JUST PHILOSOPHISING - ON THE CATALONA REFERENDUM DEBACLE, AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE CONTEMPORARY STATE! PART 3.

Under military rule, the military knows only too well that the threats to its rule are likely to emanate mainly from the fringes of its area of control.  

And it will therefore concentrate on ensuring that it strengthens its defences in those area. 

In civil societies, it is true that the danger can arise from anywhere. 

But dissatisfaction, tensions and conflicts within the individual regions, which can manifest themselves in terms of geographic, socio-economic, ethnic, religious, and party political issue. 

Present the greatest risk to the unity and stability of the state and country. Which is why good and competent governance is so important as a defence against these threats. 

Threats which are best prevented by the strength and fairness of the social, political, economic and cultural contract between the state and the people of all the constituent regions.  

And by the relative strength of their feeling of loyalty to being integral parts of the national family.


It is debatable as to whether there is more or a bigger threat from inter-ethnic strife, than there is from regional conflicts within the same country. 

There is concern about the impact of people of different ethnic and religious heritage moving into Europe, for example. 

As we can see from the on-going impact it is having on countries such as France, Germany, and some of the former Soviet bloc countries. 

However, all of this pales in comparison to the catastrophe which was the Baltic war in the former State of Yugoslavia.  

Even if, probably for reasons of convenience and opportunism, religious and cultural affiliations were used as the or one of the main reason for the slaughter. 

We can also look to countries such as Nigeria, which gave us the disastrous Biafran War, Rwanda and Burundi, among others, and, more recently, the new country of South Sudan, as examples of regional conflicts in sovereign nation states. 

None of which fall into the stereotypical and oversimplified largely 'black versus white' racial strife.  Which we have come  to erroneously tried to  reduce very complex demographic situations into. Which then leads to inaccurate conclusions and inappropriate responses.

So, what does all of this means for people of different ethnic, cultural, religious and regional affiliations? 

Is it that 'multiculturalism' has really failed, and that each ethnic group, each religious community, each cultural group, each regional community, should establish and maintain their own, exclusive or largely exclusive plot of land on mother Earth, and defend it from all others? 

That we should attempt to turn the clock of progress and evolution back; as Daesh/ISIL/IS are doing?

Is this where thousands of years of human progress has taken us; to the realisation that Emile Durkheim is right, and that human 'civilization' is only an artificial social veneer, which is covering up a still largely primitive interior?

To be continued.