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?

OK, a stupid question. What do you call a person who restores paintings? A painting restorer? That sounds very clunky. Are there any ways to say this more elegantly.

The nation-state arose to satisfy a very specific goal. In order to wage war on a massive scale, it was necessary to find a way to get people to die enthusiastically and for free. This goal was achieved, and the warfare that followed the creation of the nation-state was waged on a scale not known to humanity before.

A state’s greatest power lies in exercising violence and causing death. A state does that externally (by waging war) and internally (by turning its weapons on the citizens when they misbehave.) This is great power. Citizens should be in agreement that, for all its faults, the state must have the right to exercise violence on their behalf internationally and domestically. This means that there should be something that legitimates, in citizens’ eyes, this power of the state to cause death.

Since God has been taken out of the equation as a legitimating force (do you know anybody who sees the President and the Congress as God-given agents whom we should not dare to question?), a different sort of contract between the state and the individual had to be worked out. As we discussed before on this blog, a nation-state buys the citizens’ allegiance by promising to create the best possible kind of existence for them, to take care of them, protect them, satisfy their needs.

There is not a nation-state that hasn’t tried to deliver on this promise. Even North Korea is making every effort to convince the citizens that the state is looking out for them. And the citizens seem to believe the message, which is all that counts. Remember that the USSR fell the moment the overwhelming majority reached the conclusion that the Soviet model was not providing for their welfare as successfully as other states were providing for their citizens. Remember also that Franco had to swallow his ideology and go beg the hated Americans to teach him how to feed his citizens as well as the American state was feeding its people. The nation-state model simply doesn’t offer a choice: people need to be content.

We are so used to this model that we don’t even really notice it. For us, it is the only thing we know, and we rarely stop to think how historically recent and extremely innovative the nation-state is. The way people organized themselves into states before the nation-state was manufactured in the XVIII-XIX centuries was radically different. 

The nation-state model was extremely successful. There is no place on our planet where people are not either organized into a nation-state or struggling to organize into one. Everybody wants a nation-state because it is the first state model ever where the state derives its entire legitimacy from caring about the welfare of the citizens. It is a pity that this model is dying but it brought about its own demise. The seeds of a nation-state’s destruction were present in the model itself from the very start.

P.S. I know most of you got this part already, but I need to make a recap for those who are just joining us now. This is not a subject that one can process easily by approaching it in medias res. Questions are welcome. New readers, don’t be shy.

Have you noticed how eager people with poor social skills are to criticize others for their social faux pas?

“Can you believe Peter? He is so rude! He sat down without offering me a chair first!”

Yes, that Peter is such an evil-doer. Of course, you called me to yell at me that I was inconveniencing you with my son’s death 5 weeks after the funeral, but that’s such a small thing compared to Peter’s intolerable rudeness.

“This Anna person is so rude! She grabbed the last piece of gooseberry pie without asking me if I wanted it!”

Yes, Anna is such a freak! Of course, you reduced a colleague to tears the other day by telling her she must be a bad parent if her very sick child keeps crying in this annoying way, but who cares about that when gooseberry pie is at stake?

A curious difference: being under the influence of alcohol or drugs is a mitigating factor in the US but an aggravating factor in Russia.

The American justice system is all about intent, motive, mind-reading. I find that very disturbing. None of these things matter to the victims, yet every other criminal trial is dedicated to the weird guesswork about thoughts and motives.

I watch a lot of Forensic Files, etc programs, hence the observation.

So have you heard about the “Affirmative Consent” bill adopted in California? In part, the bill forces colleges to do the job of law enforcement, which is bizarre in and by itself. California’s higher education system is broke.  It’s in such a bad shape that I don’t think there is even a possibility of saving it from a complete demise. But there are ways to destroy it even faster. That can be achieved by making the tragically broke schools take on the job of other state agencies.

I will never understand the US tradition of making colleges investigate and punish crime when in every society under the sun this is a task of law enforcement agencies. I tried to figure it out, but I still don’t get it. Nobody asks colleges to investigate and punish murder or even burglary. There are no “murder prevention” or “mugging prevention” campaigns on campuses, are there? Then what is the reason that rape is not treated as a crime that it is and is pushed so aggressively into the lap of academics and college administrators who are grievously unprepared to address it?

