Immigration
My liberal self wants to think that immigration should be no problem. The Statue of Liberty calls - "send me your huddled masses for they will make us strong". It's never worked that smoothly in practice. People can be quarrelsome and defensive of a status quo.
But there is more than that.
It is hard for two different cultures to live cheek by jowl with each other. They tend to constantly rub each other the wrong way. Lebanon and Syria come to mind as well as Burma.
The First Nations people of the Americas know full well what the outcome of immigration can be - displacement from their own land.
And yet - immigration cannot be stopped - it's like pushing back against the tide. Desperate people will do whatever they can to escape their misfortune - whether it's natural disasters, famine, war. Ambitious people will try to improve their fortunes by moving to prosperous regions.
I don't think any of that is rational in a global sense. Individuals may be rational in their choices given their circumstances but nations can't be since nations don't have brains.
In substitution for brains, nations have politics. Dan Dennett proposed that our rationality is the result of a process much like politics within the neurons of the brain but that we don't see directly - we just see the results - our actions. With politics we get to see all the messy details.
We have this problem - for many reasons a country like Canada is flooded with people who want to be immigrants. But it's way dangerous if those immigrants become a sort of society within a society - the melting pot needs to work.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.