Tickleria, or, On the Inaccuracy of Nationality

There was a time, one might charitably imagine, when the concept of nation and category of nationality were descriptive. ‘These people, connected to this place, are like this’. Should one leave critical suspicions and dissenting facts to one side, such a category was likely grounded in a unified language, unified customs and common referential understandings, all fostered by some form of geographic separation from other groups.

The fact that even the staunchest nationalist will sense the underlying tensions within, and even impossibility of, these criteria is a sign of sufficient change in the times.

In this context, the concept of nation and category of nationality have ceased to be even illusorily descriptive. In fact, if they are still anything in themselves, they might best be considered cynically prescriptive.

To understand this, we must face the blunt reality that a nationality no longer guarantees any characteristic of the person it claims to describe.

Beyond the modern bureaucratic reality that at some point a form was signed or application submitted, the label of a given nationality attests nothing about the language a person speaks, the clothes they wear, the cultural references they understand nor even basic knowledge of (or recallable presence in) a given geographic area.

We know this. Nationality describes no usefully definable thing. Attempts to identify a precise referent — mastery of a language, birth or years spent in a location, a homogeneous opinion or belief — only founder, if not alone, then certainly when combined with other criteria. And, worse still: the solid bureaucratic stamp of nationality (the only solid thing about the term) periodically threatens to exclude individuals already long included within the social group. If a change in a nation state’s policy meant that a grammatical error in our speech or portion of undesirable DNA in our cells were to lead to our exclusion from a society we thought ourselves part of, we would be rightly miffed.

Going a step further, let us contemplate a number of fictional examples which become all too recognisable should you replace “Tickleria” or “Ticklerian” with various nations and nationalities.

First: “A Ticklerian speaks fluent Ticklerian”. Almost certainly refutable. I’ve met a Ticklerian who only speaks basic Ticklerian. Yet she is categorised as a Ticklerian; she has a Ticklerian passport due to birth there, and receives a scholarship for Ticklerian students.

Next: “Ticklerians were born in Tickleria”. But the leader of the Ticklerian main opposition party was actually born in another nation state. Though at least he lives in Tickleria now. His brother, on the other hand, has never set foot in Tickleria yet gained access to a Ticklerian passport by virtue of his father, himself not born in Tickleria but recipient of Ticklerian nationality after spending a certain period of his childhood at school there. How confusing.

Then: “Ticklerians are tolerant”. Not my very intolerant, and indisputably Ticklerian, neighbour. He has never lived anywhere but Tickleria. And he even helpfully flies the Ticklerian flag in his garden, just in case anyone forgets where they are or what he is. Nevertheless, tolerance is not one of his virtues.

Finally: “Ticklerians drink tea”. My auntie doesn’t. But she speaks Ticklerian as well as the greatest Ticklerian bards, and she can name all of Tickleria’s major cities. In reverse alphabetical order.

The list of examples could go on, but the point is easy to see: all and none of these people could be Ticklerian. If the nationality were to truly describe something, beyond the moment’s particular laws and geopolitical geometry, some of these people would face a loss of passport, deportation or the deprivation of rights and services (amongst other possible results of not being Ticklerian).

Again, we know this. And so, we must recognise that things really have changed.

Thanks to the Internet and efficient transport, we now feel closer to fellow petrol heads/DJs/Christians/football fans/dog breeders from every corner of the globe than we do to our Ticklerian neighbour. The only problem is, we are still called upon — for reasons we now know to be confusing, if not downright ludicrous — to consider the latter as the same as us. The former, although their opinions, life styles and speech patterns might be closer to our own, are simply not of our nationality, born on the wrong side (the ‘outside’) of an imaginary divide.

We need to let this sink in. We possess the same nationality as someone who might differ from us in infinitely more ways than another of a different nationality. Yet when it comes to easily crossing a particular border, receiving certain state benefits and even dying in the (now unclear) name of a given nation, we will find ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with those completely unlike us, sectioned off from (and even pitted against) others with whom we might more closely share a given combination of characteristics.

