“…the great collections of individuals called nations themselves behave to some extent like individuals…” pg. 121 Time Regained

Frequently, Stephen Kern will emphasize that major European powers at the time universally held the belief that a nation was analogous to an individual organism. This philosophy is used as a foundation for Imperialist, Colonialist, and otherwise Expansionist ideologies. On page 225 of Time and Space, “Ratzel applied the organic analogy to the state, which he interpreted as a “rooted organism” that must grow or die… Smaller states develop prematurely and do not reach cultural levels attained in larger states… stands under the law of progress from small to big spaces.” Hindsight being what it is, it seems obvious that European powers, who as Kern states on 236, “the command of space was desirable: it was embedded in their historical consciousness,” given a position of technological supremacy and moral absolution from misinterpretations of evolutionary biology, would embark on their murderous quests for land and resources in the 19th and 20th centuries. I’m having trouble accepting the idea that collections of individuals behave more or less like individuals, though. This isn’t a belief isolated to European powers at the turn of the century either. I see it all around me, even today. Countries, cities, communities are personified and spoken of as if they were persons. “France is too cowardly to invade Syria” or “Evergreen can’t get its shit together”. Of course, these simplifications of multitudinous institutions into individuals are a necessity of common speech. If we all went around talking like, “The French National Assembly, operating on information given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and pressure from its allies and French citizens, the majority of which, recent polls indicate, are against further involvement in the Middle East, is unlikely to pass a–” we would all have P.H.Ds and nothing would ever get done. But, the fact that we all refer to collections of individuals as individuals doesn’t make them any more of an individual, it just makes all of us lazy and delusional.