I want my Freedom!

I feel caged. We are all caged. In cages that are closed cells on a big blue ball. We have a cell called Somalia where millions die of starvation. While there is another called America, where millions die of obesity related maladies. There are cells where dictators like Gaddafi exist. There are cells where six million children die of hunger every year. And then there cells where millions and millions of tons of food rot in warehouses.
If only these cells were porus, this imbalance wouldn’t exist.

We created boundaries and then it became our job to “safeguard” it. I hear people talking about dying for their country. And it is ironic, because the reason countries were created was for people to live better. They talk about sacrifice, about a man giving up his life for the greater welfare of the country. What a waste of a man’s life! Why do we need to have countries as we have it today in the first place? Why have cells that we need to fight over? Does it make sense to spend trillions in order to have guns pointed at each other just because they were pointing that way before we were born? Why should Kashmir belong to someone? What false pride exists in having a bigger cell to call my country?

Countries should only be an administrative convenience. But today they are more than that. Today a newborn is taught to unconditionally “love” his country. He is taught to like the people within his cell more than the outsiders. He is taught that the outsiders are bad for the country. Why should two societies as a whole learn to hate each other over an issue that was created sometime in the past? Why should a whole society “belong” to a country? And why should a country own or disown people? Why cannot countries be more like administrative blocks which allow and encourage free movement of people and trade? What possible benefit exists in having rigid boundaries and quarrels?

The idea of countries and nations was relevant for an era past. The Nazis managed to kill about 3 million in the Holocaust. It was a terrible tragedy. But is today any different? I don’t think so. The difference is merely that today we don’t have a single figurehead to blame for all the evils perpetrated on mankind. An estimated 11 million are at risk due to hunger in Africa because of a drought this year.  And a significant million of them will. And a strong reason this will happen is because we have such rigid borders. And the longer this system prevails, the more we must hold ourselves guilty.

The starving Africans are helpless. They are prisoners in a cage short of food. WE have locked these people up in cages that do not have any food! Are there cages with excess food? Of course there are. But the starving citizens of Somalia cannot reach there. Imagine a world with no borders. Had it not been for the limits and controls in place across the international borders, chances are Somalia wouldn’t be in such dire straits today.

I choose to be affiliated to ideals, to people and to principles. Not to cells on big blue ball. I want to live in Pakistan and work in India and play in China. I am proud of my ancestors in India but why should that stop me from working or creating things in some other part of the world or for a different audience? I want to be born with the freedom of choice.

This is not just an idealist’s fantasy. It actually makes practical sense. In a world with no international borders, there would be no more international terrorists. No more wars or armies. No more smuggling across borders. There will be effective governance, free movement of trade, materials, ideas and people. Countries as they are today stifle free movement of people, ideas and resources. It creates artificial famines and economic slumps. It also creates artificial prosperity. It creates pools of haves and have-nots. It creates imbalance. An unstable equilibrium. Indirectly or directly this imbalance is the cause for almost all our troubles. Terrorism, global recession, famine deaths in Africa, oil price imbalance, piracy, border wars … Almost every major cause of unrest. All of these exist because we are glued to the idea that countries cannot truly co-exist without having a gun pointed at each other.

Change is difficult. Any shift towards a truly global community will be met with stiff resistance. The birth pangs of the global union will be painful. There will dramatic upheavals across the planet. Mass migration will be inevitable. But that is the price we need to pay for a more balanced world. Every man deserves to be free. How can anyone or any country claim greater right to any resource that nature offers? Some lands are rich and man will want to go there. That man should not be stopped just because he cannot cross a line on the map without getting killed!

I am not a socialist or a communist. I have not read the communist manifesto by Karl Marx. When I hear the phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, I think of Ayn Rand. But I do think that everyone deserves a fighting chance to work hard. If there is one man in Taliban who doesn’t want to stay there, then there shouldn’t be any force conspiring to lock the man in. Taliban does that. Not a civilized society. Is it right for a painter to chop of another painters hand because he is more talented? I think not. Then how did it become right to FORCE billions of humans to rot just because they were born in a territory that was in the wrong cell in the map? That is nothing less than inhuman.

I am not an anarchist. I am only an idealist. I want to see a world where a man can do what he wants to do wherever he wants to do it.

I want my Freedom!