Citizen of the World

Chaplin believed that borders were the bars that held even the law abiding in their prisons. Certainly, these aren't prisons in which you get a tiny cell. They, are, instead, the prison into which you are delivered as an accident of birth. You get the illusion of freedom, since your cage is so big, but there is no freedom. You will persistently be held into place and monitored by the nationalist paper-pushers who run their petty kingdoms - and in this kingdom, you are a but a serf. Try to leave your land, and you will be thrown into a stronger cage. Your invisible leash will be yanked. Then you start to realize just how illusory freedom actually is. But, by then, it is too late.

I hate the fact that that border controls so much of my fate. I hate that invisible line so much. It frustrates and taunts me over such a meaningless designation. Because of the omnipresence of the paper noose, no one is free - it is all just an illusion. Chaplin, who knew better than any one the tyranny of borders, was right; passports and visas are the greatest forms of government control over people, even those who commit no crime. If they wish you to stay when you wish to go, there is nothing you can do. You are a mere rat in their trap.

You, me, everyone - we are all powerless against the arbitrary and imaginary forces who have declared themselves rulers over us and control our movements. Sure, you are free - as long as you live where they want you to and do what they say. Well, nuts to that.

I will obey their laws, because I have to, but I do wish they would stop playing this false "freedom" game and just admit that we are all cattle who move according to their fences.

As an idealistic child, I was something of a nationalist - well, as much of a one as a Canadian can be. I still support emotional and cultural loyalty, and affection, towards one's homeland, if it deserves it. However, that kind of personal-level patriotism will occur naturally, no matter where one is. But the artificial construction of these bully-states with their phallocentric obsession with entrance and exits, penetration and being penetrated, cannot hold my loyalty as long as it interferes with my ability to lead my life in a just and considerate way.

Einstein write that patriotism was a primitive and infantile sickness that must someday bleed away, and I wish that were so. But, as the world gets more and more paranoid, the more primitive and infantile it gets, so change is unlikely to occur any time soon. Until then,I declare myself a citizen of the world, though it will not be recognized because it issues no passport and doesn't come complete with a nice, shiny ID card.

And I will continue to look out of the tiny window of my cell and wonder what life would have been like if my birth had just taken place a bit to the south... Or in a time in the future when Einstein's vision had come to fruition.