Sometimes we shift from role to role, fantasyland to fantasyland
without even leaving the same spot
___
Marlena, my objection was not to the possibility that people handle
many roles simultaneously, even contradictory roles, but about the
blithe use of the word "fantasy" in describing nations.
First, "fantasy" is a grossly diluted term linked to the Freudian
theory of the unconscious. Second, calling nations a "fantasy"
ignores the role of nations in moderating the claims of its
citizens, a noble and nonfantastic goal that has advanced individual
human potential.
Rather than see us a bumbling and flawed humans doing the best we
can to make things work out well, the "fantasy" judgment descends
from some abstract Empyrean of perfect rationality that pretends to
take in all nations to form its judgment. Except this point of
view--where nations are fantasies--is itself the most fantastic,
unexamined, and question-begging of hypotheses.
There ARE national fantasies--the Caliphate, the Aryan Race, the
worker's paradise, etc., but nations aren't fantasies. They exist
precisely because they aren't fantasies. They exist because they
work well enough to deserve adherence and improvement.
Regimes that exist on fantasies (Hitler's or Heliogabulus the Roman
Emperor who thought he was a Sun god) either destroy the nation or
are overthrown by the nation--much as our bodies either succumb to
disease or expel it.
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