“What good is the moon if you can't buy it or sell it?”
- Ivan Boesky, Wall Street trader.
So I’ve decided to see the world and broaden my horizons. Experience more of what life has to offer and meet some interesting people. Take in more of nature’s beauty and diversity. Perhaps I’ll move to America, or France or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So what’s stopping me? If I can get the money for a ticket, it should be all I need. Hell, if I can build myself a dingy out of road-kill and dry turds I should be able to go where I like, right? Shit, I’d have earned it by then wouldn’t you say? Wrong. We still seem to have this small-minded, medieval belief in national borders. If I want to go anywhere beyond my bedroom I need to apply for a Visa, prove I have skill and money and that I’m willing to pledge my allegiance to a king and convert to Voodoo so I don’t disrupt the delicate order of the kindly natives I endeavour to co-mingle with. The local government has to reassure themselves first that I am not a ‘terrorist’ or that I’m not planning to overthrow the government… like the British, the French or the Spanish have done so brutally before. Or like the glorious and righteous nation of the United States of America are essentially doing right now. No, they already have enough to worry about without having to deal with the likes of me, a… gulp… foreigner, an… alien. No, I’m far too scary to be allowed to just go wherever I please, spreading my ideas to the gentler folk of this world. Says who? Rich white men with too much at stake that’s who.
The world of today is essentially no different to the world we lived in a thousand years ago. We are still bound by political borders that exist for only a few pathetic, fearful reasons; economy and religion being the main culprits. Oh and skin colour… although we have started letting coloured folk speak unannounced here and there, just for that good public image... not that anyone is listening mind you. This entire issue seems to have one glaring flaw that just doesn’t sit well with me at all; what gives anybody the right to own a piece of land in the first place? And why can’t a chicken claim a section for itself? Or a dung beetle, or a cuttle fish? Because they don’t have anything to offer us economically. And besides, we’re bigger and smarter than they are, so we can just blow the shit out of them if they don’t like what we’re doing… right? So fuck ‘em! I suppose it may be one thing to say that you own your car or your cd player or your twelve inch rubber dildo with the French tickler that plays ‘god Save the Queen’… but land? We are born of the land. We need it to live on. It feeds us and provides for us, we can’t own any piece of the Earth… the Earth already owns us. We’re fucked without it. The Earth on the other hand would be happier to see us bugger off. Luckily she won’t have to wait long it seems.
Let’s go back to how it all started. At some point someone looked at a piece of lush green real estate and simply said “fuck it, that’s mine!” Next, this man (well it wasn’t a woman, let’s face it) decided that if anyone else wanted to stay on his land they had to ‘pay’ him somehow. Skins, cows, sex… something. Now, in order to say which piece of land in particular was his he had to define a perimeter, a border, and within sed imaginary line he could do whatever he pleased and that was that. Eventually we had situations where most of the surrounding land had been ‘claimed’ by one dick or another and battles would break out over who would have the remaining land. Mostly this was due to the fact that the humans (or as I like to call them; hairless monkeys) of the day just couldn’t find a way to play friendly in the sand. Maybe coz they spoke in strange satanic tongues or had funny coloured skin. Of course only white men were arrogant enough to imagine they could own, govern and tax the land that fed them. Black men for the most part knew the land was sacred. Sure they had there designated areas with tribal laws etc, but they never claimed to ‘own’ any of it. Anyway, let’s jump forward, past all the slaughtering of natives, raping of forests and disposal of nuclear waste to today. Now we have a world that is divided to the most minute degrees (including water and air space for god’s sake) and governed by fear, which is based mainly on miscommunication (or unwillingness to communicate) and misunderstanding. So much so that it is nigh on impossible for me to uproot and move to another country without stripping naked, kneeling at a pagan alter while being showered in the blood of a boiled pig and declaring allegiance to Allah, Krishna, Buddha or Bush, while handing over an acceptable sum of local currency. Now they feel a little safer.
The concept of borders is essentially no different from a couple of three year olds fighting in a sand pit over a toy car. The basic problem is that as a race we have not yet managed to evolve beyond the emotional intelligence of an eight year old. That said, an eight year old has probably not yet learnt to fear the black kid who sits at the back of the classroom, or the girl in the front row with the pointy eyes… not unless his parents got to work on the poor bastard early that is. In fact come to think of it, even a three year old is more open and forgiving than most of the world’s population. Anyone can be a three year olds’ friend, even the African-Asian thalidomide girl from down the street.
What are we so damn afraid of anyway? Ideas? Basically, if a guy from the Middle East believes in a different imaginary sky man than I do, we will simply put up an imaginary fence and start shooting each other with very real bullets and fighting for our right to sit where the other guy is sitting. Not because we want his land, but just because we don’t want him to have it. I mean, that fucker dared to challenge my faith in that angry white bearded sky god I fear so much. Mind you, if that odd little man with the towel on his head has some money he can give me, then we might be able to make a deal… for a while at least. After all, this piece of dirt over here is mine… because I said so, that’s why… so there!
But what can I do? I’d say that killing some of these ‘land owners’ would help ease some of this tight assed fear and shit, but I’d only be labelled as a terrorist and create yet more reasons for the imaginary walls to be strengthened with those big scary thunder sticks. But maybe they’d stop to ask me why I was frustrated enough to want to kill them in the first place. Nah, they’re far too white to think of doing something stupid like that. And damn right too! I don’t want just any smelly immigrant to stroll into my country, live in my neighbourhood, go to my schools and take my jobs. Thank the lord Jesus Christ for weapons of mass destruction. Now we can all feel safe in our sheltered prisons and keep those dangerous and economically draining foreigners out. Ahh, I’m just so happy in my hole.
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