We have grown used to seeing politics as an arena of contests—where rival ideologies duel, interests are negotiated, and victories are often measured by numbers. It is, we assume, a place of strategies and calculations, of speeches and slogans, of power asserted and resisted. But somewhere along the way, we stopped speaking of one quietly radical idea: friendship.

Not the kind formed over dinner or shared music tastes—but a rarer kind, older and deeper. Friendship, in this richer sense, is the capacity to care without counting. It is the instinct to ask not “What can you do for me?” but “How might we live well, together?” It is rooted not in contracts or convenience, but in trust and the belief that the other person’s life—though unknown, unfamiliar—still matters.
What if politics, at its most human, was not about managing enemies, but about cultivating this kind of friendship?

Should we care strangers? There is a quiet moral revolution contained in the phrase political friendship. It doesn’t require sentimentality or shared biographies. It demands something simpler but harder: to carry the wellbeing of people we’ve never met into the decisions we make. To include them—equally and sincerely—in the circle of concern.

In a world increasingly shaped by profit, polarization, and performance, this is not easy. We are trained—by institutions, by markets, even by fear—to calculate, to measure worth, to define others by their usefulness or their alignment with our side.
But friendship, as a political principle, resists this. It is not transactional. It does not dissolve with disagreement. It does not withhold dignity. It asks us to remain loyal to the idea of others—not because they are like us, or because we agree—but because they are human.

Of course, we cannot speak of political friendship without speaking of power. Friendship cannot flourish in a vacuum. It grows—or withers—in the conditions we build around it. In societies marked by inequality, oppression, or historical violence, friendship is not merely a warm feeling; it is an act of justice. It asks difficult questions: Who sets the terms of recognition? Who is heard? Who belongs?
To practice political friendship in such a world is to commit not only to kindness, but to justice. It is to dismantle hierarchies that keep some people perpetually voiceless. It is to offer not just care, but solidarity.

Now, can friendship be a resistance against dominant power? In a time of increasing polarization—where people are reduced to labels, where politics risks becoming a form of civil war with or without guns—friendship may seem anachronistic. But perhaps it is exactly what we need.
Friendship, politically understood, is resistance against the flattening of others into enemies. It is the refusal to cancel complexity. It insists on dialogue, even in disagreement. It protects us from the cynical temptation to believe that politics is nothing more than domination dressed up in policy.

All politics rests on a slender thread: trust. And trust, like friendship, cannot be legislated into being. It is not built by surveillance or slogans. It grows slowly, in the patient work of showing up, listening, acknowledging harm, and not walking away.
When we lose friendship, we reach for control. More rules, harsher punishments, thicker walls. But none of these teach people to care. Only relationships do. And without care—without even the possibility of it—politics ceases to be a space for peace. It becomes a war managed by paperwork.

Let's think about unity. To speak of political friendship is not to demand agreement or sameness. In fact, the best friendships grow in friction—in the honest tension between difference and loyalty. Friends disagree, but they don’t discard each other. They stay, even when it’s uncomfortable. It is diversity in unity, not mere unity in diversity.

Political friendship, then, is not a mere utopia. It’s a discipline. It asks us to keep negotiating shared life across deep differences. To remain committed to each other even when trust is hard-earned. It invites us to reimagine conflict—not as a threat to be erased, but as a space where dignity can still be protected.

We might also ask: Who gets to be a political friend? Too often, our compassion is shaped by habit—by the boundaries we inherit from nation, race, religion, or ideology. But if friendship is to renew politics, it must unsettle those inherited limits.
It must teach us to ask not only “Who do I care about?”, but “How did I learn not to care about others?” And what might it mean to undo that learning?

I argue that Friendship is probably the Most Political Idea of all. Aristotle once called friendship the highest good of human life—not because it was easy, but because it reminded us that we are not solitary creatures. We are beings made to live with and for one another. Politics, if it is to heal rather than harm, must recover this reality. Not as a sentimental decoration, but as a foundation. Friendship might be the most demanding thing politics could ask of us. But it may also be the most liberating.

Because friendship teaches us that justice is not about fixing people, or sorting them into winners and losers. It is about sharing space, negotiating needs, and choosing dignity—together.

And perhaps that—more than power, more than profit—is the most radical political idea of all.

History is not what happened. History is what we say happened. And in that distinction lies a quiet revolution of thought — one that invites us not to take the past as a monument, but as a living argument. To read history, truly read it, is not to memorize dates and kings, but to listen to voices, silences, and the craft of remembering itself.

We live in a world built on historical claims: of ownership, of victory, of loss. Borders exist because of historical events. Flags fly because of historical memory. And yet, curiously, few of us are taught to read history with the same care we might read a poem — with doubt, curiosity, interpretation, and above all, humility.

The comforting myth is that history is a line — neat, chronological, moving from cavemen to smart cities. But history is more like a mosaic that someone keeps rearranging depending on where they're standing. To read history critically is to reject the idea that there is one true, fixed meaning. The past does not lie still. It shifts each time a new storyteller tells it. History is influenced by constant negotiations. Empires once celebrated are now mourned. Revolutions once condemned are now romanticized. The "truth" of yesterday becomes the controversy of today.
This does not mean we abandon history to chaos or lies. It means we approach it as a practice, not a possession. We ask: Who is telling the story? For whom? What is left out? What is the cost of remembering it this way?

