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As the article in the latest Economist suggests “the European map is outdated and illogical”. The fixity of national borders should no longer be taken for granted as it is natural for nations created from arbitrary parts “to fracture and to reconstruct the relation between parts and parts and parts and the whole” aiming at ideal arrangement. The new shape of Europe may appear at odds with natural boundaries but it is thought to abandon cultural and political distortions. Abstract and absurd as it may seem to most European, from the perspective of the United Kingdom it could be read as a symbol of victory of Scottish national movement. What is interesting, though, is the process leading to such arrangement and the extent of its violence.

We live at a time when the characteristics that set mankind apart as ‘human’, seem relatively easy to describe and not to be in doubt for most. Yet the vision of the future drawn in films such as Impostor (Gary Fleder's) or The Island (Michael Bay's) strikes us with the premise that we are heading towards a world in which advanced technology will challenge our perception of humanity or in other words the fact that we are homo sapiens will cease to be taken for granted. The human paradigm will merge into the cybernetic one. Features once denoting humanity such as love, hatred or memories will not be solely characteristics of the human race any more.

Mr and Mrs Scotland are dead reads the title of Kathleen Jamie's poem. But how can a country terminate its existence if it has never been alive, argues Hugh Trevor-Roper in his book: The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History. At least not in the shape of a socio-cultural concept that would be historically and on paper substantiated ...