Integrity of the Transatlantic Community Societies
Nowadays the issues of personality and affiliation to communities in the network-centric world are closely connected to the issues of individual and collective freedom, its expression, ethnicity and nationality, and the norms of states or international organizations created in this context. The above-mentioned order is not incidental. These elements together affect one another constituting the core of states’ policy, its interpretation in the aspect of individual and collective security. The idea of the relationship of freedom and security, encompassing the issues of identity creates their interpretation (Multiple Futures Project. Navigating towards 2030. Final report , 2009: 19-20). A permanent situational context for the Transatlantic Community states is at the same time the fact that this idea is constantly verified in the increasingly complex forms of social ties. The form of these ties is subject to the changes in the occurring information processes dictated by the assessment of a given event or social phenomenon and its consequences. The processes of affiliation of individual and group identity created during them unequivocally indicate two situational aspects of special importance to the integrity of societies, social security of the Transatlantic Community states.
The first aspect is the 21st century attachment of a given community to identity, the nature of mental bonds, fostering them in relation to an abstract archetype, patterns: I, we, they, you (others), still plays a fundamental role in the context of individual and collective security of the Transatlantic Community states. Even though this pattern undergoes changes, it is repeated in time. It is created at present times and transformed under the influence of information stimuli which are the subject of various interactions (Ries, 2016: 1-6). It also builds the form of the identity of the societies of the Transatlantic Community states, irrespective of their status, place of origin, at the same time, in relation to the same information, which is interpreted and used differently. It is worth paying attention to this situational context in the aspect of migration - especially when we deal with the dynamics of the phenomenon of coexistence of diverse communities, settled and incoming, characterized by different forms of identity (Transatlantic Trends: Mobility, Migration, and Integration. Key Findings from 2014 and Selected Highlights from Transatlantic Trends and Transatlantic Trends: Immigration 2008-13, 2014: 5-13). As opposed to the 21st century, the 20th century was characterized by some degree of static social attitudes, which were determined by the Cold War. It ‘froze’ their specific formula, gorgonized it by the ideological prism.
The other situational aspect generates the contemporary phenomenon of a change in identity. It took place at the beginning of the 1990s. What is symptomatic in this respect is the enlargement of NATO and the European Union. The formula of liberal democracy and its accompanying capitalist economy as a central reference point for individual freedoms and their safeguarding rights have become crucial in the processes of Atlantic and European integration. Unfortunately, a change of this paradigm of development occurred with the 9/11 attacks and it has continued until now. The phenomenon of rejecting the values of the western world can be most vividly observed in the geographical areas around the European Union (Herbst, 2016: 189-192). Moreover, within itself in the radicalization of some closed communities, which reject openness to the views of others and respect of human rights. The ‘no go zones’ / ‘non-governed zones’ are a manifestation of that on the European continent. The attacks which take place in them on the representatives of the communities of the states into which their residents arrived are a norm, and persecution of ‘the others’, who do not accept the ‘rights’ which are effective here is its manifestation. The list of European states which have these zones is long, from Scandinavia to Southern Europe, it includes i.a. Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, and France.
In the 21st century, individual and collective awareness becomes another area of rivalry and confrontation. In this context, the form of respective societies of the Transatlantic Community, and at the same time its states, indicates that some of them without great difficulty manage to deal with the multilayeredness of individual identity, and its influence on collective identity, while others have problems with it. In practice, it means that the members of a given society can reconcile their own ties with the relationships with other societies, or communities, including the ones of migrants and newcomers. A barrier in this kind of relationships appears when the culture of affiliation is not developed, it is - sometimes deliberately - distorted or rejected by one of the parties, and when it is replaced by restricted relations, or when such restricted relations have been there from the beginning (Brettell, Hollifield, 2013: 113-151). These ties in this specific form can be easily subjected to manipulation - from an individual to collectiviness. Unfortunately, it also concerns the democratic societies of the Transatlantic Community states, their citizens and the people who have migrated into them or have settled there.
An extreme example of the distortion of the social ties could be the terrorist attacks with the participation of those who have rejected the democratic system of values and replaced it with the extremist one, which is limited to a given interpretation, society, etc. The form of these ties with the participation of the people who have arrived in the open societies or have socialized there rejecting their values constitutes a proof that manipulation occurs. In the case of the Transatlantic Community states, real trouble comes when this kind of situation exists, but it is not recognized or when it is ignored for various reasons, especially political ones. The causes may be diverse, from a lack of proper knowledge about the character of the state of social security, the ways of ensuring it in the conditions of the 21st century, to unfounded arrogance of ‘political correctness’ which imposes the only, proper, falsified in its interpretation narration imposing marginalisation of the developing problems of social integrity.
The idea of an open society, its form and the formula of integrity and exclusion, affiliation of social, cultural and political roles are becoming a key issue in the context of the relationships between the security of a state belonging to the Transatlantic Community and migration. This aspect of creation of what is the ideal, constructing and reconstructing the individual and collective images of ourselves,de facto the ideas of ourselves, is the basis of modern democratic societies and their security (Gryz, 2018: 64-71). Nowadays this idea is generated by the factor of migration phenomenon. It constitutes the form of creation - recreation of the societies of the Transatlantic Community states. At the same time its form is indeterminate due to a lack of a leading formula of the articulated ascondicio sine qua non adapted individual and collective values of migrants and also the societies which accept them. This situational aspect is crucial to the understanding of the idea of social security in the open network-centric societies (Drozdiak, 2017: 9-12). Depriving the immigrants of the leading political norms, understanding of the identity of a given society of the Transatlantic Community, with the assumption that the economy will automatically make them integrate is wrong, which can be illustrated by the terrorist attacks which took place in Western Europe states in the past years.