Law, with its cold reason and impersonal procedures, has erected a hard, indispensable skeleton of trust for the modern society of strangers. Yet a skeleton alone cannot build a living body of flesh and blood, with emotion and powerful agency. A society sustained only by fear of legal punishment and calculation of contractual interests would be fragile, inefficient, and lacking the "soul" that can unite people in times of crisis.
Law solves the negative trust question of "why I need not fear strangers," but it cannot answer that deeper, more mobilizing question: "Why am I willing to belong to the same 'we' with these hundreds of millions of strangers? Why am I willing to dedicate, to sacrifice, even to give my life for this 'we'?"
To answer this question, modernity had to undertake a "spiritual construction" far more ambitious and deeply felt than the legal revolution. On the ruins of ancient blood ties and religious faith, it had to create a brand-new, unprecedentedly vast "grand narrative" capable of "imagining" hundreds of millions of strangers as a single family sharing a common destiny. This grand narrative is nationalism; the imagined community it constructs is the nation-state.
If law is the "rational brain" of modern trust, then the nation-state is its "emotional heart." It infuses the cold skeleton of law with warm blood, giving it emotional temperature and moral appeal. It is this wondrous marriage of "reason and emotion" that jointly erected the magnificent edifice of modern consensus, making it, over the past few centuries, the most mainstream and most powerful form of human social organization.
Common Language, History, and Enemy: Creating a New Trust Community
The "nation," a concept we today find so self-evident, as if it has existed since time immemorial, is actually, in the long river of history, a quite recent "invention" or "construction." In the pre-modern world, an ordinary peasant's primary identification was with his or her family, village, clan, and perhaps a distant "all-under-heaven" ruled by some dynasty. He or she rarely thought of people a thousand miles away, speaking different dialects and living by different customs, as natural "compatriots" simply because they belonged to some abstract "Chinese nation" or "French nation."
A nation, in essence, is an "imagined community" — this is Benedict Anderson's classic thesis. It is "imagined" not because it is false, but because the members of even the smallest nation will never know, let alone meet, most of their fellow members, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion.
How was this grand "project of imagination" accomplished? It was achieved through a series of powerful "cultural technologies" that systematically and massively shaped and unified people's "observational consensus." Its three core pillars are a common language, a common history, and a common enemy.
First, print capitalism and the forging of the "national language."
In the pre-modern era, Europe's intellectual world was ruled by a universal sacred language — Latin — while the common people spoke hundreds of mutually unintelligible dialects. This linguistic fragmentation was a tremendous obstacle to building a unified national identity.
The invention of the printing press and the rise of capitalism inadvertently became the "midwife" of national languages. Printers seeking to maximize profits found that the market for books in Latin was limited, while printing in a local dialect with the largest number of speakers could greatly expand the market. Driven by market competition, certain dominant dialects (e.g., the Paris dialect, the London dialect, the Florentine dialect) were selected by printers as "standard print languages."
When thousands of books, pamphlets, and newspapers printed in this "standard language" began to circulate across vast territories, a profound linguistic revolution took place:
It created a unified "communicative sphere": a merchant from Marseille and a citizen from Lille, though their accents might differ, could read the same newspaper written in "Parisian French," understand the same political joke, and be moved by the same patriotic poem. Printed matter created in their minds a shared "space of meaning" that transcended regional barriers.
It fixed the language, giving it "permanence": spoken language is fluid, while printed text is relatively fixed. Once a language was selected as the print language, its grammar, vocabulary, and spelling were systematically codified, normalized, and endowed with a sense of timeless "antiquity" and "solemnity." It no longer seemed to be merely "what we speak now," but became "what our ancestors have always spoken."
It endowed certain languages with a new "status of power": with the formation of a "national language" based on standard print, those who spoke only local dialects were gradually marginalized. Mastering the "national tongue" became a prerequisite for entering the political, commercial, and cultural elite.
Through this centuries-long gradual process driven by "print capitalism," the originally fragmented linguistic landscape was reshaped into distinct cultural plates bounded by "national languages." Speaking the same "national tongue" and reading the same script became the most basic and most solid bond for constructing the imagination that "we are the same nation." It allowed hundreds of millions of strangers to resonate on a common "frequency of thought."
