Orion

Let's tell a story about our lives. Giving people a story gives them a clear set of directions, and people would rather receive this map than create it themselves. A traveling person can use knowledge of the land to find their way, even if they have no specific place to go. Down hill means water, and eventually people. Uphill means visibility, wider access, isolation. On a boat, with water stretching to the horizon on all sides, anybody with eyes could use the stars to orient themselves. Even under cloud cover, the greatest pacific explorers could read the waves themselves, getting information about currents, reefs, and the proximity of land.

We orient ourselves in the world, and we tell stories to remember that orientation. The stories we remember shape our idea of what a person is, and give us a baseline against which we compare ourselves. The stars become constellations, and take their place in the mythology that defines our relationship to the world, to people. These stories are how we determine what a world and a person is. And many of these stories are malicious lies.

The parameters set to define manhood, for instance, are not universal, but they are universally violent. Tests of manhood involve the violent betrayal of a woman, the breaking of another man, the abandonment of societies beyond men. The story being told there is a map of how to subdue and domesticate those weaker than you, and how to submit and serve those stronger than you. Manhood is the myth. The violence is the starlight. The terrain is identity. Some myths teach us to submit to beauty, some submit to force.

Those who share the same mythology we call nations. The nation needs to make itself real, because it is the route by which people find and submit to each other. The nation claims that it is a biological fact, a physically existing object consisting of bodies and land. To self consciously proclaim your nationhood is to say that you, among all people, are more human. Your myths are superior, your identity and way of life more important. Nationhood is a story we tell ourselves about what makes us different than other people. Nationalism, of course, can not exist without genocide. The birth of nations is a violent expulsion of humanity from a hollow core. Garibaldi had to invent Italy to liberate it and the wars of liberation could not end until he did so. The Hellenic revolt against the Ottomans was fueled heavily by expats in Odessa. Many of them had never actually seen the place they were calling Greece. They had only the stories their families told them, and the ramblings of British tourists. They could not have created Greece until the vibrant polycultural landscape was razed to the ground and a plantation of tourist-friendly Christians was created in its place. Israel today is approaching the climax of this nation-building process. The state of Israel represents the standardization and legal regulation of what it means to be a Jew. Discipline is enforced by the creation of enemies and the threat of abandonment. The murder and displacement of the Palestinian people plays the same role as the genocide of other peoples. Observe how Indigenous American population were mythologized as noble and free, even as they were sacrificed on the altar of individual liberties and a racist caste system. The genocide of Anatolian Greeks marked the revival of the Turkish nation, the slaughter of Turks and other minorities produced Greece. It is all nonsense, of course. The differences between these supposedly distinct groups of people barely exist beyond the minds of those who violently enforce the difference. It is astrology written in blood. Astrology tells lies about the stars to help us remember how navigate the world, but how many of us can still navigate by the stars? Nationalism tells lies about who we are, to help us build communion, and yet everywhere today we see the ruins of communities.

As our ability to navigate by the stars was replaced by an ability to use maps, we allowed our dependence on our senses to be replaced by a dependence on communal information. Knowledge is a commons, belonging to nobody, but information is a commodity. Data is the most valuable commodity in the modern world. From data we produce information, from information, knowledge. We have allowed a commodity to slip between our eyes and the stars, and now our ability to navigate is owned by whoever controls that commodity. Many good things have been done with maps. Many bad things have been done with maps. When we created the maps, we got something new and lost something ancient.

When our children learn about the world through newspapers, movies, videogames, social media, a similar process is taking place. The stories we told children are being replaced, remodeled and mediated. Our identities are being gentrified. The tools we use to understand ourselves are becoming more expensive and less useful. We have lost something older and more real than nations, and gained nothing to replace it.