Your World and My World: the Same World
Earth is our home. My home and yours. It doesn’t matter where upon it you were born. All of planet Earth is the home of all humans.
No line drawing, ‘legal’ scrawl, nor even the beliefs in your head can get around this wonderful and fundamental truth. Mother Earth created all of Us, We are all Hers and She is within all of Us, in Our entirety, in Her entirety. The Many Within the One Within the Many.
Of course, human beings don’t have an imagination or moral eraser big enough (yet) to erase all their fanciful pencilled-in borders and live peacefully without them.
We all know that a humanitarian crisis would unfold if we tried to eliminate borders. We have a long way to go, perhaps hundreds of years, before that can happen. But if we survive, we will get there. It’s our destiny to perish or flourish together.
For the time being, all humans have a pragmatic and just aspiration that their identities, communities and cultural places will be peaceful and safe, and not eroded by capitalism, tourism or excessive immigration. Everyone wants their own culture to be enjoyed, preserved, and celebrated, and to evolve without duress.
But, never-the-less, the moral fact remains. The World is Everyone’s Home.
Transformationism begins to envision a liberated world, to determine what problems and opportunities lie on the horizon, and take the first steps toward implementing solutions and making that vision real – for all people, Universally.
It might sound fanciful, but as Simon Astro Wilson and as a Transformationist, I do not believe in the no win scenario, and you shouldn’t let conservatives, racists and authoritarians convince you to believe in it.
We can achieve global prosperity, manage our fear, protect our communities and cultures and open this beautiful world of ours for all of humanity to inhabit, explore and enjoy – as Mother Nature intended.
Understand Migration
Prior to the emergence and stabilization of the modern global nation-state system, people were more migratory and borders were undrawn and porous.
Humans did, after all, originate in Africa and, from there, explored and inhabited almost every corner of the world.
Migration and cultural exchange have had, and continue to have, many benefits and harms for our species.
For the good, today there are perhaps thousands of distinctive human cultures and languages all over the world, each enriching the palette of human experience, precisely because cultures enjoyed periods of migration and stability that enabled them to grow and blossom. More, human communities often survived purely because they could move when conditions in their homelands became hostile.
For the bad: in all of history there have been many thousands more human cultures than there are today, but all changed, and many became extinct, perhaps most by way of human-to-human violence.
We need look no further than imperialism and colonialism and their legacies to discern the horrendous consequences of morally unenlightened human migration.
But the horrors of intercultural violence were, and still are, ever present the world over.
No matter the scale, from continent-spanning imperial expansions down to the level of individual families escaping poverty, it’s clear that humans have big problems both welcoming newcomers and adapting as newcomers.
It’s not just about racism, though racism plays a part. Migration problems are natural because humans are cultural: all humans must adapt to the culture they are born into in order to survive. Adaptation is a genetically ingrained psychological imperative. So when we perceive a threat to our culture – the thing that ensures our survival – we naturally react with fear and hostility, and millenia of human-to-human cultural violence have done nothing but reinforce that fear.
Immigration Today
During the 20th century, and with the establishment of a more stable system of nation-states in the aftermath of World War 2, human moral advancement led to the conception of a right of asylum for all who are escaping persecution.
Further, industrial capitalist economics determined that ever-increasing populations are necessary for the economic growth of nation-states (a belief that persists today). If birth rates do not take care of population growth, then immigration is necessary.
In 1950, world population was about 2.5 billion. Today, it is estimated to be over 8 billion and by some accounts closer to 9 billion.
France and the dis-United Kingdom have asylum backlogs of around 70,000. The dis-United States has an asylum backlog of nearly 4 million applications. This is only the tip of the iceberg of people who would qualify for asylum but don’t even apply, primarily because they simply cannot – consider women in Afghanistan trapped in domestic slavery as just one example, proving that many millions of people worldwide qualify for asylum.
The global failure of capitalism and socialism that continues to foster violence and poverty everywhere, together with the emerging polycrisis, is on track to make this situation even worse.
More, so-called ‘developed’ countries like the dis-United Kingdom, Canada and the dis-United States, take in immigrants by the hundreds of thousands every year desperately trying to shore-up capitalism, because the stupidity of modern capitalist economics depends on population growth to achieve so-called economic growth.
Really, though, preserving capitalism and economic growth is just a way for the rich to get richer and for so-called ‘developed’ countries to steal educated people and their wealth from the so-called ‘developing world,’ and to steal uneducated people to do the grunt-work in capitalist fields and factories.
They even promote the theft of skilled workers from developing countries as a policy virtue. What a dirty, dirty joke. At least it would be a joke if it wasn’t a god damn crying shame.
Another Way
Transformationism is morally oriented. No Transformationist government will steal trained nurses and physicians, etc., from any other country. If so-called developed nations are so developed, why the hell can’t they staff their own medical institutions?
Further, all Transformationist governments will collaborate to end capitalist exploitation of the developing world, restore power over and ownership of their resources to them, and, by working together, devise novel ways of helping all people everywhere to achieve: clean energy, clean and resilient food production, access to clean water sources, a global health care system, accessible quality education in every country in the world, environments and industries cleansed of pollution, vibrant clothing and cultural industries, and communities safe for women and nurturing for children.
If you or any self-righteous capitalist know-it-all thinks it’s smart to point out how unrealistic this all is, why don’t you instead ask yourself what the fuck is it we are doing here if it is not to bring about a better world for all of humanity? What exactly are you doing with your life? Maybe you think a better strategy to surviving the polycrisis is to invest in gold, get ripped, become a millionaire and build yourself a bunker. Wow – what a big man you are.
Here’s an eye-popping thought for you. Maybe if the legacy of colonialism and persistence of exploitative and degrading conservatism, capitalism, racism and misogyny were shown the door, and maybe if desperate people had healthy and thriving economies, just maybe they wouldn’t be so desperate to leave their places of origin in the first place. Why not help them to heal their societies and achieve prosperity so they can stay in place? Maybe if women and children were safe there, they wouldn’t even think about leaving. Let’s make it so. Maybe if nation-states didn’t have capitalist systems dependent on immigrant population growth to accomplish even the most basic modicum of economic growth (and, by the way, even a century of immigration has not helped avert the polycrisis in case you haven’t noticed), we wouldn’t need immigrants. Let’s TRANSFORM the system. Maybe if so-called developed countries actually supported their learning institutions, health care systems and support programs, they could train their own nurses and doctors, instead of having legions of uneducated citizens flipping burgers and standing around clothing stores twiddling their thumbs so some degenerate millionaire can float aimlessly about in yacht.
Ever thought about that, my friend?
Copyright Simon Wilson and Transformationism