River Nations
A modest proposal
Humans have fought over territories since before consciousness. The chimpanzee in us won't easily let go of the territorial imperative, especially in the male of our species. There are many factors which continue to contribute to this primitive tendency (mostly in the arena of socio-economics), but much of it focuses on boundaries. Where boundaries are determined by humans, humans will continue to dispute them.
What about allowing nature to determine boundaries?
The treatise below is lifted (with permission) from "the Tappers" and the RiverNations web site. It represents a policy which can be activated by individual human inhabitants of planet earth without reference to governments or any other concentrations of power and resources.
This, of course, is not a government or corporate initiative. This is a people's initiative. River citizens don't need anybody's permission to declare their river citizenship. They just do it and take up their rights and responsibilities as they see fit.
Political/geographical boundaries can and should be defined exclusively by river basins. Where armies rise and fall and non-basin based boundaries are temporarily established, river citizens know that these are only blips and confusions in the passage of primitive and erratic human history. They know that the proper and timeless boundaries will always be there regardless.
In the interests of getting started on this, colleagues established the very crude and badly in need of updating web site mentioned above and began to assemble stats and information about their nearest rivers.
Visitors and new river citizens are always welcome.
Are national boundaries best defined by river catchment basins?
© 2011 Deacon Martin