By Rob van Kranenburg

So I finally (well, finally after forty years) lay down my distopian moments; my vision of the disintegration of the European nation states, that tsunami erasing painstakingly fought for public life called citizen, or e-citizen if you want to be precise. So for the last time:

A worst case scenario: disintegration

From the Netherlands to many many Netherland, or the land Land in twelve steps:

1. The Netherlands has no coin of its own, it has euros.
2. Most legal jurisdiction and law comes from European law and growing.
3 What is a nation state that cannot define itself in its own legal and monetary terms?
4. A state that cannot define itself legally needs an ironclad mental model that embraces all and everyone in the Netherlands.
5. This inclusive mental model is under heavy pressure.
6. The digital network turns civilians into professional amateurs. We see a growth of informal networks operating in between a formal policy level and an idiosyncratic everyday life.
7. The nation state tends to privatise and outsource tasks and obligations.
8. Individual core needs can be privately dealt with; medication through internet, medical care globally available.
9. So we wait now for the first village that refuses to pay its taxes to the Netherlands. Why should they pay for all these Creole cities where over fifty percent of the young people are from different backgrounds and descent, ‘allochtonen’ as the word goes in Dutch?
10. What happens when a thousand people refuse to pay their taxes to what for them is no longer a friendly nation state? Who is going to lock them up in the end?
11. There is no room in the Netherlands to put 1000 people into prison. The nation state loses its final argument as a state as it can not make good on its monopoly of violence.
12. Resulting in: the new middle ages.

Why should this scenario be unrealistic? All its axiomatic requirements are met: the network has empowered and is empowering individual citizens to such an extent that they can start managing their private lives for themselves, while Europe as an idea, as a story is still to abstract for citizens to outsource their newly gained perceived autonomy to.

And our young designers? Our new media generation?

Why should they care about the polis, an ambient agora? Or about accessforall?
What does their government do for them but telling them not to do this and that and be careful, hey watch out!
What do they owe their nation states?

Basta!

That said, I move on. I cannot drag this vision beyond my forty years, I’d grow sour and more afraid, much more afraid. I can feel a turnabout in Barcelona. Although my internet access is not working in my room overlooking the square in front of the old Cathedral, Hotel Colon breathes a calm grand air, so calm it eases me down to such a relaxed state that my beloved Nokia 7650 is stolen from my inner pocket in the Easyjet internet café downtown. What a blessing it is to be sober. Five years ago I would have brought it back from among all these tough looking guys, Latin Kings probably. Originally from Latin America they arrived without fathers, raised themselves in the streets, styled themselves after cult like military crews like M-18. But I’m sober and decide angrily to buy me boots, boots of Spanish leather. Because that is the way the Dylan song goes. No, there is nothing you can send me, my own true love. There is nothing I’m wishing to be owning, but to carry yourself back to me on the spoil, from across that lonesome ocean…Ah, but yes there is something you can send back to me. Spanish boots of Spanish leather. For two days I move around town and I find me two pair of serious boots. One, alas- comes to 344 euros and the other pair is about 360. Both beautiful, both of Spanish leather. I’ll be back for them one day.

Two. I cannot believe the optimism in the room of the autonomous city council of Barcelona that hosts the CIRCLE Conference on Youth Culture. The idea is that CIRCLE presents a policy document for the Council of Europe. I am basically the only pessimist around it seems as story after story of ‘natural’ cycling of transgenerational clashes, of peaceful hegemony easing out transgenerational violence. I just sit and wonder where in Europe I am and what date this is? I am a bit more at ease when the Polish and Croatian professors ask for my text and the Russian delegates ask if they may translate it. They know about transitions. They are able to think in terms of clashes, violent uprisings, whereas we can only think in terms of continuity.

Thirdly, I had to put away, meaning leaving physically behind in a Belgian train, this latest biography from Stalin. Oh yes, it has beautiful pictures, I tore one out, but I could not endure the instrumentalism of this Georgian jet set, Tsarist self-styled high tea afternoon killers. I could not help but thinking that this beautiful sense of rhythm and order that I so love either in Branskij woods or in the empty wide concreteness of Bauhaus, a sense of planning, can only be attained through violence. Any attempt to regulate 21st century networks invite in its very act violence. The only form of organization is self-organisation. All else will be steeped in blood.

