Check this out when you have some time. It is a fairly short and interesting read. Although it is a couple of years old, it touches on something I have been thinking about lately, especially as it relates to the current political climate in the US and across the Middle East and Europe. The article is about the narcissism and ugly paternalism inherent in "voluntourism," especially of the medical sort. It is worth thinking about because one of the things we are experiencing is the collapsing of the neat borders we have created for ourselves in what has been called the global north. I hesitate to call it the developed world because it really is a Euro-American phenomenon more than it is "developed" in the sense that it does not seem to apply to the "developed" nations of Asia. In this country, the rise of Trump and the popularity of Sanders share at least one common factor and that is a dissatisfaction with the psychosocial boundaries that we either see as collapsing (in the case of Trump) or being unnecessarily and dangerously imposed on us (in the case of Sanders). The evidence of their collapse is most acutely demonstrated in the Syrian refugee crisis and the demonization of an entire people, in many circles pejoratively referred to as "Muslims" who are being displaced by the boundaries that we imposed on them from the global north. I continue to believe that the dominant and subverted metaphor for this collapse of boundaries between global north and global south is the current popularity of "zombies." They are impossibly numerous, already dead (read "not human") and threaten to subsume us into their mass of unintelligible chaos and inhumanity. Read Trump's rhetoric and those of his ilk and it is not hard to see the parallel: "Mexicans" and "Muslims" are not merely immigrants, but monsters with only one desire - to devour "us."
The problem is that have to come to terms with the fact that we must share the globe with everyone on it. Paradoxically, we have created the conditions that by necessity are pushing people to demand that we start sharing what we have with them. I worry that the impulses of bigots and authoritarians will control our response to the very conditions of necessity that they and we have created. I fear these impulses because they will be bigoted and authoritarian and most probably violent in a martial sense. I don't think this response is guaranteed because there are a good many people and political actors that are striving to respond in decent and humane ways. I have never been much of a fan of Angela Merkel, but I have to say the decency and practicality she has shown in her response to the Syrian refugee crisis has caused me to reevaluate my opinion of her. She is truly a beacon of hope and example to be followed. I am particularly impressed with her insistence and commitment to the idea that a democratic and developed society not only can absorb those in need but that it must and in so doing will not collapse but will succeed and demonstrate a path for the rest of the global north to follow. I am also more deeply impressed with Pope Francis than I was even a year ago. His confidence and humility in the face of the global dislocations we are seeing serves as another model that we can become a better and stronger global population when we act justly and generously. It always hurts when you have had everything to yourself and suddenly are forced to share that which you have thought of as being wholly your own. What Pope Francis and Angela Merkel demonstrate to the global north is that we have never really had everything to ourselves, merely that we have taken everything for ourselves and this isn't right. If we want to change the world, it won't be through short trips to economically disadvantaged places where we take proud selfies to show how selfless we think we are being. Instead, if we want to change the world we should ask ourselves how we can divest ourselves of the privilege we have taken and accept the fact that this means we will have to acknowledge the claims of others as being equal to our own. It is true that boundaries are crumbling, but the answer isn't to build a wall. The answer is to build bridges.
I am worried and I am scared. I worry about the world my son is inheriting, but I am not without hope. Angela Merkel shows that we can be generous and tough. Pope Francis shows that we can be brave and humble. For all of its faults, the Milwaukee French Immersion School that my son attends shows that we can embrace each other, even when so many of us are so radically different. Trump notwithstanding, walls are crumbling. This shouldn't be scary. Zombies aren't coming in, people are. I say let's get to know them.
