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The connection between the nation-state and physical health.There is a strong connection. However, this connection is not self-evident in this age. Most societies on the planet have benefited from the supportive role of the nation-state for too long to remember the days before its creation, the day's prior to the 15th and 16th centuries of the unfolding Renaissance. Prior to this time, throughout all ages, in all societies, and on all continents on the planet, with a few minor exceptions, 99% of the people lived as subjects, serves, or slaves to various types of masters, and were treated as such. Their life expectancy was 30 years on the average. 40% of the people died before the age of 14. Out of this darkness, the spark of a scientific idea about the nature of man, created an explosive uplifting of society in a century of 'light' that is still regarded as the greatest period of progress in the history of mankind. As an aspect of this development, the idea of the nation-state emerged that was first adopted in 1462 by King Louis XI of France, which, in a short time literally doubled the standard of living in that nation. Thus, the tables were turned. Feudalism was put aside. Now the nation, itself, became master over its destiny. Living conditions improved through applying the principles of the nation state, wherever they were applied. Education became scientific, universal, and powerfully humanist in nature; geniuses were born; technologies were created that gave mankind access to ever greater resources of food and energy. Today, the life expectancy in the leading nations on the planet is twice that, of the earlier figure. Scientific research, medical technologies, and public health-care infrastructures have won the war against an ancient enemy of mankind, pandemic diseases. Most of these diseases became eradicated, which once wiped out whole populations. This victory would not have been possible without the institution of the sovereign nation-state that funds education systems, finances research efforts, and enables large scale infrastructures which make the world a better place to live in, such as sanitation, water development, electric utilities, transportation networks, etc.. We call these things progress, but none of this progress would have been possible without the institution of the nation-state. An oligarchic state is one of poverty, marked by backwardness, oppression, pessimism, and injustice. The English poor laws of the 19th century were examples of this backwardness. They were both murderous in nature and socially destructive, in that they destroyed the greatest resource a nation has, its people, rather than developing the potential of that resource. In fact, the Poor Laws were designed in such a manner that the poor would die quickly through starvation, etc, and so remove themselves from off the face of the earth. This is the face of the oligarchic state. Health care receives no attention under such a system, while higher education is available mainly to the wealthy elite and the richer segments of society. In today's world, the institution of the nation-state is under attack by that same class of oligarchy that stood behind the Poor Laws in Britain. Nor has their song changed. The call still goes out to "murder the useless eaters." The tone may have changed over the years, but the end-result has not. The oligarchy's profit generating schemes still demand the destruction of hospitals, the removal of public health care services, the removal of the social safety-nets, and the artificial degradation of living conditions under free-trade that increases poverty and squalor, to the point that physical existence can no longer be maintained. This is the face of today's conservatism, but beneath it hides poorly hidden, the face of feudalism. Already, the weakening of society (as in 19th century England) has brought back diseases into this modern world that were once eradicated (but which had actually been welcomed by the rulers of the earlier times). Except, today's weakening of the human system has been imposed against entire continents, rather than against merely a class of underprivileged city-dwellers. The result is in line with the obvious intend. Not only are the old diseases back, right across the globe, even in areas where they had never been before, but their spread is increasing rapidly, and on top of that new types of deadly diseases emerge at a rate of one a year, which likewise never existed before. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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