i smell another "journalists without borders".
ahhh, i love the smell of empire building in the morning. i think that we have a skewed view on the subject. for one thing, our history classes frame the ancient empire builders (the persians, the greeks, the romans, the egyptians...) as though they were hollywood movies, and who are we to know the difference? we take our teachers to be vendors of the objective truth, and how many of our hollywood movies are based on the stories we hear in social studies and history class?
as for the modern empire builders, well, we sort of gloss over the british and the dutch. i'm not sure why. at one point the entire indian subcontinent was owned by a british import-export company. not to mention the disasterfuck that was made of the african continent by the brits, the francs, and the dutch. then there's the pathetic attempt at an arian empire by the germans, which often gets overshadowed by the holocaust that ensued. then of course, there's the USSR, which will always live on in american history books as a faulty, illogical, and oppressive regime of maniacal james bond villains.
but what of the existing empires?
what about the good ol' US of A-holes? who, of course, are never even whispered about as an empire, for fear of being strung up on charges of treason, or domestic terrorism. but given the facts, who could deny that we are the classic empire builders in the vein of the romans, or the east india trading company? and are we not failing? i find it hard to swallow an opinion to the contrary.
then there's the EU. which is so trendy nowadays, as to never be referred to as an empire, but essentially pushes around smaller european economies by denying them entry into the union until their economies are of a certain standard, or face the fate of being crushed under the weight of a booming economy based in seemingly fabricated monetary values (if the euro is worth 1.5x the dollar, and a candy bar costs $1 why would it cost €2.50? secondly, i don't care if the entire continent has the same pictures on their valueless paper and metallic baubles, each country is still an independent economy, and thus the euro should be far more volatile).
there is a lesson to be learned in all this: empires fail on the grounds of a basic human lack of empathy for the population as a whole. the building of an empire in and of itself breeds a lack of empathy in those lucky enough to be on the builders team, and not one of the populations being bowled over. meanwhile, the people being absorbed (to put it lightly) by the empire, are prone to a bitter resentment for the culture that annexes them like so much consumer inventory, if they even survive the ordeal.
so who will africa look to, when workshopping their new borderless empire?
granted, they've already got a few groups of cooperative nations. take ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States), for example, a place i recently visited, a place that it's citizens hardly know exists.
upon arrival in accra, ghana, i found that the immigration checkpoint was broken into three lines, "foreigners", "citizens of ghana", and "citizens of ECOWAS". as it was very early in the morning, only the "foreigners" and "ECOWAS" lines were open, yet there was much confusion among those of us offloading from the flight. there were people i knew to be nigerian, togoan, and côte d'ivoire(ians?) waiting in the foreigners line, when, in reality, only myself, and perhaps two others actually needed to be in that particular line (ECOWAS includes those countries, as well as ghana, and 11 additional countries in the "armpit" of the african continent). in addition, there was some confusion among the ghanaians as to how they would get back into the country, there being no line open for them. if the citizens of ECOWAS don't even know that they are citizens of ECOWAS, how can we consider it a successful union of nations? perhaps on the grounds of the philosophy, "a job well done, is a job you didn't know was done". but that hardly seems appropriate when dealing with overt international political and economic relationships.
during my stay in ghana i discovered that there were many people who had a particular kind of tattoo. the lucky ones had them on their arms, but i was told of some unfortunate enough to have them on their faces or necks. the tattoo was of the individual's name and village, and it wasn't so much tattooed on them as westerners would think of a tat, but stitched through their skin with ink soaked needle and thread. why would they do this? well, one of the reasons we might be more comfortable with is that children are often expected to be independent much younger there, and given that people will make mistakes, or forget things, and that children often simply don't have the life experience to work through a problem caused by a mistake they've made (a wrong turn on the way home, a missed curfew, etc), the tattoo would hopefully help the child find help getting back to a family member. the more disturbing reason for the tattoo is the human trade industry. in the bitter irony of a group of nations once victim to european and american slave trade, the international human trafficking business is still booming in africa, especially amongst neighboring nations (ghana and togo and nigeria, for example). the tattoo could be seen by a border official checking a car for contraband, who could then arrest the smuggler, and return the child to his or her home. as disheartening as this is to think about, i think it is absolutely something that needs to be considered when discussing the dissolution of international african borders.
