Borders: The Constructs of Fearful Greedy Children

What we accept as a necessary reality, the division of our planet into exclusive domains, is nothing more than a throw-back to the days of rival Chieftains and Warlords.  Tribal thugs.  Brutish marauders.   We look at our history with a sense of arrogance, assured of our own superiority over our less enlightened ancestors.  We wince at their inhumanity.  Accounts of a tribe, clan, or fiefdom completely decimating its neighbor makes us grateful for the modern society we believe we live in, yet we gladly surrender our freedom, and take the lives of our brothers and sisters, to maintain the exact same system.

Like fearful children, afraid to share, today’s Chieftains, the global elite, prefer to keep us divided and easy to manage.  Our own ignorance, and the fear it breeds, enables their control.  Our divided populations are pitted against each other – all of them too easily convinced of the others need to be conquered – in a struggle to own all the resources under the guise of security, and the protection of their own well-being from those they are told threaten it.  We scream and lash out at each other like squabbling youngsters wanting to control the entire sandbox because we are told we must, for our own good.  Our prejudice, bias, and bigotry give them strength.  Our resources and labor give them wealth.  Our patriotism gives them control.  Our ignorance gives them power.

On a playground there is always, at least, one bully.  They surround themselves with sycophants, too insecure to express their own independence.   They threaten those weaker than themselves into servitude, and then reward them with the attention and sense of position, and belonging, they crave.  They use them to outnumber any that would question their authority, and squash all those who would attempt to exert any independence.  They convince their toadies that by acting on their own weakness, as they themselves do, that they are strong.  The thought of looking weak frightens them into action, and demands that they dominate everything, and everyone, around them.  Their own insecurity plays out in acts of violence.  The only thought they put into their actions is about how to justify them.  Their brain power is exhausted catering to the needs of their primal fear.

Those that follow such leaders seem mindless, in retrospect.  Our history, as well as our current affairs, are full of playground bullies and those that blindly follow them. From the hoards that gave their entire lives following sociopaths across uncharted territories, their only reward was being treated like dogs of war, allowed to feed on their own prey, to the rows of uniformed soldiers, marching to a drum beat hammered out by adolescents, directly into canon fire, while pompous generals played a bloody game of chess with their lives.  We shake our heads at their folly, yet we gladly send our children to do the same, and for no better reason.

Ever-changing lines have been drawn on maps since the earliest attempts at civilization.  Lines drawn by people no more important than any other. Lines drawn by people no more important than you or I. Lines drawn by people motivated only by their own fear and greed.  Depending which side of those lines you happen to be born on decides whom you must like, whom you must hate, whom you are able to trade with, love, marry, and whom you must kill.  Those lines decide whether or not you can freely access the resources of the planet you were born on or whether you must pay someone a bribe, a tariff, or a tax, in order have that which you need to survive… that which is yours… that which is your birthright.

Our current state of global debt, constant wars, environmental crisis, and exploited populations are made possible by the divisions perpetuated by those that profit from them.  America, it’s government, it’s military, and its complacent population, have become the enforcers for the schoolyard bully, the global financial elite.  They are not alone.  Canada, France, Germany, England, the whole little gang they call NATO, are more than willing to blacken the eye of anyone they are told.  China is no better.  They won’t join that gang, instead they just beat up on everyone inside the part of the playground they’ve claimed for themselves.  Lets not forget Russia, or Israel, and so on.  We’re all guilty.  It’s a mental illness of global proportions.  Nationalism is killing us.  It’s killing our planet.

In America, one step in the middle of an empty desert can make you ‘illegal’.   In Iraq, one step in the middle of an empty desert can make you dead.  In Korea, one step can make you a traitor.  And, in Cuba, one step can make you the guest of Guantanamo Bay.

How have we come to allow such insanity to persist?  The only chance that any of us have for emancipation, from the control of those that treat us as chattel property, is through solidarity.  None of the institutions of the elite are capable of controlling a unified population.  Assad could not abuse the Syrian people, as he does, if he had to answer to all of us.  American corporations could not exploit vulnerable populations around the world if they had to answer to all the people of this planet.  African warlords could not commit genocide if they weren’t protected by the borders that shelter their crimes.  The IMF and World Bank could not destroy economies, devalue labor, and privatize resources and utilities, one country after the other, if we didn’t allow them to cut the planet up like pieces of pie to be consumed one at a time.

The 99% is more than just a slogan.  Unless we change the way we’ve been programmed to think, and behave, we are destined to continue as the victims of the 1%.  While local, sustainable communities may be the goal, they are not possible unless we unite globally against the forces that would do anything they can to prevent them.  Once the people of this planet stop seeing themselves as Americans, Iranians, Russians, Germans, Arabs, Jews, or Chinese, etc., and start understanding their common cause as fellow humans on this planet, emancipation will be within our reach.

We must remove these lines from our minds as well as from our maps.  Our planet is finite.  Our continued existence depends on our interdependence, not our ability to destroy each other.  If we all stand together, the playground bullies will have no power over us.  If we stop drawing lines in the sand, we’ll have fewer things to fight over.

This is my planet, as it is yours.  I was not born the property of another, or the property of a state, or the collateral on someone else’s debt, and neither were you.  I was not born to be kept in a cage, whether it’s the size of a closet, or the size of a country, and neither were you.  Borders can only hold us if we allow them.  Borders can only keep us apart if we give them that power.

Borders are one of the greatest insults to our humanity, and one of the most effective means of our control.  We are convinced of how proud we must be to inhabit a cage assigned to us by the accident of our birth.  We are convinced to give up our freedom, and our individuality, and trade it for patriotism, and the right to maintain the integrity of the cage with our lives.  We are registered, counted, and taxed by the jailers we enable.  We, and our entire planet, with all our resources, have become the property of an elite few. And, because of the invisible barriers we allow to exist, we deny ourselves the right to join with our imprisoned brothers and sisters and petition for our collective freedom.

Our freedom will only come through unity.  A united struggle against the forces that divide and control is our only hope for a sustainable future.  This planet is ours.  The entire planet, undivided.  Deny nationalism.  Deny patriotism.  Become a Citizen of the World.