Migration

The thing about migration is that it just is. Like eating or drinking or procreating the species or emptying one’s bladder, migration is one of those basic functions that humans do as a matter of biology. Okay, sociology, then.

It’s almost cliché now to make the very real point: We’re all immigrants. And if we’re talking about the good-ole-USA, well then. Unless you’re an indigenous person, not only are you an immigrant, but a pretty damn recent one. Oh, and illegal. Don’t forget that little factoid. And Manifest Destiny? Don’t get me started. The Enlightenment was, on balance, a positive development, in my humble opinion. But the same enlightenment that paved the way for the thinkers that authored our republic—that same enlightenment somehow gave us the arrogance to pretend we know what god wants, which is, apparently, for us to rule / wreck the place. A little enlightened self-interest at work, no?

Anyway. If you ever read Thoreau, he makes mention of the phenomenon that goes on in the realm of plant life that allows seeds to be sown and take root miles from where they grow. Continents, even. Yes, insect pollination is one avenue, as is the clever idea of making your seeds delicious to birds and other animals, but another one is wind. As it turns out, seeds—some smaller than a speck of sand—are, like The Answer, My Friend, blowin’ in the wind.

So, if you stroll into your backyard and take in a deep breath of warm, summer air, some of that breath will contain dust particles, and perhaps seeds, from the other side of the planet, some minuscule mote of red clay dust from Tanzania, tripping its way through your bronchial tubes, into your lungs where you either exhale it or don’t. But that African mote of dust is here. Migrated. Thank goodness. A lot of North American flora and fauna is not indigenous to North America. Apples, for example. They’re from Afghanistan. Oranges are from somewhere in Southeast Asia, some say where Viet Nam is now. They migrated here. Illegally.

Not surprising, really, that the human species, just like the myriad species of pollinating plant life, requires the spreading of itself over space and time, not unlike the ever-expanding universe itself.

So, why fight it? When will we stop pretending we can control nature, including Human Nature? Human’s will migrate. We just will. And, the good news is, even with nearly 9 billion of us scuttling over the planet like roaches on a rotting cantaloupe, there’s room for everyone. And there’s food enough for everyone. And water. We waste almost as much of these resources as we actually consume. In a word, it’s silly. In another word, it’s irresponsible. In another word, it’s deadly. And in another word, it’s self-inflicted.

Humans are natural-born problem solvers. It’s why we’re still here. The other thing humans are natural-born at is self-possession and a brutally competitive survival paradigm based on a scarcity that is rarely in play until we invent it.

If we could figure out a way to solve for what is essentially a giant resource distribution logistics problem instead of solving for ways to monetize human suffering, we might survive a few more centuries. Otherwise, we’ll eat ourselves alive before we can figure out a way to migrate to Mars, if those indigenous to the place will have us.