Power is the ultimate inauthenticity. It obscures the truth of our common human experience: that we are all equally without essence, that we are all therefore equal.

It is a nerve-racking thing to be nothing, to be free, to be responsible for one’s own becoming at each and every moment. It is to be plunged into anxiety, into angst, to suffer the terror of one who stands at the edge of a lifelong precipice. There are no anchors now, no ropes, no gravity to keep us grounded; things fall apart in the stratosphere.

Those who are most afraid of their own freedom are the ones most desperate to take it from others.

The border of a nationality does not exist ‘in-itself’ in the same way that, say, a mountain, a shell or the moon exists. The border of a nationality is a condition that exists, if it can be said to exist at all, in the mind of the one who passively accepts it as existing. It is a ready-cut cloth, a costume, a fabricated flag, which is used to cover our nothingness.

Nationalism is ultimately unethical, not merely because it is an inauthentic posture, but because it imposes limitations on the authenticity of others.