by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2014
Humans experience boundaries, many kinds. What boundaries are experienced depends on the technology available. So, post-snap, the boundaries that humans experience will be different, quite different.
Boundaries are rooted in Us versus Them thinking: There is stuff that belongs to us, stuff that belongs to someone else, stuff that belongs to everyone, and stuff that no one cares about. In the Neolithic Village environment boundaries are harder to define than in civilized environments, but they are often worthy of fighting over. This is deep, deep instinctive thinking. Boundaries and aggressive violence are tightly tied in many, many animals in addition to humans.
With each age that has followed the Neolithic boundaries have had their nature change. Feudal boundaries -- allegiance to a headman or priest -- emerged in the Agricultural Age, and National boundaries became a strong concept as the Industrial Age came into being. One of the unexpected miracles of the French Revolution was the ability of French governments to harness national enthusiasm to give them much more resource for military operations than their monarchial government enemies were able to muster. This was a surprise that let them win wars.
Likewise, boundaries involved with employment became more formal and important as the Industrial Age changed the nature of working, and business-oriented organizations carried more social load.
Today we have strong boundaries associated with nation states. These are both physical boundaries and social boundaries. We have dotted lines on the map, check points at border crossing roads, and lots of procedural hoop-jumping if a person wants to move goods across boundaries or change their national allegiance. We spend a lot of our community resource on a military to protect our national boundaries and other national interests.
Likewise, we have strong boundaries established for many day-to-day activities -- you have to join organizations to conduct many activities such as jobs, formal education and volunteer work, and we have a lot of government resource devoted to both defining and protecting these community boundaries.
And the link between boundaries and violence is still strong -- cross someone's line and expect some kind of slap in return.
Here are some big changes I see coming:
o The protective function of nation states is going to wither in importance. With so much global coordination and cooperation emerging, there will be little to protect from at the nation-to-nation level. There may be ritual bluster, and border incidents, but it won't lead to any sort of total war as happened in the 20th century. If a rogue nation does extensive defecting -- betraying instead of coordinating and cooperating -- it will suffer more than it gains from taking the cheap shots of defection. Where there are exceptions it will be due to special circumstances. An example of such an exception going on today is North Korea. That is a nation that has been paid handsomely and routinely for innovative saber-rattling rituals since the 1950's. This odd payment form is why it can stay rogue. These kinds of "theater" may be supported post-snap, but they will be just that: an odd form of entertainment.
What national protection will still be used for is protecting from failed state warlords who still see benefits in pulling off cheap shots, and the post-snap equivalent of today's border-crossing gangsters and terrorists who profit from large-scale criminal activities. Smuggling is likely to endure as a wide-spread post-snap way of crossing-the-line -- there's so much "gaming the system" instinct involved in it.
This diminishing of nation-state importance means that flag-waving style patriotism will become a pillar of faith rather than relevant to harsh reality. At the national level there will not be much protecting to be done. Patriotism will be conducted mostly to provide warm-fuzzies for those who are performing the rituals.
National governments will steadily share more of their protective function with larger organizations such as regional security groups like NATO and the UN, and smaller regional security groups such as city and provincial police forces who are dealing with local-level domestic unrest. In a nutshell: Police forces will grow and standing armies will shrink.
o Who will control tools of violence? Military hardware and nuclear weapons are instinctively fascinating. This means post-snap people are still going to be interested in who has these and who can control their use.
That said, first keep in mind that "tools of violence" covers a lot of ground. Today's tools of violence span from children's fists through unmanned drones. Almost all tools that can be used for constructive activities can also be used for violence, so trying to blanket outlaw tools that can be used for violence is impossible. This means that any future "violent tool control" movement will act like today's "gun control" movement in the US -- it will be deeply emotional, but devote much of its attention to trivia.
Back to the main question: as national governments decline in relevance, their access to tools of violence is also likely to decline. These declines will be called defense cuts. At the local levels -- cities and businesses -- violent tool use will keep up with technology improvements because criminals will also have access to improved violent tool technology. Criminals will exist as long as communities are willing to invoke disenfanchising laws.
o What happens to people who step over the line? As I mentioned earlier, stepping over the line is a blatant invitation to violence of some sort, but what sort varies enormously, and the response is highly ritualized. My best guess: Those parts of line crossing that are mostly about human-human drama are not going to change much. Those that involve lots of technology, and changing technology, will change a lot.
The effect of cyber lying on boundaries is going to be substantial. The most obvious effect will be to blur them: If humans don't know what's going on, they will have to be told by cybers where the boundaries are. This means cybers will have the power to define a lot of line crossing and through that when and what kind of violence will be exercised.
Human-human boundary making, line-crossing, and aggressive responses are not going to go away. But they may change in nature depending on how much chemistry can control human brain function. If we have "get sober fast" pills of some sort, drunken bar fights may diminish.