what about the civil rights issues? not just among countries that have known human trafficking issues, but toward countries that still enslave their own for diamond, coal, and gold mining? for those that kill their own over tribal and cultural schisms? what about the sanctuary of refugees? what about countries that are "functioning" democracies, and those that are functioning democracies, and those that are still essentially under dictatorships? what about the arab nations, who exist on the african continent, but are light years apart from the majority of african tribal cultures? what about countries that are considered international threats? do those hoping to affect a change in a particular african region through military action risk going to war with every nation on the african continent? if so, do those african nations who wish to remain neutral, or who agree with the foreign opposition to a region's actions risk forced enlistment? civil war? internment camps? holocaust? how does such a large population of people reconcile the differences between tribal and urban life? what sort of representation would they receive in the UN? what would come of the representation that already exists within each of the existing nations? could bono kiss that many babies?
what of the war? how many would have to be fought before any sort of settlement could be reached?
what about the economy of a nation like zimbabwe? who's dollar is trading today (8/7/09) at 0.00000003 US dollars. meaning that if you went to the forEx in zimbabwe and handed them one US dollar, they would hand you 37,410,030 zimbabwean dollars. so for anyone that still has an unfulfilled fantasy of rolling around naked in a million dollar bills, you could make that happen for 2.6 cents american, if you don't mind those dollars having robert mugabe's face on them (just kidding, they don't have a $1 bill, how pointless would that be? they do however, have a $100billion bill, awesome!)
this is not even to speak of the horrible schizophrenia that has festered in a group of cultures rocked by western religious missionaries for so long that they give their children names like prosper, godson, godwin, verdict, and virtue because they read them in the bible. this group of people has arguably the most adherent populations of any in the world to both christian religions, muslim religions, and tribal religions. how does this play out in one united africa? religions are notorious for killing each other for no good reason (religion, itself, is not a good reason). nor does this post speak to the language barrier in a place where within on small country like ghana there are 13 completely different languages (let alone dialects). how does that play out in one african parliament (or council, or congress, or what have you)? nor does this post speak of the great number of nations on the continent, and the individual governments' international relationships within and without the continent with things like ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, the League of Arab States, OPEC, WTO, the UN, the EU, UNICEF, FIFA, and various other international organizations, as well as specific, individual non-african countries.
i will say it again: disasterfuck.
you know, it might seem quite to the contrary, but i hate to bring this downer stuff about an idea like continent-wide african prosperity. and what would be better than one world population living together as one? imagine all the people...
but humans have faulty wiring. it takes far too much resistance to inborn tendencies simply to get a family of 3 or 4 to live together in harmony for the standard 18 years or so until the kids move out, or the parents just say, fuck it, i want a divorce. we've had great ideas before, democracy, communism, socialism, moral barometers through ridiculous religious stories that are accessible to children, free market capitalism, free education. but what happens? money gets in the way, power gets in the way, fear gets in the way, people start touching kids, greed breeds deceit, law breeds lawlessness, desire breeds immorality. we just don't have what it takes right now, as a species, to pull off something with this kind of scope.
it would take not only an organized, pure, functional, prosperous, and peaceful society in each and every last african country. it would take an age of enlightenment so massive, and sweeping, that there was an absolute and impenetrable wall of virtue surrounding each and every african individual's life. what's more, it would take an age of enlightenment so massive and sweeping, that every last one of the world's nations outside of the african continent would be able to just leave africa the fuck alone, if they succeeded in doing this. for non-african nations too not cower in fear, encroach upon them, or threaten to cripple them or shut them off from the rest of the world because we felt that their way of life was a threat to our way of life, because an entire continent of once disparate nations, now prosperous and at peace, somehow posed a threat to all-you-can-eat salad bars, 15 minute oil changers, and designer jeans, or to wine appellations, organized soccer, and men wearing scarves, or to smog choked industrial districts, seizure inducing commercials for happy good time shrimp flavored soda drink, and the eternal oppression of tibetans.
yes, i think that one world at peace is a fantastic idea, but i leave you now with the words of a great poem (translated to modern english), words that have inspired one of my favorite books (you'll figure it out), words that have inspired this post, and my life in general:
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
-from to a mouse, on turning her up in her nest, with the plough by robert burns
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