Every time I take an international trip and reinforce my physical sense of the world as a single, connected physical planet (views out the window of vast oceans, continental shores etc) I am reminded of the utter bullshittiness of anti-globalism... (1/few)
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Sure, it takes a certain amount of money/privilege to access this sense. Even the cheapest flight that gives you a view of say the Pacific ocean or the physical non-fragmentedness of the Middle East is several hundred $. That does not make the "globe" in globalism a lie (2/few)
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Just because it's privileged people who are able to see and construct the world as a single, connected place does not mean that construct is false. Just because it's underprivileged people who have a narrower sense of place doesn't mean that narrower sense _isn't_ false (3/few)
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Just because "globalism" has become a synonym for a particular flavor of aristocratic elitist power emanating out of Davos doesn't mean Planet Earth is actually 200 little balls instead of one big ball. All globalisms have a powerful phenomenological foundation (4/few)
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Whenever I'm tempted to forget this and take dumbass nationalist boundaries and reified egregores too seriously, I consider animals and their ways of being on the planet. Like Arctic Terns that migrate 70,000 km roundtrips from pole to pole WITHOUT EVER GOING TO DAVOS (5/few)
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Or cats, which have colonized earth as well as humans. Or erupting volcanoes that affect weather 1000s of km away. Or New World vegetables that are now part of cuisines worldwide. Earth is a far more deeply connected place than our *political* experience of it suggests (6/few)
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tldr: Don't let shitty people with limited perspectives tell you that wanting to experience the planet as a single place is an evil thing or that their maps are the territory. (end/few)
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How can one reconcile globalism with the basic human urge to territorialize? It seems like statehood is a compromise and somewhat of an attempt to minimize territorial violence.
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I don’t think there’s a basic human urge to territorialize. The reverse in fact. We’re more nomadic than sessile.
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You don't feel a profound comfort in familiar surroundings? I recall a ribbonfarm post about how you always find a Starbucks/wifi-enabled coffee shop to work in, no matter where you go.
What if one's comforting place only has a single instantiation on the entire planet?
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I learned Starbucks-comfort as a 23 year old adult. I can easily adapt to other environments.
If someone can really can only find a sense of home in one fixed place they are probably severely dysfunctional or mentally ill.
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If someone's main epistemological mode is based on metis, then they might find it hard to adapt to living somewhere else.
e.g. if your fishing profession is enabled by a long, local narrative around breeding cycles upriver, this is not easy to adapt to other locations.
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