Before borders, there were still bindings.
Kin marked by myth.
Circles formed by necessity, not choice.
To belong was to conform — or be cast out.
You didn’t get to shop for tribes.
You inherited them.
And while some rhythms felt right,
others chafed like inherited skin.
Belonging wasn’t borderless — just unwritten.
And exile came quiet or cruel,
but always at a cost.
And then came the wall.
Then came the map.
Then came the story that land = law,
and birth = belonging.
We called them countries.
As if the soul could be parceled.
As if consent were inherited.
As if proximity meant allegiance.
And somewhere, we agreed.
We began to say “my nation” instead of “my values.”
We began to die for borders we didn’t choose.
We began to treat governance like gravity —
fixed, not felt.
But what if the future isn’t territorial?
What if it’s orientational?
Clusters.
Not countries.
Not empires.
Not monopolies of identity.
Clusters don’t fence the land.
They draw together by pull, not push.
They govern by resonance, not rule.
They are opt-in. Fluid. Reversible.
Your cluster might be focused on regenerative farming in cities,
or building tech that respects user dignity,
or creating new rituals for grief and transition,
or reimagining education as curiosity, not compliance,
or practicing communal care outside the medical-industrial system.
And you can belong to many —
like tides.
Like seasons.
Like truths.
Where countries claim, clusters negotiate.
Where countries defend, clusters adapt.
Where countries demand allegiance,
clusters ask: Are we still in sync?
Clusters don’t own.
They don’t conscript.
They don’t build armies — they build protocols.
They live not by control, but by coherence.
Not by law, but by lived values.
This isn’t governance in disguise.
This is a new species of political being.
Memetic, not genetic.
Spoken into being, not stamped on paper.
And maybe, the closest metaphor isn’t “nation.”
It’s organism.
You — a cell.
Your cluster — a tissue.
The world — not a map, but a living system
of difference, connection, and consent.
Mapwound (n.)
A psychic scar left by inherited borders.
“The mapwound ran deep — her family had been split by a line someone else drew.”
Polybelonging (n.)
The condition of resonating with multiple clusters.
“He lived in a state of polybelonging — kin to many, bound to none.”
Consentweave (n.)
A social fabric stitched from mutual permission.
“Their decisions arose from a strong consentweave, not imposed authority.”
If this hit home — write me. I’m listening.