In the past, people lived on the banks of rivers which gave rise to the river valley civilizations. The local tribes used to live over there. The river proved to be the source of prosperity when everything used to be in control and people faced no deficiency or efficiency of water while at the time of floods or drought, it had very disastrous effects, killing many and sometimes even wiping off the whole civilizations. The most important rivers where civilizations emerged are, the river Indus where the Indus valley civilization emerged, the Euphrates where the Mesopotamian civilization appeared, the yellow river where Chinese civilization popped out, and the river Nile where the Egyptian civilization came into being. The purpose of mentioning these river valley civilizations is that these have been the birthplace of the concept of nationalism. Let us see how?
In the early past, the communities of people were intimate where they knew each other inside out. The local tribes had control over very small parts of the river, let’s say the yellow river in the case of Chinese civilization. The whole Chinese river, of thousands of kilometers, was controlled by parts by these local tribes. Having very limited control over the river, when flood or drought struck, the local people suffered. To solve problems like these, they needed a combined resolution mechanism and that is how the concept of nationalism emerged.
Nationalism had this essence of not knowing your fellow beings, but you still share the common feeling of loyalty to the nation. The concept of nationalism came into being as a remedy to the failure of local tribes to deal with large-scale problems. One can argue that nationalism was a benevolent discovery of human beings.
Nations today, like small independent tribes of the past living along the banks of rivers, live along the bank of technological inventions, information, and scientific discoveries. This has transformed the world into a global village where no nation can live in isolation, having been interdependently related to one another. The problems that we face today are global in nature. Out of all the global problems, that of prime importance are nuclear technology, ecological challenge, and technological disruption.
To start with the nuclear challenge, it is evident to argue that the post-World War 2 era gave rise to nuclear technology, characterized by the balance of terror in the cold war era. Since 1945, all the nations of the world had and have this terror of nuclear technology that might erase human civilization from the planet earth. The whole cold war era was shaped by this threat of calamitous discovery. Over time, they realized that since the problem is global in nature and it needs a global solution and that is why, somehow, to date, they have been able to regulate and control this problem of nuclear challenge very effectively, through combined actions. No nation can control it solely, all have to contribute to the greater cause.
Unlike in the past, nations today are connected in a global chain and one of the aspects of that is Ecology. Historically, homo sapiens had been a cause of extinction of larger animals on the continents they reached. Today, homo sapiens are up to the extinction of their specie. Global warming is the impact of climate change that is the result of human actions. This global warming is an alarming situation as it is increasing day by day and there is an obvious probability that it would reach the extent of not leaving the planet earth, a planet worth living. This also is a problem, global in nature. Nationalism, here too, has no cure for this problem in a way that a single nation can only contribute to the greater cause of cure of the particular global problem and could not solve it solely.
Then we have the issue of technological disruption. The emergence of artificial intelligence and bioengineering has been a recent human discovery but the pace with which it is proceeding might prove to be a danger for human life on the planet. Humans, in the future, might face the problem of joblessness and we might see the rise of a new class of society that “Yuval Noah Harari”, a notable Historian of the contemporary world, calls useless humans. This uselessness will be economic and political in nature since the world might be controlled by algorithms. This technological disruption needs a global solution and since the future is concerned here so all we can do is predict. A global solution in the picture of universal basic income might prove very fruitful, if implemented sincerely because it is unlikely that a government receiving taxes from a corporation in England will help a jobless person in an underdeveloped place, say, Uganda.
No single nation has a monopoly over science and technology, that is why, solely, no nation can solve global issues, they need global constancy.
To conclude, one can argue that science has replaced the very basic concept of life in the world. Before technology and science, the basic rule of life was that all living things were made of organic compounds evolved by natural selection, be it plants or animals. But today, science has reached such heights that it is trying to shape life according to the wishes of human beings, with the discovery of bioengineering and artificial intelligence. With the emergence of globalization and turning of the world into a global village, unprecedented problems have emerged that are global in nature and the best possible way to solve all the global problems is to globalize politics, rather than having national-level politics as global problems need global regulation and solution.
About The Author
Ali Yasin Khan is a student of history at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He hails from Bannu, and is aspiring to be a historian.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the original author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of Rationale-47.
Rationale-47 
Such a nice article….. Keep it up Ali Khan❣️🥀
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