Any suggestions?
Amnesty International is a good thing. Even if they can't do as much as they should, at least they can get people to start thinking. Like tonight, there was a professor from another university, he had been invited by my uni's amnesty group, I think, and talked about "the right to immigration". As you can imagine, not many people came in the first place. Those who didn't certainly missed a nice simple experiment. A psychological experiment, feel free to join in, don't worry, it's not going to harm you unless you allow yourself to start reconsidering the ideology you think you were convinced of, regarding the world, regarding immigration. Alright, that's unfair, maybe you belong to the less ignorant people on this planet (wow, we'd be already five, then!).
Imagine for some reason you can't remember if the country you live in belongs to the lucky people who live a sunny life or if your country is part of those who were unlucky to be born on the shadowy side of the world. You only know there are these two parts of the world. Imagine you would be born into any country but you don't know which one and you need to decide BEFORE if you allowed a liberal immigration policy or not.. What would you do..?
Surely, viewed with such impartialness we'd all suddenly be much more immigrant-friendly, wouldn't we? Because we can't choose our place of birth so better get on the safe side then..
Realisation doesn't do much though, the world today is the George-Orwell-style: All people are equal but some are more equal than others.
Surprisingly, the prof spoke out my thoughts which I posted here earlier about countries and political borders.. so I was quite curious if he could help out with some ideas how it could be realised to abandon all borders and passports and stuff but unfortunately-disappointingly rather- he said he only concentrated on the theoretical part of the idea without concerning himself with any practical considerations. How is that possible?! How can you engage yourself so much in such a topic and then not care about figuring out any ideas about how to possibly realise it all? Any suggestions? Besides the fact we should do a lot regarding the unjust distribution of resources to get rid of the reason why people risk their life in order to get a better life in the first place, see Melilla and Ceuta.
Another thought he mentioned: If we declare it illegitimate that people in the former German Democratic Republic were forced to stay behind the wall, then how can we call it legitimate to keep potential immigrants behind their political borders?
Imagine for some reason you can't remember if the country you live in belongs to the lucky people who live a sunny life or if your country is part of those who were unlucky to be born on the shadowy side of the world. You only know there are these two parts of the world. Imagine you would be born into any country but you don't know which one and you need to decide BEFORE if you allowed a liberal immigration policy or not.. What would you do..?
Surely, viewed with such impartialness we'd all suddenly be much more immigrant-friendly, wouldn't we? Because we can't choose our place of birth so better get on the safe side then..
Realisation doesn't do much though, the world today is the George-Orwell-style: All people are equal but some are more equal than others.
Surprisingly, the prof spoke out my thoughts which I posted here earlier about countries and political borders.. so I was quite curious if he could help out with some ideas how it could be realised to abandon all borders and passports and stuff but unfortunately-disappointingly rather- he said he only concentrated on the theoretical part of the idea without concerning himself with any practical considerations. How is that possible?! How can you engage yourself so much in such a topic and then not care about figuring out any ideas about how to possibly realise it all? Any suggestions? Besides the fact we should do a lot regarding the unjust distribution of resources to get rid of the reason why people risk their life in order to get a better life in the first place, see Melilla and Ceuta.
Another thought he mentioned: If we declare it illegitimate that people in the former German Democratic Republic were forced to stay behind the wall, then how can we call it legitimate to keep potential immigrants behind their political borders?
posted by Silk_and_Velvet at 10:42 pm
12 Comments:
1. Hmm, that professor friend of yours appears to be somewhat of a copy cat to me?! His ideas are surprisingly similar to John Rawls' "veil of ignorance", only elevated to the international level... Which I think Rawls himself stressed that you couldn't...
2. And to quote "poor" :) Marx: "Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern." Sadly, this holds water even today...
who says people can't have the same opinion? there are too many people in the world thinking about the same problems no wonder they come up with the same theories. so mr rawl isn't any better though apparently, easy to simply say "it can't be done"!
and hey you're scary, did you know that exactly the phrase you quoted is written on the wall in the foyer of humboldt-university?! big golden letters of one of marx' brilliant phrases.
1. Why do you want to take away the credit from Rawls? I think he put forward his ideas in the late 1950s or so, and wouldn't it be strange if this professor has never heard of him?
2. In ths case, I choose to view scary as a compliment. As a matter of fact, I didn't know that it's written on the wall of your university, but I really like that feature!
sure the prof will have heard of rawls, i guess, unfortunately i can't ask him anymore now.. maybe i should have a look at rawls' ideas, or descriptions rather because, unless you tell me otherwise, he doesn't develop any new ideas concerning immigration?
Well, I'd lie if I said I was the greatest expert in Rawls to have ever lived. I just said that the professor's method, so to speak, looks suspiciously like that of Rawls. That is, imagine that you have to clue as to in what position you'll be born, now compose society.
But it's funny, though, that neither of them seem to think the phenomenon of the gambler into all this. That is, maybe someone would want all the world's wealth to be concentrated in the hands of one man, because they hope they'll be that person...
that idea of a gambler isn't too clever though if you think about it. you wouldn't be very happy if you'd possess all the wealth of the world because basically you wouldn't be able to talk to anyone around you, they'd all hate you, what a horrible world! or how do you imagine the life of a successful gambler?
I don't think people would necessarily hate the person who ends up with all the wealth in the world. Surely he'll be able to buy all the friends in the world he'd want, wouldn't he? Okay, this is getting silly, too silly!
who's getting silly? ;)
right, random question: would you say there's something like a scandivanian stereotype/style or is that too much generalising?
Who's getting silly? Not I for one!
A Scandinavian? I'd say a big, blond, muscular man wearing fur and who'd travel around the world in a narrow ship and loot vilages and monastaries, fight with long swords, and eat lots of meat! In other words me, provided you exclude the thing about looting, fighting... And the fur most of the time! :)
Why do you ask?
hehe, i'm asking because i expected a funny answer like that ;) no i'm sure when i thought of that question i did have something particular in mind but unfortunately i can't remember it so just accept it as a random question, things like these happen sometimes.
what are you doing, how's life? lots of fur involved? ;)
You ought to write yourself little partly sticky yellow notes, ought you not?
A week ago it snowed for some hours, but today it just rained and the bears and wolves only come out when it's snowy. Therefore it hasn't been necessary for me personally to fight neither bears nor wolves yet, which is why I still need fur to get me warm through the upcoming winter.
Oh, and by the way: what keeps YOU so busy? I see you on MSN lamentably rarely these days!
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