Four. The only way forward now is east. Flying over Tbilisi I read Paustovskij. To read Paustovskij is to feel. That is all. There is no other way is describing him. In Helsinki the only serious, comforting, hopeful presentation was from the Sarai crew. It is them I’m going to see for the Intellectual Property Conference and a EU workshop. But that is not my real reason. For all the lectures in the world I’d rather stay at home, look out the window and have the soft lines of the hills teaching me much more (as Camus said). No, I’m going East as that is where our stories that shape this positive vision of disintegration and rebuilding get their building blocks from. I must admit I’m quite unsettled and unnerved without my pessimism of not only intelligence but also, far more disheartening, of the will. This is very good.

Why should this scenario be unrealistic? All its axiomatic requirements are met: the network has empowered and is empowering individual citizens to such an extent that they can start managing their private lives for themselves, while Europe as an idea, as a story is still to abstract for citizens to outsource their newly gained perceived autonomy to.

And our young designers? Our new media generation?

Why should they care about the polis, an ambient agora? Or about accessforall?
What does their government do for them but telling them not to do this and that and be careful, hey watch out!
What do they owe their nation states?

Basta!

That said, I move on. I cannot drag this vision beyond my forty years, I’d grow sour and more afraid, much more afraid. I can feel a turnabout in Barcelona. Although my internet access is not working in my room overlooking the square in front of the old Cathedral, Hotel Colon breathes a calm grand air, so calm it eases me down to such a relaxed state that my beloved Nokia 7650 is stolen from my inner pocket in the Easyjet internet café downtown. What a blessing it is to be sober. Five years ago I would have brought it back from among all these tough looking guys, Latin Kings probably. Originally from Latin America they arrived without fathers, raised themselves in the streets, styled themselves after cult like military crews like M-18. But I’m sober and decide angrily to buy me boots, boots of Spanish leather. Because that is the way the Dylan song goes. No, there is nothing you can send me, my own true love. There is nothing I’m wishing to be owning, but to carry yourself back to me on the spoil, from across that lonesome ocean…Ah, but yes there is something you can send back to me. Spanish boots of Spanish leather. For two days I move around town and I find me two pair of serious boots. One, alas- comes to 344 euros and the other pair is about 360. Both beautiful, both of Spanish leather. I’ll be back for them one day.

Two. I cannot believe the optimism in the room of the autonomous city council of Barcelona that hosts the CIRCLE Conference on Youth Culture. The idea is that CIRCLE presents a policy document for the Council of Europe. I am basically the only pessimist around it seems as story after story of ‘natural’ cycling of transgenerational clashes, of peaceful hegemony easing out transgenerational violence. I just sit and wonder where in Europe I am and what date this is? I am a bit more at ease when the Polish and Croatian professors ask for my text and the Russian delegates ask if they may translate it. They know about transitions. They are able to think in terms of clashes, violent uprisings, whereas we can only think in terms of continuity.

Thirdly, I had to put away, meaning leaving physically behind in a Belgian train, this latest biography from Stalin. Oh yes, it has beautiful pictures, I tore one out, but I could not endure the instrumentalism of this Georgian jet set, Tsarist self-styled high tea afternoon killers. I could not help but thinking that this beautiful sense of rhythm and order that I so love either in Branskij woods or in the empty wide concreteness of Bauhaus, a sense of planning, can only be attained through violence. Any attempt to regulate 21st century networks invite in its very act violence. The only form of organization is self-organisation. All else will be steeped in blood.

Four. The only way forward now is east. Flying over Tbilisi I read Paustovskij. To read Paustovskij is to feel. That is all. There is no other way is describing him. In Helsinki the only serious, comforting, hopeful presentation was from the Sarai crew. It is them I’m going to see for the Intellectual Property Conference and a EU workshop. But that is not my real reason. For all the lectures in the world I’d rather stay at home, look out the window and have the soft lines of the hills teaching me much more (as Camus said). No, I’m going East as that is where our stories that shape this positive vision of disintegration and rebuilding get their building blocks from. I must admit I’m quite unsettled and unnerved without my pessimism of not only intelligence but also, far more disheartening, of the will. This is very good.