Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung saw the human world as divided into two parts: alongside its visible and official appearance, there is always an accompanying shadow that is often repressed into the unconscious. The shadow of the Enlightenment, with its glorification of reason, was the Romantic movement’s quest to explore the dark and unconscious forces that drive us. The shadow of chemistry was alchemy, which flourished throughout Europe. The shadow of the equality of all people demanded by the French Revolution was Robespierre’s dictatorship.
I Globalization and nationalism
The shadow of globalization, which is spreading a common technical and scientific civilization across the planet and making it impossible to live in isolation even on Pacific islands, is a furious, virulent, militant nationalism that is by no means repressed into the unconscious but has recently been sweeping the world with the force of an epidemic. The goals pursued seem indeed to be diametrically opposed. While globalization brings about the equalization of living conditions and thus increasing uniformity, nationalism seeks the greatest possible independence—even to the point of complete isolation from the outside world.
At first glance, this aspiration seems reasonable, as it is accepted and practiced everywhere in the world in everyday life. Everyone wants to be master in their own home and on their own property – my home is my castle! Disputes between neighbors over real or imagined transgressions are legion and are usually carried out with the best of intentions. Psychology and philosophy also grant every human being the right to “self-realization,” i.e., the conscious expression of personal characteristics. The conformity imposed by totalitarian systems appears to be the worst violation of this fundamental right to independence.
Seen in this light, the pursuit of maximum independence at the national level is nothing more than the extension of a right that every individual usually claims for themselves in an authoritarian manner when it comes to their own person and the use of their property. Even if nationalists do not explicitly invoke this individual psychological right, it nevertheless underlies their protest when, for example, they see the European Union as an authority that restricts the freedom of action (sovereignty) of the individual states that constitute it and oppose it for this reason.
Anyone who takes the above seriously must logically conclude that political unions are fundamentally evil, since they represent a restriction of freedom. But why do they nevertheless exist, throughout history as far as we can look back? Why have families joined together to form clans, clans to form tribes, tribes to form cities, cities to form countries, countries to form confederations, and so on? And why are there extremely intelligent people such as Albert Einstein and the great historian Arnold Toynbee who believe that the inevitable conclusion of this development is the political union of humanity under a world government? To put it another way, why do these prophets – wrong or perhaps particularly clairvoyant? – believe that globalization will eventually defeat all forms of nationalism?
II New inventions force new forms of organization
Hunters and gatherers could only form larger groups when their prey was particularly abundant locally (we encounter this rare case, for example, among the Kwakiutl on the northwestern coast of the United States). Otherwise, their aim had to be to avoid each other as much as possible, because in the same place food was only ever enough for a few people. Their groups therefore rarely comprised more than one or two dozen people who roamed the savannahs and forests in search of game and edible fruits. It was only the so-called Neolithic Revolution, consisting of the active production of food through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, that made sedentarism possible, because agricultural technology multiplied the supply of food. However, this first truly revolutionary upheaval in living conditions created new and previously unknown problems. Settled farmers were particularly vulnerable. The remaining hunters and gatherers, i.e., armed nomads, could rob them of the fruits of their labor at any time. Farmers therefore had to form political groups that would protect them. Except in remote garden cultures or on hard-to-reach islands, the new agrarian way of life, in which settled farmers made up the overwhelming majority of the population, could only survive in large organizational units: that is, in armed states.
But even these states, which soon became very rich and populous, could never feel secure. Although they had no trouble defending themselves against the remaining hunter-gatherers, they were unable to resist a new invention that suddenly gave the nomads world-historical superiority. This was the “invention” of the mounted nomad with a composite bow on a horse equipped with stirrups. A rider equipped in this way could kill enemies from a galloping horse at a distance of up to 150 meters. The Huns were the first to use this new weapon and brought the richest and most powerful empire of the time, the Roman superpower, to its knees. In the thirteenth century, the Mongols followed suit and created the first global empire by temporarily uniting most of the Eurasian continent.
It has always been special inventions that not only made such alliances possible but enforced them against all opposition. The great political empires in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley arose as a result of the new invention of agricultural food production. The spectacular success of the conquests by the Huns and Mongols was due to mounted warriors with composite bows. None of the great political unions made possible by these inventions had been intended, planned, or even foreseen. They were the inevitable result brought about by such innovations.
