Countries, Nations and States...

It is said that if we dont know history, then we are bound to repeat it... Its wonderful to see how men revel in their ignorance.... I'm sure many of you would read the first statement with a sense of "Hey-I-Know-that, gimme-something-new"..... thats the problem with adages, they are repeated to the point of triviality.... and it never returns to mainstream practicality thereafter....

History is replete with instances of war and strife over riches, land and even silk and spice.... But we, as humans, are destined not to learn anything from history..... even today, we see wars being fought over land and sometimes even over water..... You open the papers on any day and you see filmstars going on "token" hunger strike to protest over river sharing agreement and Tibetans trying desperately to garner much deserved attention to their cause....

The problem such as Tibet, has all the makings of History.... and that need not always be a good news..... It is a study in anthropology as to how man sees a country showing blatant disregard for the sanctity of a fellow nation, and still he keeps quiet; least he antagonizes the powerful infiltrator..... It happened with Germany, France and USSR..... but we still live in a fool's paradise that, that was then.... it'll not happen again.... it'll not happen today...... but when the solid excreta hits the wind circulating apparatus, who is going to stick his head out?...... I hope we dont get an answer to this, 60 yrs down the line, in a history book.....

One more disturbing trend is growing amount of regionalism..... A chance encounter with Political science showed me the difference between a Nation, a State and a Country (I'm not going to make life so easy for you, check wikipedia for further details)...... it seems as if we are living in the same country but in different nations, governed by states having different objectives and private agendas..... some thing like living in an apartment in a housing complex but not caring much about what happens to the neighbours..... or worse still, taking too much interest into their affairs!.... A hundred millionaires in the east coast working in the west coast and vice versa, made USA, a super-power.... It'd have been a different world, had the confederate states actually flourished.... The wealth of a nation is more than the sum total of the wealth of its countrymen.... its about time we understood this well enough to remember it when we need to.....

When everyone thinks that it is any one's job.... and everyone expects everyone to do it..... Nobody does.... I know this because nobody did..... I learnt my lessons.....

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