With terrorist attacks every few days, Brexit, refugee crises, global warming, Donald Trump praising dictators, it feels so heavy to know anything about the world. Throw in police violence, income inequality and war in Syria and it feels like more than enough.
It's certainly enough to make an American head to Canada, a Brit to apply for an Irish passport, or anyone else to burrow under the covers and not go outside. I understand now what the proverbial ostrich is thinking when it sticks its head in the sand.
I don't consider myself to be very political person and I don't write about politics here very often, at least in an obvious way. I do, however, try to know something of what's going on in the world and think about it a little. That's becoming tougher lately, but here's why I've decided not to hide under the covers all day.
I'm reading a book called
The Radical King, which is a compilation of essays and excerpts from Martin Luther King compiled and edited by Cornel West (
who I once met in an Indian restaurant in Hannover). West argues that King was a lot more revolutionary, a lot more socialist, a lot more radical than history has made him out to be.
What has struck me, however, is staying power of King's words. Most of what King writes is just as true today as it was during the civil rights movement. Whether that means he was a great thinker, or whether that means nothing has really changed, I'm not sure. Maybe both.
So in this time when people throughout the world, both loud ones and quiet ones, are calling for walls, divisions and 'sovereignty', this passage caught my attention:
"Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red'. We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom and reach for a sponge which is provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a European. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea or cocoa by a West African.
Before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to half of the world.
In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
So before the word 'globalization' was in the common vocabulary, King was talking about it. Not in terms of a supply chain or manufacturing but in terms of people being linked to each other.
You can vote against immigration, but you can't avoid being dependent on the rest of the world. You can try ignoring what's happening around the world but even if you surround yourself with walls there will be a time when you get hungry and want to order in a pizza. You'll do that through your smart phone which was built in Asia with a number of African conflict minerals. Then someone driving a Japanese car fueled by gas from Middle East oil will deliver your pizza, which was cooked by immigrants using vegetables picked by different immigrants and meat that was processed by other immigrants in a small town that would have disappeared by now if not for the processing plant.
And it will be hot and cheesy and delicious.
Though sea levels are rising, you can still find a place in the sand in which to bury your head.
But the reality is that a German tourist will be lying in a Speedo nearby, on a towel made in Vietnam.
We are stuck with each other. Not just economically but practically, and morally as well.
