The Future of the State...

I read a little chain of blogs having to do with the future of morality, and more specifically how societies of the future will look back at the practices we live by and how utterly barbaric they might become. This is really a fun topic to sit and ponder on. For me, however, I returned to a thought I touch on regularly: the future of the state.

Now, for those not fluent in political theory-speak, when I use the term 'state' I mean a country or nation with its own people, land, and government. Iowa is deemed a state, but it is merely an assigned territory of the state that is the United States. Often used in historical or political texts is the term 'nation-state', usually in the context of, 'coming from the scattered rule of many kingdoms rose the powerful, modern nation-state.' The kingdoms of France eventually gave way to the unified French nation-state, or simply state for short. Country is usually synonymous, but I prefer not to use it. Nation can also be considered synonymous, but generally among academics, nations are only composed of people, not tied to a land or independent government of their own (though that is what they strive for).

Enough semantics. What will become of the state in the future? Right now, the state is the authoritative body in the world. It defines borders, rights, land use, etc. It was not always so, though. Using the example I am most familiar with, Europe, there were shifts in what really ruled and people were willing to accept as true. Rome ruled throughout for centuries, and following its collapse, the Christian Church was the body that determined what power would exist where (or at least, verified a person or group's right to rule.) That authority declined and collapsed as well, leaving a void which states would fill, and a few, in their time, would attempt to conquer the rest.

The collapse of the Church's authority came due to the hands of Johannes Gutenberg and his movable-type printing press. People no longer had to rely on the interpretations of the Church in order to understand God; they could come to their own decisions on how the world worked. An ever-increasing state then stepped in to secularly, and relatively democratically (if only to say the people could remove the heads of poor rulers), decide order among people.

Our current era of digitization is creating a similar world of discontinuity that occurred following previous periods. Homogeneity is diminishing as people are able to find others with their more specific interests and beliefs in common. Entertainment is incredibly customized, to the point now of being increasingly self-made (rather like the ancient days, no?) It does not seem too far a stretch to see that allegiances to people and governments with which one disagrees may crumble in time as well.

I do not see this as immediate, or even remotely perceivable for some generations. It is difficult to even conceive of such a notion as not having a state one pays taxes to or even associates with. Instead, loose associations connected wirelessly to people occupying land not considered theirs all around the globe may be where people rest their identities. Maybe it will look similar to the religions of the world, with no specific countries under their feet anymore. Or perhaps there will be gradual migrations to be among those of similar minds to the point of disassembling and reassembling the borders of the world.


These are all odd scenarios associated with my pondering on the idea of a world without states. I wish this post had been more congruent, but sadly its writing was broken up beyond a week's time. I'm sure one can easily read where one session's writing ended and the other began. Hopefully I can have better luck writing in the future, when I may complete a thought in the same sitting as I started~