And so it should remain. After the transition to a settled way of life and the accompanying explosive increase in available wealth, a wide variety of innovations were produced at a rapidly accelerating pace. No insistence on isolation and permanent national independence could prevail in the long run. After the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry, the few remaining hunters and gatherers were driven into the most inhospitable refuges. With the emergence of cities, where luxury could flourish, this dense form of settlement spread across the entire planet.
III Nationalists become the most eager imitators of foreigners when it comes to instruments of death
The most effective, i.e., the deadliest weapons have spread and continue to spread most rapidly. Militant nationalism, in particular, has never resisted this temptation, even when their inventors were hated “hereditary enemies.” Thus, a paradox runs through the entire history of mankind. Although everyone wants to be master in their own house, it is precisely for this reason that they adopt everything from their enemies that makes their own population more defensible and richer. In this way, after bows and arrows, axes and swords, then cannons and dynamite, poison gas and, in our time, atomic bombs have spread. Aggressive Russian nationalism, which would prefer to isolate the country from the rest of the world, has absorbed everything it can from the West in terms of weapons technology and, of course, civilizational achievements, from railways and banks to old-age insurance. The capital, Moscow, is a modern metropolis like any other. Apart from a few historical relics, such as the Kremlin and a few Orthodox churches, it could just as easily be located in any other modern state. The only thing that makes Russia special these days is that a dictator is abusing the country and its people for his own ends with the same brutality as Stalin and Hitler before him. Today’s Russian elite, programmed by the dictator using every tool of the totalitarian state, sees itself and its subjects, who have been trained to be obedient, as a chosen nation with the right to rule over other peoples. Hitler declared the Germans to be the master race, Stalin convinced the Russians that they were communists at the forefront of humanity, and Putin turns them into heroic anti-fascists, even though his policies are a textbook example of conquest-driven fascism. In other words, the essence of aggressive nationalism lies in ideological self-programming. The proclaimed uniqueness only proliferates in people’s minds as an app implanted there by politics – outwardly, the life of urban Russians is hardly distinguishable from that of people in Europe or the United States in comparable urban centers. The only difference lies in this app in people’s minds, in this militant nationalism, which is an acute mental illness because the desire for national “self-realization” is allied with hatred of everything foreign.
IV True patriots are never nationalists – they are enlightened cosmopolitans
There is nothing wrong with emphasizing national independence, as long as it does not demand anything more than what each individual demands for themselves, namely to be master in their own house. It goes without saying that they want to furnish this house with everything the outside world has to offer. We are dealing here with the same aspiration that almost inevitably makes an educated person a cosmopolitan, because they naturally look beyond the borders of space and time in order to enrich their own lives by acquiring knowledge of the history and lives of people beyond their borders. This enrichment of one’s own home, one’s own country, one’s own present through the knowledge we acquire about the lives and achievements of other people – even those most foreign to us – is ultimately the goal and purpose of all knowledge relating to other cultures and times. We admire anyone who turns their own garden into a model of beauty and their own home into a marvel of comfort, while benefiting from a wealth of knowledge from all over the world. Patriotism, the love of one’s own country, is not only compatible with cosmopolitanism, it even demands it, as it aims to enrich one’s own city, region, or country in order to make it more beautiful and livable.
No one can be blamed for this attitude. On the one hand, it leads to openness toward everything foreign, never loseing sight of the purpose of this openness, which is precisely to enrich one’s own culture. However, this humanistic view, in the best sense of the word, has never been a given. It has always had to fight against a relapse into barbarism—against an often belligerent nationalism that preached hatred of everything foreign because it was seen not as an enrichment but, on the contrary, as a threat. For this possibility too has always been present in human history. None of us wants to be forced to take other people into our own homes. Mass migrations and similar large-scale movements of people have often besieged or even stormed entire countries without the local population being asked for their consent to this kind of globalization.
Until three hundred years ago, the struggle between globalization and its nationalist opponents remained largely undecided. The great world cultures of China, India, Europe, and the Middle East had reached their maximum expansion under the given geographical and technical conditions and were naturally separated from each other by oceans, deserts, and mountains. Until then, the planet resembled a paradise garden where a wide variety of fruits ripened. In China, India, the African states, and on some Pacific islands, people lived, loved, celebrated, mourned, and died in ways that were completely different from anywhere else on the planet. Even in small Europe—this western tip of the great Eurasian continent—the countries of Europe differed in their man-made landscapes, clothing, the appearance of their cities, and even in their everyday gestures and manners. Today, all that remains of this former diversity are the different languages and the historical cores of a few cities – and even these are becoming increasingly similar. As far as humans are concerned, the new species Homo Handyensis has displaced all its historical predecessors across the entire planet. Bent over a small illuminated display, Handyensis has largely replaced its own brain with a programmed chip…
Those with a knowledge of history will regret this development as a great loss, but as realists they must nevertheless welcome it, because they know that humanity today is facing a completely new situation. The ever-faster carousel of life-changing inventions is driving it relentlessly forward – toward the abyss.
