Setting the tone of the post...
Last night I watched the Channel 4 documentary, 'Immigration Street'. I really enjoyed it and it got me thinking again...
I don't know what the real objectives were for making the documentary, I'm sure there were a mixture of good and bad intentions from the different people involved in the making of it. Perhaps it did have more of a negative impact on the street it was based on, even if it did intend to send out a positive message. A lot of people didn't like the idea of it, some wondered why it was called 'Immigration Street' when a lot of the people living on there had been born there, perhaps their parents had emigrated. The producers wondered why there was such a negative feeling around the word 'Immigration' - they argued that it could be viewed as a positive thing. Many of the residents were happy to take part in the documentary as they were proud of the community they lived in.
Personally I do enjoy the odd lifestyle documentary and while I do agree that some of these production companies try to project a more controversial version of reality in order to get people talking, I still think that if they are done right - these shows can be a great way to create debate: Not just an opinionated statement made by a politician, which may have even been misconstrued by the media and then sprawled as an ugly newspaper headline. These documentaries can show real people living their lives, allowing us to see what's really happening, and in this case the majority of the residents getting on very well in a diverse community.
I don't know an awful lot about politics or current affairs, I'm always learning, I like to be open minded, taking in information from many different sources including conversations, articles on blogs, documentaries, the news, books, scripts in movies, lyrics in songs. I have ideals in my head that have developed over time and I know what is right and wrong; I know that we shouldn't believe everything we hear on the news, I know that there is a lot of good in this world but there is way too much bad, and that's all we seem to hear about - it's very easy to lose faith in humanity. I am not naïve or easily swayed, but I know that there are always so many sides to the story so we mustn't presume we understand a situation just by what we hear on the news - often one news story will be told in a completely different way in every country and even every channel - it's all part of the media mind control. I suppose my point here is that humans often talk a lot of bullshit so it's up to you as an individual to gain and maintain that ability to have an open mind, to continuously learn and not let your personal feelings get in the way of what you know to be right - it's always useful to take a moment to consider the circumstance from another perspective. We are all born innocent and vulnerable, blank canvases, open minds... only with our survival instincts. Apart from that, everything is fed into us, taught to us - our minds are constantly evolving with new information. My friend Christine said the other day "we are not born with empathy, we are taught it" empathy is crucial to living in peace in humanity.
When we scrape away all the details of our complex human world, we are all just living things on this planet for a little while until we all die and our energy dissolves into the universe. All this 'immigration' talk is only an issue to the economy, it only takes common sense to realise if everyone migrated from one country to another, it would become a problem to both countries. The issue we have now is that many people want to 'close the door' to immigrants, 'no more' they say. Well, it's not as easy as that... it's not that simple. We benefit a lot from immigration, it's just we only ever hear about the negatives, the bad eggs. An interesting comment made by one of the residents on 'Immigration Street', a man from Jamaica, he said something along the lines of "when God created the world he made no walls", while I don't necessarily believe in a God creating the world, I do agree that the planet Earth does not belong to us, it's not up to us to build walls and decide who should live where. We are all immigrants somewhere down the line. I'm also sure that many 'immigrants' would rather be in their home country living a prosperous life but perhaps their home country is war torn, which could have something to do with British invasion somewhere down the line. Many British people choose to migrate abroad too, so it's inevitable really. Difficult to manage, but inevitable.
Watch this clip from Stewart Lee's stand up show (it's brilliant):
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23yv5y_stewart-lee-on-immigration-paul-nuttall-and-ukip_fun
“People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.”
― Shane MacGowan
“As I would learn later on, developed countries will always welcome the Einsteins of this world -- those individuals whose talents are already recognized and deemed to have value. This welcome doesn't usually extend to the poor and uneducated people seeking to enter the country. But the truth, supported by the facts of history and the richness of immigrant contribution to America's distinction in the world, is that the most entrepreneurial, innovative, motivated citizen is the one who has been given an opportunity and wants to repay the debt.”
― Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
“All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.”
― Neal Ascherson, Black Sea
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson: Writings
What a beautiful world though, eh?
