JD's Journal
Everyone we know has experienced their unique journey of life, and along the way they have had their share of success and failure. Each of us have learned important lessons and gathered valuable resources that have allowed us to survive and thrive. This podcast is a place for sharing our stories and our resources for the benefit of others. It's a celebration of the resilience and tenacity of people in all walks of life, our local heroes.
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JD's Journal
Challenging the Immigration Narrative: Finding Humanity in a Fearful World
The world feels increasingly divided. Headlines scream of violence abroad and anti-immigration protests at home. Social media bombards us with reasons to fear those who don't look or sound like us. But are things really worse than they've ever been?
Taking a deep dive into historical data reveals something surprising - despite today's challenges, we're living in a relatively peaceful era compared to centuries past. The 13th century saw up to 17% of the global population perish during the Mongol conquests. The 20th century's world wars claimed hundreds of millions of lives. By comparison, our current troubles, while serious, affect a smaller percentage of humanity. What's changed dramatically is our awareness, with 24/7 news and social media creating an unprecedented window into global suffering.
This constant exposure shapes our perception, particularly around immigration. Yet throughout history, moments of profound humanity have emerged even amid bitter conflict. During World War I at Gallipoli, enemy soldiers temporarily ceased fighting to collect their dead, and unexpectedly shared cigarettes and stories in no-man's land. The Christmas Truce of 1914 saw British and German soldiers playing football together between trenches. These moments remind us that beneath our tribal instincts lies a capacity for connection.
My own experience after 9/11, when I found myself eyeing Middle Eastern passengers with suspicion despite having Middle Eastern friends, taught me how easily we dehumanize "others" by category. Australia's renowned wine industry exists because of French and German immigrants. Our celebrated coffee culture and essential healthcare services thrive because of multicultural contributions. When we look beyond categories to see individuals, our fear transforms into appreciation.
Next time you hear generalizations about immigrants or other groups, remember that behind each label are individuals with the same fundamental desires as you - safety, connection, opportunity. In a world that profits from our divisions, recognizing our shared humanity might be the most radical act of all.
Hi listeners and welcome to the JD's Journal podcast where, every week or two, my guests and I share some of our life's journey, our successes and failures and the valuable lessons and resources that we've gathered along the way. This podcast is being recorded on the traditional lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra people who pay our deep respect to Elders, past, present and emerging. This land always was and always will be Aboriginal land. The content shared on this podcast is intended to inform and entertain and it should be applied with your own good judgment. As always, your feedback good and constructive is always appreciated. The podcast is produced by me, so please forgive the occasional glitches from time to time. Anyway, enough of the formalities, let's get on with this episode. Hi, folks, and welcome back to the JD's Journal podcast. I'm so appreciative that you take the time out of your day to come along and listen to my ramblings or my guests.
Speaker 1:Today there's no guests, it's just me, and I really want to spend a short time today, kind of taking a step back and thinking about the state of the world right now. I'm sure that every one of you is seeing what's happening around the world at this point in time. We're seeing horrific violence in some parts of the world. That is unthinkable in terms of the casualties and the inhumanity that we're seeing around certain parts of the world. That is unthinkable in terms of the casualties and the inhumanity that we're seeing around certain parts of the world today. Equally, we've seen anti-immigration marches and a lot of incredibly negative language out there at the moment with regard to the multicultural societies that we live in today, and you would be forgiven, really, for thinking that things are worse than they've been before, that things are in a horrendous state around the world and they are. I mean, the reality is that there are some significant challenges there, but I couldn't help myself. I really needed to kind of rationalize in my own mind you know, what is really going on right now and are things as bad as they seem? And, as I said, I acknowledge that things are bad, there are challenges out there.
