The Metamodernist vision, its “Protopia”, is not one of a cosmopolitan “world state” or the like—not a monoculture, not a monolith. A “world state” would be as unsustainable as the colonial empires of yore.
Instead, we need to go from the current “anarchy between states” as described by realist scholars of international relations to a “panarchy”—an ordered network within which multiple forms of statecraft can be experimented with, albeit within some basic planetary frameworks of human rights and ecological boundaries. As such, new self-definitions of “Ethnos” and “Demos” can be experimented with, as well as the emergent relationships between the two. We don’t need fewer identities, we need a greater multiplicity of them, but converging around a few generic traits that impede them from exploiting one another.
Thus, the narrative and vision is not an almighty “global state”, waiting to be hijacked from below, eventually collapsing into a global totalitarian global dictatorship, and from there on into mayhem. It is a loose but resilient framework that holds the space for state-level structures to emerge, to transform, and to adapt in interaction with one another. It is a widely (but never universally) agreed upon set of regulations for transnational relations and expectations upon what states may and may not do—while still investing in the creation of new governance structures where needed, at the levels of social emergence needed. Its ultimate role is not to rule the world, nor even to unite it. States that breach the planetary norms would not be invaded, but find a concerted lack of cooperation from the planetary community, ultimately making them less likely to increase their power—like an untempered kid on the playground with whom the other kids refuse to play.
The dream I propose is not a united world—but at least a somewhat successfully coordinated one. One that has “harmony” not at the surface layer, as in no visible tensions or open conflicts, but harmony in more underlying sense that systems of information are balanced so as to decrease corruption and oppression. Its principle is that power is not misused—and that points of tension are skillfully addressed with an eye to their transformational potentials.
Such a “panarchy” must also include an increased individual liberty to choose national identities and loyalties while having greater capacities to migrate and reintegrate. The panarchy would work to increase people’s rights to choose their countries, making voting with one’s feet an increasing possibility, which in turn would lead to different state structures attracting the people most likely to thrive within them.
As such, states and national identities would be subject to transformation, while experimenting with ways to design whole worlds for people to live in, and thus be shaped by. The end result of such a vision is not one blueprint for how states should be governed and identities formed, but rather a patchwork of increasingly specialized and niched states that serve vital functions for one another, based on their economies, forms of governance, and identities. This is why I call it “transformational nationalism”; it is the national pride that demands of our nations that they transform into something better than they have hitherto been. It is a national pride in the uniqueness of the national project and its role in the world, pride in the striving of the national project to become a meaningful part of our own evolving journeys as relational beings.
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| medium.com |
A Metamodern Approach to Designing the Nation: The Case for Transformative, “Protopian”, Nationalism
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