I recommend.
“Kant’s vision of peace has come closest to being realized by the EU, in a form of cosmopolitanism founded on free trade. Born in 1951 as common market to unify the coal and steel industries of France and Germany—to make war materially impossible—it has since expanded from six to twenty-seven nations. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Over the past sixty years, the European project has shown that it is possible for people and nations to come together across borders, the president of the European Commission said at the ceremony. That it is possible to overcome the differences between “them” and “us.”
lmao.
Nonetheless, it was a big thing to switch to Euro, the money. All countries ditching their centuries-old money to unify? That was pretty cool to live, right before the 2000 bug.
Now Europe is more to each his own than ever, I guess.
“The Syrians complained of the others who’d crowded into Europe when the border had opened for their sake. The Afghans were bitter that the Syrians got more sympathy, when their own war had lasted decades longer, but were quick to say that Pakistanis were not real refugees. An Eritrean told me how much he resented West Africans, who weren’t escaping a dictatorship like him. And the Pakistanis and Senegalese could retort that everyone had left Turkey for the same reason: a better life in Europe.
Prejudices based on color or creed had existed back home, but in the camp they were animated by a new logic, one which justified the way of the world. The migrants were learning to see themselves through Western eyes.”
It’s a great book.
Juxtaposed to my own migration, Ukraine and its 8.4 million refugees since February, Eritrea (5,000 leaving each month), the fact that Syria and Afghanistan have never known peace ever since both my countries France and U.S. have invaded them, the 2015 Paris attacks (two attackers passed for refugees through Greece), what I read about EU-funded prisons for immigrants in North Africa…
It is a lot and it is an infernal mess.
But it’s vital to understand the world and gain some perspective around our first world problems (and why we should be able to solve them very easily and quickly, tf you mean).