Second, public education and the writing of "national history."
A common language alone is not enough to form an emotional community of depth. This community also needed a shared "collective memory." This collective memory is "national history" — carefully selected, compiled, and written.
In pre-modern times, history writing usually served the rise and fall of a particular dynasty, with emperors, kings, and generals as its protagonists. Modern "national history," however, underwent a fundamental "narrative turn": its protagonist was no longer a ruling family, but the abstract, eternal "nation" itself, the ultimate bearer of history.
This "national" story typically follows a similar, heroic-epic narrative pattern:
It has a "sacred" origin: historians delve into the remote, hazy past to find the "pure" bloodline or cultural origin of their nation, portraying it as a unique, chosen community that has existed since time immemorial.
It has a "struggle history" full of suffering and glory: the nation is portrayed as an "organic life form" that has endured countless hardships, overcome numerous internal and external enemies, and finally achieved independence and liberation. Historical heroes, such as Joan of Arc and Washington, are no longer seen as merely serving a particular king or class, but are recast as the personal embodiments of the entire "national spirit."
It has a "destined" future mission: this history ultimately points to a bright "future" that all members of the nation must strive for together. This future might be realizing "national rejuvenation," spreading the gospel of "liberal democracy" across the world, or establishing a "thousand-year empire."
The main vehicle for instilling this grand "national myth" was the "public education system" compulsorily implemented across European countries since the 19th century.
In standardized classrooms, children from different classes and regions learned from the same state-approved history textbooks, recited the names of the same national heroes, and sang the same national anthem under the same flag. Public education, like a giant "thought furnace," forged diverse "natural persons" into "citizens" with a unified national identity.
Through this standardized history education, a new, trans-temporal "fictive kinship" was established. A peasant living in 19th-century France began to believe that Joan of Arc, burned at the stake centuries earlier, was his "national mother"; that Clovis, who founded the Frankish kingdom over a thousand years ago, was his "national ancestor." He was tightly linked — with the long-dead ancients and his yet-unborn descendants — by this shared "national genealogy" into an imagined, eternal "family."
Third, geopolitics and the shaping of the "common enemy."
The sharpest tool for forging a "we" identity often comes from defining a "they." A common enemy, whether real or imagined, can most quickly and effectively set aside internal conflicts and divisions, unite the collective emotion of "sharing a common hatred."
In the formation of the modern European nation-state system, incessant wars served as the cruelest and most effective catalyst for this "enemy-shaping" mechanism.
A Prussian Junker aristocrat and a Bavarian Catholic peasant might have deep conflicts in language, religion, and class interests. But when they faced the same enemy — the French — on the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War, they would temporarily forget their differences and identify themselves first as "Germans." The trench became a "university of the nation" more persuasive than any classroom.
The state's propaganda machine — newspapers, recruitment posters, political speeches — would tirelessly "otherize" and "demonize" the enemy nation. The enemy was portrayed as barbaric, evil, posing a mortal threat to "our" survival. This hate-filled propaganda aimed to transform war from a limited dynastic conflict fought by professional soldiers into an all-out, life-or-death "war for national survival."
Through the bloody machinery of war, national boundaries were redrawn and etched time and again with blood and lives. A soldier no longer died merely for the honor of a king, but for that nobler, more abstract "motherland." His death would be recorded in the annals of "national martyrs," becoming part of the "sacred narrative" that inspires future patriotic sentiment.
A common language created the foundation for communication; a common history provided the emotional bond; and a common enemy forged the solidarity of action. Through the synergy of these three cultural technologies, a new, powerful "imagined community" — the nation-state — for which hundreds of millions of strangers would willingly die was successfully constructed. It provided modern society with a solid foundation of emotion and identity, a "secular church" where our "ultimate loyalty" could be placed. Within this church, patriotism became the new "religion"; national interest became the new "deity."
Currency and Sovereignty: State Credit, the Ultimate Endorsement of Trust
If the narrative of nationalism provided the "soul" of the modern state, then to make this vast community function effectively in the real world, it also needed a powerful "body" and a reliable "circulatory system." The body is the modern state's sovereign machinery of violence; the circulatory system is fiat currency based on state credit. Sovereignty and currency, like twin siblings, together form the most powerful "hard currency" in the modern trust system: "state credit."
