[theonemind]

The key is that there are no things. What we call a 'thing' is a dense set of relationships. Often, that's between particles of matter that stay close together to due nuclear and chemical bonds or physical forces, but the actual thing itself is a set of relationships. 'dogs', like humans, are not actually separable from 'environment'. At least not live dogs, because the environment contains the oxygen. So in labeling a set of relationships a dog, we've picked an useful set relationships with, on close inspection, somewhat fuzzy boundaries.

Then, what is a country? A set of relationships. Usually, a mostly contiguous large chunk of land and ... it involves other things that themselves are big sets of relationships you need to break down, like government. The country typically has government, but that one gets deep. Governments are made of and run by people. Then people consist of ... well, on and on it goes.

Anyway, these sorts of paradoxes go away in my experience if one simply recognizes that there are no things. There are only relationships. What's behind the relationships them? Nothing. The relationships are primary.

[verisimi]

You lost me at "nuclear and chemical bonds".

I can see birds, dogs. They really are there. You can point at them, touch them,

What you are talking about is abstractions. You can choose not to distinguish dogs and birds - that's fine, and you can choose to pretend countries are of the same type. Most people do.

All the best.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I can see birds, dogs

One can hallucinate all manner of things.

When you see a bird, you're perceiving neurochemical impulses produced by photochemical interactions triggered by photons absorbed and emitted by a series of atoms between you and the surface of the bird, itself stimulated by a similar cascade likely originating in a nuclear reaction that happened a hundred thousand years ago in the core of the Sun. (Also, we're playing fast and loose by referring to the surface of the bird as a singular plane, but we can't go full Cartesian because it's a Friday night.)