Globalization And The Refugee Movement From Unprotected Territories

In hopeful depictions, globalization is seen as the movement of laborers or wealth freely across the world. This picture of labor and wealth mobility is inaccurate because it is increasingly becoming evident that globalization will be defined rather as the era of the mass mobility of human beings seeking security and safety. This much is seen in the mass movement of refugees, which increasingly looks like being the symbol which defines what globalization stands for. In the new globalization model, the western world will open its borders further not to invite working-age laborers, but to ensure the security and safety of populations seeking respite from warfare or natural disasters. All movement towards the west is a ultimately "refugee movement," it entails a "becoming refugee" of the moving individual or group. 

Any future policy by safer, western societies regarding the increase in immigrants in their territory will have mostly to do with ensuring that these immigrants are provided security and safety, but not much beyond that. Ultimately, as the securing/protecting of the population becomes the major concern, the progress and development of that population takes a back seat, because for securing powers, it is important that the secured population maintain a fixed character, and not become anything more that cannot be handled. In securing, the population is fixed in its level of development and prosperity; the population remains secure but stagnant.

The paternal, protective function which is supposed to be a standard across all territories is today absent in numerous territories; security is not a given right in many nations, mainly because the western peace project no longer goes outward to “fill in” war-torn territories with broad zones of peace, but rather seeks to invite inward to its shores those singular individuals who seek to live. Today peace is a project of protecting fortunate individuals and not the whole of the group which is being persecuted. Additionally, the militarization of the west does not mean that the whole world is a safer place, even though this is how it is usually thought for comfort, but western militarization only implies the safety exclusively of the west's own borders and territories.

The fulfillment of the Foucauldian idea of “construct live,” where the goal for individuals and societies is the prolonging of life and avoidance of death, increasingly requires that populations move away from their territories and move towards other more secure territories because not all territories are secure even though they have authority in place which continues to relay messages celebrating security. “Construct live” needs to be amended for the globalization age: living a longer life comes only if one's territory is abandoned for the west; living longer is only possible with mobility towards the west, with deterritorialization from one's homeland, a deterritorialization which is long-term, perhaps even permanent, because the west does not always give the chance of a proper rehabilitation/reterritorialization. The west itself will soon seek to be known for its protective function above everything else, protecting the few against weak threats being practically easier than actively developing whole weak societies. To protect oneself is not a “natural” aim which originates in the mind of the individual, rather, the west demands that the individual seek protection and hence travel to the west, but, problematically, protection is all the west will give.     

Development Of Infrastructure In Nepal As A Preparation For A War-Making Territory

War is a result of the process of “development,” where development means the “macro-projects” implemented by big international developers to build roads, food-making mechanisms and other basic infrastructure in a certain territory. War is made easy on a day-to-day basis through the use of infrastructure: war-machines are being driven in the modern, well-paved roads, and war soldiers are being provided the most nutritious food. Without a proper network of roads, such wars would not be possible, and without hospitals to treat the war casualties, these wars would not have a steady supply of fighters. Proper roads etc facilitate warfare, even more than providing for the populace a kind of higher quality of life and prosperity. Higher quality of life and prosperity are simply promises made by the macro-style development organizations. These developmental organizations' stated goals of prosperity and higher quality of life seem only to apply for western countries, in the rest of the world these goals have only enabled easy transition to a war-making entity.

Many problematic territories in the world have consistently disproved the link between development and peace. An important reason for the link between development and war may be the “foreign-ness” of development. War is waged in problematic territories with disregard and disrespect for foreign, western infrastructure, the roads are used ostentatiously for war-making purposes, even as this goes counter to the philosophy of the organizations that built these roads. This disregard and disrespect for infrastructure is possible because the infrastructure is not felt to be “community owned” but rather is felt to be “foreign made.” War-making entities seek the continuation of the roads and hospitals so that the war effort can be kept alive, hence, today's war-making entities would rather have the big developers provide humanitarian relief and develop infrastructure so that the war may be continued with ease after the developers leave. Increasingly, war will be stopped just for big development projects, this kind of temporary stop will be the definition of peace, and conflicts are likely to continue for decades if the parties use this model of “allowing the big development organizations into the war-zone periodically.”

