Why are there so many seperate countries in the world?

According to Wikipedia, there are 205 sovereign states in the world and even more are being created from time to time.

Why is the reason really that there are so many seperate, by seperate I mean sovereign states in the world ranging from very big ones like Russia to very small ones like Singapore or Cyprus?

 

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smallest would be the Vatican i would have thought and then East Timor

 

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True but you still did not answer my question. Why are people really so divided these days?

I can see language being one reason, people not able to understand or communicate with each other and the other reason people not having access to computers or the Internet or Television and not really knowing what is going in the modern world.

But what are the other reasons that people are so divided?

 

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I think that the main reason is the ambition of some regional politicians who wish for a higher status for themselves.

The only way for them to be promoted is getting to gain independence and become "top" politicians in that new state.

 

maybe the world should take lessons from the sci community if they want to learn about getting along together

 

ha!

 

I'm not sure that the world is more divided to day than it was in the past. Before the rise of the State, the highest level of organization was a chiefdom, and before that the tribe (see works by Elman R. Service). There were many more chiefdoms than nations, and many more tribes than chiefdoms - they each tended to be larger, including more people and more territory, than their developmental predessesor.

250 countries is not many, when you consider the total human population of this planet, and the surface area that is occupied. It is amazing that there are so few, actually.

Rich

 

There is no particular reason other than some arbitrary divisions: it could have been one state governing all over the world or it could have been 1000 states instead of 200 plus, and we could have been asking the same question with different numbers. In terms of administrative efficiency, even 1000 states would be evaluated as insufficient for 7 billion people. But we are more sentimental apes rather than rational ones, so geography based linguistic traditionalist discourse -a.k.a. "culture"- can still create, legitimize and sustain bloody divisions among homo sapiens.
Think this "too many sovereign states" issue as current stage of human social evolution. With our given historical background, the level of civilization, all in all our current capacity brought us to this situation. Yet unlike natural evolution, this one is directed and energized by our mentality. So there is no atomic or genetic excuse to normalize the current state of national divisions.

 

In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century there were a lot fewer states, since strong powers (mostly European) dominated most of the world. Since WWII the world has changed so that small countries don't have to be worried about big neighbors taking over. One result is that people who feel different enough tend to separate, examples - Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (unfortunately - not peacefully).

 

Geography plays a factor. Natural barriors such as mountains, water, desert, etc. What food is available can force people into concentrated areas.

 

It is because we are evil aggressive jumped-up monkeys.

 

If there was only one country in the world and it got a Nazi government, who'd oppose it?

 

Unification of world is perfectionism.

 

It is mostly greed, desire for power, and various other selfish motivators that are hardwired into our very nature in being human. Rationally and logically, there is no real reason to have nations, but seeing as how humans are irrational, greedy, and violent, the rational and logical response is to group yourself with people that you trust in order to protect yourself from those that you don't.

Kind of sad really, but that's life, we just suck at communicating ideas with one another.

 

Also, it's oppression from the people in power. They separate people and generalize those that are not in the same zone in order to dehumanize them and create some greater than thou cause for supremacy (though that sort of falls under greed and lust for power), so sorry if I'm being redundant.

 

There would have to be at least two countries - one for us normal people who break our hard boiled eggs on the big side, and another for those unspeakably degenerate heathens who break theirs on the small side.
Maybe one more for people who haven't read Gulliver's Travels!

 

You couldn't resist, could you?

 

East Timor, with a little over one million inhabitants nowhere near being the second smallest country in the world. There are many that are much smaller in population. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Liechstenstein, The Faroes, Gibraltar, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, Equatorial Guinea, Iceland, Bhutan, Luxembourg, Fiji, Malta all spring immediately to mind. And more besides.