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    GenerationExile: Responding to knee-jerk nationalism

    With immigration at an all-time high and superthreats challenging our everyday lives, how can we avoid the trap of isolationist nationalism and encourage states to work in partnership?

    Started by: Lord Samwise Raves:6

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    With the collapse of the United Nations in 2013, following the organisation's ongoing failure to curb America's neo-imperialist oil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and latterly Venezuela, we need to establish a new forum for international cooperation. Already, groups of nations are responding to the threat of spiralling immigration and global food shortages by looking inwards and forming defensive clusters, such as the Central European Alliance and the East Asian Pact. These self-interested organisations are counter-productive to the goal of human survival - we must find a way to interact across the boundaries of state and sovereignty. How can we accomplish this?

    I don\\\'t know that self-interested coalitions of nations are necessarily harmful to human survival as a whole. They\\\'re determined to survive the crises, and if they do, then we, as a race, win. However, I agree that it\\\'s less efficient for them to not co-ordinate resources, and they need to be able to consider all avenues of survival. The short way is to make them through force of arms, but that wouldn\\\'t work very well, as we\\\'ve already seen in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it would only cause the other coalitions to tighten up, and could even spark another cold war, which would cost valuable resources. Instead, it might be better to use internal pressure to force them to see the advantage of communicating, working competitively in concert. Use outreach programs to reach people at the bottom of each coalition, and get them to pressure the top into playing along.

    I agree, Proph Bedlam - engaging closed socities from the bottom up is by far the best and most strategic option for promoting global cooperation. As Ian Bremnar posited in 2006, exposing \\\'ordinary\\\' members of a closed/aggresive state to the outside world will foster a revolutionary desire for a transition towards multi-polarity, openness and engagement with the international community from within the society itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_J_Curve:_A_New_Way_to_Understand_Why_Nations_Rise_and_Fall

    From where I sit, it seems that many citizens of nations tend to scapegoat immigrants or minority groups as the cause of their problems. So even when a nation has global-minded leaders, the citizens lack the political will to walk out the changes. Even that schmuck George W. Bush wanted to streamline immigration back in the Zeroes, and both parties put a stop to it. Immigration is a wedge issue that many candidates use to get elected. The beneficiaries of immigration policies are often not able to vote --- at least not until they've been in a country long enough to get naturalized (if that's even a possibility). I agree that we need to get nations to interact across boundaries, but I tend to focus my concern on improving the attitudes of people toward immigrants and refugees. Business loves immigrants, because they can exploit them for cheap labor. But that's not a message that resounds well with voters. They tend to feel like their jobs are being stolen. And while you can rouse people with messages like "Our country is the greatest place on earth, our people are the best workers, the smartest innovators," etc., that doesn't really promote acceptance of newcomers. Here in the USA, people like to talk about being a "nation of immigrants", but their fond feelings about their Irish or Italian or Polish or German ancestors don't translate to the Latin Americans, Caribbean Islanders, Asians, or other populaces that are now changing the complexion of our country. So how can we promote good relations between newcomers and nativists?

    This discussion got me thinking, and led me to create a couple superstructures: "Walk in My Shoes" is about recruiting lower-income young people to live in a foreign country for a year. "Multilingual Bootleg Comics Cooperative" http://www.superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/268 is about improving communications about public service matters for our immigrant communities.

    You're right, Ocyris - many of the problems stem from misunderstanding and mistrust of the 'the Other' in our midst and at our border. The best way to combat this is to build bridges between disconnected societies and communities; to demonstrate our mutual humanity and dispel the paranoia. Both of your responses to this problem sound very useful - we need to work on improved communication across linguistic and cultural barriers. Until BabelTech get their Universal Translator kit perfected and in the field, your Multilingual Bootleg Comics Coop sounds like a workable alternative. I shall keep my eye on the progress of this project... 'Walk in my Shoes' also sounds very positive (though I'm not sure if parents will willingly send their kids off on such a potentially dangerous exchange programme!) A similar project is working to improve cross-cultural understanding here in Birmingham, UK. Volunteers working with the refugee and immigrant communities in the city seek to find British young people to befriend young refugees/migrants and organise group trips and activities. By exposing both parties to each other, a mutual understanding is formed, overcominging the fundamental cause of conflict between the established and the immigrant communities. I understand that the project has enjoyed some considerable success.

    This whole nation business is so recent, and already it feels totally out of date. Likewise with the concept of land ownership. What are the alternatives? Before land ownership we were hunter-gatherers (weren't we?) but clearly hunting-gathering won't solve the food crisis with this many people on the planet. So someone has to stick around and keep the food growing. How do we combine that with welcoming (involuntary) immigrants - if we're among the lucky ones who can stay? How do we comport ourselves if we're the involuntary emi-immigrants?

    Hi Marilyn, if you have ideas on how to organise a post-nation states society, come over to the Quantum Government discussion and/or SuperStruct and share your ideas...

    Even back in the early 21 century, isolationist nationalism by individual states wae a fiction, russian nationalist belligerence of 2008-2014 being the classic example of political rhetoric being in variance to russias continued economic intergration. Coalitions of Nations are inevitable as countries with shared interests cooperate to enhance their bargaining position with the rest of the world and increase thier ability to surivive the superthreats. These coalitions could form barriers to truly all encompassing solutions that appear to threaten the interests of their members but as other posters have said a bottom up grass roots approach of engaging individuals and small communities in discourse and encouraging them to see that as a race humanity must stand together to survuve the super threats (quote out of context "a house divided against itself cannot stand")

    I really agree with Ocyris, on how it seems that many citizens of nations tend to scapegoat immigrants or minority groups as the cause of their problems. This is an issue that most citizens need to be educated in because they think immigrants are stealing jobs but in all reality there are not stealing them. They are just taking an opportunity that lazier Americans don't take or want and you shouldn’t knock a person for taking an opportunity that anyone including themselves would take if they were in their situation. If immigrants didn't take those jobs, unemployed Americans most likely still wouldn't and if they did they would be outraged about their low hourly pay and immediately they would begin striking. Then let us say their strikes worked and they were provided with higher pay. Now society member would complain about inflation in the cost of the resources produced by these now higher paid workers. So, if people are not complaining about one thing then their complaining about another. Either way all the problems in the world are not because of immigrants or minority groups the problems are due to the individuals that are money hungry and want it all to themselves instead of sharing and helping other, which would lead to more equality for all.




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