Across the map of the world, waves of desperate humanity are sweeping, their homes lost or too dangerous to stay in, and everywhere, in their heartless selfishness, those who have homes are baring their teeth like guard dogs, warning away those who must have refuge or die. Whole political parties are founded on the principle of hostility to immigrants and refugees, and their membership is swelling as the political and climatic upheavals of our time swell the tide of those who have no choice but to seek a new place to be. I think of all these people on the verge of New Year’s, a holiday founded upon the hope that time can be renewed, that the world may be returned to its unfallen condition, as it was in Eden or the Golden Age. For exile is the very definition of the Fall. It is the Fall as a universal experience, and if you do not believe in a literal Fall, then just say it is the human condition. What home we may have is precarious: we may lose it in a minute. All it takes is a hurricane, an illness that brings financial ruin, a political takeover, a war. That is why those who still have homes defend them fiercely. If they open their doors even for a moment, they may be overrun and lose what they have. For there are both foreign refugees and, domestically, the homeless, those who, like the Son of Man, have nowhere to lay their heads. Decade after decade, science fiction has reimagined the fragmenting of humanity into armed and hostile camps and clans after the breakdown of the social order, whether by nuclear war (Robert Heinlein’s
December 30, 2022
December 30, 2022
December 30, 2022
Across the map of the world, waves of desperate humanity are sweeping, their homes lost or too dangerous to stay in, and everywhere, in their heartless selfishness, those who have homes are baring their teeth like guard dogs, warning away those who must have refuge or die. Whole political parties are founded on the principle of hostility to immigrants and refugees, and their membership is swelling as the political and climatic upheavals of our time swell the tide of those who have no choice but to seek a new place to be. I think of all these people on the verge of New Year’s, a holiday founded upon the hope that time can be renewed, that the world may be returned to its unfallen condition, as it was in Eden or the Golden Age. For exile is the very definition of the Fall. It is the Fall as a universal experience, and if you do not believe in a literal Fall, then just say it is the human condition. What home we may have is precarious: we may lose it in a minute. All it takes is a hurricane, an illness that brings financial ruin, a political takeover, a war. That is why those who still have homes defend them fiercely. If they open their doors even for a moment, they may be overrun and lose what they have. For there are both foreign refugees and, domestically, the homeless, those who, like the Son of Man, have nowhere to lay their heads. Decade after decade, science fiction has reimagined the fragmenting of humanity into armed and hostile camps and clans after the breakdown of the social order, whether by nuclear war (Robert Heinlein’s