Let us talk about identity. States and nations often speak of themselves as if they were born fully formed. “We have always been this people, speaking this language, living on this land.” But such claims, though poetic, are strategic. They use history to harden the fluidity of culture into a shield or a sword. To read history wisely is to recognize that identity is a story we choose to tell about ourselves — sometimes for survival, sometimes for domination, often both. Cultures evolve, blend, borrow. Heroes are constructed to inspire; villains to warn. No one is purely one thing, ever. This doesn't mean we should condemn taking pride in heritage at all times. It means we should wear it lightly — like a robe, not a cage. We might ask: How have others lived here before us? How might our identity include them, too?

Every history book is "full of absences". The servant in the background of the painting. The woman whose name is forgotten. The child who died before records were kept. The fields, once full, now buried under concrete. The communities erased with no monuments to remember them. Reading history, then, is not only about what is said, but about who is missing. A critical reading listens to the margins. It asks, What didn’t make it into the archive? Whose memories were too inconvenient to preserve? Sometimes, we are the ones forgotten. Other times, we are the ones doing the forgetting.

The devil is in the detail and the power is there. There is a curious detail about many historical texts. They are often written to flatter the powerful. Victories are glorious, laws are wise, and the leaders are brave. But in the "footnotes", it seems not much so. In the economic policies, the logistical decisions, the betrayals dressed as diplomacy, the truth hums quietly. To read history well is to notice where power hides. To recognize how cronyism and elitism dresses up as legacy, how domination claims the language of civilization. Not to breed cynicism, but to nurture discernment. Power rarely introduces itself as power. It arrives wrapped in principle and decorated with tradition. To read history critically is to ask: How did power get here? Whom did it serve? And how does it ask to be remembered?

Now, how do we read it? We might also read history not only to analyze, but to compassionate and to learn. There is something intimate in realizing that people in every century struggled with doubt, heartbreak, greed, beauty, and failure. The philosopher in exile, the teenage soldier, the widowed mother of five — they all lived in the same emotional landscapes we do. History, when read very well, is a mirror of our fragility and strengths. It reminds us that the present is not the culmination of progress, but another moment of becoming. And this humbles us. We may even begin to forgive ourselves and each other. We may do so more easily by knowing that none of us were given clean beginnings.

Reading can be an act of ethical imagination. In the end, to read history critically is not to deny the past, but to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Not as a final word, but as a conversation. Not as an rigid inheritance, but as a responsibility. We do not study history to relive it. We study it to ask what we must now choose, what burdens we carry forward, and what stories we might write differently for those who come after us.

So the next time you open a history book, pause before you dive in. Ask: Whose world is this? What truths were chosen? And how might I, as a reader, do justice not to the facts, but to the human complexity behind them?

The state (usually a nation state) is often imagined as a fixed, bounded, and self-justifying entity as if its authority emerges from some inherent essence, a timeless legitimacy, or a divine mandate. But through a critical lens, such assumptions crumble. The state is not a natural or inevitable structure as it insists. It is a system, constructed over time, contingent on context, shaped by contestation, and maintained by flows of inputs and outputs. It is not what it claims to be, but what it does, and how it is perceived, negotiated, and challenged.

Understanding the state as a system of extraction and distribution allows us to deconstruct its power while demanding accountability. It allows us to look beyond its claims to legality or tradition and ask deeper questions: Who gives to the state? Who benefits from the state? What justifies the exchanges we are asked to accept?

Every state, no matter how democratic or authoritarian, relies on inputs. The resources may be material, symbolic, and emotional. State extracts or receives these  resources from the people and communities within its reach.

• Resources and Taxes: The most visible form of inputs including wealth, land, and labors. They are extracted in the name of development or protection.
  
• Loyalty and Legitimacy: A subtler form of power. People are asked to accept the state's authority, often through rituals, myths, flags, elections, or coercive threats.
• Compliance and Order: The everyday submission to regulations, borders, identification, and bureaucratic routines — often accepted not because they are just, but because resistance is costly.
• Security and Surveillance: People are required to expose themselves to state scrutiny for the promise of protection. This is a trade often made under duress.
  

None of these inputs are morally neutral or naturally owed. They are negotiated claims, often backed by force, fear, or ideological persuasion.

Let's talk about outputs. States justify their existence by pointing to the goods, services, and protections they offer. These are supposed to be the returns for the inputs taken. They include:

• Security: Protection from violence, both external and internal. This is often the state’s strongest claim to legitimacy — the monopoly of force in exchange for peace.
• Infrastructure and Services: Roads, education, health, communication — sometimes delivered efficiently, often unevenly or selectively.
• Legal Recognition: Citizenship, rights, documentation — the tools to participate in formal life.
• Symbolic Unity: A sense of belonging, nationhood, identity — often excluding those who do not fit dominant narratives.

Yet in practice, these outputs are not distributed equally. Entire regions or communities may give inputs without receiving remarkable benefits. Marginalized groups often find themselves systematically excluded — over-policed but under-protected, taxed but under-served, loyal but unrecognized.

