As I watch the unfolding of the pre-election festivities, it seems to me that there is a central question that faces both the parties (and the electorate at large): What comes after the nation-state?
I've been thinking for some time that the central question lay in the conflict between the Right's 'all government is useless/evil' and the Left's 'government is useful/good'. I still think those outline the general structure of the parties (or at least the partisans,) but as I've seen the traditional structure of both parties seeming to meld, I've begun to think it's broader than that.
History has (largely) been a slow process of people organizing themselves into larger groups for purposes of defense and/or trade. How that organization has proceeded has most commonly been based on geographical location, which has then created/been created by an 'identity' linked to that location.
What is identity? Again, for most of human history, this has been linked to a physical location, occupied by a family/tribe, who ascribe to certain norms, customs, and standards of behavior, often religiously derived. Now, however, with the exceptions of a few remaining tribal peoples, those things that we call part of our identity often have remarkably little to do with those geographic limitations.
The somewhat silly habit that we now have of declaring “war” on abstract concepts or behaviors (i.e., the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror,) has demonstrably little effect on the supposed objects, and often creates collateral damage comparable to an actual war. Further, I suspect that it makes the discovery and punishment of actually criminal acts even more difficult than it would otherwise be, by conflating crime with political protest or with the foreseeable outcomes of poor policies. It also causes our political & social discussions to be inherently befuddled, as words have a meaning--and 'war' doesn't mean 'reduce or eliminate poverty', for example. One could, possibly, make a case that 'war' does actually mean 'create terror'...and doesn't that make 'war on terror' a phrase of inherent circularity?
The point here is that very little of what we invest our mental & emotional energy in these days is connected to a geographic 'national identity'. We are more likely to identify as based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or (this is important) occupation. That occupational identification may give food for thought--is business based in the nation-state? Not in these days of multi-nationals and leveraged buy-outs. Capital transfers around the globe in milli-seconds, and while labor is glacially slower, millions migrate for work. The ideological identification with religion is most assuredly not latched to location...if anything, it's more akin to the medieval notions of Christendom & the Caliphate.
None of that is to say that the history of a people in a nation does not exist as an identity; it does, to be sure. But it may well be that it is more breakable than we often think. There used to be a phrase, “character is destiny”. Is it? Or is geography more likely to be destiny? If geographic identity no longer defines us, and character is a matter of the individual rather than a group, how do we identify ourselves, and manage to work together on a scale that will be globally effective?
I look forward to your comments.