No nationality, no religion

The complicated, liberating metadata of my future children

Ben Werdmuller
Ethical Tech

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My future children, should I have any, will come from a tapestry of places. From my side of their lineage alone, they will come from three continents. They will have multiple passports. They’ll share my sense of both coming from a specific place but also no place at all. I don’t completely identify with my nationalities, and it’s likely that neither will they.

It wasn’t until well into my adult life that I understood how far the metadata of my identity diverged from most peoples’. Many people include a nationality in the fabric of who they are; I have multiple, and don’t completely identify with any of them. Particularly here in the US, many people identify with a religion; I don’t believe in any. For a lot of people, they have a deep, historical relationship with their communities that goes back for generations; mine goes back less than one.

People seem to be very worried about how their culture changes in the face of immigration. The truth is that culture has always been changing through the ebb and flow of populations.

In the 1300s, the Spanish began to drive out their Jewish population — once one of the most prosperous communities of Jews in the world. Continuing a pattern that has been repeated all over the world, they…

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