Why do we need a state?
Philosophers have tried to answer this question in a variety of ways. Some of the main arguments (very simplistically put) have been to promote happiness, to prevent and address conflicts between people, to achieve distributive justice, to develop capabilities of people, for an egalitarian society, to promote freedom etc. It is to be noted that the question was on existence of state and it is because we need equality, freedom and peace that we need a state and not that the state is given and these are a few things that the state could "choose" to do. Given this background, one needs to rightly evaluate what the current states are doing and if they are not fulfilling the very purpose of their existence then do we need a state? But this debate is for another day.
Moving ahead What is the justification for political communities and governance?
Among several other explanations voluntarism is one of the prominent. We are being governed only because we have consented to be governed. There are also counter arguments that If I choose to not be governed, do I have an option to opt out? If that is not so and I am forced to be a part of a state, isn't it infringing on my freedom?
Also the system of democracy and elected representatives is based on the tenet that we choose the laws (or the makers of the laws) which affect us. With the cosmopolitanism and interconnected world where the decisions of one country are affecting every other, this idea also comes under a big scanner. If a particular country decides to stop exporting food, another country in some other corner of the world dies of starvation. So the law in a country which i do not belong to and do not elect the representatives is deciding my life and death, shouldn't I logically be party to the decision making. If we go by the tenets of democracy, should we all be voting for all the countries? If we are not, then do we still say it is democracy that we are living in?
With the current world we are in, where we need to question the basic tenets of life, there is one menace that is looming to engulf. Patriotism, the dreaded P word.
While the time is to rethink the borders and the idea of nation as the whole, we are here pitting a country against the other, beating up people who refuse to walk the line, sentencing them to life imprisonments.
In the idea of justice, the individuals right to life triumphs over any other right. And one needs to remember that a country is a self imposed structure of a group of individuals and only that. If a country has a character it is given by us and not god sent.
About a seventy years ago there didn't exist a country or that flag which we are killing for and probably a century down the lane it might not exist (or might as well exist) but lo behold, we the bearers of the honor of the glorious nation will torch all those who don't look up to us.
Like we now look back towards the past with disgust and wonder how people could be so barbaric and kill in the name of ethnicity, just a little time down the line, we would be in those museums of the dead, and there will be generations who would look at us disdainfully and say "I wonder how these fools killed in the name of something called Nation"
We can't judge the present by the ideals of the future but we can't judge the present with the ideals of the past as well and nation is an imagined past, which we are clinging to so tight to.
We are in a time where we should be worried as a species and not for a flag or a line. If I need to be angry, I would be for those millions of people who are dying this very moment due to hunger or being subject to injustice by the powerful few. I would be very angry, because it is a failure as a species and not in the name of some stupid P word!