Speaker 1:But as I did my research into this topic, it was interesting. I kind of went back through the centuries to see. You know, how do we compare right now? How does the world compare in terms of the state of play and the way we treat each other and those issues that we're facing across the globe? And I learned quite a lot as I went and did my research into this. You know, for instance, I learned that the 13th century so the 1200s, particularly during the Mongol conquests and the expansion of the Mongol Empire from a per capita perspective, probably the worst century that the world has tracked, with, you know, somewhere between 30 and 60 million deaths, which at the time, with a global population of 360 million people, represented somewhere between 8 and 17% of the world's population, were impacted during that period of time of the world's population were impacted during that period of time. The 17th century also is a very challenging time the 30 years war, the civil wars that went on at that point in time, the Ming transition, the Ming to Qing transition in China Again, you're somewhere, you know, around the 25 to 30 million deaths in that period of, and based on a world population of 550 million people. Back then again, somewhere in the order of 7% to 10% of the world was affected by that.
Speaker 1:More recently, the 20th century, with two world wars and Holocaust and other events that were going on around the world, somewhere in the order of 160 to 200 million deaths in the 20th century that we know of that were attributable to war or genocide or persecution and so forth, and so again, the world had grown from 1.6 billion people to somewhere in the order of 6 billion people, so on a per capita basis, you know, if you want to just think about a statistical perspective, you know somewhere between 3 and 6 percent of the world's population were affected by that. Again, the numbers in real terms are staggering, there's no question about it. And so you know, we are dealing with these times. The 21st century, our current century, by relative comparison, is better on all counts in terms of what we're dealing with, again acknowledging that things aren't the way that they should be by any stretch of imagination, again acknowledging that things aren't the way that they should be by any stretch of imagination. But I do think that we are probably more affected, more aware of what's going around the world, and some of the things that are obvious.
Speaker 1:Factors in that are that, you know, we have accessed information, and real-time information, and in a very graphical form today, that we've never had as a civilization before the existence of social media, along with the 24 by 7 news networks who, frankly, let's be honest, the news today has become a form of entertainment and it's a business that's in the business of drawing eyes and making money. It's a commercial venture in most cases, even for networks that we have presumed historically are truly dedicated to news, and I don't want to understate what our journalists do. I think our journalists around the world are incredible, often putting themselves into very risky environments and so forth with their mission of delivering the real news. But we have to be honest with ourselves, and that is that news has become an entertainment forum, and it's an entertainment forum with the intention of bringing your eyes to the content, to drive sponsorships, advertising revenue and so forth market share, what I'm gonna call it. But it is a business, a commercial business, and it's in the interest of that commercial business to make sure that we are drawn, to see what's going on, and unfortunately, it's the bad news that draws us in.
Speaker 1:And so that combination of the 24 by 7 news cycles and social media means that our perhaps our sensitivity to what's happening and the sometimes distorted information that we receive as impacting us, and I think that's been very apparent in the rhetoric that we've been hearing around. Immigration in a number of countries around the world, including Australia here, where I am, but obviously in the US I've seen a lot happening there and in the UK. We've seen the marches and so forth, and there's a lot of misinformation that's flowing out there. And I'm not going to get into a battle with anybody on this podcast, that's not my intention but if you look at the raw data, if you take the time to go and have a look and validate, fact check some of the information that's being presented there as driving the impacts of immigration, the negative impacts of immigration, they just don't stack up. And so you know we are getting caught into this era that we are in right now, where everybody has a voice, they have a platform by virtual social media, and so often what we're seeing and hearing is either poorly researched information and perception being presented as fact, or manipulated information that's being presented to drive an agenda and that's impacting us and our understanding, our perceptions of the world in a very negative way, and so it makes it very easy to present this notion of the bad guys, and the bad guys typically being those people who don't look and sound and feel like us. And that's not new. There's nothing new there If you go back through all these events that I talked about at the beginning of this podcast, those horrendous situations that have occurred around the world, century after century after century.
Speaker 1:The playbook isn't that different. The playback book is actually remarkably similar, and that is that you know you start by identifying a problem. You then identify the bad guy or the cause of that problem, but typically you do that in a way that categorizes an entire group of people in some way or fashion, and then you build a dialogue, you build a story that describes why that group of people are the source of the bad situation that you're dealing with. We saw that very much in the early 30s, leading up towards the Second World War and the Holocaust. We saw that playbook playing out quite clearly in terms of the Jews at that point in time being identified as the cause of many of the issues that were occurring in Germany, and then them being kind of victimised through that war and through the Holocaust and so forth. And we're seeing a similar pattern occurring right now, obviously not to the same extent, but we are seeing that same pattern being played out quite elaborately, in fact, and it's being supported, unfortunately, by the social media that I talked about and the 24 by 7 news uh feeds that we're dealing with, and so we are getting this very tainted picture of that.
