I understand what you mean and the speaker made a mistake by conflating German as an ethnic group and German in the sense of German nation. The difference can be clearly demonstrated by comparing Germany and Austria, who ethnically are both German, but have distinct national identities. This wasn't always true. During the HRE period Austria was just one of the many polities of the empire, but the situation changed in the 19th century with the destruction of the HRE and then the development of a rivalry between the ruling classes of Austria and Prussia inside the Alliance of German States. This rivalry defined the border between the two national identities and those identities are very much constructed because ethnically and linguistically norther and central Europe, the larger Germanic world, forms a gradient, a dialect continuum of some sort (this was even more true before the standardization of language). I want to also stress that the nature of the rivalry between the German and Austrian ruling classes in the 19th century was different from the rivalry of medieval nobles who also often fought amongst eachother. In the 19th century the nature of the rivalry was economic and capitalist. The rivalry was for the formation of a unified economic space and who's rulling classes will control it. Capitalist economic development operates on a scale much larger than the previous feudal economy. It needs a unified market with a unified legislation with preferably a universal language on a given territory to facilitate communication and operations. The feudal economy of Europe was much more local with a comparatively small volume of long distance trade that would be crucial to the economy and it's functioning. The economy was primarily focussed on producing goods for consumption locally and there was not much production that was primarily for trade. Now, all our economy is focused of commodity production which requires a lot of resources for mass production and a wide market.

Germany never had the enlightenment and no, they lost the war. That doesn’t mean they weren’t right. It just means they lost.

what do you mean?

@@foolfether If ya know ya know I guess. Check out the history/culture/literature/philosophy/art/music/language emanating from Germany I guess

@@foolfether Perhaps it might help to point out the German obsession with language/syntax and litigiousness and potential relations of the two...Also, the strange lack of German humor...The very constricting and DEFINING nature of language in German culture. At least that is the perspective as a (semi) outsider looking in. I'm American from German/Brit ancestors.

What or who is Wittgenstein?

@@JackDSquat I will tell you if you can explain internet search engines to me.

there's also the fact that we were still all christian or at least the vast majority were in the beginning, so we were still grouped together by that, as well as the founding ideals, but we were just more loosely connected that the europeans tended to be.

@@Thatonedudeyouknowtheone Yeah, even the Deists had a strong cultural connection to the Biblical story even if they didn't believe that the supernatural elements actually happened. And, of course, classical education was still widespread, so everyone had strong cultural connections to Homer and Vergil, too. That much should still be possible even without establishing a religion. It would require tearing out the education system root and branch, though.

Or it's the new Babylon

@@mik569 Babylon is a symbol of all-consuming tyrannical order, which is antithetical to the pattern America embodied from her founding. A "new Babylon" wouldn't suffer the presence of armed citizens who consider it their God-given right to shoot tyrants. The new Babylon is the totalitarian state, and while America might be struggling to ward off that particular threat, she's done a better job of it than practically all of Europe, Asia, and the Anglo-sphere.

It's both the disappearance of the idea of lineage and the disappearance of localism. The idea of ethnicity used to be related to cultural varieties and rituals. To be a Hebrew man was to get circumsized and to observe the passover. It had nothing to do with "race" as the Darwinians define it today. Becoming Hebrew was making Abraham your father through adoption. I'm also reminded that the english word "King" is related to the word "kin". Your nation is your extended family. The disappearance of locality is rampant today, and it goes beyond the disappearance of local dialects. Local shops have made way for supermarket chains. These have also started to absorb bakeries and butcher shops. Local coffee places are rivalled by chains like Starbucks. It's no coincidence also that during covid times, the local shops and businesses were under greater pressure whereas the chains had easier times surviving with government benefits.

The root of the shift form more local identities to larger identities lies in the economic system. A feudal economy is much more local with stable permanent economic links existing only in small regions. A lot of production was also done for local consumption and not for selling on the market. Larger long distance trade would usually be seasonal, sometimes recurring more rarely than every year and would be usually very festive affairs to which foreign merchants would come with their goods and people form neighboring regions and sometimes quite distant ones would come to trade. The market was so small in its capacity that only during such events where merchandise and buyers would assemble would long distance trade really be viable. We can see in this medieval period that this was the core of what would develop into the capitalist system, but at this stage this economic mode of production was not the main one around which society would organize. The stable economic links dictate whom you regularly cross and with whom your interests are more likely to align. In medieval times this regions of stable and regular economic links were very small. That was conducive to the formation of very regional identities. Industrial capitalism is a completely different beast that requires the organization of much greater resources for the profitable mass production of commodities for the market that also has to match the production scale. It thus requires a unified economic space with a unified legal system and a standardized way of measuring and communication to streamline operations. It also starts linking economically together more distant regions and people form affiliations with people further apart. Up until the 19th century capitalism was battling the remnants of the feudal system and this also reflected in the formation of national identities. Now capitalism operates on a global scale and we can see it reflect in our culture and what we consume. We regularly eat food from other cultures, we consume things that were produced all over the world, and our cultural consumption is also very varied and cultures influence eachother. We are now at a stage where even national boundaries are blurring and disappearing. All this has its roots in how humans organize their subsistence, i.e. the economy. This method of analysis and viewpoint on the development of human society is from the historical materialist school of thought (Marxism).

@@dorinpopa6962 Can you give me your opinion instead of that of the son of Mordechai?

@@arspsychologia4401 I subscribe to this school of thought when it comes to historical development of human society. I've found that it has the best explicative power and accounts nicely for a vast array of historical examples. Do you have any real counter arguments beyond your subjective and performative comment?

We don't need a new astrology, we need Christ

You mean People's Republic of Murica?

What else would that be? There's North America, Central America, South America, and the Americas, but America (singular) means the United States of.... *AMERICA*