I think what you’re getting at is that societies define themselves based on external threats.
Psychologically speaking on a group level it is much easier to say what we are not and define ourselves based on that than it is to develop an internal definition of ourselves.
You can see this in the history of national identities coalescing around external threats such as the American identity being sidelined for state identity until the revolution.
This is a well-studied phenomenon and contributes to the post-colonial failed states with arbitrary borders. Remove the colonial power and you’ve removed the national identity and cause massive fragmentation and dysfunction.
I’m not sure there is a solution to this in a nuclear world as it is in our biology and has served us well up until the point where we developed genocidal tools and processes which justifiable scare the developed world into relenting from defining external groups as major antagonists.
As much as a strong national identity can give great cohesion and confidence it can now also teeter the world or parts of it into apocalypse which it has basically done twice now and loomed over us a third time with the Cold War. I sense we have a new Cold War now and it has been looming for almost decade. To me this is our great filter and I am forcefully optimistic we can figure something out because the alternative is utter destruction.
Psychologically speaking on a group level it is much easier to say what we are not and define ourselves based on that than it is to develop an internal definition of ourselves.
You can see this in the history of national identities coalescing around external threats such as the American identity being sidelined for state identity until the revolution.
This is a well-studied phenomenon and contributes to the post-colonial failed states with arbitrary borders. Remove the colonial power and you’ve removed the national identity and cause massive fragmentation and dysfunction.
I’m not sure there is a solution to this in a nuclear world as it is in our biology and has served us well up until the point where we developed genocidal tools and processes which justifiable scare the developed world into relenting from defining external groups as major antagonists.
As much as a strong national identity can give great cohesion and confidence it can now also teeter the world or parts of it into apocalypse which it has basically done twice now and loomed over us a third time with the Cold War. I sense we have a new Cold War now and it has been looming for almost decade. To me this is our great filter and I am forcefully optimistic we can figure something out because the alternative is utter destruction.