Speaker 1:So I'm, you know, kind of thinking about. You know, um, in all that darkness, no, like, where's the light? Like, where do we go from here? And to that I had this recollection of a significant event that occurred during the First World War that I think was quite remarkable. So in 1915, for Australia and New Zealand, there was a watershed moment for us where, for the first time, under our own banner, the banner of the anzacs, the australian new zealand army corps, uh, we went to battle. We went to battle in gallipoli, uh, in turkey, uh, against the ottoman empire. Um, we uh began that battle in, uh in uh, april of 1915. And then, uh, early on, like a few weeks into that battle, a remarkable thing happened on the battlefield.
Speaker 1:So if you can imagine, first World War, fighting, typical trench war, two sides shooting at each other across no man's land in between battle, raging 24 by 7, horrendous numbers of casualties, building up bodies, basically building up between the two trenches effectively, and, and basically, a couple of weeks into that battle, a recognition by the leadership on both sides of that battle that these bodies that were piling up were basically a health issue. They were an issue for them and there was a need to do something about that occurred between the leadership on both sides and an armistice was agreed to on the 24th of May where for basically between seven uh uh was it from uh, about seven o'clock in the morning, I think, until about four o'clock in the afternoon, the guns were put down and on both sides the soldiers were able to come out of their trenches with the intention of staying to basically pick up the bodies, collect the bodies of their fallen comrades and effectively clean up the battlefield. But what occurred beyond that kind of clinical process of cleaning the battlefield was the soldiers mingled and they engaged, and they engaged respectfully, and they engaged and they engaged respectfully and they, you know, they shared cigarettes and souvenirs and there, in this kind of no man's land between the two trenches, having this moment of camaraderie in the worst of circumstances, while they were kind of cleaning up the battlefield, when the ceasefire ended, again remarkably and I think I'm trying to picture being in this environment they went right back to the process of killing each other. Basically, they returned to the trenches and, you know, for their kingdom and for their country and for the cause, the battle resumed. The battle resumed pretty much the same way that it had been.
Speaker 1:But for that period of time, in that kind of that break, that armistice between them, they came together as men, with respect and compassion for each other. It wasn't unprecedented, by the way. On the Western Front, again during the same First World War in 1914, during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the soldiers across the trenches sang Christmas carols and that brought them again out of the trenches into the no man's land area and they exchanged gifts such as chocolates and cigarettes, and they actually played impromptu games of football with each other and so forth. Having this again, this sense of synergy and coming together as humans and for a moment, you know, laying down the angst and the hate and the ill feeling and intention to kill each other for a period of time, to come together as unified human beings in that celebration of Christmas, and, you know, compassion for each other. And so and there's many, many stories of these that have gone on through these periods the Korean War there was a period of time there that there was a truce and the same thing happened and so forth. So I was really curious about, you know, how do we go from there? How do we go from that situation where I'm just shooting anything that moves with the intention of killing them to then coming together as humans and so forth, and it made me really think about, you know what's the shift in mindset that happens when we do that? And that brought me back to my own experience during 9-11.
Speaker 1:So I was living in Australia but just circumstantially happened to be in the US when 9-11 happened. In fact was due to fly home from Seattle back to Sydney with my wife and a friend. Actually, I was over there for a conference and my wife, unusually, had come with me for that trip and I was also there with some work colleagues and so forth. There was about 120 IT managers from around the world who had gathered together in Seattle. All of us were due to fly back to our respective homes on that day, on 9-11.
