Tepper Reads discussion

I’ve always been a science fiction fan, though more of sc-fi movies and TV than books, and grew up watching reruns of the original Star Trek series, and The Next Generation as it aired on television (Full Disclosure: I’m more a TNG and Picard fan, but I do like them both).

One thing I’ve always loved about Star Trek is that the people of earth have finally gotten it together hundreds of years in the future. Earth is unified as a planet (it’s even referred to as United Earth). Though countries and cultures still exist, we unite as one planet among many in the United Federation of Planets. While there are myriad ways life is better in the future presented by Star Trek, this unification as a planet always held the most appeal to me. Why can’t we, as a planet, just get along? Why can’t we unify to help migrants, to fix the changing climate, to end hunger, to fix any number of problems together, as one people?

Hamid expresses this same sentiment in Exit West on page 158, “Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.” This, to me, seems to be one of the central themes of the novel. What roles do nations and their borders really play? And could they ever go away completely?

This is an interesting viewpoint and seems almost ideal but it is opposite to what hedge fund guru Jim Rogers concluded after biking/driving 252,000 miles through hundreds of countries on his way to two world records. His final conclusion: Most big countries will have to be broken up into smaller ones in order for peace and prosperity to prevail. Each smaller country would be sovereign and have its own clearly defined borders.
My own parochial analysis is that in Africa we need 2 to 5 times more countries than what the Berlin Conference arbitrarily demarcated in 1885. If we can create a federal system like the United States, then borders between nations become symbolic and are only enforced when the Federation overreaches it's own authority. This is similar to the 10th amendment. Strong borders between small countries are counter-productive because they limit trade, labor arbitrage, unified currency and the economies of scale that come from trading with outsiders as a single bloc. The Federation may feel a need to enforce all its outside borders in order to remain intact as a functional bloc. Witness today that the EU is upset with Turkey over the opening of the EU's southeastern border to millions of refugees.
What to do with refugees? Inside each bloc, there are always countries which desperately need more people due to low fertility rates, inverted population pyramids, a need for cultural diversity, and job skills that certain refugees bring. There are also other countries which contributed to the upheaval in the refugees' homeland. They should take in some refugees. For the rest of the countries, it is easy to find benefactors who are willing to 'sponsor' families of refugees for a few years so that the burden does not fall on the entire community as this might build resentment when public facilities get overwhelmed. Refugees should be allowed in based on the following: "Article 14(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted in 1948, guarantees the right to seek and enjoy asylum in other countries". Lastly, refugee children assimilate completely in their new countries and become very productive citizens like Secretary Madeline Albright who arrived on Ellis Island at age 11, Sergey Brin (then aged 6), supermodel Iman, and singer Gloria Estefan. Adults assimilate too, when given support. Other refugees who fled their home countries as adults or children include Albert Einstein, Peter Drucker, George Soros, Freddy Mercury, Secretary Henry Kissinger, and the Dalai Lama. It is
impossible to know which refugee child will be the next Sergey Brin, so it may be better to take in all refugees that can be comfortably supported by the social safety nets available. Those who subscribe to 'the marginal utility of giving' believe that a country must take in refugees until the host country's systems are almost as overwhelmed as the ones in the refugees' country of origin. I will leave it to others to decide on the usefulness or feasibility of this approach.

Thank you so much for this thoughtful analysis, Tapi! I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an economist or businessperson in any way. I'll also admit that my views on this can be a bit naive, but I can't help but think about how many problems, like wars, have been caused by an invisible line between to places. Perhaps countries don't need to go away, and perhaps we need more of them, but each and every one of us in the world needs to remember that whether there's an invisible line between us and the people next to us, that we're all people, and that we all deserve basic human rights.

From my point-of-view, it feels like sometimes countries create an "Us vs. Them" dynamic, in which the "them" is sometimes demonized, or sometimes seen as "less than" by the "us." This isn't the case with every country, to be sure, but we see this rhetoric all over the globe, and it's both saddening and maddening. People are people, no matter where they come from, who they worship, etc. If borders didn't exist, would this "Us vs. Them" dynamic go away? Probably not at first, but maybe eventually? I posit that as a question because I just don't know, but I know what I want the outcome to be--everyone treating everyone else as if they're equal.

I really appreciate how you point out all of the positives of refugees, be they business-related, science-related, or arts-related. The US has become such a business, scientific, and cultural presence throughout the world because of the strength of refugees. And you're right, we don't know who could be the next Sergey Brin (or maybe the person who could cure cancer, solve the climate crisis, etc. etc.) so it's best to help as many people as a country can.

You make some great points, Matthew! "Us" vs "Them" has been a continuing problem screaming for an urgent solution.
The doors in the book seem to represent a way to go from one country to another through borders. It is apparent that there are much fewer people returning through the doors than those who are escaping, presumably because life is better and safer in the new country. Some say that without borders, the warlords in the Saeed's hometown would export their violence to his new home, rendering futile the whole idea of fleeing in the first place. With no borders, we have to hope against hope that the encroaching violence and war from the 'bad' parts of the world can be quickly neutralized by peace and security in the 'good' areas of the world. Some say that in practice, violence spreads unless quarantined.

This is such a rich and interesting discussion. And true to the best conversations, it raises for me a number of questions, primary among which is this: Is a strong sense of nationalism and/or protectionism (some might conflate the two, while others would argue they are different) something that is deeply rooted in the psychology of human beings, or is it manifested by rhetorical structures that are ultimately created by nations/nation-states? Does "Us" vs. "Them" naturally exist in our hearts as people or because we are told that it should in order to protect our nation's interests?

I do not have an answer to this. But I love that Hamid -- and the two of you -- have given us a reason to consider it.

I want to touch on Michelle's point about psychology, because it's something I talked about a lot in undergrad as a psych major! It seems like we are hardwired to separate ourselves into us vs them groups with essentially no influence needed. Some of these separations make a lot of sense (countries, sports team fandoms, political parties, etc.). But it turns out that people will have this group mentality based on their preference for one painting over another. They will also exhibit this mentality based on a random group assignment! We are so biologically hardwired to love our own ingroup and fear a potentially dangerous outgroup that we'll do it in any circumstance. So you could theoretically remove all the borders of a country, but you will never be able to remove the borders of someone's mind. On the sci-fi theme... if there were to be some sort of alien group, that could end up bringing people together! The ingroup would just become... humans!

I'm glad we're talking about borders and xenophobia and immigration and refugees now especially with the terror inspired by COVID-19. We've seen (unsurprisingly) many people focus on xenophobia instead of public health. Should people be freely traveling right now during a pandemic? Of course not! But who is allowed to travel and who isn't? Who is victimized or blamed or shunned and who isn't? It's fascinating, and I'm sad we won't be able to meet in person to talk about it!!!

Thanks so much for this psychological analysis, Daniel! Very interesting stuff. I'm curious, do you think we're actually hardwired in this way, or do you think this is something that we're taught beginning at birth? Like, is this a social construct that's embedded in our brains at a young age by those who raise us, or is it something that we're just born with? I sure don't know, but I'm curious what you (and everyone else) thinks. My hunch is that it's a little bit primal, and a lot environmental, but that's pure speculation on my part.

And yes, a big reason we picked Exit West was its timeliness--immigration and borders have been on lots of people's minds over the past few years, especially here in the US--but we didn't realize exactly how timely this book would be. I'm hoping to have more info about one last online Meet-Up in the coming days, so we'll hopefully all get to talk about this together very soon.

Stay safe everyone!