Unlearning The ‘Nation State’

Doug Turnbull:

But there’s reasons to be skeptical too. As the one-global-city develops, it will push more and more marginalized people out to the hinterlands. A one-global-city with aligned / same political institutions is perhaps an educated elite fiction. Or if it exists, it’s not morally superior to a nation state that looks out for all it’s citizens. A one-global-city might turn into a caste society, with upper class tech / knowledge workers and then everyone else. We’ll continue to live in an awkward economic sybmiosis. Like two species that both need and hate each other. Always at low-level of conflict, but not enough to blow out into some massive war.

Maybe, in the end, it’s the one-global city – the globalized, neo-liberal, New World Order that will need to be unlearned. Perhaps, it’s the hinterlands that will tame their elites – attenuating their ability to connect with the rest of the world. Nation states reassert themselves as explicitly anti-intellectual, parochial entities. Sometimes choosing ignorance and isolation to maintain national sovereignty.