Belonging can unite strangers, preserve traditions, and give people a reason to defend one another. It can also divide neighbors, harden borders, and turn difference into suspicion. Few political forces are as emotionally powerful as the belief that certain people are “us” while others remain “them.” That distinction shapes elections, immigration policies, international alliances, and wars.
Lance Hoovestal examines this struggle in The Deep Now Project: A Personal Encounter with the Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse, written with Ralph Pettman. Drawing from a life lived across countries and cultures, Hoovestal considers what happens when national identity and global connection begin pulling societies in opposing directions.
Every Country Must First Imagine Its People
A state has borders, laws, institutions, and a government. A nation is something less tangible. It exists when people believe they share a history, identity, homeland, or political purpose.
Governments strengthen this feeling through flags, ceremonies, education, public stories, and national memories. People who may never meet one another begin thinking of themselves as members of the same community. Their shared identity can inspire loyalty and social cooperation.
The difficulty appears when belonging requires an outsider. National identity often becomes stronger when contrasted with people beyond the border. Political leaders can use that division to gather support, especially during periods of fear or uncertainty.
Hoovestal Grew Up With More Than One Identity
Born in Helena, Montana, Hoovestal was raised within the traditions of the American West. Rodeos, horses, country music, boxing, and vast landscapes formed part of his childhood.
His heritage, however, was never limited to one cultural story. His mother, YuVonne “Dee” Hoovestal, belonged to the Gros Ventre Assiniboine Sioux nation. Through her, he inherited a connection to a First Nation whose identity existed long before the modern United States.
Hoovestal could therefore see himself as an American, a Montanan, and a person with Indigenous ancestry. Later travel added another identity. Years spent studying and working abroad led him to consider himself a citizen of the world as well.
These identities did not cancel one another. They demonstrated that belonging can have several layers.
Crossing Borders Changes How Nations Appear
Hoovestal’s family moved to Spain when he was four. As an adult, his education, business career, and research took him through Ireland, Singapore, China, Australia, and other countries.
Living abroad differs from observing another country from a distance. Local customs no longer seem like unusual details. They become the ordinary rules through which people organize work, family, authority, hospitality, and trust.
Such experiences showed Hoovestal that every society considers parts of its own way of life natural. People rarely notice the assumptions behind their national character until they encounter a society built around different ones.
Travel did not make him less American. It made him more conscious of what being American meant and how national identity can coexist with respect for other cultures.
September 11 Made Belonging Feel Urgent
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Hoovestal was working in Houston when a colleague called him into a conference room. There, he watched the World Trade Center burn and collapse.
The attacks produced grief, fear, anger, and a surge of American patriotism. People enlisted in the military, displayed flags, and supported action against those responsible. International sympathy was also widespread.
Al-Qaeda represented a different form of belonging. Its leaders sought unity through a militant religious identity that crossed state borders. Their vision did not depend on citizenship within one country. It relied on loyalty to a global religious cause.
The conflict demonstrated that globalism is not always economic or secular. Faith can also create identities that stretch beyond nations, sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently.
Turkey Shows How Faith and Modernity Coexist
While living in Istanbul, Hoovestal learned from Turkish friends how religious and national identities can occupy the same political space. Turkey had adopted secular government, democratic institutions, and a market economy, yet Islamic traditions remained central to how many citizens understood their society.
Modernization had not erased faith. Nor had participation in international markets removed the desire to preserve a distinct national character.
This example challenges the assumption that globalization will eventually make every country culturally similar. Societies may adopt the same technologies and commercial systems while maintaining very different beliefs about family, morality, history, and public life.
Markets Cross Boundaries That Citizens Still Defend
Economic globalism asks goods, money, services, information, and workers to move across borders with fewer restrictions. Businesses benefit when they can reach new customers, find lower production costs, and recruit labor internationally.
Citizens do not always experience these changes as progress. A factory worker may see employment move overseas. A small farmer may become dependent on distant supply chains. Communities may face pressure on housing, schools, wages, and health services when migration happens faster than local systems can respond.
Criticism of these pressures is sometimes treated as hostility toward foreigners. Hoovestal suggests the deeper conflict often concerns who gains from open borders and who carries the social costs.
Immigration Places Two Moral Claims in Conflict
Migrants may cross borders to escape violence, poverty, persecution, or hopelessness. Their desire for safety and opportunity is deeply human. Receiving societies also possess laws, limited resources, and obligations to existing citizens.
Treating either side as morally irrelevant prevents serious discussion. Compassion without workable policy can create disorder. Enforcement without humanity can turn vulnerable people into political objects.
The question is not simply whether borders should be open or closed. It is how governments can respect human dignity while maintaining laws, public confidence, and social stability.
This balance becomes harder when businesses benefit from inexpensive labor or political groups use migration to inflame fear.
Human Rights Offer Common Ground Without Sameness
Hoovestal considers universal human rights one possible bridge between nationalism and globalism. Rights recognize individuals as morally important regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, sex, or class.
The right to vote is especially important because it gives citizens a peaceful method for accepting, rejecting, or revising government policy. Elections do not eliminate disagreement, but they allow conflict to occur through participation instead of force.
Rights also place limits on national power. A government cannot justify every action by claiming to defend the nation. Citizens, minorities, and outsiders retain moral claims that authorities should respect.
Social Movements Create Loyalties Beyond the Flag
Organizations such as Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Greenpeace, and Oxfam gather people around causes rather than nationality. Their members may live in different countries while sharing commitments to justice, relief, peace, or environmental protection.
These movements demonstrate that global cooperation does not always require a world government. Ordinary people can build international relationships from the ground up.
Though not always unbiased, they can pressure national leaders to address issues that governments would prefer to ignore. When successful, a concern that began at society’s edge can become part of mainstream political discussion.
Identity Must Become a Bridge Rather Than a Weapon
Hoovestal does not expect nationalism or globalism to disappear. Both respond to genuine parts of human life. People need communities close enough to provide belonging and institutions broad enough to address shared dangers.
The challenge is preventing either loyalty from becoming absolute. National pride should not require hatred of outsiders. International cooperation should not demand the loss of local identity or democratic control.
Through The Deep Now Project, Lance Hoovestal asks readers to consider belonging as a layered responsibility. People can care for their country, respect other nations, defend individual rights, and participate in a connected world.
The future may depend less on choosing between national and global identity than on learning how to live honestly with both.