This imbalance is the heart of political discontent. When the inputs extracted from people do not translate into dignity, security, rights, or care, the state reveals itself not as a neutral arbiter but as a hierarchical apparatus, serving particular interests while marginalizing others. For the powerful, the state becomes an amplifier of wealth and control. For the vulnerable, it is a gatekeeper, an enforcer, or even an occupier. The asymmetry between input and output is not a design flaw — it is often a reflection of political hierarchies embedded in the state system.

Because the state is a system — and not a rigid essence — it can be contested, reshaped, and resisted. Its inputs can be withheld. Its outputs can be demanded. Its structure can be made more transparent, participatory, and just.

Let us reject the idea that the Nation State is the only possible way. Instead, it asks communities to imagine alternative systems: federations, networks, councils, cooperatives, or more creative ones. The crucial point is the models should make the power more accountable. The input and output are aligned with mutual respect and negotiated legitimacy.

This also means taking seriously the plurality of political heritage. Different peoples may have different roots and various communities might need different relationships to political authority. Uniformity under a centralized nation state may not be the answer. We must design systems of governance that allow local autonomy, cultural dignity, and horizontal coordination, rather than enforcing homogenized rule.

In this way, to see the state as a system is to liberate our imagination. It is to stop worshipping the state and start evaluating it. It is for asking whether it truly serves the people who sustain it. It is to embrace skepticism towards power and to defend the Common Good. The state, in this view, is rather a machine than destiny. It is a system that is powerful, complex, often extractive — but ultimately, built by human hands. And what is built by humans can be rethought, repurposed, or dismantled in pursuit of common goods that honor human dignity and collective agency.

In a fractured world, marked by domination, marginalization, and layers of structural violence, the solidarity of the oppressed is not merely a slogan but a lifeline, a political strategy, and a moral necessity. When those who suffer under systems of power begin to recognize not only their shared wounds but also their shared capacities, solidarity emerges as both resistance and reconstruction. It is a conscious alignment across different struggles, rooted not in sameness, but in mutual recognition of injustice and the will to transcend it.

To be oppressed is not to be passive. Oppression attempts to reduce people into silence, dependency, or fear. But history shows again and again that even in the most degraded conditions, humans resist. What solidarity enables is the amplification of that resistance — not as isolated uprisings, but as interlinked acts of reclaiming dignity, resources, and meaning. This is a process which we cannot avoid as conscious creatures, even when we know that meaning and stories are constructed socially.

Solidarity does not require identical experiences. It requires an ethical commitment to the freedom and dignity of others, even when their context is not your own. The solidarity of the oppressed must be a relationship of political friendship, where each struggle echoes another, forming a network of care, protection, and shared strategic learning.

A solidarity built on rigid essentialist identities is fragile. It can quickly turn inward, suspicious of difference, or defensive about purity. What is needed is solidarity grounded in critical thinking: one that understands identities — class, ethnicity, gender, religion — as strategic, historical, and constructed, but no less meaningful as "truths".

This solidarity must not be about claiming a universal victimhood. It is about recognizing that all forms of oppression are maintained by hierarchical power, and that liberation in one area is intimately tied to the liberation in others. A feminist revolution that ignores colonial or class oppression cannot succeed. An anti-colonial movement that reproduces patriarchy or silences minorities cannot bring justice.

For a critical thinker, power always demands scrutiny. Even in movements for justice, the seeds of domination can take root if not vigilantly checked. That is why solidarity must remain horizontal, dialogical, and pluralistic. No one group or identity actually owns the truth. No leader is above accountability. Solidarity of the oppressed thrives when it builds structures of participation, not veneration.

Yet, strategic unity is vital. Oppressed groups must sometimes speak with a collective voice to negotiate, bargain, or demand rights. This is not to deny their internal diversity, but to confront power with coordinated strength. Strategic essentialism here becomes a political tool — but one always subject to critique from within.

Solidarity of the oppressed is held not by ideology alone, but by relationships: trust built through shared risks, mutual support, and a willingness to learn from each other’s mistakes. It is forged in protest, in underground organizing, in community care, in refusing to be divided by the tools of the powerful — fear, scarcity, suspicion, and envy.

In the face of absurdity, we must hold onto this moral foundation: No one is free until all are free. Not as a poetic ideal, but as a structural reality. Oppression anywhere reinforces the system of oppression everywhere. The long-term survival of any struggle depends on cultivating a culture of solidarity — across borders, identities, and generations.

In the face of rising authoritarianism, extractive capitalism, nationalist populism, and digital surveillance, the oppressed cannot afford to remain fragmented. Neither can they afford shallow calls for unity that erase real grievances. We must not stop just by hashtags or speeches. What we need is a deep, critical, principled solidarity— grounded in shared commitments to dignity, justice, autonomy, and collective flourishing.

This is the solidarity that builds movements, rebuilds broken societies and creates the conditions for new ways of living. It is not charity, nor pity. It is mutual obligation — and mutual liberation.

