What Have Borders Done for Us Lately?
And Can Patriotism be Expanded?
The liberal approach focuses on the moral consideration of
individuals. However, because of
the fundamental concepts of community and morality, the liberal approach can
only be used within the confines of the state. It is argued, should we expand the liberal approach to the
rest of the world, we would be jeopardizing the safety of our nation, without
which we would not live. A simple way of thinking about this is to take for
example, the United States decides to help a group of individuals outside of
its national border. In order to
do so, the United States has to take money away from the Department of Defense
or Public Services. So by helping
individuals outside of the nation the U.S. has neglected or weakened a duty to
their own citizens, and in one way or another has negatively impacted the safety
or well being of the nation.
I
find this whole concept to be one created with its end purpose in mind: to
undercut the liberal approach to international relations. After all, community is not the
starting point of the human species.
If you start with community, there is no contest to why we should take
care of our own before we reach out to others. What happens if you start at the beginning though, at
individual humans who actively or passively interact with one another. The issue then becomes the fact that we
have borders around our nations.
These borders have allowed us to evolve differently, create different
cultures, and develop pride for our own nations. In effect they have lead us to wars over territory and
ideals. They have allowed certain
acts of cruelty to go unpunished due to sovereignty. Not to mention they’ve made traveling much more difficult as
well. No one on earth likes going
through Customs when entering a foreign nation or coming back home.
What are borders beneficial? They allow us to break up the
world into smaller parts so that it can in a way be more manageable. However,
it seems to me that they have made the world less manageable as a whole.
We
have national borders and there is no foreseeable future without them. So how can we use the liberal approach
in IR, knowing we have national borders, if it is limited to the moral
consideration of individuals within a single community? Nussbaum would suggest doing away with
notions such as patriotism. I do
not see how this is remotely possible due to our natural intuition of
speciesism (*speciesism is a hierarchical approach that puts one’s own kind
above all others). What if we
expanded the idea of patriotism? What if we have a sense of duty and pride not
just for our nation, but also for our world? The truth of the matter is that
everyone’s primary concern is the preservation of their own kind. At the same time, everyone’s chief
concern is that another group of human beings will be the cause of their own
kind’s destruction. The solution doesn’t
appear to be one that is difficult to arrive at. I think it is apparent that no
other species has the capability to end the human race, other than itself. If we consider our own kind to be all
human beings who live on this earth, then we would quintessentially eliminate
our main fear.
The
main issue with this approach is the ability to create a sweeping change in
thought throughout our entire species.
And to this problem I offer education as a solution. Education has the ability to change the
world in this way, but this by no means guarantees that it will change in this
way.
I think that a lot of scholars and philosophers would disagree that the 'beginning' is a bunch f individuals. Aren't you raised by parents as a child? How can you exist without social interaction? And how human or moral are you before you interact with others? Isn't it the moral part of humanity that we are generally concerned with as opposed to our organs and limbs?
ReplyDeleteThere's a difference between speciesism and racism or ignorance of the world. I agree that our chief concern is the preservation of our own 'kind', but that doesn't really mean that we need to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world. I don't know if there needs to be sweeping change in thought through all of humanity, but perhaps some education in the realm of international conditions.
ReplyDeleteI think the question you pose regarding to expanding patriotism internationally, and having a sense of duty and pride for the world is interesting. However to expand this idea of patriotism, as a citizen of the world is difficult since as you said everyone’s priority is self-preservation. But, this would also entail having a universal moral code, something that all people need to believe in and honor. This is challenging as we’ve discussed in this course because of the borders we have positioned around each community. Furthermore, implementing a moral code could be violating human rights as well since every culture values different ideas. But for expanding patriotism and eliminating ignorance of others, only a few common moral codes are needed. Therefore, I agree with William that sweeping change throughout humanity is not necessary, rather awareness and exposure to other cultures is enough to find the common ground in which there will be some moral obligation to the international.
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