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This content was posted on  18 Mar 21  by   Nordic Bildung  on  Website
Pulling the US back out into the 6th Circle

An analysis by Lene Rachel Andersen

After years of the United States dissolving into various political clans and tribes, it seems that President Biden is now trying to pull the country together and to make a coherent nation out of it. The New York Times has a wonderful analysis here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/opinion/biden-stimulus-culture-war.html

In our model Circles of Belonging, we operate with 10 circles, of which:

  • the first circle is the individual herself,
  • Circle 2 is the family we are born into,
  • Circle 3: peer groups,
  • Circle 4: the familiy we establish ourselves
  • Circle 5: local communities (workplace, house of worship, local neighborhood etc.)

Circles 2-5 are thus real communities where we actually meet everybody in the various groups, whereas Circles 6-10 are the socalled imagined communities: groups that are so big we cannot possible meet everybody, instead these groups are held together by narrative:

  • Circle 6: Nation
  • Circle 7: Culture zone (Europe, the West, Africa etc.)
  • Circle 8: All of humanity here and now
  • Circle 9: All life on the planet
  • Circle 10: All life past, present and future

It took civilization around 5-6.000 years of written history to create peaceful nation states and collaboration within culture zones–and it took the Trump administration 4 years to throw it away. In other words: it took written civillization 5-6.000 years to bring forth politically stable and peaceful groups in both Circle 6 and Circle 7, and now President Biden seems dedicated to glue them together again.

This is amazingly good news for all of us. Because, as a species, we need functioning nations and culture zones, if we are to address the problems in the 8th Circle of Belonging: all of humanity, in the 9th Circle of Belonging: all life on the planet, and with regards to life in the future: the 10th Circle of Belonging.

Creating economic releif for the American middle- and working-classes may not seem like a benefit to humanity, but an economically and culturally unstable USA is not going to help the human species as we are trying to secure our shared home and our future.

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