There is a quiet fiction that many modern societies live by: that the nation state is the supreme guardian of order, the necessary container of human life, the final arbiter of justice. Law, under this logic, becomes sacred; and power, when institutionalized, becomes natural. But this fiction unravels when examined through a more grounded lens. It is revealed that what actually sustains human beings is not the machinery of the state, but the meaning-making depth of society.

Let's talk about what we mean by the word "culture" first.

Anthropological philosophy, exemplified by Clifford Geertz, paints culture as a dense web of shared meanings and symbols. Understanding a culture, therefore, demands a deep dive into the intricate interpretations that its members weave into their practices and beliefs. For Marxists, culture is a superstructural element, ultimately determined by the underlying economic base. It serves to perpetuate the dominant ideology and maintain existing social hierarchies. Critical theorists, particularly those of the Frankfurt School, focus on the manipulative potential of mass culture in capitalist societies, arguing that it homogenizes thought and suppresses genuine human experience.

Poststructuralist and postmodernist thinkers like Foucault and Lyotard offer a more fragmented and fluid understanding. Power operates through cultural discourses, and meaning is not singular but multiple, varying across perspectives and contexts. Pragmatism, with thinkers like John Dewey, takes a more functional approach.

For Williams, it is the word “culture” that brings together and helps him understand the transitions in the other key words. Culture, in other words, is the filter or lens through which art, industry, class and democracy must be understood.

Here in this piece, I refer culture as the following. Culture is a dynamic and evolving system of socially constructed meanings, practices, and symbols shared diversely by a group. It's not a fixed entity but a pragmatic tool for social organization, communication, and problem-solving. While internally diverse and fluid, these shared frameworks have real-world consequences in shaping behavior, fostering collective identity, and enabling strategic action like safety, recognition and collective agency.

To be human is to grow into a world of stories, gestures, rhythms, and customs—not through edicts and decrees, but through the intimate texture of culture. Culture is not merely an accessory to life; it is life’s first teacher. Before we speak the language of politics, we inherit the language of the people around us. Culture is our first skin, our first logic, our first way of seeing the world.

And yet, culture is not fixed. It is not an essential container, nor a cage. It breathes. It adapts. It folds in on itself and opens outward. A critical thinker view of culture practically allows us to embrace its presence without worshipping its permanence. It teaches us that cultural belonging does not mean surrendering to unchangeable traditions, but participating in a dynamic, communal project—one that can evolve, resist, and reimagine.

But while culture is formative, the state too often pretends to be foundational. It demands obedience through force, cloaked in legality. Where culture persuades and nurtures, the state compels and punishes. It may offer security, but too often at the cost of consent. And in its quest for uniformity, the state suppresses the very cultural plurality it claims to protect.

This is where the problem begins. When the state elevates itself as the primary authority over life, it marginalizes the more organic, decentralized, and often more ethical sources of social order: families, languages, neighborhoods, rituals, and the everyday ethics of co-existence. Law becomes abstracted from life. Justice becomes a bureaucracy. And citizens are reduced to subjects of enforcement, rather than participants in community.

Cultural ascendancy over politics in this context is not about replacing the state with ethnic supremacy or romanticized tradition. It is about re-centering the sources of meaning, identity, and moral guidance within communities—allowing people to live through the richness of shared values rather than the imposition of distant commands. It means recognizing that human beings thrive not under centralized control, but within plural, evolving cultural spaces that nourish both autonomy and belonging.

This does not mean we should do away with all forms of coordination or collective protection. But it means we must be deeply skeptical of concentrated power, especially when it becomes impersonal, unresponsive, and coercive. The state should not be a god. It should be a tool—limited, revisable, and accountable to the moral ecology of the people it claims to serve.

A good society does not demand uniformity; it enables dialogue. It does not enforce order through fear, but cultivates harmony through mutual recognition. And this is the promise of cultural ascendancy: a vision where communities are not passive recipients of policy but active curators of their own values, stories, and paths of development.

Of course, this path is not without danger. Culture can be weaponized. It can be used to exclude, to fossilize, to dominate. That is why we need strategic essentialism: the mindful, conscious use of cultural identity not as destiny, but as a provisional tool of resistance and solidarity. And that is why we also need cultural humility—an openness to re-interpret, to critique, to evolve.

In this light, our task is not to abolish all institutions, but to reimagine them. Institutions should not be monoliths towering above culture, but vessels formed within it—flexible, plural, and shaped by those they touch. The state, if it must exist, must learn to become smaller than the cultures it serves.

Let us then refuse the false choice between chaos and command. Let us build a world where law listens before it dictates, where power is always checked by participation, and where the true source of social legitimacy is not the state’s monopoly on violence, but the community’s capacity for meaning, care, and deliberation.

Culture, in this vision, becomes not a static relic but a living, evolving commons. A space where ethics are nurtured, where identity is shaped, and where freedom is understood not as atomized independence but as the shared right to co-create the terms of our life together.
This is not utopia. It is a politics of presence—where power is always in question, and culture is always in motion.

We often think of hierarchy as either something we must accept or something we must fight. But the truth is less dramatic. Hierarchies are not carved into the nature of things. They don’t fall from the sky or rise up from the earth. They are made by people, for reasons that often seem sensible at the time: to bring order, to divide work, to avoid chaos. Of course, they may sometimes be created by of certain people for certain tasks resulting inclusions and exclusions.

