Researcher: The future will resemble the feudal age if recent trends persist

Pioneer of quantitative political science Rein Taagepera says humanity has entered a transitional era in which consumerism is colliding with the planet's limits, AI is racing into the unknown and the nation-state may eventually give way to new global power networks.

You fled Estonia at age 11 to escape the war, grew up in Morocco, had a distinguished scientific career in Canada and the United States and eventually returned to Tartu. Your journey spans a considerable portion of the geographic and political spectrum of recent history. Yet we still live in a time when migration, exile and the loss of a national homeland have not disappeared. What does the concept of home mean to you?

My hometown is Tartu. If home is defined as the place where you've accumulated the most stuff, then home is the city of Irvine in California. So my hometown is on one side of the Atlantic and my home is on the other. I've now lived for 30 years in Tartu's Riiamäe neighborhood, though I have fewer possessions there. My childhood home is on Sõbra tänav in Karlova and of course I was born on Toomemägi, at the clinic that is now the Skytte Institute.

Several decades ago, you wrote that the psychological root of Estonia's silent capitulation in 1939 lay in the subconscious peasant obedience of the country's leaders at the time. More than 35 years have passed since Estonia regained its independence. To what extent do you see this slave mentality among today's Estonian politicians and in what situations does it manifest itself most clearly?

A great deal has changed over the past 30 years. Of course, people continued to mature even during the Soviet period. It was not just a time of stagnation and bowing one's head; the depth of Estonian culture expanded immeasurably. So the situation today is completely different from what it was when leaders quite literally came from peasant farmhouses. You cannot really blame them for acting the way they did because given their background, it was almost inevitable.

By now, interaction between different peoples has leveled many national differences. I see how many mixed marriages there are in Estonia today, with people from all over the world. Contact between people sometimes creates friendships and at other times friction. But the world's population has grown so much that there is less and less room under our feet. When another person stands too close to you, it can provoke irritation.

I once wrote that reckless drivers are also carriers of this slave mentality. For a free person, freedom is built on self-respect and the desire to be a product