Hence we find development organizations are obliged to speak of war out of guilt, because (unconsciously) they are making war possible with their infrastructure development projects. There is a positive correlation between a warring population's war effort and the level of development of infrastructure in that territory. But in today's developing world, the first thing that should provide the people with a common identity is their territory's infrastructure rather than their cultural similarities and natural resources. Hence, it is up to the people to collectively come to own the infrastructure that has made their lives easy. Ultimately, this may mean that foreign-made infrastructure itself becomes the object of contention: the big roads and hospitals are rejected, the food-making systems are ignored for alternatives designed by the community, the power-plants are replaced or reclaimed etc. Collectively making infrastructure would bring about unity between the populations of different territories or identities. The activities generating strong community ownership should be the number one priority within a wider infrastructure development project, rather than community ownership only being encouraged at the end of the project as some kind of added bonus.

Funerals In The “Cyber-Civil-War” Age

In Foucault, the state controls information so that it can ultimately control the behavior of the physical human bodies of the population. This model does not suffice, because today the superstate instead controls physical human bodies as information carriers, to control bodies in their ability to carry and hold information, not for how they behave. The state does not produce information seeking to control the population, but rather it controls the production of information by human beings themselves; the state becoming only a controlling entity, creating life or taking life but not in charge of the production of information, because state-like production of information is now in private hands.  

In the near future under this superstate, every physical body will already be in the cross-hairs of the superstate because these bodies will be the carriers of important information, and every body will always already be like a deviant if the information systems the superstate stores within the body become virus-laden or faulty. Without the innocent body's own fault, something such as a chip or a bar-code within it may deviate and cause the necessity to unjustly destroy or intrude on the body that simply carries the deviance/faulty device. Innocent lives will frequently be lost at the hands of the superstate only concerned with the management and maintenance of its devices. Another ethical question would emerge: does the superstate let the innocent life to live and have his/her virus-laden chips infect the whole of cyberspace, or should an innocent life be killed?

The superstate may deem necessary to retrieve and erase the deviant devices within the human body of its subject, giving rise to a “cyber-civil-war” in the future between the authoritative superstate and angry but innocent “deviant” carriers of information systems who feel intruded. In this war, the biological death of the citizen would not be the end objective of the superstate, because the body is not to be killed just in its movement and behavior, but must also be destroyed for the information that it carries within it. For the superstate, the body cannot simply be shot and let to lie in the street. Proper destruction of the body and not just its death would be the aim of the superstate, making the superstate effectively an entity that controls post-death funeral processes, that approves and administers some kinds of funeral processes over other kinds, depending on which funeral process enables proper destruction of the information systems within the body. The superstate will control the complete cremation of bodies in order that the information systems in those bodies are completely destroyed. Mass concentration camps will ensue where citizens are to go to die and be cremated in a way suited to the superstate. Killing the human body will become an activity performed on the way towards the deactivation of the foreign devices within that body; the worth and value of the human body will be judged based on the smooth functioning of the devices within it: if the device manifests a lot of bugs for some reason, the human body, no matter what its wealth and class, will be considered a weakness in the superstate's order. 

The superstate's complete control of funerals would be a great denial of freedom for the population to do whatever it feels like with its dead bodies. It would be problematic for a superstate if the mourning civilians were to get rid of cremation, to make the dead body productive and active through the information stored within it, to let the virus roam freely, to withhold the information contained in the dead from the superstate, to make it possible for others to extract data from the chip before the superstate does. In this civil war, the entombing of the dead and the use of open graves would resist the superstate's authorization of complete cremation.