To think clearly in a world like ours is to grow comfortable with the idea that many things we treat as permanent are, in fact, temporary. Hierarchies included. They are not natural laws but human decisions, built on customs, symbols, habits, and shared expectations. Some peoples need to construct them for their struggles. And if we built them, we can question them too—not always to destroy, but to understand, to improve, and sometimes to let go. They may be "tools", but not "truths".

Being skeptical of hierarchy doesn’t mean we must rebel against every system. It means we develop a calm and honest curiosity. We ask: What is this structure doing? Who is it helping? Who is being left out?

Sometimes, hierarchies help. They offer clarity and organization in complex situations. But they can also become rigid. Titles can replace understanding. Traditions can be mistaken for truth. And when that happens, a gentle kind of questioning becomes necessary. We might ask: What story is this hierarchy telling us? Who gets to speak and be heard? Who is invisible in this arrangement?

A thoughtful skeptic doesn’t blindly say all hierarchies are good or bad. Nor do they rush to replace one system with another, equally fixed. Instead, they stay close to the messiness of human life. They understand that power is always shifting, always partial, and always needs to be examined with care. This kind of questioning is not a political slogan or a moral rulebook. It is a habit of attention. A way of noticing when authority starts to feel untouchable, when confidence turns into arrogance, or when leadership forgets to serve.

In this way, skepticism is not chaos. It is a form of care. A way of protecting the complexity of human experience from being flattened into one single version of the truth. It reminds us that good leadership listens. That rules are only as good as the dignity they preserve. Still, we do not need to despair. Power doesn’t have to mean control when properly used. Structures don’t have to be prisons all the times. With reflection and effort, we can shape more open and honest systems—ones that are clear rather than confusing, flexible rather than frozen.

To question hierarchies is to demand accountable flexibility. To question hierarchies is to improve structures that serve evolving needs in designing systems where power is earned through ongoing consent, not inherited as natural law. To question a hierarchy is to show that we care. It is to want something better for everyone, not just those at the top. And it creates space for what might be the most generous kind of relationship: political friendship. Political friendship is built on mutual respect, shared purpose, and room for disagreement. We live in society for our survival, safety and growth. Thus, we must care.

The healthiest societies are not those without leadership, but those where leadership is transparent, accountable, and responsive to real human needs. In these places, power isn’t inherited—it’s earned, again and again, through trust, attentiveness, and fairness. When the old ways stop working and new ones are still forming, it’s tempting to reach for certainty with a quick fix. But perhaps the better path is to listen a little more and ask the quieter but braver questions.

Question everything. Critique hierarchy with care. Build bridges.

Imagine a home. In this home, the rooms are different. One is painted with stories of mountain spirits, another echoes songs from the coast. Some rooms burn incense, others cook with turmeric. The people in these rooms are family, but not the same. They don’t always agree. Sometimes, they fight. But there’s one thing they do agree on: this house should not belong to just one of them. It should belong to all of them.

That, at its heart, is the spirit of federalism. Or at least, it should be.
But let’s slow down. What is federalism—not as a textbook definition, but as a living political idea?

Federalism is NOT a Map. It’s a Conversation. Many people in countries like Myanmar talk about federalism as if it’s a kind of jigsaw puzzle. How many states? How should we draw the lines? Who gets what resources? These are important questions, but they are not foundational questions. They ask how federalism works, not why it exists.

From my point of view, federalism is not about fixed destination or ancient divisions. It is not about drawing borders around "pure" ethnic groups or enforcing neat, eternal truths about who belongs where. That’s essentialist thinking—imagining that there are timeless, unchanging groups with permanent entitlements. But human groups are not static. Cultures mix. Languages evolve. Power shifts. What we call “ethnic identity” is often a strategy—sometimes for survival, sometimes for resistance, often for recognition.

Federalism, then, must be a tool, not a truth. A flexible structure, not a sacred formula. A conversation, not a command.

Let’s return to the house. Imagine one room insisting that its furniture, music, and customs are best—and demand the others to just copy them. That’s not harmony; that’s domination. For a people, it’s colonization.

Let me invites you to ask: Whose values are being universalized? When a majority claims neutrality, they often hide power. When one cultural group is called “national” and others with similar characteristics are called “ethnic tribes,” the language itself creates hierarchy. And that is the problem with many centralized states—especially those built through conquest or colonization.

Federalism matters not because people are essentially different, but because people have historically been treated differently. The choice is strategic. The point is not that communities must govern themselves in isolation, but that they should have the right to do so—especially after generations of being told they could not. Besides, it is the original spirit of international order that every people must have the right to self-determination, isn't it?

So, federalism is not just administrative—it’s historical. It is an invitation to heal from forced assimilation, cultural erasure, and imposed uniformity. It is a chance to say: “We are different, and that’s okay. But we still choose to share a future.”

Let us draw our attention to a country like Myanmar, where different internal nations—yes, nations, not just ethnic groups—exist, the most just path forward is not one single mold for all. It is a plural mold, one that allows people to shape their political future while still being part of a shared country. We must respect their differences in political heritage.

