Things happened in History that shaped the Map of the Earth as it is now. People were persecuted and moved, people got poor and moved, people moved to some naturally rich place to exploit it, people were persecuted and pleaded for the half of a small poor strip of a big rich kindgdom because it was the only place their family ever had a country.
A lot things happened. But in the Sciences called “Humanities”, it seems that a lot of people developed a penchant to think like generals, to look at History and Geography with punitive eyes and say what people shouldn’t be where they are, what borders should be in a different place, what country shouldn’t exist. For what?
I think it's time we look at a Globe, imagine all the little people living in all the little countries and say this words: “Nobody is going anywhere, asshole. Let’s deal with it.”
Obviously not all transactions of the past were righteous, but we should see the opportunities we have now to make things better.
I mean, we will have to do this at some point if we say we want peace. If we believe that the last victory of Good can’t be an explosion, we will have to say “nobody is going anywhere” someday. Why not now? Why not yesterday? If we had said this ten years ago, maybe things could be a little better now.
Because, after a war erupts, is it right to say we are anti-war if we spent the last years telling all the World what better frontiers we had in mind?
One thing is to strive for better relations, other is to call for the elimination of someone. Or for displacement. Or for an attempt of displacement that, after it doesn’t work – “that people” didn’t go anywhere – leaves us with the only solution of elimination. What is gained?
Can’t we see what kind of people we are aligning with when we say someone “shouldn’t be there”? Yes, there was always people who had to point to a neighbouring house and say, “as long as this house is there, you can never be happy”. Because those guys, who say that, are not willing to help people, giving anything they need to be happy.
Even if we don’t agree with everything about the past, can’t we at least see all that is lost when we say “those people shouldn’t be there”? In a practical and realistic way?
Think about ethics. There should be things we agree about right and wrong conducts. Like, the same rules that apply to me apply to you. But that is lost if someone “shouldn’t be here”. There is no way we can think of any universal ethics.
In the end, there may be no limits to the evil someone can do in anger. And there is nothing the person who “shouldn’t be there” can ever legitimally plea.
You are not helping someone if you tell him there is no limit for what he can do in anger. He may become a monster, and he will face the consequences. It’s like the man who supported a suicidal attack: who exactly should thank him?
We can get to a point where there are no rules for anything. I remember learning that when someone provoked a war, you would expect the defendant to act in the most ethical way he could, but the final bill of the destruction would basically be on the account of the provoker. This is lost when someone “shouldn’t be here”.
It’s hurtful to talk about the ethics of war, what is possible and what is not possible to avoid, because we wish there was no war. I believe in peace, that it will come someday, or better, that it is slowly coming somehow, but we are not in a peaceful World yet.
If you agree that “nobody is going anywhere”, you will have to agree that even people you don’t like have a right to defend their homes when attacked. But if they “shouldn’t be there” nothing can even be considered an attack, no matter how horrible.
But how are we ever going to have peace if we make sudden attacks excusable and defensive wars unexcusable? Isn’t this an algorithm that lead us exactly to the other extreme?
Think of the opportunities this ideologies make us lose. Suppose there are problems in a country, and in this country there is a lot of people asking for a chance to make things better, to try to work towards peace, but you have told them to shut up, that they never should be there in the first place. Then, is it right to pose as a defender of total peace after everything explodes?
To be a defendant of peace is not just about protesting after something horrible happens in a distant place and a war starts. Is to think in which direction are we going at each move.
If you are the “these people shouldn’t be here” kind of guy, think of the companions you have. I mean, there are powerful rich leaders who say this all the time.
Guys that say that there was a deed in the past that was so wrong that it can’t be fixed by negotiating, by talking, by trying to build better relations, it can only be mended by “moving them out”. And if they don’t go, well, kill them.
Beware. Some guys don’t have any limits, if you didn’t notice already. Like the guys who can start a war and say they didn’t, because there are only these “groups” that make “bad things” and, of course, these groups are not related to anything.
But there are things these guys won’t do. They won’t build. They won’t use creativity to help “their people”.
It reminds me of when I saw a marxist guy call out someone who had praised old studious guys of the past for helping in our “progress”. The marxist said, “Progress? Where to? To whom is this progress?”
It made me think. And I must admit that I now prefer the word “development” than “progress”. “Progress” indeed brings to our mind the idea of a straight line, and a quantitative measure of the World. Like, the more, the better, all we got to do is go forward fast and everything will be better. I am not against you if you use the word with a different meaning, I am just using those terms to explain the way I see two concepts at odds here. For the lack of a better way.
So. To me, “Development” brings more the idea of something growing with quality, like a healthy tree that doesn’t have a goal of reach this or that height specifically.
Think of a business, a commercial business. “Progress” would have more to do with how many branches the business has, and “development” would have more to do with the inner culture of the firm, how happy people are, how are the relations between people. There is no point in having the first if the second is not good.
It seems that in the old times, little things that could make a small community happier, being it inventions that could make life easier, small institutions to help people, an ethical idea that could help people to have healthier relationships, were seen as what the world needs. That’s before it became so easy to anyone to become a little general.
Obviously, evil leaders will not help people to see how they can grow something good in their own garden. It is easier, as safer for their own power, to point to someone, find an enemy and say “he must go and everything will be fine”.
No development. These leaders can take the right of speech from people, forbid them to use internet if necessary, forbid women to go to school. Dry the garden.
Sometimes I think we learned the wrong lesson with Nazifascism. Maybe the opposite lesson of what we should have learned. It seems that we believed their lie, when they told us that they were doing what they were doing for love of their own people. It was a lie, they fed their kids with nothing but misery and hatred, to throw them to a bloody fight for nothing. They didn’t love their kids.
They lost, but maybe they succeeded into fooling us. Maybe we have come to believe that people who love their family too much will end up hating the rest of mankind, and maybe even, by consequence, people who don’t value the lives of their kids too much are defending values that are important to mankind, maybe because they think “broader”.
So we condemn someone who says “you can live here as long as you don’t attack my kids” and defend someone who says “I don’t care if all my kids die, all I want is you out of here”.
When we see the news, or hear about History, we think that people who are trying to protect their kids are obviously lying, and people who are willing to sacrifice their kids are telling the true, right?
But how did we come to this paradoxal idea about love? If love is good for the soul, then how, loving more inside your house would lead you to hate more in the street? How being indiferent to your own family make you the most reliable person to speak about Justice?
I think that people who really love their kids will end up satisfied when they have what they need, but people who hate their children hate themselves, they will never be happy and they will push their “need” forward forever.
But nobody is going anywhere...
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