Asgard is not a place. Never was. Asgard is where our people stand.
Odin. Thor Ragnarok
<Insert country name> doesn’t exist! No, really. Everything we know about Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, or the USA is equivalent to our knowledge of Santa Claus or Jack Sparrow. We casually talk about these characters, and we even attribute certain actions to them. Santa Claus brings gifts, for example. Everyone knows what Santa Claus looks like, where he lives, and how he gets into homes to wish children a Happy New Year.
The country you consider your homeland doesn’t exist, just like Santa Claus. If the people who remember a certain country disappear, then that country will vanish too. There are no borders except on maps (and if they do exist physically, in the form of posts, barriers, or barbed wire, those physical borders were established according to the maps, not the other way around. While mountains and seas are marked on a map based on their actual existence in a specific location, border posts are planted in the ground where everyone believes they should stand.)
Moreover, even if a country’s borders change, it doesn’t mean that the country has disappeared or become a different one. Look at how the borders of countries have shifted throughout their existence. Often, they ended up in completely different locations compared to where they were originally declared.
So what is this country that we are supposed to love? Where is it, how can we touch it? Propaganda refers to the name of the country as something universal for everyone. Like Santa Claus. He’s pretty much the same for everyone. A beard, a fur coat, a staff, a young companion… But with the country, it’s even worse. For everyone, it’s different. For some, a courtyard among the Khrushchyovkas (five-story apartment buildings) comes to mind. For others, it’s a lake in a ravine behind the village. For some, it’s the mountains where sheep graze. Everyone will picture their own version of the country. But everyone will think that when they hear the name of the country, everyone else has the same image in their heads. Just like with Santa Claus.
But this is a deception. And, like with all unreal things, people try to cope with cognitive dissonance in some way and begin to attempt to materialize the nonexistent. There is even a special term for this: reification. For things like a country, Santa Claus, or the value of money, there is the term “intersubjective reality.” In other words, these things exist only in our minds, not in nature. But they exist in the minds of many at once.
How do we try to materialize the unreal? Has anyone ever seen material things adorned with symbolism? Does your laptop or washing machine have a flag or anthem? Of course not. They don’t need that! But intangible things do. You can’t believe in what doesn’t exist without creating symbols and legends. Flags, coats of arms, borders, and documents are needed to prove that a country exists. This is why churches are built and icons are hung in them—to provide some kind of material support for the intangible concept of God. Especially since everyone has a different idea of God in their head.
Indeed, everyone has a different idea of what their country is. It’s enough for the propaganda machine to work on the minds of the population, and suddenly you have terms like “historical justice,” “territorial claims,” “Russian world,” and someone’s (as it turns out) Crimea, and so on. Yet, no one in any country has actually felt that they gained or lost Crimea in any way.
And if a country has a president, then what is this president of? “Where’s our prosecutor? In the sixth chamber where Napoleon used to be…”
You know what Disney pays actress Elizabeth Olsen, who plays Scarlet Witch Wanda in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for? It’s for her ability to not burst out laughing during filming while she continues to wave her hands around with a serious expression, directing “mystical energy” against her enemies.
Somewhere for the same thing, a salary is paid to the “president of the country.” Maybe that’s why professional actors or clowns become presidents?