Reader el asked if there is a worst-case scenario for the post-nation state. Yes, of course, there is.

Benedict Anderson famously referred to the nation-state as an “imagined community.” A nation is an imagined community because there absolutely no possibility for the citizens of even a very small nation to see the entire country and meet every single citizen. This is why, for the nation to exist and have meaning, we need to imagine and re-imagine it every single day.

Now, the worst-case scenario for the post-nation state is that the collapse of the “imagined community” will be followed by the “imagined community of shared grievance.” I can’t remember for the life of me who coined this brilliant phrase but that genius was not me. Global media of communications enable everybody around the globe who feels vaguely aggrieved and left behind by the rapidly transforming world to get together and join in the hatred of those who have run too far ahead.

In case this sounds too cerebral, here is a real-life example. We are all seeing Russians nursing an extreme sense of grievance right now. They are obviously not even sure what they are  so upset about: NATO, EU, USSR, the West, their own miserable existence – who knows? They are upset and they are acting out. And do you think the vaguely aggrieved Russians might have something of value to give, say, to the similarly vaguely aggrieved ISIS?

This is the worst-case scenario of post-nationalism. The imagined community of the aggrieved and the sulky getting together and lashing out against those who are not as intimidated by the rapidly changing world. 

I’m being asked if there is anything good about the new state form. Of course, there is positive and negative in most things.

The new state will be highly fluid on every level. Fluidity means insecurity, instability and anxiety on the one hand, and an enormous, unseen burst of opportunity on the other hand. The shackles of collective identities are falling off. Everything is temporary, everything is in the state of flux. Of course, the rate at which this change is occurring differs among different societies but my blog’s readers are all in the places where these changes are happening already.

We’ll get to live several different, unstable, highly changeable lives instead of a single predictable one. It’s scary but fun. Some of the literature I have read on the subject refers to the new society as a society of opportunity. But there is no opportunity without risk and no freedom without the burden of choice. And of course taking the opportunity and turning to your advantage (and doing so every day for the rest of your life) will not be easy.

Suggestion: if you tend to suffer from anxiety, now is a good time to get rid of it completely. We are moving towards a society whether the division between winners and losers will be harsh (this is the bad part). And the line will be redrawn every day (and this is the good part). 

I decided to let go of my greed and not to request a teaching assignment for the summer. Instead, I will be working on my book.

The decision is making me feel nauseous.

Speaking about gay people during a Crimean government session on Tuesday, the region’s de facto leader Sergei Aksyonov said “we in Crimea do not need such people.” In comments reported by the Russian news agencies Interfax and Itar-Tass, Aksyonov said that if the LGBT community tried to hold public gatherings, “our police and self-defence forces will react immediately and in three minutes will explain to them what kind of sexual orientation they should stick to.” He added that Crimean children should be brought up with a “positive attitude to family and traditional values.”’

I’m really really curious who the Ian Welshes of the world find it in themselves to support this people-hating regime and still consider themselves Liberals.

Idiots abound:

For years, Ukraine’s once vaunted Soviet education system has deteriorated, with corruption taking a toll on the quality of education. Plagiarism is widespread and often goes unpunished, while bribes are often accepted to purchase grades, to pass exams and even to buy diplomas. Several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, no longer recognize Ukrainian medical diplomas because of the sub-grade qualification level of graduates. The U.S. also doesn’t recognize Ukrainian medical degrees.

The author of this piece creates an impression that this corruption and deterioration happened after the fall of the USSR which is a vicious lie. I already shared on the blog how the graduates of the “vaunted Soviet education system” tortured me back in the early 1980s when I sought medical help as a very small child. The entire “vaunted Soviet education system” was predicated on corruption, bribery, plagiarism, and meaningless diplomas. Jeez, people, read Solzhenitsyn for a description of how garbagey Soviet diplomas were even back in the 1940s. And it only went downhill after that.

Of course, higher education in Ukraine and Russia sucks something fierce. But that suckiness was inherited from the Soviet times.