Sovereignty: Monopolizing Legitimate Violence, Becoming the Ultimate Guarantor of Trust
Sociologist Max Weber's classic definition of the modern state is: a human community that successfully monopolizes the "legitimate use of violence" within a given territory. This "monopoly on violence" is the hardest, indispensable physical foundation upon which state credit is established.
In the pre-modern world, the right to use violence was dispersed. Feudal lords had their private armies, the church had its inquisition, guilds had their disciplinary punishments, and clans could carry out blood feuds. In this state of "polycentric violence," there was no unified, ultimate "guarantor of trust."
The process of building the modern state was, to a large extent, a process of depriving all other social groups of their right to use violence and concentrating it in the hands of the state, the sole subject. The state, by establishing standing, professional armies and police forces, ensured that it was "the strongest enforcer" within its territory.
This "monopoly on violence" has decisive significance for building a broad-domain trust system:
It provides the ultimate "teeth" for the enforcement of law. The reason we believe a contract in black and white is valid does not ultimately come from the elegant legal wording of the contract itself, but from our belief that, should the other party default, we can initiate the state's judicial process and ultimately mobilize the state's police force to forcibly seize the other party's assets, freeze their accounts, or even imprison them. The state's machinery of violence is the invisible "real tiger" behind the "paper tiger" of law. Without the deterrence of this real tiger, law is no more than a scrap of paper.
It provides a unified "safe environment" for the domestic market. Through its omnipresent police and public security systems, the state suppresses banditry, quells rebellions, and protects private property. It integrates a geographical space once fragmented by various local violence and fraught with risk into a unified, predictable, low-transaction-cost "domestic market." A merchant who dares to transport valuable goods over long distances does so because he believes that, within the territory covered by state sovereignty, his basic personal and property safety can be protected by the state's machinery of violence. The state is, in effect, selling the most basic and most important public good — security — to all those engaged in economic activity within its borders.
It makes commitments and issues deterrence to the outside world in the name of sovereignty. In the anarchic jungle of international relations, a state's sovereignty is the ultimate credential of its capacity to make commitments (sign treaties) and issue deterrence (wage war) on the international stage. We believe another state will abide by a trade agreement not merely because of the agreement itself, but because we trust that the other state's machinery has the capacity to constrain its citizens to comply, and that, should the other party brazenly break the agreement, our own state machinery also has the capacity for effective retaliation (e.g., trade sanctions, military strikes).
Sovereignty is the ultimate "credit rating" of the state as a "legal person." The laws and commitments of a strong, stable sovereign state are seen as "credible" both at home and abroad. Conversely, a "failed state" with weak sovereignty and constant civil war — no matter how perfectly its constitution is written — will not be truly trusted by anyone. For how can an organization that cannot even monopolize violence within its own territory provide reliable guarantees for more complex trust contracts?
Currency: Flowing State Credit, the "Measure" of Social Value
If sovereignty is the heavy, immovable "mountain of gold" of state credit, then currency is the "gold coin" mined from this mountain that can flow rapidly through society. The essence of modern fiat currency is not its own physical value (the printing cost of a banknote is nearly zero), but the "state credit" condensed and redeemable behind it.
The reason we willingly accept a piece of colorful paper with no intrinsic value as payment for our hard work, and believe that tomorrow we can still use this piece of paper to exchange for bread, milk, and shelter, rests on a profoundly deep and equally fragile chain of "collective belief":
- I believe that the state (through its machinery of violence) will compulsorily require all economic activities within its sovereign territory to accept this piece of paper as legal tender (this is "legal tender status").
- I believe that the state (through its central bank) will have the capacity and willingness to maintain the relative stability of this paper's value, and will not plunder my wealth through unlimited money printing (this is trust in "monetary policy discipline").
- I believe that the state (through its tax system) will accept this paper as payment for my tax obligations. Since taxation is compulsory, this creates an eternal, foundational "demand" for this paper.
