The Value of Being Human?

What’s your human value?

You passport determines your value as a human being.Let me explain.I watched a detailed documentary about migrants and refugees. They looked at the movement of people from a different angle and it made me think.First, the word migrant or migration.What and why?Think about it why do people do that and I mean think about it for you. The media have created a new meaning to the word. The word has now become associated with very subtle criminal feel yet why would anyone sane person leave everything – home, family, possessions and local value to live in a box on a strange street or prison-like camp and be treated with utter disdain?They asked on man why he had left everything.He replied that in his country as a citizen he is treated as a lower class to be suppressed and have life withheld from him. To open a business and push forward in life is frowned upon and unsupported.Yet the same man also explained that if you had arrived in the country from say France as an example the government will support and happily invest into the foreign investor.In other words, the value of being from another country is higher than the value of a local. The man also explains that as a local being killed on the street by the government wasn’t uncommon.Why?For being a local citizen and no other reason.

But what about the word refugee?

This is a word that has been abused again by the media and shockingly even some world leaders (although I think 'leader' is the wrong choice of word).A woman explained how there was a knock on her door at home in the country she had fled from. Finally, the door opened and in burst a group of men. In a second they grabbed her husband and an Uncle and then beheaded them both in front of her and the children.She explained in tears that this was common in her country right now so it was a case of flight or die. When I say flight I mean flight for refugee... safety! She also went on to say that the people native to her country have no real value in her country.Both had the same thing to say and it is this.If they could become a citizen of another country their value as a human being would rise instantly.Both shared stories that when they should their native passports they were viewed with suspicion. Now they show their new passports and citizenship of their new country and both explained how no one blinked an eye and treated them as normal, regular human beings.This documentary wasn’t just two people it was many people that had left everything NOT to get more from another country but to increase their value as a human being.Shocking but interesting!Boundaries are manufactured by men. They don’t and cannot exist as a reality. They are put in place from fear. Fear of losing what they have claimed as their own. You can see this on a small scale with home owners. When you buy a home you get a land deed and the land deed shows your exact boundary.In the local news last week a man was caught on camera threating to beat his neighbor to a pulp because the neighbour would lean on his fence post. The fence post marked his boundary or the line between sanity and sometimes insanity.

Yet Egypt once had massive boundaries – where are they now? So did Greece, so did Rome and so did many others but where are they now?

The boundaries were created by greed and mostly established through blood and war. The greed created fear of loss. The fear of loss built armies and nations. The nations rose and stand in opposition to each other. The nation's demand leadership. The leader is appointed. Once appointed the leader can adopt a godly mantle that will then build his leadership around his greatness above all. This by default creates lowliness in the masses of the country. The value of the human is a result of how the country is then led by the leader – good or bad.And humans being humans will try to flee a threat. Threat is very real in some nations more than others.Yet.The ideas and concepts of nations will always be and has always been built on sand. Nations can vanish as fast as they appear.Nations will build and then be destroyed by those that built.I read in Monocle magazine a great article about Lebanon. Yet when I was a kid Lebanon looked like Syria today.Built by men, destroyed by men and then rebuilt by men. Yet interestingly the artist and young business people being interviewed still have to battle through suspicion and walls put in place by their own rulers. As Lebanese, they are almost by social default devalued by their passport by their own rulers in their own country despite their obvious greatness.Shocking!And now through the rise of the stupid leaders, the ill-informedd, the ignorant and the foolish that surround themselves with foolish we are seeing different humans from different nations being given a human value. It can be high, medium, low or simplyDon’t be shocked when massive changes arrive into your life.They do come and will come whether we like it or not. The real question is are we ready to recreate or life if we have to? Could we? Do we have what it takes to survive outside our boundaries?Finally I met a ‘refugee’ that looked a real mess and a little down and out. Ignored by the people in his new country, under threat oif death from people in his home country.He told me this.I am sad and broken. In my home country I was a businessman with a larger manufacturing company. We supplied most of those that needed our product. I had a large house, many cars and a lot of money in the bank. Most of my family is somewhere else. Many are dead killed by a stranger for no reason in a war that makes no sense.I left my money behind, my big home, my many cars, my factory was bombed and everything – my life – has been destroyed. We had to run with nothing. Finally I arrived here in this place.I want to go home but I will never go home. I am worth nothing in my own country. At home I am nothing. In this country I am human.I wonder if it is worth asking the question are we being fooled by the media mantra of what a refugee or an immigrant is?Have we made a decision of what an immigrant or refugee is based on facts not media hype or ill-informed stupid leaders?It’s the difference between knowing our value as a human and our valuation of other humans.I watched an police interview to the media in the USA. The man said something like the following.‘His skin was different to ours and he spoke a language I couldn’t understand. It was like a demon speaking’ … A dangerously subliminal TV moment missed by many yet absorbed by millions.It had everything.

Devaluation of another human race.

Fear of the unknownFear of lossSelf-elevation of one race over another.Yet cultures do vary, beliefs are different and those that will kill for a beliefs like Christians, Muslims, Jewish or any other belief we can do nothing to change them. Blowing them to a million pieces simply scatters seeds that return ever strong than before.Change comes from within a person and that person will only change once he or she realises change is needed.Only then can we value the lives of everyone rather than the lives we have been brainwashed or embedded to place in a value different to our own.We are all human.

This world is in a dangerous time.

The battle for power has never been greater. The dangerous have never had so much power. The new age of leader has taken upon itself to declare itself great and others a lesser humanity.These are dangerous times that are picking up pace.These are also wonderful times where good and great people are doing good and great things. Where the old way of boundaries and borders are being torn apart by the freedom given to us by the web. Where black and white are the same. Where Arab and Muslim are the same. Where a human smile is exchanged with a human smile despite the language barriers.We can only hope the good will win over the bad.We are all human.We all have value.You have value.You are human.Feel free to share or connect.Peace.Alan Forrest Smith