WE ALL DESERVE TO BE FREE
Once upon a time, we were free to go wherever we chose. It wasn’t so long ago. The history of humanity, is a tale of constant motion.
People are supposed to move about. We have imaginations which encourage us to dream about life in other places, bodies which are built to roam, and hands which can make an array of vehicles. A few of us even possess the “Wanderlust Gene”, which encourages us to take risks – to sail across unchartered oceans, and launch ourselves towards faraway planets.
Some of us are forced to relocate. Lots of us choose to migrate. A few of us belong to nomadic communities.
But if one thing is clear, it’s that mobility improves our societies. Emigrants send back billions in remittances – helping to reduce poverty, and inspiring their peers to upskill. Immigrants do the work that their hosts are unwilling or unable to perform. They sustain economies which have ageing populations. They establish industries, invent products, create jobs, increase wages, fuel growth, pay taxes, and enrich our cultures – enhancing our music, arts, sports, languages and cuisine.
It's time to celebrate movement! It’s time to demand our freedom! It’s time for open borders!
This book explains why – making the historical, scientific, economic, cultural, political and philosophical cases for free movement.
This book hasn't been released yet. My previous titles have sold tens-of-thousands of copies. But the translations aren't so successful, and translators shouldn't expect to make much money from this project.
Boom!
No, that doesn’t do it justice.
BOOM!
No, that doesn’t even come close.
The universe didn’t begin with a big bang. It began with a massive bang. The sort of explosion that’s impossible to conceive. A melee of gamma rays, heat and light.
This massive bang dispersed all the physical matter that’s ever existed, at more than a billion kilometres per hour. That matter would go on to form stars, planets, trees, animals and humans – but it would never stop moving. Every gram of matter that exists today, has been in constant motion for 13.8 billion years – travelling away from the site of the big bang.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is no exception: It travels 2.1 million kilometres every single hour.
Planet Earth is also beholden by this rule of constant motion. It’s orbiting the sun – travelling 107 million kilometres in an hour.
Our solar system is also moving around the Milky Way.
And there’s more: That’s because the Earth is rotating on its axis. If you’re standing on the equator, you’ll be travelling 1,600 kilometres each hour, thanks to this phenomenon alone.
All this means one thing: You’re migrating right now. It might not seem that way. You might be very comfortable, relaxing on a sofa, sipping a cup of cocoa. Everything might feel pretty stable. But in reality, you’re whizzing through space at a mind-boggling velocity. You’ve never been where you are at this moment, and you’ll never be there again.
This has always been the case.
The history of the universe, is a history of continuous travel through space. (Fraknoi, 2007).
