Ladies and Gentlemen,

The question of identity always can be somewhat frightful, because it either documents belatedness or the wish for difference. And mostly both at the same time.

Whoever asks the question happens to be satisfied with his " Self" or he is afraid he could lose it. He becomes emotional, talks in a militant way and always quite prophetically. He has to claim the positive for himself and his people. Identity is ideological. It actually means identification with a new self-image. Even I cannot totally overlook this fact. Though I promise you to be as little prophetic as possible, since I want to talk about the sober matter of integration.

At first though, I will talk about the fear for a self-image.

A short while ago, a politician stated regarding Europe and worrying about Czech identity: We do not want to be dissolved there like a piece of sugar in a coffeepot. I sighed: Beware, then they in Europe would know that we are sweet.

There has always been the fear of novelty, the fear one can loosen by expanding hearts and brains. One can also strengthen it with ambivalent sayings: White versus black, sweet versus bitter, solid versus liquid, just as our sick shopping mall metaphors are doing.

In the knowledge of lack of sweetness, our identity founders insist on the bitterness as if it were a kind of gift; and the sources of identity are indeed quite bitter. Beginning with the personal ones and ending with the collective identities. The "ego" or "I" of nations is a delicate commodity. On the marketplace of today's world village it can hardly, maybe never be sold.

If I understand our topic correctly, we are talking about identities within the larger concept of identification, for what else can integration be other than to find a common denominator useful to all?

That is not an easy task in the hunting grounds of self-determination. After all, the European "I" is not a national concern, as indeed the classical making of a "We" confusion would be. Rather, it can be described as being opposed to the contemporary identity concept.

The usual element of it remains to be a binding memory. We are talking about a kind of family album of the group, in verse. The kind events are taken note of, not the unkind ones. The victims are taken note of, not the victimizers. What caused pain, challenges correction. Correction is to be written in old script so that the mistakes may be hushed up, to create a historical balance, which thereby begets its masquerade. The so-called victories can then be compared to saws…poised at the branches of the growing matter. Therefore, our history is not a beauty, but a wrinkled witch with warts; it loathes mirrors and princes of wisdom.

Identities are thus identifications in process - in need of care and memory therapy. Consequently, forgetting becomes as life bearing as remembering. The memory concepts of our grandparents are in search of grandchildren. You may find them like the Czechs and the Slovaks by separation or like Serbo-Croatian as a repetitive culprit.

Our family albums are stuffed with contrasting pictures. Should a European identity for this reason start with forgetting? - or with a civilized remembering?

We realize the models of kindness are fragile, at least in the formative stage. It is simpler to be ambivalent in the name of one's own concerns, in order to eradicate reductional mono-identities as saviors of the world.

We Europeans practiced this kind of cooperative mode only after two catastrophes.

In those days we knew what we were striving for and towards. Now we do not even know who is striving. The space of integration is split in many ways, it has economic zones-in unequal efficiency, namely the zones of traditional closeness and those of historical envy. There are military alliances in reconstruction and destruction, three main groups of ethnicity, with many who see themselves as "being in-between" and as "wanting to join"-like the Basques and the Bulgarians.

And religions! Three Christian ones (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox) and one Islamic, the latter almost excluded in our bipolar era, though it is making itself known again with new ambivalence.

You see, integration doesn't have it easy with us, because it has to discover what is integrative-and it has to be different than that which we have practiced until recently. I come from a part of Europe that only recently had given up integrative tendencies. Maybe that helps me now to talk about concepts to be avoided. The breakup of communism was also the breakdown of the intended union. It wanted to present the positive as an acknowledged goal of history. Slightly masked in scholarly pursuits, it represented it as goods distributed in a fair manner within the nomenclature of experts. It presented itself as materialistic and economical, though transforming everything into the material of power. It pretended to have a plan to be followed, but this plan was self-serving and turned out to be a woodworm in a furniture depot, devouring everything without the chance for change.

This union praised itself in its own hymn as follows: "Created for the indestructible union of the free republics of Russia, the Great, in eternal glory."

We remember: We were faced with a union-destructible, with its republics certainly not free-and the eternally glorious Russia…also small. It sings this song again but melody and text supposedly are changed.

However, the formulations are important for our purposes for they illuminate the classical method of us Europeans to form a union that is unilateral, imperially heroic, and carried by a historical task, which has to master a self-elected nation.

All ethnicities of our continent, mostly the larger ones, applied this method. All of them were there when the noblest idea of our continent, that of human rights, was despoiled. It mutated into the term nation, of the ethnic or of the working people. First it was formed a la Napoleon, then a la Bismarck and Wilhelm, then a la Lenin-Stalin, and finally a la Schickelgruber. Only sixty years ago, we still abolished human rights throughout the continent We insisted on rituals of exclusion. Identity for us was a quarrel for eternal and immeasurable supremacy, "a ritual for the future."

After that we were able, in a westward move, to concentrate on the marketplace of the present time, to concentrate on the measurable, on the comparable-thus on a Europe for all Europeans. This first non-tribal-national-life concept did not count anymore on the grace of the bearers of real existence. It tabled the question of our daily struggles into the private sphere and did not call itself "EUangelion" but simply and modestly EU. Its success was astonishing-Europe finally integrated.

Only as losers the Europeans became winners. Only as non-heroics and as multilateral players did they become one. Only the defiance of history made them into a true story. They even managed to break down the remaining walls of their zoo-like paradises. This end of bipolar ambivalence shows also paradoxical features like something of a point zero typical for the calm before the storm.

