By 'not durable', do you mean 'the concept stretches as far back as we have written records'? Yes, 'nations' meaning 'something that gives you a passport' haven't been around long, but 'nations' meaning 'geopolitical entities' is as old as record-keeping itself.
And what do you mean by 'rule of law'? Do the decisions of tribal elders count? That doesn't suggest consistency, which is the spirit of the term.
>but 'nations' meaning 'geopolitical entities' is as old as record-keeping itself
This is completely untrue. States as we recognize them in the modern sense have only existed since the 17th Century in Europe[0], and much later in other parts of the world[1]. Before this time, political organizations consisted of kingdoms, principalities, city-states, tribes, and various other small groupings of people.
This is completely untrue. States as we recognize them in the modern sense
Well, I said 'nations', in response to the parent saying 'nations'. I didn't say 'states'. If you are going to be pedantic, then be pedantic correctly.
Before this time, political organizations consisted of kingdoms, principalities, city-states, tribes, and various other small groupings of people.
I guess places like Egypt, the Roman Empire, and Ming were all 'small groupings of people'?
That somehow 'Rome', that stretched from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, was merely a 'city state'? Even after the capital was moved to a different city half a continent away? That despite having a complicated system of senators, emperors, provincial governors (or that they even had the concept of 'provinces'!) and so forth, that there was no 'political organisation'?
In the context of the conversation, the OP's 'nations and borders', there's nothing wrong with what I said - 'nations' and 'borders' have been around for as long as we have records.
City-states are not comparable to modern nations in their scope, budget, police powers, military powers, surveillance powers, etc. A return to smaller political units that don't have the resources to mount, for example, pervasive surveillance and large-scale incarceration might make us freer than we are now.
In other words, maybe national politics needs to be refactored into smaller units to be more tractable and maintainable.
"A return to"? You make it sound like the empires of old simply couldn't be oppressive, simply because they didn't have hi-tech surveillance.
Not to mention that industrial-scale slavery existed in quite a few places well before the modern era. "Returning to" the ways of the past is very much not guaranteed to reduce our oppression.
And what do you mean by 'rule of law'? Do the decisions of tribal elders count? That doesn't suggest consistency, which is the spirit of the term.