V The race between nations and states for a more comfortable life
We saw that it was groundbreaking inventions that forced the merging of small units into larger ones in the past—from families to clans, clans to tribes, tribes to cities, cities to countries, countries to confederations—globalization progressed steadily, regardless of whether the actors involved intended it or not. Today, the adoption of the latest technological achievements has become a race for power and prosperity that all states want to escape, but no state can escape. Globalization has become a steamroller that violently buries all established independence, while at the same time generating its shadow – an increasingly shrill and militant nationalism.
The compulsion to conform has dominated human history since the Neolithic Revolution because the causes have remained the same to this day. Even then, these causes were fear on the one hand and the pursuit of an easier life on the other. Let’s start by talking about the temptations of a more comfortable life. A single example from the present day is enough to prove its irresistibility: the car. Even the most stubborn defenders of tradition – be they Indian gurus, Chinese Confucians, or shamanistic nature worshippers – have not erected any barriers against this invention, even though its immediate effect consists of a spider’s web of straight asphalt threads that now cover the entire globe and are forcing the greatest changes and devastation in the landscape and way of life of human beings everywhere. However, cars and airplanes, as modern means of accelerated transportation, are only the most striking symbols of the Industrial Revolution that originated in Europe and whose consequences are changing the face of the planet beyond recognition, for better or for worse. On the one hand, humanity has been blessed with a wealth that is unique in history, on the other hand, the ugly and undeniable shadow of this development is the progressive littering and poisoning of the globe with CO2, pesticides, nanoplastics, etc., which in turn triggers a further consequence: species extinction, to which we ourselves are ultimately threatened with falling victim. At this point, the desire for a more comfortable life turns into its exact opposite – a climate crisis and ecological catastrophe that, like all the upheavals that preceded it, was not foreseen by anyone, let alone planned.
VI The race between nations for military power
Alongside the desire for a more comfortable life, which is apparently common to all human beings and therefore easily sweeps away all resistance from tradition, there is a second, even more powerful driving force: fear. It has now created an existential threat: self-destruction with nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach any point on Earth at supersonic speed within minutes, leaving governments unable to respond. Military strategists at the top of the state have now been forced to delegate the response to an enemy nuclear strike to machines, i.e., to sensors and automatic defense systems fed by artificial intelligence. This is a shocking consequence! Thanks to our progress and our outstanding scientific and technical expertise, we have reached the point of self-disempowerment. We must place our fate in the hands of computers and machines. In the future, they will decide the life and death of Homo sapiens. None of this was planned, not even foreseen; the superior intelligence of our species has become a trap for our own survival.
VII Global problems can only be solved globally
Some attribute this development to “capitalism,” but this is only a technique that has proven particularly successful in the race between nations – successful, however, only in the short term. While the race between nations for a more materially comfortable life threatens the planet with ecological collapse, the race for the deadliest weapons promises Armageddon. In both cases, nations are no longer acting out of self-determined freedom but are imposing on each other a radical renunciation of their own freedom. Russia and China are arming themselves because the US is currently developing a new weapons system (e.g., Trump’s Golden Dome). The US is arming itself because China is investing more and more money in its weapons production and Russia regularly threatens nuclear strikes. And all three are arming themselves because the race just keeps going. For no system has ever been invulnerable: for every lock, human intelligence devises a new key. Europe, for its part, must now pay massively for its own defense because the US no longer wants to protect us and we know from history that the big fish are always lying in wait to swallow the weak and small.
The deprivation of freedom in the race between nations also means that every state must constantly spur its own population on to scientific and technological excellence even if it merely wants to preserve the wealth it has acquired. Here, the state acting most ruthlessly is likely to set the pace and the scale. It goes without saying that the actual purpose of scientific and technological progress, namely a more fulfilling life, is very quickly lost sight of. The ten percent of the best-educated managers in business, science, and technology that is those who keep the economy running, race breathlessly through life. Little or nothing is left for culture and enjoyment. It is like a never-ending 100-meter dash, where the finish line will never be reached.
