Hetalia - Chibi 2 - How Italy Became A Victim of Bullying

The Chibisodes of the Hetalia series are centered around Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. It goes into the history of the Empire's fragmentation, its assimilation into other countries and the sociopolitical conflicts which plagued the continent for centuries. It does all of this with an unparalleled childlike humor.

The narration goes on to discuss how the motivations for conquering Italy post-Empire were largely based on the rich volume of resources these lands possessed, as well as the cultural and religious backbone which kept the country flourishing in more abstract ways.

Now, the first of these categories is of course quite vital. For instance, as the study of agriculture was still in its infancy during the Middle Ages, a nation required much larger land tracts to provide the same amount of food we could get from much smaller land tracts in the Modern Era. That said, in the Modern Era, we are slowly reaching a critical turning point for resource allocation: post-scarcity.

We have seen this in telecommunications, and energy is not too far behind the curve these days. There are global industry leaders who have made it their mission to end global poverty as soon as feasibly possible, and we've seen major enrichment projects in some of the world's poorest nations. When we reach the point of food and water being accessible to all people, what will there possibly be left to fight about?

That second category, cultural and religious backbone, will become very important. If you recall last night's article on the urban aesthetic, we discussed these ideological variables as making up the paradigm of society. The mark of the post-scarcity world will be its capacity to go to war on the grounds of wanting to prove someone wrong, and nothing more than that. Even the most basic of movements will become bastardized and bloody. What will that be like? Well, something like this:

The Lesson: There is something rather pure and innocent in petty squabbles over land and resources. These things are something tangible, something we can feel proud to fight for as they have encouraged us to seek compromises, solutions to our problems. When those fights are over, and we as a society grow up, our forward path will be much darker, much more terrifying, much more sadistic and cruel. But for now, the world is primitive, childish, and cute. If we cannot preserve those qualities, then we must cherish them while they last.