Nation of Kult
by Nomad Romulus

I know in the past, we've toyed with the cute idea of being able to bring Kulters together on the physical plane, set up a physical community, and live as a Kult society in the real world. Right now we're still limited, by such things as economy, self-determination, mobility and other connections, to primarily an Internet plane with occasional real-world rendezvouses.
But until that day comes, I want you to reflect on an idea that came to me lately, and if you can see it, to take comfort in one philosophical concept that exists even without shared physical space, and that is:

Kult is a nation.

This isn't the first time that a group of people with similar interests and similar worldview came together in an attempt to pursue those interests, promote their worldview, and reach aligned goals. We call such groups "organizations", because when they come together, they come together for one purpose, and leave everything else at the door. They separate their individual personalities from their organizational personalities, keeping them separate from each other even when both are shared amongst each other. There's organization time, and then there's social time *outside* of organizational time.

We're not just an organization like that. We don't draw such formal lines between who we are and what part of Kult we are. We bring both together and tie one to the other. We choose our roles in Kult on our own and depending on what our own interests are. Our socialness is often tied to our seriousness, or intermingled. There is serious time and there is social time, but a door isn't closed between the two, nor are they held in different places, or allocated to limited periods of time. No, we leave all those doors open, allowing the mingling of interests from socialness burble into new serious directions.

I've been looking a lot of site lately that deal with the topic of "micronations". A micronation is, in essence, some form of government, society, and culture that tries to separate itself as a unique entity, to come together under one banner, and identify itself as a culture.

One site puts it like this:

Nationhood: A condition where a group of persons achieve a common identity as a people and the will to be identified as such.

A quote on the thekult.net also puts it like this:

Nation: The desire of many individuals to do great things together.

We are a nation. We meet both definitions. And in fact, we meet them better than most formal countries in this world today can honestly claim to.

Meeting the second definition is more or less easy to see. Kult came together because we wanted an organization in which we could share interests, pool resources and ideas, and when feasible, take those interests and resources and ideas and put them to use as projects of action. Whether or not we've succeeded in the sense that we've taken these elements and changed the world with them, the point is that we've each deep down had the desire to see projects form and be carried out, whether or not we could always make it happen or on the desired scales.

However, the ways in which we meet the first definition are is often ignored, or at least, not recognized in the way that I'm about to qualify them. Most of us probably haven't looked at Kult the way I started doing after I started reading up on micronations. Frankly, I think we meet that definition better than most of the actual micronations that such sites talk about.

We're not just a community of people that come together for a combined social/serious purpose. In many ways our social purposes came out of our serious purposes, as we realized that we are different from other people in some way, in our worldview, personal interests, personal appearance and habits, beliefs of morality and humanity. It was only natural that we would find comrades in each other while we were acting as cooperators.

As a result, we find we are tied together by more than just a website, a set of focus areas, or a set of projects. We are reflective of a particular, dynamic, diverse yet cohesive and distinctive culture. We've at one time or another formed our own member-generated art galleries, radio stations, music collections, literary anthologies, and feature magazines. We've not only acknowledged indirectly that we do have a particular culture, we've gone to the trouble of trying to preserve it, and express it collectively with a certain shared pride. We've passed on artwork and expression that other members have created with a certain special endorsement or interest, whether we've stated it (e.g. "this was made by someone in my group") or not.

This is not simply because it came from the web site we're a part of. It's because we consider it, on a private level, something from our own shared culture, that comes from our little website nation.

Most individuals and most countries don't feel that. The USA certainly doesn't, as much as most of its citizens would like to think it does. It's too big, and too conglomerated, and lacks a real national identity. The USA's national identity, partly because it has become the preeminent cultural definition of the world, is no longer a cultural identity, but simply an association with a certain banner, a certain set of talking heads, a few very old songs and verses, and a few documents that take on mostly a legendary and iconoclastic purpose rather than an influence on our culture or way of life. It seems to me, if you can call the USA a nation, with it's cross-intolerant diversity, irrational regionalism, and total lack of real national motivation beyond getting half the people to all hang up the same sign once every ten years, you have to acknowledge Kult as one too. We don't hit all those marks either, but we do it just as well, and with more solidarity of a certain sense.

A lot of this is all either to philosophical or too metaphysical for you. I can't expect those of you to swallow all this whole. A lot of you aren't completely bought on Kult, and are waning in your identity with it. Perhaps you've forgotten about the shared elements of our culture past and present, or perhaps you've let yourself become resentful of your Kult identity for the wrong reasons. But you were once part of this Nation, and unlike a lot of groups that come and go, I certainly think that if you spent any real time in it, being a member of it, that it will be something that will stick in your personal history just as much as any physical country or new place you could ever move to.

That is what being a nation ought to really be about. And we have it.

http://www.geocities.com/micronations/
How to start a micronation, with definitions of micronations and microstates based on goals and seriousness.

http://www.corvinia.org/minfor/micglossary.html
Micronation glossary, defining certain aspects of virtual and physically-defined micronations.

(Next issue: I'll explain why I think micronational identity, and microgeographic self-rule, is the only effective way to achieve true democracy in the modern world.)

By Nomad Romulus