The Existence Of Nations

The very existence of an external world seems to be completely assumed by most people, when its existence is demonstrable but extremely difficult to prove, and no assumption is justifiable regardless because an assumption is by nature arbitrary and not based on logical proof.  What about the existence of nations, of countries with their geographical boundaries and political regimes or communities of inhabitants?  The nature of nations is less central, less foundational, and less far-reaching and significant in its ramifications than the existence of an external world of matter, not to mention metaphysically dependent on there already being a physical world in place in which to draw up nations, but it is still relevant to the distinction between social constructs and core metaphysics--just not social constructs in the ideological sense as with invalid concepts like racial stereotypes or basing beliefs in consensus, but the sense that nations could not exist without groups of beings to form and sustain them.

If a certain region of the external world really does exist as opposed to just being an illusion perceived to exist, then that region has its respective length, height, depth, and so on, all of which are characteristics of that particular part of the planet.  Whether or not that land is anyone's private property or under the domain of a larger political state, and no matter the arbitrary units of measurement assigned to it, that land has its size and appearance.  Were there no conscious beings to preside in it or perceive it--and if matter really does exist unperceived, an unprovable and unfalsifiable possibility due to human limitations--then the region a nation would have within it does not depend on having any formal or casual government to exist.  Nations are a kind of social construct within the social level of existence, not the physical kind.

Like how fiat currency has no inherent monetary value because no object in nature has inherent financial status, only the potential to be used as if it does have financial value, land has no inherent political status.  That all currencies are fiat currencies entails a massive scope for this fact.  Fiat currencies have functionality because people act like they do, and if a certain metal or type of paper or anything else used like a currency (such as animals or salt) was dropped from use as a currency, it no longer has societal monetary significance.  Similarly, land only has a political status because people treat it as it if does, but this is not subjectivism or relativism, both of which are objective impossibilities.  It is just the truth that a nation can be establish, yet only because people act in a certain way towards it with certain intentions.  The moral and ideological validity of their political body is a deeper matter.

If there are no moral obligations and inherent value to certain states of being or kinds of creature--not inherently meaningless subjective moral preferences, which are meaningless either way, but genuine obligations that one should live in accordance with--then there is nothing about the external world that has moral value with or without the presence of nations.  No individual's actions, thoughts, or beliefs or those of people manning an entire nation's legal system have moral validity just because of preference or political power to exert one's subjective will.  Only acting in alignment with and making laws that reflect actual moral obligations could a nation deserve respect or loyalty.  Moreover, the aforementioned philosophical triviality of the existence of nations compared to the existence and nature of an external world does not mean that the moral nature of politics and other things is less important than the natural world; on the contrary, the natural world is neither the core of all reality (logic has that intrinsic status, followed by the uncaused cause) nor capable of having value in its own.

For a nation or the non-political land it is founded on to have value, there must be objective moral obligations and values.  It is true that, as previously stated, the metaphysics and epistemology of forming nations is less central and important to understanding what can be know of reality than the metaphysics and epistemology of the external world itself.  However, nations have a closer proximity to moral issues, so why is the subject of nations less philosophically significant (here I mean significant in terms of how foundational something is and how extensive or deep its ramifications are whether or not moral obligations exist to grant it objective value)?  It is because moral obligations transcend political bodies because they, if they exist, are rooted in the uncaused cause that brought the material world into existence.  The thing that must exist for nations to be brought forth, the external world, and the thing that must exist for governments and nations to have genuine value, the uncaused cause and morality, are both more foundational than the metaphysics of nations while going beyond.