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.