- Most importantly, I believe that everyone else believes the above three points just as I do.
It is this "meta-trust" built on the "collective imagination" of state sovereignty and future stability that endows that little piece of paper with its magical "power." It becomes a fluid, standardized, infinitely divisible "medium of trust."
Currency, as a medium of trust, performs several irreplaceable functions:
It is a "common denominator of value": in a barter economy, how many bags of rice equal one sheep, how many bolts of cloth equal one axe — such conversions are extremely complex. Currency provides a unified "measure of value" for all the bewildering variety of goods and services. Everything can be converted into a common, abstract unit — price. This "commensurability" greatly reduces the computational cost of transactions, making a nationwide, complex market division of labor possible.
It is a "store of trust": in a society without currency, if my labor's fruits today (e.g., freshly caught fish) cannot be exchanged immediately, they will soon rot and their value will disappear. Currency, however, allows me to "store" today's labor value and withdraw and use it at any point in the future. It extends trust from the immediate "present" to the infinite "future." This trust in the store-of-value function is the psychological basis for long-term savings, investment, and future planning.
It is a "daily ritual of national identity": every time we use currency printed with the head of our national leader, the national emblem, or iconic architecture, we unconsciously participate in a small, everyday "ritual of national identity confirmation." Currency, like a flowing national flag, silently proclaims the existence of state sovereignty in every market, every shop, reinforcing our sense of belonging as members of this community. The collapse of a national currency (e.g., hyperinflation) destroys not only the economy, but also the people's fundamental trust in the state as the "ultimate endorser" — the disintegration of the entire social fabric.
Sovereignty, with its static, monopolistic violence, provides the ultimate "guarantee" for trust. Currency, with its dynamic, flowing credit, provides the everyday "medium" for trust. The two are interdependent, two sides of the same coin, together forming the most solid "material shell" of the grand narrative of the nation-state. They transform the metaphysical, emotional "national imagination" into a "hardcore reality" that can be touched, calculated, and relied upon in every citizen's daily life. In this reality, every individual living within its territory is granted a brand-new, most fundamental credential of trust.
Citizenship: The Most Basic Credential of Trust for a Modern Person
Once the magnificent trust machine of the nation-state was constructed, a crucial question followed: who is qualified to enter the protection of this machine and enjoy the security, order, and welfare it provides? And through what mechanism does this machine identify its "internal members" from "external others"? The answer is the most core identity category of modern society: citizenship.
In the pre-modern world, a person's identity was plural, embedded, and unequal. He was first the son of a family, a member of a clan, an apprentice of a guild, a vassal of a feudal lord, and finally, perhaps, a distant, vague "subject" of some king. His rights and obligations depended entirely on the specific, particular social network in which he was embedded.
The modern nation-state, through a profound "identity revolution," leveled this complex, hierarchical identity system to the ground and built upon it a new, unified, theoretically equal foundation of identity. Citizenship is a membership credential granted by the state, the most basic and most important "credential of trust" for a modern person.
What does it mean to hold the citizenship of a certain country? It means that between you and that abstract, vast state machinery, a two-way "virtual contract" centered on rights and duties has been established.
From the state's perspective, granting you citizenship means the state makes a series of solemn "trust promises" to you:
- Promise to protect your basic rights: the state promises to use all its sovereign power (army, police, courts) to protect your life, property, and freedom from infringement, whether domestic or foreign. At the core of this is a series of "civil rights" guaranteed by the constitution, such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, and religion, as well as the political rights to vote and stand for election. Your passport is a "state protection letter of commitment," declaring to the world: this bearer is one of "us"; any infringement against him or her will be seen as a challenge to our entire nation.
- Promise to provide basic social welfare: with the rise of the welfare state concept, the state's promise has expanded from negative "protection" to positive "empowerment." The state promises to provide you with a basic, dignified living environment, including public education, medical care, unemployment benefits, and old-age pensions. The state gradually transforms from a simple "night watchman" into a "great parent," and its trust in citizens manifests as a long-term "investment" spanning the entire life cycle.
- Promise to grant you equal legal status: as we discussed earlier, the state promises that before its legal system, you are equal to all other citizens. Your voice, in theory, carries the same legal weight as that of the richest and most powerful person.