Speaker 1:We basically woke up to the events that are occurring that day and that was an incredibly interesting time for a couple of reasons. One of them was that, in contrast to the current mood that we're seeing in the USA today this very deep division across party lines and across conservative versus progressive or liberal mindsets the US came together in a way that I'd never seen before and we were actually stuck in the US for four days after 9-11 because there were no flights. And we had the opportunity my wife and I firsthand had the opportunity to see what happens when that country really unifies like in the full sense, unifies together in response to a threat. It was actually quite remarkable as an experience to the extent that a year after that my wife and I and the two kids packed up and moved to the US and stayed there for five years. We were so convinced that the way that it came together, there was it was a place we wanted to be. Sadly, that didn't last for a very long time.
Speaker 1:The other side of that was, I recall quite vividly hopping on the first plane four days later that we could get from Seattle to LA for our connecting flight to Sydney. And I have to be transparent and honest with you, when I got on that plane we were petrified. You know everybody was still very much on edge about domestic flights, in particular in the US, and was there going to be another terrorist activity? And I can tell you with all you know transparency and authenticity that as I got on that plane and I sat the two girls in towards the window in the centre seat, I sat on the aisle. I was sitting there sizing up every passenger around me about whether they were a threat and of course, I was making my judgments about those people based on what they look like.
Speaker 1:All my judgments were, you know, based on the appearance of the people around me and as I look back at that, it's horrible the fact that that was the basis of my judgment, but I'm sure I wasn back at that. It's horrible the fact that that was the basis of my judgment, but I'm sure I wasn't alone at the time. I think we were. You couldn't help yourself. If you saw somebody who had a Middle Eastern look about them, then you immediately, you know, were on edge, given all that. We knew four days after the event that they might be a threat for you.
Speaker 1:And so I guess you know I'm kind of processing the fact that at that time I basically bucketed a group of people into a single category and I had a feeling about those people. I had a very negative feeling about those people, even though four days before I'd been in this conference with people from the Middle East who I've been working with for years and who I consider to be friends and still consider to be friends. But I couldn't help myself from those circumstances that went away and suddenly now everybody was just sitting in a category you are either white and safe or you are not white and not safe, and that's again it's a horrendous, horrendous position to be taking, but that was the reality of it. But I do think that's something that we need to take into consideration. And again, as I watch what's been going on recently around the way we're thinking about immigrants and the way we're thinking about people who are different from us, it's always interesting. A little bit humorous to me is that in not a positive way, is that when I talk about a group of people you know those immigrants, those you know Middle Eastern people, those black people, those yellow people, those white people I'm basically taking the humanity out of that and I'm talking about something that is just you know, this meaningless cluster, and it's easy then for me to take a negative position on those people. And yet, myself and those other people around me, when you talk about a specific person that you know who's a member of that community, the mindset is quite different. The mindset is quite different, and so the more I think about you know what's going on right now. I think it is that I think it's this kind of dehumanization that we go through when we start to think about people under some, you know, badge or under some name that doesn't have humanity attached to it, which is quite different how I think about a specific person. And so I think the challenge for us all is to catch ourselves doing that and to catch ourselves being, you know, consciously aware of the fact that those groups, whatever groups we're talking about, is made up of a set of individual people, and if we knew that, individuals with that group of people would probably appreciate those people, very much appreciate those people.
Speaker 1:As I think about immigration here in Australia right now and it's a very hot topic, just as it is, as I said before, in the US and the UK and other places there is a sense here that immigration is a threat to this country and I am mystified by that perception. I honestly can't rationalize that perception. I always see immigration as an opportunity. I really do always see immigration as an opportunity. I really do. And I think, if I think about the history of Australia, I think this country, you know, beyond the First Nations, people who've been here for somewhere like 65,000 years, who owned this country and continue to be the rightful owners of this country.
Speaker 1:The country that I know as Australia today is very much built on the cultures that have come to this country and the value that they brought to this country. You know we are a country that today is recognized for having some of the best wines on the planet. Well, why do we have the tremendous wines that we have? We have them because the French and the germans came in and they brought in their techniques for growing the grapes and processing and producing tremendous wines. If you look at the, the barossa valley, which is the the heartland of wines in australia, so much of the knowledge that came in, that built the barossa valley, came from the french and the germans and others who brought in their skills and their multi-generational expertise in growing and producing fine wines.