That is because this competition will never end as long as humanity continues to consist of independent nations and states fighting for wealth and power. In our 21st century, we have come so close to the point of self-destruction and the destruction of our livelihoods that we must finally realize that there is only one way out of this danger. We must put an end to Hobbesian chaos and the race for supremacy between nations. Global problems can only be solved by a global authority that imposes the same obligations on everyone in the interests of peace with humanity and nature.
VIII The last gasp of nationalism
The paradox of today’s situation is that our very intelligence – embodied above all in the inventions of increasingly apocalyptic weapon technology – forces us to accept such a global authority as a lesser evil compared to the foreseeable self-destruction. For the time being, however, the challenge is growing, and so is its shadow. All states are rebelling against the restrictions a world government would entail. No one wants such a government; some see it as a monster, a leviathan; everyone insists on their own power and independence. Everyone wants to remain master in their own house. The US, China, and Russia, i.e., the greatest powers, rather want to take or maintain the leading position; ultimately, they will fight for supremacy. Thus, two powerful tendencies stand irreconcilably opposed to each other. While globalization – the scientific, technological, and economic unification of the world and its ways of life – is progressing faster than ever before, the exact opposite is happening in people’s minds. They are becoming ideologically inflamed, believing their own nation to be unique and vastly superior to all others. They are therefore fighting with all their might against the surrender of sovereignty that would enable them to survive, only to continue a race that is driving them all toward the abyss and has already robbed them of all self-determination. In their minds – not in material reality – the world appears radically different to various nationalists. The current president of all Russians, Vladimir Putin, hides behind a sympathetic smile a merciless brutality that sacrifices his own people just as ruthlessly as the rest of the world when they oppose his totalitarian delusions of grandeur. China is determined to replace the US as the world’s leading power and has allied itself with its vassal Russia to this end. But the Middle Kingdom is proceeding much more cautiously and strategically than the US – not to mention Russia. Officially, the powerful and now also wealthy country still presents itself as a developing nation. This strategy allows the Chinese to declare themselves allies and mouthpieces of the global South against the US. As long as it suits Beijing, the Far Eastern country supports the UN, the WTO, and other supranational organizations. It thus appears to represent the interests of the global community vis-à-vis the US. But this is pure fiction, as China rejects the rulings of international organizations with the utmost determination as soon as they conflict with its ambitions. This applies, for example, to its territorial claims in the South China Sea, which were rejected as invalid by the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The US, still the leading military power but falling behind the rest of the world, has now recognized that its supremacy is under threat on all sides. In response, it has elected a president who is taking a new, unprecedented and, until recently, unthinkable path by trampling on everything that once made the United States great, respected and powerful. Freedom and democracy, not to mention education and honesty, are up for grabs under this president or are openly and unabashedly rejected by him. The new president is eliminating problems such as climate change and the large-scale destruction of livelihoods in the simplest way imaginable: by simply denying their existence. Brazen incompetence combined with unbelievable self-glorification have thus made it to the top of what is still the most powerful and, until now, most respected country in the modern world.
IX In the end, a pessimistic but by no means desperate outlook
The international race between nations for maximum economic and military power has now entered its final phase, and this is being staged with all the means of propaganda and hypocrisy at its disposal. It is a final phase of collective madness. Europe had hoped in vain that its pacifist example would have an effect. It had also persistently ignored the fact that this pacifism was predicated on the protection of the United States. Now the EU is forced to recognize that pacifism is as ineffective against a man like Putin as it was against Stalin and Adolf Hitler in the last century. Those who do not arm themselves merely reveal their own weakness and are small fish that the big fish will devour without hesitation. In doing so, the latter will proceed with the usual hypocrisy: their own claim to power is always hidden behind the beautiful façade of the common good promising peace and security to the world. At the same time, however, all nationalist forces are being mobilized – especially, of course, in military armament – to conquer the top or maintain their position. Nowhere is this hypocrisy, this mendacity, practiced as shamelessly as in Putin’s Russia (Trump seems downright naive in comparison). All we can hope for is that humanity will realize at the right moment that its only and last protection against itself, namely against the abuse of its superior intelligence and its increasingly life threatening inventions, is to submit to a common rule that will finally bring the collective race to an end.