(As in, humanity has not progressed beyond teenagerhood.)
Finding historical examples to corroborate particular psycho-social traits at various stages of life is not hard nor would it be hard to refute them. However, making this analogy offers a perspective on human history that allows for a less judgmental analysis as one would when appraising a child’s development. Because a teenager is supposed to have achieved some measure of empathy it’s hard to not be judgmental, but we try to understand that their misplaced arrogance and intolerance is a part of identity formation. The salient question as to how to relate to the adolescent’s obnoxious behaviour with more detachment and equanimity is; how we apply that and other positive parental communicative interventions to intra national and international issues. One well known parenting technique is setting or rather, less pedagogically, negotiating clear boundaries. Boundaries between mother and daughter are more about rules of behaviour though they might involve actual physical space. Whereas boarders between countries are all about the end of your land and the beginning of someone else’s. Allowing nature to be solely responsible for a nation’s boarder is easy when surrounded by ocean, but even then, island ownership can be contentious as in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and the Kuril north of Japan.
As already mentioned, post Congress of Vienna the 19th century was big on creating nations, but it wasn’t until 175 years later that nations became an ism to study– at least in the US. According to Benedict Anderson it took the collapse of the Soviet Union which woke up multiple dormant ethnicities to slough off the delicate fiction of Yugoslavia to galvanize US academia into the reification of identity politics. (Imagined Communities, 2006 version) Creating nations, like adolescence, is not a pathology. It is a necessary stage of development. Although both have their maladjusted manifestations. Today in critiques of contemporary politics the word nationalist often accompanies exclusionary policies on immigration and assimilationist assaults on multiculturism. This assemblage of right- or left-wing demagoguery is not confined to the usual suspects like Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, Venezuela, Russia and China, a list of European countries where elections in May 2019 has Hungary at the top with 49% voting for a nationalist party with Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Sweden not far behind. Like the gullible teenager as opposed to his cynical sister the US and UK appear ready to swallow yet more wall building rhetoric.
Understanding the cultural roots of how a community imagines itself into a coherent national identity (Anderson, 2006) could help to expose certain arrogant mythologies of immemorial genesis as well as demonstrate how active nation building educative practices in the 19th century prepared the population for sacrifice in an increasingly secular society. For government propagandas in 1914 to be effective, that is to convince their populations to join up and be killed, they most certainly did not appeal to calm disinterested rationality, they cynically exploited an emotional attachment to nation. Despite the march of science and rationality and the unmasking of religion humans remain deeply emotional. So, it was easy for propagandists to target the higher cognitive emotions like pride by highlighting the fictitious triumphs of Boudicca, Henry V or Elizabeth I, love for Jerusalem in England’s pleasant lands, individual guilt for not feeling the first two and shame when others find out. Also ramping up the negative basic emotions like fear, anger and disgust for the enemy was not difficult.
Given that emotions have evolved for good survival reasons they are not about to disappear any time soon. On an individual level we can use neurolinguistic programming to alter the language of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are so that we do not have to be trapped in emotional blockages from the past. As a child an event is traumatic because he/she lacks information or the cognitive capacity to process information. As an adult you can revisit that early event with more information so you can alter your story and no longer be negatively influenced by it. Of course, applying that technique to whole countries is not easy. However, some have tried. For example, Truth and Reconciliation commissions in Germany and South Africa have achieved a measure of national healing. Concerned commentators in Australia have suggested we also need a similar process to heal Aboriginal Colonial injustices. Although, with the defeat of the Voice recently (2023) the future doesn’t look hopeful.
Transnational NGOs like Transparency International encourage governments to increase access to the truth for its people. Journalists in Australia are currently engaged in a Right to Know campaign because whistle blower protections are under threat and FOI legislation seems to have fewer teeth. Proclaiming ‘truth to power’, more often by the left, sounds like a good idea but when that truth is contested by vested interests who use multiple avenues to prosecute that contest, other more subtle persuasions are needed to convince the arrogant teenager.
To summarize, when the underlying economic neo-lib orthodoxy continues to produce greater inequality, precarity of employment and demagogues whose vested interests conspire to manipulate populist fears to their commercial and political advantage, it’s hard to identify who is the teenager. Is it the hapless identity experimenting algorithmically mediated consumer or the insecure but powerfully networked bully? How to intervene with either from a nurturing tolerant parental perspective is undoubtedly the communicative challenge of our times.
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