The concept of a nation, so integral to the notion of identity for people, the ageless stimulant of loyalty and empathy, is the glue that holds together millions in the face of affront to national pride. Patriotism, when present, happens to be one of the strongest emotions. It can lead to or, in retrospect, justify actions from throwing plastic bottles at the rival cricket team to taking a bullet to the chest ‘defending’ national territory at borders. It allows Americans to criticize Iraqis, Indians to detest Pakistanis, the Japanese to envy the Chinese, and all of them to trade, negotiate, threaten or be diplomatic with each other. And all of this doesn’t even measure upto the toenail of the crowning glory of the concept of nations- immigration. For how on earth would an MBA graduate from India immigrate to USA if there were no India and USA when immigration is the process of switching countries?
Yet the concept of a country with its territory and its countrymen who with the rules and laws try to establish their individuality, may not be (even when executed with absolute perfection) as elysian as touted by devoted nationalists. Even if after countless revolutions and renaissances perfect harmony is achieved within a country how important is it to the bigger picture? While politicians shout themselves hoarse to further the causes of their adopted communities in the country and countries enter into protracted negotiations to control relative commodity price imbalances, the human...ahem...goes to the dogs. Democracy may be the fair system which has the interest of the countrymen at heart when government isolate's the domestic economy from the world's, but what escapes notice is that in all this vigilance there is no system to look out for unbiased human advancement irrespective of what piece of land one was born on. It still bears more than an uncanny resemblance to the medieval feudal system just that instead of segregation based on the governing monarch land is divided on the basis of language or religion or ancestry or just plain military occupation at the time of 'independence'. The degree of simplification in application and increase in productivity of collective world resources if there was no distinction based on nationality would be humongous to the extent being of virtually inconceivable.
I say we started wrong. Focused on creating a national identity and its aggrandizement thinkers, who did bother to think about this, lost view of the higher order of things until it was too late to reverse the effect of national identity. Imagine a scenario in which there were no nations to begin with, just the earth. If at the end of feudalism the world instead of breaking up like mercury freed from a thermometer and turning into independent self governed different nations the earth had just turned into a congregation of free humans with no national allegiances, would not the sole purpose of each individual be the attainment of the best possible situation given his capabilities?
The policy making would have been entrusted to a Hegemony, (an elected body of course) federal in nature with comfortably sized wards and sub-wards for the smooth functioning of the political machinery. There would have been: no requirement of international policy and trade, just the unconstrained availability of planetary resources for optimum allocation; just a single currency to render the world economy nothing more than an exaggerated yet efficient barter system (if everything tanks together, nothing is tanking) and no foreign investment for there would have been nothing foreign. Government and laws would have been formulated at the planetary level while enterprise would have been at the other extreme- the micro, the individual level meaning equal opportunity the world over. Of course opportunity might not translate into equal prosperity but prosperity proportional to individual intellect and volition doesn’t seem like such an unfair alternative. Besides it would have been incentive for personal improvement, the only kind that spirals into any improvement at all.
Is this picture just wishful thinking of a mind divorced from reality? Essentially, yes. Even though territorial and ‘ideological’ disputes between nations while each one tries to protect its underprivileged might very well annihilate us all together, it (evidently) is not an incentive strong enough for humans to consider a psychological readjustment as drastic as I suggest. The threat apparently is not too imminent or ineluctable.
However, let none call me a cynic. I still live in hope that their does exist some technologically advanced sentient species somewhere in the universe who is just too busy playing a better version of X Box and eating fries (or equivalent). They are bound to run out of fries (or the yucky stuff they like) at some point of time and will get over their self absorption long enough to find earth and attack it. And then when everyone realizes that the scattered, quarrelsome, incompatible national forces (which can't act without arm-twisting a dozen heads of state) are simply a bad idea they might just use the opportunity for a new beginning to try out my idea. After all give them a common enemy and people will find new ways to coexist ( Dan Brown agrees). Establishing a Hegemonic office would then be more practical than rethinking hundreds of different constitutions again to factor in the possibility extraterrestrial aggression. All this provided that we are able to send the x box playing nerdy aliens scurrying to look for another planet, otherwise OOPS.