This is what multinational federalism offers. Not one identity, but many. Not one center, but many centers working in coordination. It resists the pressure to blend everyone into one "nation-state mythology". It instead offers a framework of co-existence, with room for autonomy, heritage, and solidarity.

Some may ask: “But won’t this break us apart?”
Indigenous peoples will reply: “Pretending sameness has already broken you.”

The real strength of a country lies not in how similar its people are, but in how well it manages their differences with justice and dignity.

Let me also reflect a few points on what Federalism Is NOT.

• It’s not just decentralization.
• It’s not about giving power from above (or below so to say).
• It’s not a technical fix to appease rebels.
• It’s not about freezing identities into rigid boxes.
• It’s not about carving up the land for political games.

Federalism is not something “granted” by a central authority—it is negotiated by peoples who refuse to be "ruled" without consent. It is not a gift. It is a contract.

Of course, federalism is hard. There are risks. Power struggles don’t vanish just because we redraw boundaries. And yes, identities can become rigid, competitive, even exclusionary. That’s why we need vigilance—to keep asking: Are we using federalism to empower people, or to entrench new forms of domination? We must be watch out for the signals if our new system is entrenching the different forms of inequality.

We must remember that identities are constructed. That doesn’t make them fake. It is like what Buddhists call "Sammuti Sacca"- conventional  realities. These identities are political. So we, for building a peaceful society, must build systems that treat them with care, not with negligence. We must design a future that sees federalism not as a final answer nor product of rigid essences, but a living pragmatic strategy for solving the crisis of shared dignity at this point.

In a intellectually free world, federalism is less about fixed truths and more about shared agreements. Less about who you are and more about how you want to live together. It exists because the alternative (aka forced assimilation for sameness) is violence in slow motion. Federalism is a strategic compromise. It is not necessarily a recognition of innate differences but a pragmatic response to historical oppression. So let us teach the next generation not to ask, “Who is the real owner of this land?” but instead, “How can we all be stewards of this future?” Let us move away from fear of difference and toward a politics of negotiated coexistence.

The type of federalism Myanmar need is, thus, in some aspect, the quiet courage to live with many truths in negotiation, in one fragile, shared world.

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Human society has always been a project of value-making. From the earliest rituals around fire to the algorithmic regulation of digital life, we have never lived outside of meaning. We construct it, negotiate it, and fight over it. Meaning is not optional; it is inevitable. In this sense, society is a system of negotiated meanings that give rise to moral orders, identities, roles, and ultimately, hierarchies.

But this meaning-making comes with consequences. As soon as a society begins to name values—what is sacred, who is respectable, which labor is dignified—it also begins to create gradients of worth. Hierarchies originally arise not from evil intent, but from the natural drive to coordinate, organize, and sustain collective life. However, once a hierarchy is formed, power becomes sedimented. The inevitable temptation follows: to exploit, to preserve advantage, and to rationalize that advantage as natural, deserved, or even divine.

In ancient societies, hierarchy was often justified cosmologically. Kings ruled by divine right, castes by spiritual purity, and men by virtue of "rational superiority." These essentialist claims were narratives, not facts. But they were effective. They rooted oppression in the soil of myth and transmitted it through generations as tradition.

Oppression, in this classical form, was visible. It was formal, brutal, and often physical. People were chained, silenced, exiled, enslaved. Social orders made no attempt to hide domination; they justified it.

In modern societies, however, this mode of domination has undergone a transformation. Elite may not oppress through ugly violence, but they seduce.

Where once power ruled through visible chains, today it operates through invisible scripts. We are not beaten into submission—we are persuaded into desire. The modern citizen is not told “you must serve,” but rather, “you must succeed.” The chains are now internal, in the form of self-optimization, brand-building, and emotional labor. Exploitation wears the perfume of freedom.

Having said that, it is also important to note that oppression is not completely gone. Not all societies are linearly moving from brutality to seduction. Myanmar is one of these examples of violent oppression. The transformation is not necessarily a complete replacement but rather a layering of control mechanisms, where subtle "seduction" often coexists with more traditional forms of domination, sometimes even reinforcing them. Burmanization is still exist as coerced assimilation of indigenous people but it is more and more legitimized by the power of seduction for instance. Our focus here, however, is the manufacturing of desires, fabrication of consent and internalization of oppression.

We know it is bad to be exploited by stimulating anger, sadness, guilt or fear. However, we don't necessarily feel bad for being exploited by stimulating "happiness" or "pleasures". The pursuit of Dopamine is affecting everyone. After all, these all emotions are not good, not bad or not neutral. They are natural. We should not be taken advantage of them, should we?

Let us look at marketing or a fashion trend. It is not simply a neutral economic act; it is an act of desire-production. It exploits not just values or labor but attention, affection, identity, and aspiration. Capitalism itself is a value creation mechanism that created our "progress" but hierarchy created by unlimited accumulation of non-expiring wealth (or money) can be used in many ways to go beyond "just personal freedom". People may be more happy and more miserable at the same time. As Amitai Etzioni once asked: "Is happiness the wrong metric?"

