I don’t mean this to say countries are like living organisms, I literally mean this to ask, “Are countries living organisms like us?”
Today, biologists use seven qualifying factors to determine if something lives or not:
Responsiveness
Ability to grow or change
Reproduction
Metabolism
Homeostasis (the ability to regulate internal conditions)
Being made of cells (1 or many)
Evolution
Obviously, beings like ourselves check off all characteristics, but what is striking when looking at this list is how well countries fit these descriptions. In many ways, if we are willing to call ourselves alive, we should need to call the countries living organisms, and likewise, if we are to claim that countries are not living, are we even living?
Responsiveness:
Countries are clearly responsive to their surroundings. What goes on outside of countries has large effects on how it reacts. Whether it is making treaties, declaring war, establishing trade deal, or anything else, countries are clearly responding to their environments satisfying the first necessary characteristic. Counties responsiveness are necessary to their survival, we must run flee from or fight dangers that face us, as do countries. If they lose a war, like people losing a fight, they may die.
Growth and change:
Countries are not static beings, over the course of their lifetime they go through many changes. Some gain territory, some lose, they change their leaders, some even change their form of leadership, the make technological advances, they have social revolutions. From the time of a countries birth to death, it is almost never the same country.
Reproduction:
This one is maybe the hardest to get people, behind but it is true: countries reproduce. Countries are made of people, the cells of a country, and new countries are made from the young cells of an old one. For example, Canada is the child of Britain and France. Not to say that countries reproduce in pairs though. Countries can reproduce alone, which they often do or form new countries from the product of many nations. No country alive today, was not born from the cells (people) who lived in a mother country.
Metabolism:
We may think that countries don’t eat but they do and in the exact same way as us. Countries have a digestive system just like us. To say that countries don’t eat is similar to saying humans don’t eat. We merely ingest food and break it down into parts edible for individual cells and distribute it where it is needed. The cells are the one doing the eating and breathing, we just provide eat cell with food the way our country provides us. (It is important not to confuse country with government). Our country has a digestive system. It is made of farms which bring food into our nations like our mouth does for our body, (although a better parallel may be chloroplasts in plants), of processing plants which ensure it safety and prepare it to be more easily consumed such that each cell (person) does not need to slaughter and grow their own food, leaving them to serve the country in other ways. Similarly, in our body, unlike single celled organism, not all cells can acquire food on their own, but they serve other roles like being in the brain or blood or skin… Our roads and truck drivers are our circulatory system to deliver the necessary ingredients for each individual persons survival. As long as what we do as humans is considered “eating,” so should it be for countries.
Homeostasis:
Countries cannot regulate the temperature like we can, but its cells can regulate their own internal temperatures so their is no need. Rather homeostasis in countries is done with laws, social conventions, constructions… The internal conditions of a country may vary, like us, but cannot vary too much or will mean death, like us. Countries regulate all the internal conditions that they have to and if they fail, such as allowing a rebellion to spread, they die.
Being made of cells:
Countries are made of people; people are made of cells. Keep in mind that not all of our cells touch each other, many float alone surrounded entirely by water. Just because every person is not stacked on top of each other does not mean or country is not made of people and therefore cells.
Evolution:
2000 years ago, almost every country was a monarchy. As it seems, that was not great and now many countries are democracies. Governments, technology, and people are not the same as they were forming the ancient civilizations of the past. We evolved to be free of many diseases and we created vaccines to rid ourselves of the ones we didn’t, which in turn, means countries evolved to be free of those diseases. Every time a country fails, the people make a new one hopefully having learned how to be better. Eventually countries that are successful last making that the natural selection of countries.
More: There are plenty more parallels between multicellular living organism and nations. Enough so that I think it is correct to claim that they are alive. Viral diseases of people work the same on nations. They spread from cell to cell until it is wiped out or kills the country/person. War between nations is just like fighting between living things. Revolutionaries are cancer cells. I don’t mean this to say that revolution is bad, it just defeats a nation in the same way cancer beats a person. I won’t outright say that terrible people deserve cancer, but I will say that bad nations deserve revolutions. If people don’t treat their cells right, they may begin to fight back against the body and the person gets cancer. If countries don’t treat their citizens right, they call for revolutions.
What does this mean?
I don’t believe that this is a moot point. So what, who cares if countries are “alive”. This does not mean our sole duty is to serve our countries, but it is important to know that are often essential to survival. Human cells cannot survive on their own, and people cannot survive on their own. Sure, many survivalists do this for a while, but it takes to to reproduce. And how is this person supposed to protect their children. We are more than “pack animals”, we are the building blocks of other life forms together. We can learn from countries as well; for example, don’t treat your body poorly or it will start a revolution (cancer). Yet I know that cancer is not always your fault, and often time just countries are taken down by evil revolutions.
If you have made it this far, you probably have thoughts on the matter, please feel free to share. All opinions are welcome; I love to get feedback. Do you agree that countries are alive? If so, what does it mean to you? Should we call people that study countries and politics biologists? I;m going to answer that myself, yes. Should we say Barrack Obama majored in political sciences, or should we say he majored in biology?
- ə