There is only one ocean in the world. It’s all the same water. Territory and sovereignty blind us to some…
There is only one ocean in the world. It’s all the same water.
Territory and sovereignty blind us to some obvious truths. /1 https://t.co/aAwfJqheaR
Most of modern history is humans shifting to life inside maps. That basic physical fact is always ignored.
For example, to this day we call the ‘international community’ the UN, the attempt to get sovereign nations to agree to things. /2
What we forget is that the international community *preceded* those sovereign nations.
It allocated territories and sovereignties, to particular groups. That’s when the maps got going. /3
Trying to create an international community from sovereign nations is literally the same as trying to unscramble an egg.
It’s completely backwards. /4
You can see the same misunderstanding at every scale. Take another byproduct, ‘local’ v ‘global’.
As I look outside my ‘local’ window in Australia, cars from 2 other continents line the streets. I have American solar panels on my roof, using silicon processed in China. /5
The local is already global, thinking otherwise is like trying to have local sunshine or air.
We’ve taken the team sports of our social lives and used them as a projection onto reality itself. /6
The countries on our maps are the remnants of older team sports, maintained into the present.
Humans are absolutely obsessed with their own social relations. They’re a prison they struggle to escape, to let reality in. /7
The reason social media has been such an astronomical success is that it targets precisely this. Human social relations.
Nothing is more addictive for us. Nothing makes us more blind to actual reality. /8
Not just our geography is now structured using these social team sports.
Our whole social lives are, within countries. We’re in our various teams, battling other teams. /9
This week the teams lined up behind violence against women (itself a return game), next will be something else.
The realities lost in all of the noise. /10
But it’s all the same water. What I call reality-based politics would ignore all of the team sports.
And just focus on practical problems, and the practical ways to resolve them. We don’t actually have a choice, reality will kill us if we ignore it. /11
It’s just a matter of how long that death is delayed. But our team sports prisons make it highly unlikely we’ll see this.
Only catastrophes have broken through those prison walls, historically. Natural disasters, massive wars. Climate change will be next. /end