The expansion integrates also those who do not always accept the European integration, let alone like it. However odd this may seem outwardly, inside within the heads it is quite monstrous. They talk about the small nations, which could be devoured by the larger ones as if the EU were cannibalistic, and fond of the tasty little lap dogs.

The expansion also misguides those that had practiced already well-but it makes them feel more important again. They practice "grandezza" and annoy all the others, thereby the maxim, which brought so much creativity has been called into question: Every one of us happens to be small in a different way. We are listening again to prophetic paroles and forget slowly that our new present time also acts technologically, and one challenge means to decide which use these new discoveries have. This challenge may be the most radical since the era of the pyramids.

We cannot overlook the danger of a futuristic utopia which-

a) deals in archaic reduction or
b) succumbs to the total feasibility of existing things.

Euphoria and scenarios of horror have encountered each other so closely that we have to ask ourselves for the first time, the totally technical radical question what actually is man?

As quickly as possible the EU should now clarify its situation. The "points zero" are also "vantage points". If that were true, it would mean that the typical formula of self search would have to be changed from "we are what we are" to "we are not what we are."

That may sound absurd, but only if we look for usual self-identifications and not for evolutionary ones. Yet, maybe therein lies the true source of integration, in finding and binding all life granting differences.

A short while ago, in Vienna, the puzzle of a stable transfer of cell information was discovered in genetics-namely as chains, which guarantee specialization. We may say that we are talking here of a kind of packaging to be found already in our vast cosmic space. Thus we could understand identity as a clever knot in a solid network. Identity being integral and intelligent.

However, can we Europeans be packaged?

Well, certainly not with the customary methods. Our identity has to be grasped-partially and totally-as an acknowledged and thought through complexity.

What "should be" in this exercise could be defined as a minute description of "what we have" - that means to the contrary of the usual concept. In practical terms that may suggest a condition which summarizes the legal credit and makes it work. Inclusiveness as the main technique of political participation.

Since we have no nation called "Europeans", we may use all national differentiation as a form of system opening dynamics. Thereby our identity would be a political rather than a dictatorial achievement. A union without a nation as the main term cannot be a-national or anti-national, rather it is rational.

These are not dry concepts such as a late harvest of enlightenment or similar movements. This would mean to overlook the fact that reason taken as a whole, uses emotions for its decisions, in the end. The intuition for the right decision also goes for all similar complex questions. The skeptics may ask immediately what would happen to national interests: They are decisive for the model as well. The EU follows a ranking order in a different way. So what, one is inclined to ask. First of all, that would not constitute a feudal pecking order but a choreography without assigned partners with a chance to perform a waltz comparatively. Difference and preference are not only related etymologically. We cannot count in advance on a divine preference for our identity for any of us, therefore differences grow in a puzzle that can be solved and the design of which continues and allows variables, so that the large unity stays in context.

Unity-thus union, if you will-which counters though the classical identity trap. We are reminded of the clever Frenchman with his theory that each "Self" has a tendency to want the same, that the "Idem" becomes a "Totum" and acts in a totalitarian way. How true.

Totalitarian regimes act out identity. Language as tautology (thus "I am I" and "We are we"). Yet our language must not become tautological. It has to be always ready for a new metaphor.

We have to advance-to polyglotism! And there we arrive at yet another component of our "self." It cannot be imagined without an EU-educational system-a kind of international university with three languages (the language of the country, the language of a neighboring country and a generally accepted main language of communication). Only in that way can we withstand the international desperanto of our populists.

What about the economy? We already have the EURO. In what we have already achieved, we see the first rhyme in our puzzle.

Concerning security politics, in the end there ought to be a common partnership of Euro-Atlantic security.

Some are thinking more of EU identity-I realize-especially here. Not me. And I would like to stress here especially: Since we derive our European values together with the Americans we cannot defend them separately, lest we want differences which are antiquated. And maybe we succeed in returning our experience to the Americans-with a unilateral heroic behavior.

Discoveries in the fields of genetics, nano-technology, and of intellectual robotics are pace making today. Genetic changes, molecular machines, and humanoid robots offer a tangible, even mathematically explainable perspective. Thereby the acceleration of innovations advance geometrically, not just arithmetically. The biosphere in which we were at home as beings, has become a zoo-sphere in which we have to, should, would feel at home…?

The question of identity is not a "classical" one anymore.

And yet, we still offer answers as if we lived in a kind of world before Copernicus. The simplicity with which we claim our collective uniqueness reminds us of the geocentric pride of our forebears. It also was actually easier and more "understandable," even though it was totally wrong.

As far as identity goes, sooner or later we will have to leave the world of monomania. We will be less unique but not less valuable. Our identity of a small planet will be counter to god-like or sun-like. Can we live with that?

We will have to learn!

Simply stated: As a matter of fact, this claim was made before the "era of clones," nonetheless, it applies to logical and philosophical goals-and to entrepreneurial strategies, namely especially to those. If we do not want any totalitarian tautologies we should try (oh what guilt!) to live our complexity.Those who will not be oppressed by their past and are looking unerringly towards a future free of dogma will meet their identity in form of a metaphor of their present creative freedom.

Only this kind of freedom can integrate us without force and oppression. because we are not to be found somewhere between identity and integration-and only have a small chance of identifying ourselves in this new complexity.

You must know, there is something like an identity of integration.

Thank you very much.

Translated and interpreted by Peter Pabisch
Member of PEN - Austrian Center and German Center Vienna, Austria, and Albuquerque, USA,
December 12, 2004