Global Wandering

Normandy Field

“How does an animal path in the jungle arise? Some animal may break through the undergrowth in order to get to a drinking-place. Other animals find it easiest to use the same track. Thus it may be widened and improved by use. It is not planned- it is an unintended consequence of the need for easy or swift movement. This is how a path is made, even by men - and how language and any other institutions which are useful may arise, and how they may owe their existence and development to their usefulness. They are not planned or intended, and there was perhaps no need for them before they came into existence. But they may create a new need or a new set of aims: the aim-structure of animals or men is not "given" but it develops, with the help of some kind of feedback mechanism, out of earlier aims, and out of results which were not aimed at. In this way, a whole new universe of possibilities or potentialities may arise: a world which is to a large extent autonomous.” - Karl Popper

I’ve been reading a lot of Karl Popper lately. A follow up to my Black Swan fest from last month. I’ve not studied much philosophy because most of it I just don’t get. It all seems very circular – maddeningly so as if written in some secret philosopher’s code that you need a PhD to comprehend. Even with Popper, who seems more straightforward than most, I only grasp about 25% of what he writes. Fortunately, he repeats himself; so slowly a number of his major themes sink in. “Sink in” probably isn’t the right word. It implies comprehension. Resonates is a better term. It’s as if there is something important in the words just beyond my grasp⎯yet close enough to make it worth plugging away to understand.

On another note, I found the article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine by Jason Deparle entitled “Should We Globalize Labor Too?” intriguing. He profiled Lant Pritchett’s proposal to allow impoverished countries to legally send guest workers to developed nations to work. In other words, allow these countries to export the one resource in which they have a competitive advantage – cheap labor. Critics can reel off a litany of reasons why this is a bad idea. On the other hand, consider Africa. Here is a continent where rich nations arbitrarily drew up the borders and named the countries. Often migratory tribal lands were cut in half. The Europeans then ruled the “new” nations with an iron fist for a century while extracting as much of the natural resources as they could and sending it back home. After Africans demanded independence, these unschooled citizens were expected to prosper in lands that had been stripped of wealth. Is it any wonder poverty, famine and genocide ensued? The sandbox was made too small for the number of people and all the best toys were taken away.

I don’t understand why we insist on keeping guest laborers out of our borders when there is clearly demand for their services. We hold borders to be too sacrosanct, as if they were God-given, when in reality they are arbitrary lines that often developed in the manner Popper alluded to in the above quote.