I remember when computers came out of IBM and joined the rest of the world. They were huge room-sized, noisy clicking machines. As technology grew, computers shrank. When their usefulness grew, the world shrank. I think that, along with that, tolerance shrank too.
At one time, countries like Africa, China and Somalia were faraway places. We needed a map or globe to locate them because they weren’t a part of our little American world. Since then, computers and the Internet have connected the whole world – our world.
Unfortunately, in our blithely imagined supremacy, we Americans forget one thing: This is not just our world. Everyone forgets one basic fact, which is that hardly any one person is (or ever was) native to any one country.
Whether you believe the Bible or archaeology, humanity first began and emigrated from Africa. Thousands of years ago, “people” were all cave dwellers, a mix of neanderthals and humanoids, which evolved into homosapiens. The world, which had been one single continent we call Pangea, had split up millions of years ago by moving inch by millenial inch into our current seven continents. To this day those seven continents are still evolving, moving this way and that imperceptibly.
We need to remember we all came from the same place and we all live on the same planet. I have no tolerance for intolerance.
Compared to some of the rest of the world, we who were born in America have lived a marshmallow life: fluffy and sweet. Because of that, some of us nowadays don’t want to share. America was founded on liberty, forged in freedom and fought for its independence. To not share is un-American.
The reason I write this is because I have been doing temporary jobs in a variety of factories, and I am absolutely appalled by the prejudice I am hearing and seeing in this supposedly enlightened year of 2012.
I can’t help but wonder if we as a species are de-evolving back to neanderthals. I hear the specious reasons: “They” don’t belong here, “they” don’t speak our language, “they” are taking our jobs.
To that I say, “Does anyone belong here? What language would you speak in their country? And, besides that, too many of “our” jobs have been outsourced to too many countries by manufacturers for cheap labor and heftier profits. So don’t blame “them” for that.”
If you are upset because they don’t speak your language around you, wake up and realize they speak one MORE language than you do. If you think they are taking a job away from you, work harder to get it back. America is still the land of opportunity, and the people who seek asylum here now seek it for the same reasons your grandparents and great-grandparents did, which is why YOU were born here.
If failing that, you still don’t believe there’s room enough, or you don’t like the people on this planet, feel free to move – or evolve.