Such Nice Young Men...

The two young men pictured above are both from sub-Saharan Africa, and both traveled to the United States in their twenties -- with different reasons and different results.

On the right: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who, holding a valid U.S. visa, attempted to murder over 200 civilians on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, apparently on behalf of an extremist Al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. He now sits in jail, subject to federal interrogation but spared federal torture by the results of the 2008 Presidential election.

On the left: Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a now middle-aged Burudian who, in 1993 immigrated illegally to the U.S. to escape ethnic cleansing in his home country -- and has now returned to Burundi to open up medical clinics with the non-profit organization he helped to found. He is the subject of "Strength in What Remains", a new book by Tracy Kidder.

What drives people to do the things they do? Can we possibly know where someone, even ourselves, will end up? We have been a self-aware species for millions of years now. Are we close to any answers? Physical laws give us fairly reliable and accurate predictions about the path of matter through its environment. These are crucial to understanding and improving our world, but give us little help to understand and improve ourselves. Social science attempts to use the proven scientific logic of physical laws to predict how the large mass of matter which makes up a human will act in its environment. Yet despite all of its academic and statistical rigor, social science has often been wrong and sometimes twisted to justify terrible things. Religious laws aim not to predict, but to guide. They do not tell us what we will do (as only the divine can know that), but instead what we should do. These as well have been twisted into justification. In short: we cannot predict ourselves or others, and attempts to predict have often been mutated into attempts to control.

Let us fall back to a real-world situation, and take this discussion out of the theoretical and into the practical. An immigration official reviews the two young men upon their arrival to the United States and must decide whether to allow them entrance. There is no room for intellectual vacillation here, there is only a Yes or a No, a friendly "Go Ahead" or a call to airport security. And let us imagine this official has all the information we have. How do they decide who to let in?

Desgratias is first. He steps up to the official's booth and presents his letter which introduces him as the agent for a coffee company in Burundi. The official knows Burundi has just broken out in civil war (late 1993: Hutu militas vs. Tutsi army -- Rwanda will erupt several months later along the same ethnic lines). Desgratias grew up in a very poor family herding cows, and was only allowed to attend school because his grades were the very top in his class and he happened to be classified as a Tutsi, and not a Hutu. The official can guess that this letter is a forgery, but also that this disheveled young man standing at the booth is in real need of a safe place. In 1993 Desgratias is granted a business visa. Would that still be the decision made today?

Umar steps up to the booth. He is from a wealthy, well-connected Nigerian family. He has the proper credentials. He looks a little shabby for the son of the former head of Nigeria's Central Bank, but he was educated in the poshest British schools available. Umar is granted entrance to the United States. Is that decision defensible?

Okay, okay, point taken. Desgratias is poor and needy -- he should be given as much support as possible. Umar shouldn't be treated any better just because his family is wealthy and well-connected -- his associations should be examined just like a poor Yemeni student's would be. And Desgratias, despite having legitimate grievances with Burundi's colonizers in Belgium or the Hutu militias which tried to kill him, never strapped a bomb to himself to try to exact revenge. Meanwhile, Umar strapped a bomb to himself to try and kill Americans and Europeans -- the same people who had funded his own high-class education and lifestyle. People are unpredictable, we need to do a better job of trying to understand them and not judge them based on superficialities. Point taken.

What then, can we do? We know that we don't understand everything about people, that we can't reliably guide one person -- let alone hundreds, thousands, millions -- to some certain outcome through a logical, scientific process. Nor can we rely on the moral guidance of religion to assure peace, prosperity, or predictability. The world will keep spinning. There will be a thousand more Desgratiases and Umars at our door tomorrow. What can we do?

And now, the long-awaited, extra-mildly wise answer...

We must engage with globalization not only as a market transformation, but as an opportunity to effectively utilize resources to create a better world. there is no doubt that the current trend towards hyper-capitalism is dangerous. There is no doubt that indigenous societies lived, and to some extent, live, a simpler life which represent an antidote to the risk-taking and consumerism which fuels hyper-capitalism. However to phrase the conflict as globalization/future versus simplicity/past solves nothing. Clocks only go in one direction. Denying the future will not help us create a better one. We must engage with the world -- and I don't mean "we" as in the U.S. government, I mean "we" as in "all of us" -- on every level, in every city, every remote mountaintop village, and every social networking site. Borders are irrelevant -- the stories of Desgratias and Umar demonstrate this.

And we must stop assuming that "rich" = "better" or "happy". Sure, we know it in our own personal lives. But we still believe that a country is improving when its economic growth rate goes up. And we believe that angry poor people are the most likely to become terrorists. The truth of the matter, especially in a ever more complex world, rarely stands up and declares itself in the media.

We must search it out, the truth. Each one of us a technological-age Indiana Jones, metaphorical whip and scepticism at the ready. Desgratias and Umar and all of the world's migrants and travelers will keep moving, growing, shifting, cross borders, bumping into each other. And we certainly can't "beat" them. So join'em!