In a post-industrial society, we are not just workers—we are consumers, influencers, dreamers, and brands. We are not commanded to obey; we are seduced to participate. Social media, advertising, careerism, and romantic ideals all converge to create a logic of self-exploitation. We curate our suffering for visibility. We grind not because we are told to, but because we believe we must. This is the genius of seduction—it does not oppose your will; it co-opts it.

In classical oppression, there were rulers and the ruled. Today, the system is more diffused. As Byung-Chul Han puts it “exploit themselves in the belief that they are realizing themselves.”

We have become our own taskmasters. The boundary between the external power and the internal “self” is blurred, if not broken. You no longer need to be silenced; you voluntarily curate your expression. You no longer need to be marginalized; you can be commodified. You no longer need to be denied freedom; you can be sold the fantasy of it.

This form of seduction is not benign. It erodes emotional freedom and disorients agency. When the rules are invisible, you cannot rebel against them. When the master speaks in the voice of your dreams, you cannot disobey. In this world, “freedom” becomes a strategy of control.

To be emotionally free is not merely to escape physical violence but to discern the subtle pressures that shape your desires. Human agency in such a context is not about declaring independence from society because no such exit exists within the realm of narrative animals. It is about navigating the social field with strategic awareness, resisting seduction where it erodes agency and reshaping meaning without being trapped by it. It is not to renounce worldly desires and become a monk. It is about intellectual independence.

Every society needs meaning and to create values. But meaning breeds order, and order not only breeds security, it also breeds power. Power itself can be a force of progress and provide foundations of human agency itself but its hierarchy creates exclusions. Let us have skepticism and critical awareness towards hierarchies. Let us first check against oppression, then against seduction. The challenge of emotional freedom and human agency, then, is not to destroy society but to unmask its scripts, to refuse essentialized hierarchies, and to live with strategic awareness. Individuals can cultivate critical awareness, self-reflection, and engagement with diverse perspectives. Practices like critical media literacy and conscious consumption can help individuals identify and resist the temptations so that we don't loose our focus on creating a society of freedom, political friendship with our fellow humans and the construction of Common Good.

Society will always attempt to name what is right, beautiful, worthy, and desirable. But we do not have to blindly accept those names. We can reclaim our right to redefine them. In that act of redefinition—not as a final truth but as a living negotiation—emotional freedom becomes possible again.

Many interpretations of "democracy" exist today, and its practical challenges are often overlooked. Instead of romanticizing the word "democracy" and relying solely on the outcome of votes, imagine a political system where thoughtful dialogue and debate among community members drive decisions. This is the core of deliberative democracy. Let's imagine a model that prioritizes collective reasoning and informed consent over simple majority rule. Let us expand our democracy beyond voting to include debates, dialogues and discussions among the people.

When citizens gather as equals to exchange reasons, weigh evidence and navigate disagreement, they engage in something profoundly different from mere preference aggregation. This deliberation process must honors the complexity of public issues by cultivating spaces where diverse perspectives can be articulated, challenged, and refined.

Think of Rousseau's concept of the General Will. Rousseau distinguished between the mere "will of all"—the sum of individual preferences—and the General Will that emerges when citizens deliberate with the common good in mind. "The General Will alone," Rousseau argued, "can direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted." In this interpretation, deliberative democracy might be understood as offering practical mechanisms for discovering this elusive General Will through structured, inclusive dialogue.

Similarly, John Rawls argued that "public reason" provides theoretical underpinning for deliberative approaches. Rawls envisioned citizens engaging in public dialogue by offering reasons that others could reasonably accept, rather than simply advancing claims grounded in their particular comprehensive doctrines. His famous "veil of ignorance" thought experiment—asking us to design principles of justice without knowing our future social position—represents a deliberative ideal that pushes beyond narrow self-interest toward more impartial reasoning.

Our contemporary democratic systems, however, suffer from a troubling short-sightedness. Polarizing electoral mechanisms, with their predictable cycles and emphasis on immediate results, systematically privilege short-term thinking for many people. This "democratic myopia" often renders our governance structures peculiarly flawed to address long-horizon challenges like climate change or intergenerational justice. The majoritarianism also left out the consent of the lost. The political discourses polarize the people and create a soft war within.

When elected officials operate with one focus perpetually on the next election, how can they adequately represent those whose voices remain unheard. Future generations, distant populations, or even non-human species affected by our decisions are left out as well. Deliberative processes offer a potential remedy by creating spaces where participants can temporarily step back from immediate interests to consider more expansive timeframes and communities.

The process of deliberation typically unfolds through several interconnected phases. Communities first identify and frame the issues warranting collective attention—a process that itself benefits from inclusive participation. Information sharing follows, drawing on diverse knowledge sources from expert testimony to lived experience. The heart of the process lies in the ensuing discussion, where participants articulate perspectives, challenge assumptions, and collectively reason toward decisions that reflect their deepened understanding.

Consider how this may play out in citizens' assemblies, where random community members convene over extended periods to deliberate on complex issues. In Ireland, a citizens' assembly helped break decades of political deadlock on abortion rights by creating space for nuanced discussion outside the polarized rhetoric of electoral politics. The recommendations were later endorsed by national referendum. It may be seen as a promising example of how deliberative forums can sometimes navigate contentious terrain more successfully than traditional political institutions. There are other examples, but I think that we got the point.

