Hope Is A Skill

hope is a skill

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

I've been thinking about Avatar: The Last Airbender recently. You know what's weird? The Four Nations. They're treated as a collective, a natural way to politically and culturally divide the world of Avatar, four units in balance. But they're not, really. They're too different.

Let's start with the Fire Nation, the closest to what you'd expect the nations to be. It's a nation-state in the most literal sense; a group of people who see themselves united by history, culture, and common descent, ruled over by a polity with a strong central government. (Relative to vassalage or something, not by modern standards.) It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect the Four Nations to be from their name, so the fact that it's the only one with Nation in its name is appropriate.

Then there's the Earth Kingdom. Unlike the Fire Nation, it's not really a unitary state. For the most part, the Earth King does not rule the Earth Kingdom like the Firelord rules the Fire Nation. It was overrun with bandits and warlords during the Kyoshi era, consolidated into warring states by the Roku era, and splintered into warring states again in Korra's era as soon as the queen was killed. The Earth Kingdom was kinda united during the Hundred-Year War, but with powerful lords acting independently of Ba Sing Se and occasionally calling themselves kings. It was united in Aang's adulthood, but that's an anomaly. Still, the Earth Kingdom isn't that different from what we'd expect from one of the Four Nations. It's a nation, just ruled by a polity too decentralized or fragmented to call a state.

We come to trouble with the Water Tribe...or, really, Water Tribes. There were times when the Northern and Southern Water Tribes were united under one chief, but it makes more sense to think of them are separate entities. The Northern Water Tribe has cities and armies and a hereditary chiefdom, with the chief's family basically being treated like royalty; the Southern Water Tribe doesn't seem to have any of those, being little more than a collection of villages with no apparent government.

Even if they were culturally identical, those distinct material conditions would make the two tribes' members very different. And they aren't culturally identical. And that's not getting into the Foggy Swamp Tribe. The Water Tribe isn't a nation. It's a collection of tribes nominally united by history and culture, but actually united by Waterbending.

And then there are the Air Nomads. It's hard to get a read on them; we don't see them in the actual show (damn you, Sozin), and the information we have on them doesn't map as cleanly to any real-world groups. They're nomads whose cultures are centered around fixed temples, with no territory and no apparent method of gathering food. They're a self-reproducing ethnic group whose men and woman are geographically separated. For that matter, they're a coherent culture, distinct from their neighbors, despite being geographically separated.

The Air Nomads are only vaguely sketched out, but they're even less like what you'd expect a "nation" to be. They didn't seem to have any central government (before they were reduced to the Avatar's family and his band of Air Acolytes), they don't have any territory to speak of, they barely have any culture beyond their spiritual beliefs. But they're still a Nation, equal to the other three.

The Four Nations have little in common. Only one and a half can be considered a unitary polity, like "nation" suggests. All except the Air Nomads and maybe Fire Nation show regional variation in culture; rural Earth Kingdom communities have more in common with the Water Tribes than Ba Sing Se, and the Northern Water Tribe arguably has more in common with the smaller, coastal Earth Kingdom states than it does with the other Water Tribes.

And there are plenty of polities, cultures, and ethnic groups that aren't considered one of the Four Nations. There are the daofei, the bandits and warlords I mentioned existing in Kyoshi's time. There are groups like the Shang of Yangchen's era or the Fifth Nation of Kyoshi's, who started as a mixture of different nations and coalesced into having a singular cultural identity (and a stronger governing institutions than most of the Four Nations). There are the sandbending Si Wong tribes, the Bhanti Island sages, and those bands from the Great Divide that nobody likes to acknowledge, but they do exist, unfortunately.

None of these groups, except arguably the United Republic of Nations, are treated as significant. They might be self-governing, with a distinct ethnic identity and spiritual beliefs and so on, and have a population that dwarfs the Air Nomads...but they're not one of the Four Nations, so they're not important. Most don't affect matters outside their immediate neighbors (generally just one of the Four Nations), almost none last more than a couple centuries (compared to the millennia that the Four Nations have been recognized as a thing), and just about all of them arguably fit into one of the Four Nations. The Bhanti sages are kinda independent but also kinda part of the Fire Nation, the various Earth Kingdom tribes are all earthbenders and are made to obey the stronger Earth Kings, even the Fire Nation colonies/Republic City aren't completely independent of the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom.

The Doylist explanation is, of course, that the Four Nations are defined by their elements; one nation per element, one element per nation. But they're recognized as an institution in-universe—why else would the Northern Water Tribe assume leadership over the Southern when they were at the literal opposite end of the world? (They tried this before the spirit portal reopened, mind you.) And it's hard to imagine how that could be the case if it wasn't based purely on the elements in-universe, too.

The Avatar is clearly a central pillar of in-universe culture, particularly spiritual beliefs; that makes sense, since the Avatars have always been world-shaping figures, with supernatural powers beyond what anyone else is capable of. They rotate between four groups of people, each of which has a distinct powersets that each can only be inherited by members of that group.

The Water Tribe is seen as a unitary entity not because of any material reality, or even shared institutions, but because those are the people who can be Waterbenders. The Earth Kingdom constantly falls apart because of the difficulties in governing such a large area, and comes back together because Earthbenders exist. The Fire Nation is united by fire. The Air Nomads aren't put on the same level as the Fire Nation because their nation is politically significant, but because their existence is spiritually significant.

The other tribes, the daofei and the Shang, even the Fifth Nation? They might have territory and people, they might have distinct cultures, they might have political clout while they last. But they don't have their own element, and that makes them lesser. Fragile. As long as there are waterbenders, they will be one Tribe. As long as there are earthbenders, their ruler will be the Earth King. As long as there is a single airbender, the Air Nomads will be among the Four Nations.

In 1944 a kitten named George (short for General Electric) was saved from drowning by a U.S. Navy crew member. George was then photographed and given a liberty card and detailed health record. Source.

Amazon is being sued by the FTC and 17 states for being an illegal monopoly

AP News

Amazon sued by FTC and 17 states over allegations it inflates online prices and overcharges sellers

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorney generals filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon on Tuesday, alleging the e-commerce be