know that Humans are a Hivemind. Until now I acctually disliked borders. But I am a Human, and you say Humans like Borders. Man thanks for the Warning. I will be working on adapting the Hiveminds Opinion.
But we DO form similar social structures to that of wolf packs. The majority of human history has been one of tribadism
Pretty sure you mean tribalism.
Tribadism (NSFW) is something different.
To be fair the majority of human history has involved tribadism
True, but it’s not a direct cause for forming packs (though it may correlate), and generally less destructive.
I’ve definitely formed packs on that basis, but college was a wild time.
But it stays an Argument purly on Nature. And someone still needs to explain to me why nature automatically means better.
Also, I’d like to know why one animal doing one thing is used to justify human behaviour as “natural” while another animal doing something else is not. (Or even the same animal doing something else is not.)
There are tons of non-territorial animals, for example.
These are processes that’ll just happen organically and those usually have the least upkeep. If something is made artificially it needs to be artificially maintained. I’ll be honest, I am personally against borders, I greatly enjoy open borders in the EU but the fact that borders form naturally is a process we’d be aware of. Just like wealth accumulation in capitalism, its a natural conclusion that’d take measures to avoid.
Our entire world couldn’t be more far away from what nature once was. And there are just so many “artificial” things that have proven to be better than nature. What I’m saying is that just saying that something is natural really does mean nothing. I can be both, good or bad. It’s not like I’m denying nature. Because you said that I need to be aware of it.
Why are some things that some animals do used as a justification for humans to do the same, while other animals doing something else isn’t?
For example, Wikipedia says this about the topic:
Territoriality is only shown by a minority of species. More commonly, an individual or a group of animals occupies an area that it habitually uses but does not necessarily defend; this is called its home range. The home ranges of different groups of animals often overlap, and in these overlap areas the groups tend to avoid each other rather than seeking to confront and expel each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal)
It is natural to not have borders, and only a few species do.
Well borders are rather useful and good. Everyone has boundaries with other people, it’s even kinda mandatory for mental well-being. Everyone has borders with their home. Those are even legally enforceable.
I’m fairly sure you’d be rather pissed off if i would randomly walk into your home and started harassing you.
I’m not the State. You are confusing personal boundaries with state borders. Totally different topics. Always a nice try to place state interests into personal interests of an individual. Oldest trick in the book. That’s just like that argument that I need to go die for my country because if I was personally attacked on the street I would also defend myself. These are totally different scenarios. We can live together in big scale while still having private spaces. These things can coexist.
I’d say it’s the exact same principle, just scaled up.
From personal boundaries and home rules, which are set up by each individual themselves. To HOA or apartment complex equivalents boundaries and rules which are set up by democratic voting(hopefully). To a district or state rules and boundaries to country to unions.
“Timberwolf Hivemind” is a damn good band name…
well clearly someone is psyoped into believing wolves are part nature
wby always with the wolves?