This confusion is the pernicious result of the inaccuracy of nationality. It simply does not describe the characteristics we suppose to be referencing when uttering a sentence like: Ticklerians are brave. The statement is so mightily broad that if logically applied to the distribution of Ticklerian passports, it would require all brave individuals around the world to be eligible for Ticklerian nationality and also make possible the policy that all cowards in Tickleria be stripped of their passports. This is without mentioning the reality that a single person can be brave sometimes, but a coward other times.

For the purposes of sport, this inaccuracy matters little. Whether Tickleria wins or loses, deaths are unlikely (barring idiocy) and no one is irrationally prevented from fulfilling their objectives in life.

However, outside of sport, this inaccuracy is a gargantuan problem. Anything which can, and will, determine our fate should be as rational as the human societies it structures. However, despite our educational achievements, the nation is anything but clear; it is murky and contradictory. And in our world of communication and transportation, nationality is anything but without exception; it is piecemeal and riddled with numerous narratives which deviate from the set standard.

And yet, despite these problems, nationality continues to go about its work of deciding people’s lives. It continues to be applied to a person due to certain facts, but completely in spite of other, conflicting facts. Once applied, it opens certain doors (access to a geographic region, access to a state’s public services, protection by a given set of laws), yet might close others (for example exclusion from, or tougher access to, other regions and the related states’ welfare and legal frameworks).

Surely if nationality is to mean anything, and be legitimately incontrovertible (the sort of thing worthy of being the first adjective on your Wikipedia page) then it must be as accurate as its fateful status demands. For example: if we want it to be linguistic, then we must accept the fact that those who learn the language as well as us have the right to the same nationality as us. If we want it to be determined by where we happen to be born (questionable given our inability to control our parents’ movements), we must accept that those who are intolerant, don’t speak Ticklerian and hate tea still maintain equal birthright to the nationality. Equally, those born elsewhere, regardless of Ticklerian parentage, their love of Tickleria, or their possession of skills Tickleria needs, simply cannot be Ticklerian.

One could even combine any number of similar factors. However, regardless of how one constructs a particular version of nationality (and it has been tried many times), one would still be left with the bizarre prospect of excluding someone who fits all the desired categories but one (say, birthplace) yet extending the category of nationality to another person who ticks the official boxes (say, mastery of language and marriage to a Ticklerian), even if the latter can hardly be considered anything like the desired representative of (or contributor to)the ideals of that particular nationality.

The nationalist, anti-nationalist and anyone beyond and in between has by now gone through so many mental contortions that we no longer know what to think. The very thing which has driven human communities together and apart, to commit the most wonderful and most reprehensible acts imaginable (although religion and competition for resources have a legitimate claim to such a title), is revealed to be as fictional as allegiance to a particular football team. It is a consensual illusion with, in positive cases, the ability to connect restricted groups of humans.

You may have been born into it, or you may have later wholeheartedly bought into it, and it might give you joy but, I submit, that in light of society’s advancement since the creation of ‘modern’ nations (say, up to 300 years ago), it is now but a shoddily antiquated foundation upon which to organise serious human endeavours.

So: how do we solve this? Is there an alternative?

Perhaps. But only if we open the gates to the inevitable heresy of wondering: What if we were to replace nationality?

After all, most of us want accuracy: we want our clocks to show the right time, our taxes to not even marginally exceed their agreed level and the aeroplane carrying us to not mistake a five-lane roadway for a runway. One might argue that time and money are also fictions of a certain nature (though infinitely more easily measurable than nationality), but we should all be able to agree that simply believing a busy road to be a runway will not help us.

Now, if we were to replace nationality, it would have to be with something more honest or, empirically speaking, more accurate.

Time for some more provocation: perhaps ‘wealth’ best fits the bill.

Imagine it: If you are ‘Rich’, you may use your Rich passport to travel to any country you wish, and use as many of the local services as you desire. If you are ‘Poor’, however, you must stay in your small home region and, should you break the rules (as people tend to do) and leave, you will not be eligible for services elsewhere. While harsh, it would probably be more accurate (as in reflective of a measurable phenomenon) and honest, at least as far as present economic realities are concerned. In fact, and only half tongue-in-cheek, we would likely require very little adjustment.