From your perspective, accepting this citizenship also means you make a series of corresponding "return promises" to the state:
- Promise loyalty to the state: you promise to take the state — rather than any other organization (such as clan, church, or class) — as your "ultimate political object of loyalty." When the state faces foreign invasion, you have the duty to defend it, even to give your life for it. This "patriotic" loyalty is the core of the emotional dimension of the citizen contract.
- Promise to abide by the state's laws: you promise to obey the laws enacted by the state's legislature and enforced by its judicial and administrative systems. You agree to submit disputes between yourself and others to the state's legal system for adjudication, rather than resorting to private violence or revenge.
- Promise to fulfill civic duties: you promise to provide the necessary resources and legitimacy for the normal operation of the state machinery through taxation, military service (in some countries), voting, and other means.
Citizenship is the personification of this invisible "general social contract" inscribed with rights and duties. It is an assessment system, the ultimate standard monopolized by the state for evaluating "who deserves to be trusted and included within its protection."
This assessment system operates daily through a series of highly standardized "identity technologies" controlled by the state bureaucracy:
Birth registration and household registration system: by recording the birthplace and parents' nationality of every newborn, the state "captures" each person into its identity management network from the very first moment of life. "Jus sanguinis" (right of blood) and "jus soli" (right of soil) constitute the two fundamental principles of citizenship qualification.
ID card, passport, and visa system: these state-issued, standardized, difficult-to-forge documents are the sole credentials for citizens to prove their "legal identity" at home and abroad. They are like "keys of trust," opening countless doors that were once tightly shut to strangers: you can use them to open a bank account, purchase property, board a plane, access public services, and cross borders. "Illegal immigrants" or "stateless persons" without these documents are identified by this system as "untrustworthy viruses" and excluded from almost all formal social life.
Census and social databases: through periodic censuses and increasingly vast electronic databases, the state precisely grasps information about its citizens' numbers, distribution, age structure, education levels, and economic conditions. This "statistical art of governance" allows the state, like a shrewd "shepherd," to macroscopically manage, plan, and regulate its "flock" (population).
Through this complex system of identity technologies, the nation-state successfully transforms a loose, heterogeneous "people" into identifiable, classifiable, and manageable "population." Citizenship becomes the "admission ticket" for a modern person to enter social life, enjoy rights, and gain trust. It replaces the genealogy of blood and the baptismal certificate of the church, becoming the most basic and most indisputable answer to "who I am" in this world of strangers.
The Apex and Crisis of Modern Consensus
The rational skeleton of law, the emotional flesh and blood of nationalism, and the unified "skin" of citizenship — together, these three built the magnificent edifice of "modern consensus." Under the shelter of this edifice, humanity has created unprecedented wealth, knowledge, and power over the past two hundred years. It expanded the scale of trust from tribes and religious communities of tens of thousands to nation-states of hundreds of millions, sparking fierce competition and cooperation around the globe.
This system reached the peak of its power in the mid-20th century. The sovereign state seemed to have become the "ultimate form" of human political organization, the final destination for solving all social problems.
Yet it was at its zenith that the foundations of this edifice began to be eroded by newer, more powerful historical forces. The flow of global capital relentlessly crosses and mocks the boundaries set by sovereign states; the rise of the internet is creating "virtual communities" that transcend national languages and state jurisdiction; and global ecological crises, financial crises, and public health crises repeatedly reveal that no single nation-state can alone confront the challenges that truly concern humanity's collective fate.
"We are the same nation" — this grand narrative that once united hundreds of millions of hearts now appears increasingly narrow and feeble before new, more complex global realities. The certainty provided by law is being dismantled by the accelerating pace of technological change. The equality and protection promised by citizenship appear ever more fragile before vast wealth disparities and global risks.
Modern consensus, the foundation of trust that has supported us for centuries, is emitting the sound of cracking beneath our feet. A new, more diffuse, and more unsettling "postmodern" condition is descending. In that world, the crisis of trust will erupt fully in an unprecedented, bone-deep way. And humanity will be forced, once again, to seek the lost "sacred adhesive" that binds society together.