A Little Perspective on Distinction Making: Country or Not-Country

It seems the United Nations is in charge of naming country and not-country on this planet. The insert on the left tells a bit of the fascinating stories of some current not-countries. Consider Transdniestria. It sure sounds like a country. But if its impressive name isn't enough to legitimize it, shouldn't its formal secession? What about the list Jesse Ellison provides of all the things Transdniestria has that are all its own: constitution, parliament, military, postal service, currency, flag, and national anthem? I wonder if the Transdniestrian soldier strapping his boot thinks he has no country. I wonder if the Transdniestrian carrier delivering the long-awaited letter and the woman counting out Transdniestrian coins to pay the postage due think they belong to no country. What about the children who know their anthem by heart and stand and raise their voices to sing it?

Working with distinction making (one of the four universal patterns in the Patterns of Thinking Method) means working with identity and other: we posit—declare, create, acknowledge, name—an identity, and this immediately posits all the others who are not that identity. When the U.N. determines what makes a country, it simultaneously determines what makes a not-country. When a group of people in a geographically defined place call themselves a country, thus making everyone outside their borders not-their-country, shouldn't this clear distinction be honored? This brings us to perspective.

If we want to be thinking human beings, and manage that thinking consciously, we need to be aware of the perspective that carves out any identity-other given to us. (Perspective taking is also one of the four universal patterns of thinking.) When we do this, profound questions ensue, such as: Who says? Is that true? From whose perspective is this the identity and that the other? What is the identity of that other from its own perspective? (Every other is also an identity.) And more . . .

Note that we're integrating the four patterns when we consider what perspective defines the identity and other in any given distinction.

I wonder if the lives of those Transdniestrians--soldier, mail carrier, woman, and children--will change when the U.N. decides they're allowed to be what they already say they are.