Of course, the “Affirmative Consent” doesn’t stop at that and offers more insanity:

“Students engaging in sexual activity would first need ‘affirmative consent’ from both parties — a clear threshold that specifically could not include a person’s silence, a lack of resistance or consent given while intoxicated.”

There is obviously no useful purpose that this can serve. If a person is terrified of saying “no” or resisting, that same person will be terrified into saying “yes.” There is absolutely no practical benefit anybody can derive from these bills and policies. But the point of the bill is not to help rape victims or prevent rape. The only way to do that would be to focus the efforts of the law-makers on the actual institution whose job it is to fight crime: law enforcement. 

People, please observe what is happening: the state is divesting itself of its functions at a very rapid pace. Now it has gone so far as to openly declare that it has no interest in punishing crime and it’s up to regular citizens to do that. Or not. This isn’t just the erosion of the welfare state. We are way past that. This is the erosion of the state, period. 

Those of you who are celebrating this piece of legislation need to wake up. We are in a country that brings heavily armed troops into the streets to target peaceful protesters. And the same country refuses to persecute violent crime against individuals in such an open and blatant fashion. Think about it. Police has enormous resources yet is removing itself from investigating actual crime. This is a road towards a very dangerous place. Law enforcement is paid for by our taxes (although not for long). Shouldn’t it at least pretend to do its job for a short while longer?

P.S. This post is evidence that I find the agony of the nation-state as painful as any other person.

Some interesting questions about depression:

Depression isn’t new, but its prevalence certainly is.

I wonder why? There has to be some cause, some reason why it affects so many when historically that seems not to have been the case.

My guess is that the narrative of depression – that it is something that just is – is not correct.

Historically, depression is a very new ailment. In the XVIIIth century, it suddenly became fashionable among the European aristocrats to experience bouts of melancholy. In the XIXth century, the representatives of the middle classes who pursued social mobility started to imitate this affliction of the rich and the spoiled.

For most of the human history, all the absolute majority of people did was trying to survive. Not starving or freezing to death and not being murdered were the goals that occupied every waking moment of pretty much everybody with very few exceptions.

In the developed societies today, basic survival is not an issue for anybody. With our basic needs taken care of, we can pursue goals of a higher order. We can now afford to pay attention to our emotional states, our feelings, our moods. Depression is an ailment of a rich, mostly content society, and that’s why it couldn’t have become prevalent at any other moment in history.

The party was a great success, people. Everybody ate and drank a lot. Except me who hardly got a chance to try anything.

The guests loved the food. The black-eyed pea salad was an enormous success (thank you, R, for the recipe!) I marinated it overnight in the dressing I made of olive oil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar. The guests were attacking it so fast that I had to steal some from the table or I’d never have gotten a chance to try it.

The avocado wrapped smoked salmon was very popular with N. I think he ate all of it by himself. Of course, there wasn’t a lot of it to begin with because smoked salmon is expensive.

The Ukrainian response to meatloaf was greeted with a lot of joy. I made two kinds, differently spiced. One was walnut- encrusted and the other one was pumpkin seed-encrusted.

Everybody loved my “everything salad.” The “everything salad” is what you make out of all the little things left behind after cooking. Just shred them, mix them all up, add the dressing, and people will spend the entire night telling you that you created an exotic bouquet of flavors.

The two pies that I made (gooseberry/blueberry and strawberry/peach) were wildly successful. And so were the hot sandwiches served cold. Plus there were numerous things on sticks. And hummus with crackers.

The shocking thing about the evening was that the most popular drink of the night was Diet Coke. The 30+ guests didn’t even touch any of the hard liquor we’d bought. They had very little of the wine. They drank the sangria I made (which seems to have been too strong), and that was it. N was very impressed by how virtuous and moderate these academics were.

Even though everybody was mostly sober, I did catch a few whispers about the discussions of my tenure case by the tenure committee the day before.

And I also got some really good gifts. The long-time dream of mine to have a fish-shaped dish to serve my salted herring (selyodka) was fulfilled by a colleague from Venezuela. I have no idea how she guessed that I wanted it.

Conclusion: parties are not a bad thing at all.

The party is on full blast. People ow my food and they brought gifts.

N is socializing like I’ve never seen him do in my life. And one guest turned out to be a fellow Yalie.