Since It’s Always Been One Continent, Afro-Eurasia, Europe Shouldn’t Fret Over Mass Migrations

Because the land on which we live has always shaped us and determined our destinies, not to mention unite us under a single banner known as humankind, those living in Europe shouldn’t be too worried over the ongoing mass migrations coming out of North Africa and the Middle East or Southwest Asia. In fact, Europe as a single continent is in reality misleading, a Eurocentric notion since it’s always been interconnected with Africa and Asia. Moreover, to those whom geography has so joined together, such as Africa and Europe and Asia, let no person put asunder.

Inherent Powers of Afro-Eurasia Has Determined Its Fate
Just in case you disagree with Afro-Eurasia as a single continent, 2 million years ago some of our earliest ancestors, Homo habilis (Human toolmaker), quickly migrated out of Africa to settle Asia Minor and Europe. What’s more, their lifestyles and habits revealed the inherent powers of geography and often determined their fates. And despite their physical barriers or the rules of politics, economics, science, and technology, the iron law of geography always remained with the land where power is hard to defend. Humankind has indeed compensated by pushing outward-and sometimes pushing backward.

Migration Is the Mother of Geography
The current migrations taking place within Afro-Eurasia are actually a repeated pattern so commonplace to history that we often forget it’s the mother of geography. From the earliest Afro- and Indo-European tribes to Asian migrations, including those between the Romans and North Africans, Greeks and Persians, Islamic warriors and Christian crusaders, or Mongols and Vikings; Afro-Eurasia has been an inviting place for mass migrations. Despite the curses of war, the many fertile plains and land bridges, rivers and lakes, seas and oceans, and favorable climates and resources, are blessings too.

Europe’s Not Immune to Afro-Eurasia’s Retaliatory Geography
However, Afro-Eurasia geography can be vengeful and retaliatory, specifically when people pursue centuries of slavery, imperialistic wars, even genocide in the name of “living space.” Indeed, and to understand Europe’s present influx of immigrants, just look at past Afro-Eurasian conflicts such as World War One and Two or the Cold War. It could furthermore be argued that the ongoing conflicts rooted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and North Africa are due to colonial powers ignoring the rules of geography. No nation belonging to Afro-Eurasia is beyond or immune to the formidable powers of geography.

War In Afro-Eurasia Somewhere Means War Everywhere
Technology can also be either a cursing or a bless. To be sure, fighter jets and drones may seem to overcome the distances between an “us and them” mentality and false sense of physical space, but it’s easy to forget that the land where we live, work, and raise our children is important, and that the choices of those who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet-most residing in Afro-Eurasia-will to some degree always be shaped by the interconnected landforms and bodies of water mentioned above. In other words, war somewhere in the continent Afro-Eurasia somewhere means war everywhere.

Internal Geography of the Soul
There is finally an internal landscape, a geography of the soul known as the exchange of ideas followed by choices. Not only does this pertain to faith or language, but ideologies and norms. To be sure, and given Afro-Eurasia’s history of equal migratory exchanges, the Chesterton Prophecy, which purported that “European” nations had lost their national souls through the unintended integration of its culture with more “barbaric cultures” that it had previously conquered; or the ongoing debate whether illegal immigrant subgroups from predominantly Islamic countries are “Muslimizing Europe, seems a bit unfair.

Afro-Eurasian Geography More Than Just Memorizing a Map
On the other hand, Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote: “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.” Given that Afro-Eurasian geography is about more than just memorizing places on a map, let alone understanding its complexities or appreciating its diversity of interconnected cultures, “Europe’s” response to “its” newly arrived immigrants will surely determine its destiny.

Here the Past Was Everywhere Doesn’t Just Mean Europe
What’s more, the Eurocentric idea that “Here the past was everywhere, an entire continent sown with memories” will have to at some point-and should already-include Africa and Asia.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.