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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Last week, I watched a YouTube video with a style quiz. This would have been an unremarkable waste of time, except that it made me think more about categories.
That video categorized clothes - women's clothes, mostly - into eight style types, named after natural features. The quiz was supposed to reveal your top three. I got "stone" (basic, practical), "sun" (quirky - why is the sun quirky?), and "flower" (flowery, feminine). People in the comments reported their results. Interactivity to boost audience engagement - yawn.
But wait. What authority did the person producing the video have to divide styles this way? The system seemed to be her own. Her authority derived not just from her training in design or style, but also from her following. At least a few people wanted to follow this system.
And that made me realize something about the modern nation-state, or at least how I could think about it.
See, when a certain blob of cells called the border between the United States of Canada "an artificial line," I thought, "Yes, but ALL national borders are." And to the family at mealtime I proclaimed, "Of course Canada is fake. ALL countries are fake!"
But this didn't feel true. And it was only until watching the fashion quiz that proclaimed me a stone, sun, and flower that I realized why. The land is real. The categories are human inventions. But if something is a "social construct" as people used to say (do they still say that?) it is also real in a sense. It could flicker in or out of existence, it isn't eternal, but consensus of a category creates a certain reality even if the category could be framed differently.
Countries are a tricky version of this, though, because they often follow boundaries of natural formations such as mountains or islands, or unconscious human processes such as language change and cultural differentiation. So it makes sense for the people who speak Kurdish, for instance, to want a country called Kurdistan. I'm not saying this sort of thing is invalid or uninformed.
But I worry about nationalism. It often seems that it's My Country First. And that can easily lead to large-scale violence. I mean, wars are still about wanting more land, more resources, more power. But it seems especially dangerous when backed up with the ideology that one's country or empire is a primary part of one's identity.
Alternate inflammatory statement: Countries are okay as long as you don't take them too seriously.
But are they okay? You need a certain amount of centralization for things like health care, transportation, and research, but do they have to be as hierarchical as they are now, elements of democracy notwithstanding?
This is what I mean by being an anarchist. (I especially like it if I get to define anarchism! Anarchic, that.)
But seriously, I think anarchism is more like union meetings or artisan club events, less like throwing bombs. Also, one person can't completely be an anarchist because anarchy this way isn't the free-for-all sort of anarchy. It means non-hierarchical or at least limited-hierarchical forms of social organization. And that is my political theory for today.
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