There are some questions in everyday life, which
traditionally lie in the “stalemate zone”, where one cannot move ahead too
easily, as that would mean abandoning cherished and essential concepts, while
at the same time one cannot really stay where one is, as those concepts have
been outgrown and surpassed by the real facts of life. In general, these
questions touch a raw nerve consistently among the people, which is why it is a
difficult area to survey and cross, in the first place. One such concept is
that of a nation.
A glance towards the good ol’ days’ (going back from
pre-World War times till the age of empires) definitions of a nation, shows a
distinct characteristic: that it was the period where, save for some
technological exceptions, the boundaries for the culture, race, religion or
language of a people more or less overlapped with the administrative
boundaries, making it easier to define a nation. The concept of a nation was hence intimately
tied in with those elements, and helped form the identity of the individual.
This same glance also highlights something else… identification with a nation
provided the individual a bigger network of people, whom he (she) could call
his (her) own, than would be the case without that concept.
Starting from Biblical pre-history, up to the end of the
nineteenth and 20th century, there had been no occasion for the
average human being to be concerned about places beyond the borders of his
country, save for trade. It was at this juncture, however, when the entire
world got drawn into a collective endeavor, which turned out to be wars. Kicking and screaming, humanity was brought
face-to-face with the fact that events happening at the ends of the world truly
have a direct bearing on their life. That contributed to the rise of the United
States as a leader.
This much is observable to any historian, (or to a
Wikipedian today) but consider another process occurring side by side with it…
consider the innovations brought about from the region of UK and the US. The
telephone, the telegraph, the radio, the television, which provided the
connection with the whole world, for the first time ever, have been born there…
and the next double whammy of the 21st century: the mobile phone and
the internet. On the social level, the most widespread language for global
transactions, English, was also taken up and spread out from this region. You
have the unique characteristic that this New World was predominantly consisting
of people who moved there in search of a better life, down from the early
Europeans and Africans to the relatively recent Latin Americans and Asians.
This has brought together every single element that earlier went into the
definition of a nation: every religion, language, culture, and most importantly,
race, has mingled. Even the name of the vastly popular magazine that arose in
the past century, the National Geographic, hence highlights the strangest
paradox: this is a nation that negates every definition of a nation that we
knew so far!
This occurrence is unprecedented, as most of the nations of
the world at the least share the same race, but the implications of this have
not truly penetrated the thought processes of people today. For the first time
in history, as far as we know, an entire planet has been interconnected on
various levels, and one region of the world highlights those interconnections
far more than the others, making it an inter-nation, a fertile ground for new
ideas to arise in. What designation do we have to choose for this place? Of
course, one can just go on with the old definition of a nation, but consider
what that implies… while in the earlier era, the concept of a nation served to
unite people, today the very same concept in this particular region can no
longer unite people to a higher network, but acts in the reverse: It divides
people. Different regions of the earth feel this in varying degrees, but in the
United States, it is felt most keenly, and must as a consequence be considered
with even more clarity. If an interplanetary alliance existed as in Star Wars,
being aligned with that is the only possibility for identification, as any
other identification belongs to a subset of the world.
What does this really mean? More so than any other place on
the Earth, when an American attempts to grasp at a national character, he can
only grasp at a shadow, a relic of an earlier time. The only characteristics
remaining, as those of liberty, and innovation, are features which cut across
every national divide; in fact, they are the very result of people cutting
across national divisions. In other words, if one does insist on grasping at
that concept, one is straightaway led to international concepts.
But let us take a look at the consequences, if one still
insists on using the idea of a nation to the United States. Every technological
and cultural feature which functions on the international level, when forced to
fit into the mould of a nation, would serve to make the people think that the
nation itself is the world. And instead of a strengthened identification with
every nation of the world, all attention would be directed inward towards this
particular geographical area as having the priority, which can very easily slip
into an idea of being the elite. Instead of improving the interconnections with
the world, the emphasis would be the improvement of this mini-world with the
very same interconnections.
Another major consequence would be that the outreach to
other nations is predominantly done on a national basis, and no other
institution has as strong a national identity as the military. So naturally,
the military outreach of the US is observed to be far above the average, and this
would be looked upon as unnecessary meddling by almost every other nation. It
is inevitable, however, with the importance given to the idea of nationality.
In the context of this date, a slew of articles can be
written on the touchy issues of Islamic terrorism, immigration, outsourcing,
citizenship, and the oft-quoted theme of national security, but they are merely
the leaves and branches of the tree born of the idea of the US as a nation, an
idea which has lost most of its sap and is doing so with every passing day. The
Age of Nations is over. I pray that we do not continue the attempt to put new
wine into old wineskins, as a wise man once mentioned.
