Wilf's Blog

I don’t get nationalism. I think it’s stupid.

I’m English, though I think of myself more as British. I admit that I cheer on England in football and rugby matches, and I root for Team GB in the Olympics.

But I can’t see nations¹ as anything other than arbitrary containers. What’s the difference between me and an Irishman? Why should stepping over an invisible line just North of Berwick upon Tweed mean that I’m in a different country with different laws?²

A few thoughts:

• I only support British/English teams because I happened to be born there.
• I only happen to be cultured as I am for the same reason.
• I wouldn’t fight for my country.
  • Fight for an ideology, yes, but not an arbitrary country.
• I don’t think Brits are superior to the rest of the world.
  • I don’t think I should treat them any better than the rest of the world.

Why do nations exist? Are they anything other than the result of a history full of battles between the rich, with borders being placed at the extent of a force’s reach?

The differences between nations are their laws and (to a lesser extent) cultures³. I believe that ‘high-level’ laws⁴ should apply to the whole world.

Now I come to the idea of a one world government⁵. Oooh! Whenever I watch something by teh conspiracy theorists, crowing about a “New World Order”, I think: what would be so bad? What would be so bad about there being a global government which could legislate for the whole world, globally creating and enforcing high level-laws? Some things should be illegal.

Why can’t we be citizens of the Earth, rather than citizens of France or subjects of The Queen?⁶

The next question is how much power should this global government have, and to whom should the rest be given? The simplest solution would be to give all power to a single global government, and to have no derivative, local governments. Perhaps that is the way we will eventually head, but⁷ we would not reach that place without passing intermediate steps, and it’s those steps which interest me more.

In the majority of countries at present, there are many levels of government. In America, there is the federal government, state governments, and then local governments in individual counties. It’s similar over here. It might just be my prejudice from growing up in such a world, but I think it’s right that local populations should have some⁸ say over how they are governed, separate from other localities. For example, different counties could have different class sizes, or different speed limits, or different environmental policies⁹.

How do we divide these localities? I don’t know. Perhaps we’re back to drawing arbitrary lines in the sand. Maybe the concept of a nation shouldn’t die, and could still act as another level of government. Despite everything I’ve said, what bothers me is not that nations exist, but that some people are so patriotic. Yes, your country might be a better place ideologically¹⁰, but it doesn’t mean that your people are ‘better’¹¹, and it’s only by chance that you happen to have been born there anyway.

Such thoughts are childish.

A conclusion/aside of sorts. When I see people pushing for increased nationalism – as is the case in Scotland with the SNP¹² – it bothers me. In my opinion, we should be moving in the other direction: few countries and borders, not more.

At present, the Scottish Government has full control of Scotland, except for these powers. Why, for example, does a place of 5 million people need to be able to have control over abortion law? In my opinion, this law should be going the other way – it should be legislated by the EU¹³, as I believe all woman should be able to have the right to an abortion. Whether or not particular areas should be legislated at a more local or more global level, there is no need for Scotland to become yet another sovereign state.

What happens if, after Scotland gains independence, Perthshire decides to be its own nation? And then after that, Blairgowrie decides to be its own nation, and so on? Why would it be any less ridiculous than Scotland exiting the Union? Why does the SNP want to leave the UK but not the EU? I don’t know.

Here’s a Wikipedia entry that I’ve yet to read. Cosmopolitanism may describe my views, but I’ve not read that either. I acknowledge that I should do a lot more research and reflection.

1. By nation I mean: nation, country, state. ↩
2. Whole islands being nations – Iceland, for example – doesn’t seem so arbitrary, but the classification of land into ‘nations’ does still seem artificial. ↩
3. There is a lot of mixing of cultures between nations so this is less relevant. ↩
4. As I shall call laws about things such as murder, assault, rape, and fraud which almost all would accept should be illegal. ↩
5. The structure of such an entity is not my concern at present. ↩
6. Star Trek has it right. ↩
7. Regardless of its merits or failings, of which I have not even started to think. ↩
8. I don’t know how much. ↩
9. I’m just making stuff up here, but the specifics aren’t important. ↩
10. And it might be more fertile, productive, resourceful and attractive. ↩
11. Whatever that would mean. ↩
12. My constituency has been SNP for a while now. ↩
13. Or a higher government. ↩

Here are a few screenshots from my time spent in Facebook’s iPhone app.
Read more…

Bugs are usually annoying, but sometimes they can make me laugh.

Take this image for example. I must have right-clicked just as Mozilla Firefox loaded and became visible, although I had intended to click on whatever window had been there previously. The context menu that came up was fucking crazy.

Why? Well, maybe because the program lacked the context to know which list items to show. This suggests to me that the context menu is populated with all possible items (including those from addons) when the program loads, but they are hidden and shown as required depending on the context of the right click.

Whatever the cause, it was a nice WTF moment to my day¹.

1. FYI, this happened on 22nd February 2010 at 22:06. ↩

From Balloon Juice:

The blogger who posted as the always hilarious Jon Swift has died.

He had so many funny posts that it is hard to choose one, but this take-down of Mark Noonan ranks near the top.

I started reading RSS feeds¹ when I downloaded NetNewsWire 1.0 for iPhone. To fill my greatly expanded reading appetite that I soon developed, I explored the blogrolls of those sites which I already read. Many of them linked to Jon Swift.

The Jon Swift blog has lain dormant for quite a while, but when Al was posting I thought he was producing some of the best satire on the internet. I think sticking to his conservative persona really paid off – only after his death was his identity revealed². I remember lying on a recliner in the hot Nice Sun, sipping a cool drink and reading Jon Swift on my iPod between dips into the pool. It’s how life should be³.

Maybe my memory of the blog is distorted by my holiday memories, so I’m going to re-read the archive in full. I think I’m going to appreciate it even more this time⁴.

Anyway. I always feel sad when someone I know dies, particularly the young. As well as the loss of⁵ a beloved blog, it’s also a reminder of my own mortality. Death’s a strange thing and we all learn to deal with it in our own ways, but I feel that, at 18, I’m still largely untouched by death. Even though I have only one surviving grandparent (and her brother died last week),I’ve never been to a funeral. I don’t think I’ve yet felt the grief of losing someone close to me.

How long can it last?

1. Just after the debut of the iTunes app store. ↩
2. By his mother! ↩
3. I was even happier when I discovered that the local mall had Wi-Fi, so I could get the newest posts straight to my iPod. Heaven. ↩
4. I’m older, more knowledgeable. ↩
5. In this case, anyway. ↩

On a walk today I finished listening to the audio version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, “Eating Animals“. I heard that Natalie Portman became a vegan after reading this book, so I wanted to read it too.

I eat meat and I love it.

I also want to hold clearly defined principles, and to live consistently with those principles.

Before “Eating Animals”, I’d never read a book about meat, and I hadn’t really thought about whether I should eat it¹. Even after reading the book I don’t think I’ve properly started to consider things, but now I have the information necessary to re-examine my position.

It’s tricky. I think I will most likely stay an enthusiastic meat-eater, but I still have an uneasy feeling that I’m eating meat without having my opinions on the matter in order. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.

I’m going to think about this over the coming weeks.

1. Usually stopping after ‘well, it’s natural so… why not?’ ↩