The Moths And The Lamp: Immigration, and the Moral Amnesia of Empire
A provocative essay on immigration, colonialism, and historical memory. “The Moths And The Lamp” explores empire, borders, migration, and the moral contradiction
“And so a colony of moths came together and bought a lamp.
Then you came and stole the lamp, and took it to your house.
And the moths, at night, came to your house and danced around the lamp, because that was the reason they bought the lamp in the first place.
Then you went around town complaining:
‘These moths won’t leave my house alone!’
‘If they want to come to my house to dance around the lamp, let them come properly… get permission…’
And so you treated them like rats. Like cockroaches.
But you committed the crime.
You stole their lamp.
You did not “come properly” to their house either.”
Were You A Legal Thief?
That’s exactly how many people sound when they become enraged about immigration.
About “illegal immigrants.”
Were you a legal thief?
Did conquest become morality simply because enough time passed?
Did violence become legitimacy because it was eventually written into law?
History is full of nations that crossed oceans uninvited, planted flags on other people’s soil, extracted wealth, renamed rivers, redrew borders, and then, centuries later, developed an obsession with documentation.
Now the descendants of those who travelled freely across the world without visas, passports, immigration queues, biometric scans, or “proof of funds” suddenly stand at the gates demanding paperwork from the descendants of the dispossessed.
The irony is astonishing.
Gunboats And Backpacks
You invaded entire continents without permission.
Now you are furious because desperate people crossed a border fence.
You arrived with gunboats.
They arrived with backpacks.
You extracted gold, rubber, oil, diamonds, labour, and human beings.
They are arriving to wash dishes, drive taxis, study nursing, code software, clean hospitals, and survive.
And somehow, they are the criminals?
This Is Not An Argument Against Borders
This is not to argue that nations should not have borders.
Every society has the right to laws, order, and security.
A functioning state requires structure.
But moral seriousness also requires honesty.
You cannot spend centuries destabilizing regions, extracting wealth, supporting coups, redrawing civilizations with rulers on colonial maps, building prosperity from imperial advantage, and then pretend migration emerged in a vacuum.
Cause and effect still exist.
The Lamp Matters
The lamp matters.
The moths are not dancing randomly.
People move toward light.
Toward opportunity.
Toward stability.
Toward functioning institutions.
Toward currencies that hold value.
Toward electricity that stays on.
Toward systems that work.
And many of those systems were financed, directly or indirectly, by centuries of unequal extraction from somewhere else.
That does not mean every immigrant is automatically right.
It does not mean every immigration policy is evil.
It does not mean borders should disappear.
It simply means moral outrage should be tempered by historical memory.
The World Learned The Address
There is something deeply ironic about a civilization that spent centuries entering other people's houses uninvited, only to become obsessed with who is entering theirs.
The moths came because of the lamp. And when the lamp is stolen, the light itself becomes a map back to the house that took it.
I rest my case
Don Kenobi
#CultureNotStructure
#OldManInTheMolue
#MyFrancisEssays
No comments:
Post a Comment