We must be the first generation ever where the option to freely migrate has become almost impossible.
Humans have always fought for their freedom; whether religious, political, racial. Finding themselves and their ideas in conflict with the majority, no longer able to live with their fellow man or persecuted and driven from their homes.
In recent times the minority were able to emigrate, find sympathetic others or start their own like-minded group in fresh pasture or foreign lands.
Sadly this is no longer achievable…singularly maybe as a political refugee but no like-minded group can move as one and find virgin territory to freely express their differences.
Migration has always been key to human success and innovation. Stifling this primal desire to up sticks and move is patently detrimental to the human race.
We are tribal by nature and proudly so. Most are happy with the tribe they were born into.
By fixing communities in one place the negative effects are plain to see. Dissatisfaction reigns.
I have never been a proponent of integration. I am a loner but my adopted tribe, the gay tribe, has enthusiastically created comfortable ghettos where they feel safe and valued. The same can be said of Asian communities in Northern England, Hasidic communities in Brooklyn, Posh people in Gloucestershire etc.
Where we are trapped together in unhealthy union fights between opposing tribes become not only more frequent but also more relevant. Forced to share increasingly limited space, integration and multiculturalism become the buzz words for panicked community leaders and governments all over the developed world.
Remember the Rwanda genocide? It is no coincidence that before the genocide Rwanda had more humans per square meter than any other place on the planet.
There was no more room. Nowhere to run.
One tribe hacked the other tribe to death. It is what we do.
In Thomas Hardy‘s desperate last novel Jude the Obscure, there is a small boy nick named by his Father, ‘Young Father Time’ an anxious little thing who murders his siblings then commits suicide upon hearing that his Mother is worried at how they might all be fed.
He hangs himself with this tragic note pinned to his vest: “Because we are too many.”
Genocide may be a valuable part of the human story. It maybe a very healthy part of our story, as unpalatable as that may sound.
If we are unable to migrate we are unable to evolve. Our ideas become increasingly inward looking, we become prone to mysticism, religion and superstition.
At this moment in the history of man we are all, unfortunately, Native Americans forced into reservations, like Inuits and aboriginals obliged to accept the limitations of an over crowded and over regulated world.
Bedouins, gypsies, nomads no more.
I have always felt separate from everyone. Separated by class and circumstance, by wit and intelligence, by impatience and sobriety.
My tribe of one has found his place in acres of rolling scrub overlooking the Pacific. The tribe of Me walks safely in my own home town.
