Planting Flags

We're All Immigrants. If not directly, our ancestors were. This is a simple fact about the "human condition" that's completely and utterly refuted by the everyday practice of politics and education. One of many. This short post is about remembering some of these simple facts.

Once again the United States of America provide us with a perfect representation of one of humanity's biggest contradictions; on one border, the natural border of the East Coast, we have Ellis Island, Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, symbols of freedom and hospitality to immigrants, and at the artificial border in the south the same American government is building a wall to represent the opposite. I love how the symbols at the natural border also represents the natural state of humanity; we are, in essence, a nomadic species and, as it turns out, we're the same as the majority of species on this planet. We've always been on the move, exploring new territories, discovering new places, creatures and peoples, and Americans are in the best place to fully understand this truth; the country is the product of European immigrants after all.

National borders are almost all artificial. They're just imaginary lines on a two-dimensional representation of the real terrain covering the globe. And borders are invariably either the result or the cause of violence. The American flag planted on the Moon in 1969 may well be the only flag ever to have been planted in peace. But... Claiming ownership just by merit of being there first is in itself a stupid practice because, as stated earlier, we're a species that's always on the move. All of us. We've always been nomads and with technological advancements the only thing that's changed is the distances we're able to cover. And the only difference between Mexicans moving to America and an Americans moving to Mexico is the easy with which the border is crossed, and the amount of violence faced upon reaching it. In the name of "protecting what's mine" immigrants aren't allowed into the land that was founded by the symbolic act of planting a flag. And a lot of bloody violence of course.

I'm clearly oversimplifying here, but that's on purpose and to drive home the basic truths, primarily that owning a piece of the planet, be it privately or nationally, is the cause of hardship and violence unknown to our species before we partially settled down in cities at fertile locations. And claimed those locations our own. The question "who owns the planet?" is valid, and in my mind there's only one answer: all of us, which also means none of us. The further retreating behind our own borders is predominantly seen in so called "white" countries, many of which aren't really white at all save for the fact that a flag has been planted. Unfortunately this strange habit of ours to want to own stuff has been mixed with a lot of racial pseudoscience and economical injustices; the below linked video, which I encourage you to watch, dives deeper into that ugly side of the modern history of our species. I wonder what flag Elon Musk will plant if he ever realizes his dream to start a colony on Mars...

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