[monkeydreams]

> "Countries" seem more of a stretch, as replicating would technically mean creating other countries like itself. Not just sustaining itself into the future.

The world is full of countries, nations and so forth. At some time in the distant past there was no nations. After that there was one. Now there is over a hundred, with the corpses of many more lying in our past.

All usable land on Earth has been claimed now so they have no space to grow in number without cannabilising one another. Their walls have grown hard and inflexible with the passage of time and laws and agreements, and the evolutionary pressures of conflict have subsided of late, as they cannot move against one another without incurring the wrath of alpha predators, and the alpha predators cannot attack one another without the assurity of mutual destruction.

But countries live a long time, and their frame of reference is different from our own. Their moods encompass entire generations of the lives of mankind. They will eventually again fight among themselves unless ordered into cells within a higher organism. They will fight and devour one another, birthing new border states or vassal states. To any greater being it would appear like an almost peaceful dance, the ebb and flow of lines on a map, the respiration of civilisation.

To us it would be every bit as savage and chaotic as it must be for the cells and bacteria which comprise us.

[guerrilla]

And some day it'll start again when they can colonize foreign planets.