The death of Patriotism, the Rise of Blockchains

“The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.” ― Criss Jami

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

We will no longer need a centralized monopoly called “government” to manage a centralized monopoly called “police” and “military”. It will all be done in the blockchain, by geographic groups of people who start to pool their resources to defend themselves.

Peer-to-peer groups will “uberize” their security, policing, and defence needs. Franchises like starbucks for security will start to pop up on every corner.

But the best part is how much these groups will save. No more trillion dollar wars fought for the interest of a few. No more invading countries just for their oil, lithium, or pharmaceul opium fields.

And because this is all done in a flat, peer-to-peer computer network, no more politicians!

No more empty promises to get votes. No more executive orders by a central president with zero accountability. No more expansion of the military industrial complex. No more Dick Cheney granting government contracts to his own company that he happens to own equity in (oversimplified, but you get the idea).

Now, this may sound a lot like a nation state, but it’s not. The nation state as we know it will be dead. On the blockchain it is entirely possible to have multiple virtual nations which overlap each other, sort of like how I can join more than one facebook group to serve my various needs.

For example, anyone could contribute their autonomous (pet?) quadrocopter on-demand to intervene during a local trespassing, or attempted theft. And they would be compensated the bid amount to serve that problem, just like an uber driver with their own vehicle.

But your friendly neighborhood quadrocopter is not limited to just neighborhood watch. If a larger need arises, it could travel potentially miles and arm itself with armor piercing rounds (it’s actions explicitly authorized over the blockchain through majority consensus).

As you can imagine, this is a far cry to the static, walled-off, nation-states we are familiar with. Someday borders will be as antiquated as the stone walls that were built around castles during the feudal governance age.

And starting sometime in the next 20 years, nationalism, complete with prideful flag waving, will start to be regarded as a form of primitive religion practiced by old people.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ― Voltaire

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” ― Howard Zinn

“Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people, Living life in peace, You may say that I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us, And the world will be as one” ― John Lennon, Imagine

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it….” ― George Bernard Shaw

“Every day we’re told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it’s always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are ‘We’re number two!” ― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Our true nationality is mankind.” ― H.G. Wells

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious” ― Oscar Wilde

“I love my country, not my government.” ― Jesse Ventura

“We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.” ― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers… Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.” ― François Fénelon

“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.” ― Ronald Reagan

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either “my country, right or wrong”, which is infamous, or “my country is always right”, which is imbecile.” ― Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander

“Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind.” ― Albert Einstein

“People who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have one” ― Banksy, Wall and Piece

“When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.” ― Stephen E. Ambrose

“Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you’re still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as ‘race,’ ‘class,’ ‘nation,’ and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.” ― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“How long have you been away from the country?” Laruja asked Ibarra.

“Almost seven years.”

“Then you have probably forgotten all about it.”

“Quite the contrary. Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.” ― José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)

“No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.” ― Walter Kaufmann, On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo

“We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti, What are You Doing with Your Life: Teen Books on Living Volume 1

“In worshipping their nationhood men worship themselves and scorn others, and that is no healthy thing.” ― C.J. Sansom, Dissolution

“Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices

“Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can’t. Diplomacy won’t. It has to be people like us.” ― Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana

“Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.” ― Dr. Helen Caldicott