That the liberties and wealth we know today is a direct result of the state - or even possible only with its laws, its industrial economy and global trade, its sophisticated military and its complex infrastructure is immaterial. For all those thousands of years of classical heritage, we remain in our deepest nature I think still creatures of kith and kin. Still tribal.
And so any image we can hold out for ourselves as what we once were... be it the Dying Gaul of Rome or the ruddy Highlander of Balmoral - the Lakota of John Dunbar or the Na'vi of Jake Sully... the face changes from age to age and the fashion of the time. Any more-tribal culture sufficiently vanquished or imaginary to be a comfortable palette for our desires instead of an immediate threat will suffice. I daresay in a hundred years the wars of Afghanistan will furnish yet another idealized tribal life, the rough edges of life under the Taliban smoothed off with time and romance.
For we are who we are. And we are at heart unreconciled.
Go. Read Jenny's whole post.
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