Are you for Real-ist?

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. 
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
-Lilla Watson, Australia Aboriginal Activist

 As a kid, growing up with beautiful Lake Coeur d’Alene so central to life: swimming, sailing, walking around the boardwalk, picnic’s on the dike road, feeding the ducks every Sunday, I was under the impression that EVERY town had a lake.  It wasn’t until a trip to Clarkston, WA to visit my aunt and uncle that I remember asking where the lake was and finding out– like a kid finding out there is no Santa Claus–that not every town has a lake.  I had been living under a faulty pretense and Lake was not in the definition of Town.  This realization made an impression deep enough to be a vivid memory over 20 years later.
 
And here in Denver, at the age of 27, yet another definition I’ve clung to all my life has been falsified.  In Mr. Medved’s 7th grade geography class, which took place in one of the “portal” trailers at Canfield Middle School and where I sat next to the boy called “Critter” who regularly collected the dead flies from the windowsill and proceeded to eat them, while the girls squealed in disgust…anyway, it was here in the portal next to Critter that I learned about the world outside of the US.  We observed borders and memorized capitals and did reports on our country of choice.  I presented on GHANA, feeling a natural affinity for the country that was practically my name: G-Hana.  (To this day I still call it “G”-Hana).  Since then, I’ve never questioned the structure of the world: States are a given.  Countries are a given.  Borders are a given.  White picket fences: given.  (just kidding about the picket fences, but seriously how did they get into the definition of “American Dream”?) 
 
Thanks to my International Political Theory class–my most despised class this quarter, because I had no idea what it was or why it was pertinent to my life–my definition of the world has changed: my definition of the structure of international society has changed.  Borders are not a given.  Sovereign states are not a given.  Countries are not a given.  The whole structure of our world is NEW.  This idea of the “American Dream” is new because America is new.  I suppose I’ve known this all along, but it wasn’t of enough significance for my brain to dwell on.  So why is it significant now?     Post-World War, International theory emerged for the purpose of changing the world for the better by removing the blight of war.  It emerged from the dialogue around world peace.  Is world peace possible?  How is it possible?  International political theories have been significant in the formation of US Foreign Policy.  Problem-Solving theories (particularly Neo-Realism) have dominated the field, assuming the structure of the world as we know it to be natural, legitimizing it. This means that these theories are asking how world peace can be achieved (if it can be achieved) within a world that is frozen in particular ways and ultimately unchangeable in the way it is divided.   These theories cannot imagine a world without boundaries, without borders, without sovereign states as the main actors.  However, a different movement of theory has been gaining in popularity: Critical Theory is driven by political interest of emancipation, acknowledging that world structure is ever-evolving, ever-changing and perhaps world peace is attained through a different world structure. While problem-solving theories seek change within structure, critical theory seeks to change the structure itself. 
 
I used to take world order as I was born into it, as given.  But how effective is it really?  Nation states beget Borders and Borders beget “us” and “them” mentality.  Why did I grow up surrounded by prejudice against Mexican immigrants and Muslims and fear of “others”?   Three generations back, my family immigrated from Finland, Yugoslavia, Cornwall and Sweden.  Immigrants. All of them.  “If you’re not Native-American, you’re Immigrant American.” Why does the livelihood of American “citizens” matter more than the livelihood of the new wave of immigrants seeking a better life, just like my relatives?  Are we not a global community?  As far as my ecological studies taught me, the Earth is one big ‘ol interconnected Eco-System.  What happens in one part of the world, affects another part of the world.  Natural disasters don’t pay any mind to borders.  Are they really the most effective structure for world order? 
 
In 6 hours, I’ll be at Denver International Airport to pick up a Muslim refugee family from Iraq: Ammar and Nada and their three teenagers Khattab, Hafssa, and Yamamah.  My friend Stuart rallied us friends to sponsor this family.   Living examples of the reality of war, that I have been so far removed from.  I can’t imagine the devastation if Idaho had been declared war upon, and the world as I knew and loved was suddenly destroyed.  Family and friends killed, no longer safe to go feed the ducks at Lake Coeur d’Alene on Sundays.  And then, as a 14-year old girl, like Yamamah, have to leave everything familiar behind to become a refugee in… Brazil: I don’t know Portuguese!  I really have no answers, but between my International Political Theory course and sponsoring a refugee family for the rest of this year, my brain’s getting out of the “Neo-Realist” box for awhile.  
 
Is world peace possible in this world as we know it?

Advertisement