If you identify your sense of being with an institution (e.g., the nation-state) then its glorious accomplishments as well as its evil consequences become quite personal. Those who adorn their houses with American flags, or dress up in red-white-and-blue “America: Love It or Leave It” T-shirts are doing more than simply participating in limited cultural celebrations such as Halloween trick-or-treating, or dancing around a May-pole. They are making a metaphysical statement about their sense of who they are; that they correlate their sense of being with an institution that defines itself in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence; and whose modus operandi is to coerce, steal, threaten, torture, terrorize, and kill whomever it deems suitable to the accomplishment of its purposes.

It is at this point that “dark side” voices, consciously-derived thought, and the spiritual dimensions of being human, enter into conversations within our minds. The political systems with which we have been trained to identify ourselves are destructive of life. The principal indictment of the modern nation-state is that, in its varied practices and manifestations, it no longer serves any life-sustaining purpose whatsoever.

Butler Shaffer