The deliberative approach fundamentally reimagines citizens' role in governance. Rather than occasional voters or passive recipients of policy, community members become active co-creators of public decisions. This transformation asks more of citizens—requiring time, engagement, and openness to changing views—but also offers more: a deeper form of political agency and connection to one's community.

This vision of active citizenship recalls Rousseau's assertion that freedom comes not from the absence of constraint but from living under laws one has helped author. "The people being subject to the laws," he wrote, "ought to be their author: the conditions of society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it." Deliberative processes embody this principle by making citizens genuine authors of collective decisions, not merely their subjects.

We would be remiss, however, to present deliberative democracy as a panacea without acknowledging its considerable challenges. The deliberative struggle of equal participation collides with stubborn realities of power imbalance, resource constraints, and social inequality. Even in carefully designed forums, certain voices may dominate while others remain marginalized, reproducing rather than remedying existing power disparities.

Reaching meaningful consensus presents another formidable challenge. As societies grow more diverse in values and worldviews, finding common ground becomes increasingly difficult. Here, Rawls's notion of "overlapping consensus" offers a promising direction—suggesting that citizens with different comprehensive doctrines might nonetheless converge on political principles they can affirm for different reasons.

The resource-intensive nature of deliberation raises questions of scale and sustainability. How might deliberative approaches, which typically flourish in smaller settings, address issues requiring national or global coordination? Digital technologies offer intriguing possibilities for expanding deliberative reach, though they bring their own complications regarding access, authenticity, and the quality of exchange.

Despite these challenges, deliberative democracy offers something our political systems desperately need. I mean spaces for collective reflection amidst the noise of modern politics. By reasoned decision-making and creating structured opportunities for listening and learning, deliberative processes can help restore the declining capacity to reason together about our common future. Deliberative democracy doesn't claim perfect outcomes or uncontested truths. Rather, it suggests that decisions improved through inclusive dialogue, while still fallible, carry a legitimacy and wisdom that undeliberated decisions typically lack.

But there is a nuance. Think of deliberation as a lively space where we find ways to cooperate even with different opinions. It is not a place of sermons or producing truths. We don't need everyone to become the same; it's about different groups strategically agreeing on shared goals and ways to communicate so we can all move forward without losing our unique aspirations and our identities. This approach, although seeking to gather people as equals, must also recognize that we are all different and that power isn't always equal. So, when we discuss, we should always ask ourselves the following questions. Who is really being heard? How are we making decisions? And are we making things fairer for everyone? Whom was left out? Deliberative democracy must actively disrupt dominance e.g. active inclusion of marginalized voices. Otherwise, it risks replicating the hierarchies it seeks to replace. Only by being this thoughtful can talking things out help us create a community that respects everyone's differences and is fairer for all.

Might deliberative approaches offer not just a theoretical ideal but a practical necessity? Perhaps the path toward more responsive governance lies not in abandoning our democratic commitments but in reimagining how those commitments are realized through creating spaces where citizens can practice the art of thinking together about the world they share, apply their agency and promise together to create.

In the wake of the devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck last week, Myanmar faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The disaster has claimed over 3000 lives and injured thousands more, with the death toll expected to rise as rescue operations continue. The disaster's impact extended even to nearby countries like Thailand.

The earthquake majorly hit the Mandalay and Sagaing Regions and nearby areas where people are already tragically struggling with the ongoing conflict. For months, people there have been caught in the crossfire and bombardments. This existing turmoil is now making it incredibly difficult to get help to the people who need it most. Imagine being injured or losing your home, and then facing even more obstacles to getting food, water, or medical attention.

Just when things couldn't seem any worse, there are horrifying situations that the military has continued launching airstrikes in the very areas hit by the earthquake. Imagine the fear and despair of survivors, already repeatedly traumatized and vulnerable, as they hear the sound of more explosions. Human rights groups are rightly condemning these actions, pleading for an immediate stop to the violence so that aid can finally reach those who are suffering. But who can actually hold the junta military accountable?

Under intense pressure from around the world, the military regime has announced a temporary ceasefire, saying it's to allow for recovery efforts. But many are understandably skeptical. How can people trust this promise when there are still reports of military attacks? They are obstructing aid groups. They are even documenting young men who are helping on the ground, so that they can conscript these good people later.

Right now, people are desperate for the most basic things: clean water to drink, food to eat, a safe place to sleep, and urgent medical care. Aid organizations on the ground are painting a grim picture of widespread destruction and a healthcare system on the brink of collapse, with hospitals overwhelmed and supplies running out.

Time is running out. The monsoon season is just around the corner, threatening to bring even more hardship. If we don't act quickly and work together, the combined impact of this terrible earthquake and the ongoing conflict will lead to even more lives lost and unimaginable suffering for the people of Myanmar.

As the world watches, we dare ask this. Who can even take a responsibility to step in and make sure help reaches those in desperate need, without any barriers?

The Myanmar military is cruel, unaccountable and not serving the people at all. They must go anyway.