There's not a lot to be done, I fear (insoluble problems)

Do you ever read about the problems of the world, and worry that they're just not really solveable? Like, there might be solutions but they're a damn sight worse than the problems in the first place, or at least, no better? I keep coming back to this today, somehow.

This asylum seeker debate, for instance. It really seems like a lot of people don't give a tuppenny damn about anyone so foolish as to have been born outside Australia. A lot of the arguments have a real vibe of "you should have thought about THAT before you were PEASANTS" to them.

People often advance the argument that our population can only be sustainable up to a certain ceiling and then BAM: droughts, famines, everyone having to feed their fibro houses to their children to save them from starvation, etc. Which is very possibly true, but hardly solves the problem. Firstly, if this is true, then the people who are already alive (like, say, refugees) surely have more right to the planet's limited resources than people who haven't even been born or conceived yet. If we're really concerned about resources, wherefore all the reproducing being encouraged? Maybe we need a one child policy or something? I mean, that engenders its own problems, doesn't it. (See what I did there? I didn't even mean to. That's what we call priming, my friend. You think "problems with the one child policy, and your subconscious goes "here are some words about gender!". Fascinating).

We don't need to engage with the arguments of the distressingly large number of people who simply do not care if other people are suffering if those people are black, or Muslim, or whatever. Their argument clearly has basically no validity, not even pretending to have a proper basis in meaningful reality. But these people are still a problem, since their attitudes leave migrants to form cliques and ghettos, which is essentially pretty definitely not a good thing. I mean, by all means "there's a large Mediterranean and South East Asian population near Maroubra" (that leads to a high availability of delicious things in the shops, for one thing!) but Harlem and the Bronx (I'm sure there are heaps in Sydney, but hardly so recognisable) and so on don't seem like they're working out super well for anyone involved. No-one learns the language or cultural mores of the new country in these cliques, for one thing, which is the sort of knowledge deficit which leaves you disenfranchised and all too easy to exploit. What do you do to solve the problem of racist people? There's no solution to that sort of thing. Freedom of speech, man. Etc. There might be a solution, but damned if I can see what it would be. You can try education, but that's obviously a slow-burner, and doesn't work as reliably as we'd like.

I think the problem that a lot of people secretly have with refugees is the one which they don't really want to look square in the eye: people who have been so badly mistreated that they need to seek refugee status are probably broken and 'no good to us'. No-one (I trust) wants to think of themselves as someone who would happily send someone back to their rapists, assaulters, would-be killers, etc. But people do complain about "those people" bringing their old cultures and old feuds etc with them, which I think is maybe part of the same concept. I mean, it's obviously pretty distressing to talk to someone who doesn't understand why the doctors won't circumcise their infant daughter, and responds "oh well, I guess we'll just have to do it ourselves at home, the old-fashioned way" when you try and explain, and personally, I would very much like it if there were no more of that ANYWHERE, and especially here where we have some hope of actually stopping it.

But I do sort of worry that the current response to "you are too broken by your toxic culture or dreadful experiences" is "therefore we will send you back to continue the cycle!". I feel like, frankly, given the choice of being shipped back to somewhere like the places some refugees are trying to escape, I would genuinely prefer the short sharp shock of drowning aboard a leaky people-smuggling boat. And sending them home is often not muh better even in simpler criteria since it's not so rare (or surprising) that these people often don't survive long when shipped back.

I feel like Jonathan Swift here, all "Modest Proposal" and what have you, but I feel like I see where these policies of "deterrence" etc are going. Can you see it coming, the logical conclusion of that sort of thinking? One day someone will realise that keeping people in refugee prisons is very expensive, as is sending them home, and that some people who can't go home are expensive for society because they're so traumatised and need a lot of health care etc. One day, some politician will realise that the distillation of these policies is having a rule, a very well-publicised rule, that if you seek refugee status here, you will either be accepted or executed. That way, the prison problem is solved, the 'people who are pretty much too broken by trauma to function anywhere' problem is solved, and the 'sometimes the reason that you can't go home is that you're a psychopath or serial killer or miscellaneous terible person who will cause trouble wherever you are' problem is solved. Not to mention the presumably entirely fictional political-football problem of people going "what have we got to lose? Screw it, let's try our luck!", since if what you've got to lose is everything, you'll only be tempted if you have nothing to lose or if you genuinely think you can make a go of it.

But that, of course, although apparently sound logically, is pretty monstrous.

And this is the thing, the only way to solve this problem we have here is to solve the problem of massive disparity and overwhelmingly dreadful asshattery everywhere, and I'm really not sure it can be done. My charming and well-meaning ex-boyfriend thinks that a revolution will solve many of these problems, but he also seems to genuinely believe that property is theft, and that the Reign of Terror after the French revolution was a necessary evil, or possibly even a necessary meh. I mean, what I'm saying here is that it's all very well to suggest we should overhaul the system, since it's clearly broken, but I pretty much do not want to have the people who want to do that in charge of my life, in general. Plus I'm concerned that despite being in general very delightful, he seemed, if I understood and recall correctly, distressingly ok with the idea that a revolution might entail torturing people for information, which not only doesn't actually work but is also the sort of thing which I personally consider a dealbreaker in a revolution. (And, if I'd been quite sure that that's what he really believed, something of a dealbreaker in a boyfriend too, even if he was very handsome and nice (and now single, ladies!)).

I'm not sure what I'm more worried about:

1)that things might just carry on as they are despite being clearly not really ok, on a worldwide scale, or 2) that the crazy Teaparty type conservatives will have a resurgence and it'll be eugenics and racial purity and barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen all round before you know it, or 3) that the opposite-side extremists will get their resurgence instead, and the whole world will end up like North Korea, and no-one will have to pay rent, but also no-one will be able to own their bedroom, or have pets who aren't productive (and yes, I checked, apparently dogs and cats which are productive of happiness don't count), and society will collapse in an unpleasant way.

I'm not happy with things as they are, worldwide. I don't want genital mutilation or drowning or imprisoned refugees to happen, let alone starvation and child-armies etc. But if the option is choosing between exploding or imploding the world, that's definitely not ideal either.

Dammit.