It's not arbitrary, our ancestors in many cases fought and died to establish those lines so that they could live their lives how they wanted within those lines. They worked hard so that their children and grandchildren and fellow citizens could have better lives within those lines. To discount that as luck is demeaning to the sacrifices of the people who came before you

As an example, if you read about the motivations of specific actors in the American revolutionary war, many of the top dissenters were basically interested in not paying taxes and being the boss of their own piece of land (instead of having oversight from across the pond). Nobody is ethically pure, of course, but the main push for the revolutionary war was done out of massive self-interest from people in power.

"There was a time that we were noble" is something that rarely plays out in practice. Why should it? If anything humanity has gotten more, not less, ethical and noble over time.

There's an idea of fighting for justice and truth, and then there's trying to die to establish lines on a map. They're not the same thing, and I'd say that it's rarely coinciding in practice

he might've been from europe though, and we really did have ... a lot of blood wasted to draw out these lines... we kept killing each other for them

bloodshed and misery of the commons is a very ... 'noble' thing. by which i mean that every noble in europes history enjoyed it.

i'd agree to the spirit of your message though, and the grandparent post probably as well. he probably didn't mean it like you interpreted it

They might just be "lines on a map" but they mean something to people, just 50 years ago those "lines" were the difference between living in a communist hellhole and freedom and prosperity. There's a lot of cubans and eastern europeans who risked their lives to get on the other side of some lines on a map and get a better life for themselves and their children.

If people hadn't been willing to fight and die to defend those lines and their ability to live how they want, we wouldn't be able to have this discussion right now

My family members fought in wars, paid taxes, and helped build up the country so their descendants could have a better life, calling that nothing but luck is disrespectful to the sacrifices they made.

Also, statistically, birthrates are higher in less developed countries with worse living conditions.

That's sort of the whole point; often improving the lives of "fellow citizens" came at the expense of everyone else

Doesn't sound so noble then, eh?

Carthaginians, Celts, Bosnians, Tutsi, Rohingya ...

I'm glad it's like this for me, and I hope the world can keep moving forward in that direction (as an european I'm kind of used to no borders between countries, the same way US people move between states); but at the same time I'm not sure how healthy it is to have such privileges and not even recognize them as such anymore.

I guess this is what causes the people from "our" countries calling themselves expat rather than immigrants (we've had a case this week again, where an english immigrant in France complained on twitter about immigrants coming to France ...).

I believe remembering what is a privilege you are lucky have is important, maybe if we were better at that we would have less on the modern "social stupidity" issues (another matter entirely but if people knew how lucky they were of not having polio and/or knew someone related to them who got it, they would be much less likely to avoid vaccination ...).