ElI5: what does it mean to be a country?

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I’m serious. I don’t understand why humans draw imaginary bidders. I don’t understand why humans fight and lose their lives defending those borders. It’s not “cultural identity”. For example, people in either side of Punjab are more similar to each other than say people in the South of India. And further, i don’t understand how countries can be bought and sold like the “Louisiana purchase”. I mean who’s paying for what? It would be great if someone could recommend some books about the idea of nationhood.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I think in reality, a country is the boundary of civil right. Within this boundary, people respect each other’s rights and privileges, either regulated or enforced by law, or by a collection of social agreement that we know as “culture”.

This doesn’t seem to hold true across the boundary of countries. Country A’s people simply have less/no inclination and is less/not required to treat Country B’s people equally as A’s own citizens. So for each country’s people who want to treated appropriately according to their standard, they must isolate them from the people that don’t. This is how new countries are formed. Mistreatment, disagreement, conflict, escalation, civil war, finally, independence.

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