The US wants Greenland - Empathy Sees It (Practice It)

Hey there! How's the new year been for you? hopefully yours is as productive as mine has been, and I hope this momentum continues. Let's talk empathy, shall we? 

Empathy ensures we are able to understand why individuals and groups of people act in a certain way. It doesn't have to be about agreeing with certain actions, but more about understanding where some people are coming from. It helps our clarity and gives us a better way to approach situations or perhaps be more self‑aware. I'm saying this because, on the surface level, it makes perfect sense to nurse hate and resentment with events such as land grabs. The US's push to acquire Greenland, Russia's advances in Ukraine, China's push to claim Taiwan, Israel's advances in the West Bank, and a whole host of others. These are not only matters of today but trends that have existed since the beginning of time, and literally a key characteristic of living organisms. When you go through taxonomic classification, this trend is very evident in the animal and plant kingdoms. I know we sometimes forget that we humans are at the top of the animal kingdom, and it's somewhat degrading to refer to ourselves as animals. We share these characteristics of claiming territories, as evident in pre‑colonial and colonial times and today as well.

Trump actually shared this AI-generated image, yes, he did. 

One thing about living is knowing you're safe. Safe from what exactly? It could be a variety of reasons, but the ones we can trace from history have to do with being safe from “enemies.” Please look back into history, and you'll see that every kingdom that has ever existed lived with some sort of existential threat. Wars have been part of our reality as humans. Some today think the idea of war is so strange and foreign, but it is who we are. I never knew war and watched it on TV until my very own home went up in flames, and I saw human displacement firsthand. There was a branch of geography I learned back in secondary school called “Human Geography.” With such knowledge, I understood the idea of territory, and you don't need to live through mass migration or displacement to understand territory acquisition and protection. I don't want to drift a lot from my central idea of understanding these things through empathy.

Every empire that ever existed sought to expand and conquer, from the Greeks, Ottomans, Persians, Romans, British, Viking groups, various localized empires of sub‑Saharan Africa, etc. Every one of them did the same thing. You get very upset hearing the US wants Greenland because you fail to see who we are as humans. Yet every empire that existed maintained some sort of peace and order as far and wide as it could exert its influence. That is to say, the order you enjoy is based on the shared values that define you as a people. For the West, that would be the fundamentals of liberty and freedom. These are not the same values that define adversaries like China or Russia. The US is one of the greatest empires that has ever existed, but just like changing times, its model has been different based on the era in which it has existed or is existing. The US doesn't need to invade Greenland like Russia invaded Ukraine. In fact, such an invasion is not the American way. Many think Russia or China just want to exist and do business, but history tells us that even when an empire holds the cards, it exerts its dominance over others. The US‑led Western dominance has done just this with its vast expansion of military bases around the world and its crusades to spread democracy, most of which have left other countries in worse states than they arrived. Russia went into Ukraine because they knew they had more muscle than Ukraine, and Europe had fallen asleep in their dreams, believing the dog was asleep as well. The only thing stopping China from marching into Taiwan is that the US stands guard and has refused to even sleep at night. So what I'm saying is, even if China dominated the world, you may be compelled to speak Mandarin (which I'm learning, by the way) and not be as free as you are now.

Your empathy doesn't mean feeling sorry; quite the opposite, it means seeing things from another's perspective. This brings you to a place of rational logic. I'm not naive to the US push for Greenland being just an issue of keeping enemies at bay, no. I know it's also about money (profits) for some people, but to arrive at this realization, you need to give empathy a chance. Whether all these are ethical or moral is not the question. I just presented my observations of what I see to be a trend that further explains us as humans. You may feel bad about it; some other person will feel good about it. That's just us as a people, and empathy will bring you to a place where you can properly process these.