. . . then remember that “nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so” (c). There is no nation-state without people believing the most egregious lies known to humanity. Even just today, a blogger recognized that

any national history gauged more to promote skills of dispassionate analysis than to inculcate patriotism and civic virtue is bound to outrage a large subset of citizens with affection for said nation.

And it’s true. Nation-state’s existence as a model is predicated on people abandoning rational analysis and descending into the depths of emotional, unreasonable attachment to something that doesn’t really exist. And that’s all shades of pathetic.

It sounds like the new state form is all bad but that’s not true. Even if it seems like there will be more inequality in it, in reality it will be the same inequality but on a different basis.

How do you feel about the feudal system where you were either born a prince or a commoner and could do very little to change your lot? Stupid, right? But this is exactly how people 200 years from now will look at our nation-state system because it’s not that different.

In a nation-state, the circumstances of one’s birth still define destiny. This is maybe less noticeable because it occurs along state borders and not along familial bloodlines. But what is the difference, really?

The importance of borders radically diminishes in the new form of state and people become less circumscribed by the good or bad luck of being born in a certain place. We will see an enormous mobility in every direction and on every level. We are already seeing it.

As we discovered in the previous post, the state doesn’t have anything to gain any longer from ensuring everybody’s welfare. This means we are moving towards a model where nothing is expected from or offered to a significant part of the population. This large group of people will still have formal citizenship but will be de facto stateless. They will neither pay taxes not vote. In the US, this is already a very significant percentage of the population.

We are all making fun of the conceal-carry crowd, and they are very funny. However, they are sensing a great change happening: the interest of law enforcement agencies in prosecuting crime is waning. Police is getting militarized because its purpose is changing. It looks like an army because it is becoming one. This army is defending those with a functional statehood from the stateless-within-a-state.

Living during a tectonic shift is never very easy. Even people who are not entirely sure what a nation-state is feel disturbed by the news it is dying. And the changes we are seeing around us don’t look very attractive. But nobody ever gained anything from blindness. Besides, every state-form has both positive and negative characteristics. If we know what the new contract between the citizen and the state is, we will know how to adapt to it and won’t flail about aimlessly.

OK, the person who told me that the Teaching Naked book was a load of steaming, stinky shit was absolutely right.

The author has no training in pedagogy and can barely string two sentences together without making wild generalizations. It’s all “human beings always this” and “every single person on the planet necessarily that.” The writing is miserable, the argument is based on very weak assumptions. If a student of mine handed this in as an essay, I wouldn’t be impressed. I only read 25 pages so far but I’m signally unimpressed.

The nation-state model carried the seeds of its own destruction from the very start.

First of all, if the state is to provide for the welfare of the people, soon enough the people will clock on to the idea that there is no welfare without life and will become reluctant to lay down their lives to fulfill their part of the bargain. Thus, the basic social contract will be broken and the nation-state, frustrated in its central goal, will have no more reason to exist.

At the same time, by enhancing the well-being of the people, the nation-state created the perfect conditions for the flourishing of human creativity and the development of science. The neat, clear and impenetrable borders – one of the greatest inventions of the nation-state – could not resist the thrust of human talent.

These developments mean that both the form and the content of the nation-state were undermined. When a state form loses legitimacy, it is only a matter of time that a new model will arise. The new form of state is only now being created, so everything we can say about it – including its name – is still tentative.

Some people are referring to the new form of state as “market state.” This appellation makes me cringe because the word “market” had been overused to the point of being completely emptied of all meaning. This is why I want to leave the issue of naming this form of state aside for the moment and try to deduce its characteristics.

Let’s do this together. Once again, the nation-state strove to ensure that, in case of war, everybody would be involved on the war effort. Declaration of the Rights of Man, feminism, abolition of slavery, labor rights, civil rights, minority rights, the tiniest-minority-ever rights, the “let’s make sure nobody’s feelings are hurt” model of society – these are all results of the nation-state’s efforts to please and emotionally attach everybody to the state. What will happen when the state gives up on this goal?