Nations Disunited

The way the world is set up, nations are assigned the job of solving the worst human problems and protecting people against the worst threats. There are other ways to organize human power and make decisions that affect humanity, but seven or eight hundred years ago the nation configuration was settled upon, and since then has been sustained and pumped up through ballyhoo patriotism and economic self interest.

The result begins to look like the end of humanity’s ascent, an ascent measured by increasing longevity, health, productivity, creativity, and fun. Now humans confront habitat decay, WMD agony, and debased civilization.

The BP oil disaster is a good example of our vulnerability. Not surprisingly, the nations involved - the United States and Great Britain - are called to account and turn on one another. Britain is blamed for tolerating a corporate monster that exploits natural resources and the environment while eluding safety and pollution regulation, while the U.S. is blamed for tolerating, even promoting, fossil fuel dependency more than any country, and for inadequate regulatory control.

Prime Minister David Cameron asserts that the economic value of BP to the British and American people should earn BP respite from blame. London Mayor Boris Johnson says that “It starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves.” (Financial Times, June 11, 2010)

The power centers of nations are relatively small coteries of people who constitute their governments, and the monied interests that facilitate their control. Corporate power centers are still smaller coteries, of investors and senior managers. The endangered, affected billions - most of us, in self defense, had better empower ourselves where power is available, which is by uniting the cities and towns of the world. Nations are here to stay, for the foreseeable future, but thinking, sentient, suffering humanity had better not leave it at that.