A few days before writing this, another report of a 'migrant' shipwreck on the Mediterranean temporarily fills our timelines. 150 individual lives found themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving sea. Many of them survived, but only to be reabsorbed into the murky body-processing systems and sometimes enslavement of Libyan authorities (if one can declare them systems at all within such Western-triggered lawlessness). Many others on board perished and images of the recovered bodies being processed for burial were haunting in their starkness.
Black plastic bags lined the Libyan beaches, scattered along the coastline line like our plastic waste that is vomited up by an unsettled sea onto the beach. Devoid of ceremony, belongings or reverence, the bodies were lying in wait to be anonymously deposited into holes in the ground. A distinct illustration, if any, of today's societal inequalities through life and on into death.
An official declaration by the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) on their definition of what a migrant actually is, states the following:
"A 'migrant' is fundamentally different from a refugee. Refugees are forced to flee to save their lives or preserve their freedom, but 'migrant' describes any person who moves, usually across an international border, to join family members already abroad, to search for a livelihood, to escape a natural disaster, or for a range of other purposes. However, refugees and migrants often employ the same routes, modes of transport, and networks. Movements of both refugees and migrants are commonly referred to as 'mixed movements'. It is important to distinguish the different categories of person in mixed migratory movements, and apply the appropriate framework of rights, responsibilities and protection."
Though we're in the age of anthropological categorisation, it is still difficult to determine the difference between 'migrant' and 'refugee' that the UNCHR is attempting to layout in this statement, either as a historical or contemporary definition. The undiscovered bodies that perished in the sea are immediately consigned to history and become just another layer of human sediment on the large all welcoming necropolis of the Mediterranean seabed, home to countless shipwrecks, belongings, acts of vengeance, victories, failures and the incomplete dreams of innumerable aspirational travellers and traders. Whilst along the same Mediterranean waters, not such a distance away, other tremors can be felt and heard. There's the suggestion that large scale ceremonies with 'rhythmic dancing' were a feature of ancient Carthaginian religious ceremonies and additionally, we can craft interesting parallels to the suggestion that slaves of ancient Phoenicians accompanied their masters to the afterlife, in our world of increasing extremes, geopolitical complexity and the consequent modern slavery, now part of our current capitalist epoch. Ceremony and rituals of ancient times are echoed in the rhythmic thudding of dancing feet, the popping of champagne corks, on beaches commodified down to an individual grain of sand, and the pleasant melodic explorations over thudding bass tracks can be heard from afar, as the nobles of today revel in the pleasures offered by the machinations, production and human harvest from the economic extremes of this dynamic 'late-stage capitalism'.
Unlike the nobles of yesteryear travelling in opulence and style on to the afterlife, the migrants of today flee their homes with minimal possessions to take on to a new life. They travel light, often even without family members, on the journey to new lands and dreams of improved economic conditions, and the abstracted dream of the potential absence of visible war and violence, improved human rights or even climate. Abstract rather, as our geopolitical infrastructure is more dense and complex than ever before, with a tremor beginning in one government/corporate boardroom on one side of the planet, to be felt on the socio-political Richter Scale on another. Our ongoing international warfare is now obfuscated and largely invisible to the common eye, as too much is still reliant on global trade, so bombing one's immediate neighbours would come at considerable cost.
Poetic irony is par for the course in this era of late capitalism, as also this summer right across the water from the catastrophic Libyan shipwreck, a Google 'summer camp' on climate change is being held for the super-wealthy, who arrive in typical opulence in a variety of luxury travel including a number of private jets and superyachts. Italy's new significantly right positioned interior minister, Matthew Salvini, put a block on migrant ships docking at Italian ports, a contentious decision, but beyond the practicalities, regarded by some as a statement against the slow-motion inertia often experienced in a multinational organisation like the EU. With this annual summer camp shrouded in secrecy, One can cynically imagine the nobles of today essentially plotting their escape to an anthropocentric afterlife, as it has been deduced we're now too late to save the earth as a habitat that can still accommodate human life. The irony of Google holding the climate summit can be extended to considering how their much of their business model is predicated on harvesting every tiny aspect of the human experience for the profit, whilst also connecting us in unprecedented ways. Though it is possible to argue that alongside a number of other global techs-conglomerations we needn't name, they're enacting a new neo-colonialism. Maybe something altruistic will come from this accrued mass of information about the human race and will be used for the benefit of the earth we inhabit, or maybe not.
As many profit from our manufactured division and despair, it is clear disaster capitalism does not just refer to nihilistic exploitation of the environment, but rather also an exploitation of the human spirit that supersedes labour.
We're firmly positioned within a new epoch of migration, with traditional routes down and across the Mediterranean Sea again playing a key role. Unknown bodies traversing unknowable waters, to new shores in search of more fruitful lands, but it is tempting to let the mind wander to a speculative future for Europe, The Mediterranean and the general recalibration of the earth through this and coming eras of migration and climate change. An ancient country was set aflame in revolt a few years ago, and bodies fled mostly out through the lands of Europe. A mediatised separation between us and the realities of the afterlife of this beautifully historic country, Syria, that has a lineage richer than the recorded history of western civilisations, then brings shock to the white faces of Europe, as though the events they were following in realtime through the flatness of digital screens, were just narrative entertainment akin to a Netflix series in which Kingdoms of faraway lands joust for ultimate position, by migrating through each other's lands and employing humanity's instinctive barbarism to assert crucial tribalistic dominance for their own survival.
Within these speculative imaginings, a two-tiered world drifts further into its extremes of inequality and division as the borderless monied class(es) clamp down on economic and natural resources, further staking their claims, before the value of money itself dissipates. The wealthy separate themselves off into a bunkered underworld, surrounding themselves with the accrued wares of this world as they scurry off to possible afterlives beyond the earth's irreparably toxic atmosphere.