Speaker 1:Australia today is recognized as one of the best countries to go to for a cup of coffee, and you know that staggers me. When I moved to the US back in 2002, the US had great coffee and we all get excited about the fact that we were going to be able to get coffee in Seattle or wherever you went, or you had to go to Italy to get great coffee, but Australia now is ranked as one of the top countries in the world. Our baristas are world recognized. Why is that? That's because of immigration. It's because we brought in multi-generational skills in the production and the delivery of tremendous coffee, and it goes on and on and on. If I look at the cuisines we have in Australia, this country has such a diversity of wonderful cuisines from around the world. Why? Because of immigration? Because we've brought in these cultures.
Speaker 1:And so I guess I think we have an inherent fear of change. I think there's a, as we see in all environments. I saw it in the corporate environment where change frightens people. I get it, but I think that's what we're dealing with in some cases here is that fear of change. But I don't see it as change, I see it as evolution. I truly believe that this country will continue to evolve, and it will continue to evolve because of the incredible talent we already have, but the insights and perspectives and knowledge and traditions and cultures that we bring in from other generations, and I'm quite excited about how this country will continue to evolve with that. And so I guess you know what's the message of all of this rambling podcast is I don't think we have an immigration problem? I really don't, and some people might be offended that I say that I think we have an immigration opportunity. I think it should be well managed. Don't get me wrong. I think that we should have immigration policies and strategies that are selective and bring in the right people.
Speaker 1:I know that there's stories out there about immigration being the cause of our housing problem. It's not. The reality today in Australia is we have about a million residential properties that are not occupied right now, that we have been million residential properties that are not occupied right now, that we have been building residential properties at a faster rate than the immigration rate. And here's the kicker 26% of the people in the construction industry that are building those residential and commercial properties are immigrants, and so that's not the issue that we're dealing with here. There's a sense that immigrants are, you know, hogging the social security platform and hogging all of our money. That doesn't stack up either when you look at the data. In fact, the reality is that employment rates of immigration is very high. They pay taxes. They're actually less dependent on our health systems than our own folks, so that's not the issue either. In fact, immigration, if anything, if it's done the right way is going to continue to bolster our economy, bringing in skills. There's no question about it.
Speaker 1:You look at our medical network today. Our doctors and nurses so much of our medical services are immigrants. These are people that have come to the country and we need them. Frankly, we have major challenges in terms of the coverage of doctors, particularly in rural Australia. We have massive challenges there in terms of the number of doctors and nurses that are available to us and, in fact, we will solve those issues through immigration, through bringing in people who are properly qualified from around the world. But it's highly likely today that when you go to your clinic or go to your hospital or whatever, the person you're going to be going to be treating you is going to be an immigrant. It's going to be somebody who's coming to this country, and so forth.
Speaker 1:So I challenge all of us to take a fresh look. Immigration is not new. This country, as I say, it's been managing its growth and its evolution to immigration for 200 years. Nothing radical has changed. There's no mass immigration. That's different from how we've done immigration before, and we need to start thinking about those categories of people that we like to call the bad guys as being the individuals that we know, a collective collective of those individuals, every one of them with common values to ourselves, with common interests, and so forth.
Speaker 1:I know I talked in a previous podcast episode about the fact that you know, as I was sitting in Beijing and as I've been in many of the countries that I was servicing in my previous role, what I found was that people were largely the same.
Speaker 1:There's mums and dads and kids, and they all want to have a home, they all want to have connection, they all want to have good food, they want to have a roof over their heads, they want to be in a community, they want to learn, they want opportunity. There's not a lot of difference in the whole thing, and I think we just need to take a step back, stop looking for the bad guy and just recognize the value that this multiculturalism is giving us every freaking day. So I will end my ramble there today. Thank you again for coming into the podcast. As always, I look forward to any feedback that you've got, good or bad. I love to hear any questions or any critical feedback that you've got on the podcast. I hope, wherever you are, you're living your best life and please, folks, be good to each other. Thank you you.