That being said, the problem of defining from which data point one would be eligible for the desirable Rich passport would be a tricky proposition: does it include assets? What about people who gain the Rich passport then once again drop down below the ‘wealth’ threshold? And is a baby born inheriting their parents’ Rich passport or do they start in the Poor category? Also, wars between the two human groups would be bloody. If you are now envisaging an endless army of the masses crashing in zombie-like waves against the marble walls of a fortified golf club, you are not alone.

Though an interesting experiment, such thinking might strike us as ‘wrong’. We cannot divide people by ‘wealth’ instead of nationality, can we?

The sentiment is understandable, yet somewhat ironic. After all, dividing people by measurable wealth is empirically justifiable, or at least much more so than the confused lottery of grounds and exceptions outlined above. At least if we were to replace nationality with ‘wealth’, a desirable passport (‘Rich’) would be transparently attainable for all, rather than a semi-mystic status one is born or allowed into selectively (“if only I had been born on that side of the river”).

Even so, it’s all quite distasteful, isn’t it?

Indeed, there is quite simply something a little crass to openly discussing and exhibiting the divisive drive behind our human categories. Moreover, however we might formulate it (‘nationality’, ‘wealth’, ‘work’, ‘hair colour’ — why the heck not?) there is still something quite off-putting about the whole process.

The root of this feeling might lurk somewhere in the same inaccessible dimension as the roots of love, jealousy and other ‘mysterious’ emotions. Moreover, and much like with these others, it might prove both unavoidable yet forever elusive.

So if we cannot escape it (this feeling of… Unfairness? Exasperation at inaccuracy?) then we might wish to better manage or even circumvent it.

Perhaps we must then first ask: why do we need a category like nationality? Is it for better management of vast numbers of people (a thoroughly rational reason)? If so, is birth or parentage still the best way to do this? If such criteria prevent us from living and working in another place, I daresay it is no longer a sensible proposition for the modern human. If I can make business connections online in a few seconds and travel to meet them for a project within a few hours, any reality-blind structures which pretend this is impossible because my mother gave birth to me in a certain place are not only simply inefficient, but they also encourage the flagrant waste of human potential.

When dealing with collective decisions, we mustn’t forget that people are both capable of and prone to physical movement and mental change. This means that when categories like the ‘nation’ or ‘nationality’ become mixed with serious, concrete human policies (passports, welfare allowances, quotas) they become out of date the moment they are decided upon.

The modern world poses so many questions, for example, what is more important, where you are born or how much wealth you have created? What language(s) you speak or your contribution to society? The content of your blood or qualities of your personality? (To name but a few conundrums).

How we measure these things is important, for then we must decide to what extent they should determine our fate.

And, the best part, dear skeptic: regardless of change, nothing worth having will be lost. The demise of the Greek city states did not erase Plato and Aristotle. The fall of the Roman Empire did not wipe out its lasting linguistic, political and cultural achievements. And that was all before the nation state had even been invented. As for nations, just think of anything from Prussia to the USSR for proof that humanity kept hold of scientific and societal lessons despite the states’ passing.

Human development is not complete erasure (an impossibility) followed by hollow artifice. It is the remixing and retaining of the ‘what was’ in conjunction with the best dreams and designs of the ‘what can be’.

Given that today people continue to suffer and even die for being born in the ‘wrong’ place, with the ‘wrong’ passport, speaking the ‘wrong’ language and having the ‘wrong’ beliefs and opinions, I humbly suggest that now would be an ideal time to overhaul our human categories by reassessing nationality.

If the human mind can create complex technologies and virtual worlds, it should surely be up to the task of finding something better than the allocation of a different human status based on being born on a given side of (and perhaps only a matter of metres across) an imaginary line.

Let’s not confuse what is with what ought to, or indeed could, be

So… Let’s start:

Replacement required, all applicants welcome.
(Ticklerians need not apply).