I increasingly shy away from political debate, not because I have nothing to say, but because politics is one sphere in which illiteracy and certainty often coexist very comfortably. People who have spent remarkably little time interrogating an idea can still speak about it with absolute conviction, and the conversation quickly becomes less about understanding than defending identities and inherited loyalties.

Patriotism is one of the ideas I have become especially suspicious of. I increasingly wonder whether patriotism, at least in the form in which states often demand it, functions as a language through which elites protect systems of extraction. The ordinary citizen is asked to defend the border, respect the nation and sometimes sacrifice for it, while those with wealth and power remain remarkably adept at moving their money, families and interests across those same borders whenever circumstances require it.

The wretched of the earth, meanwhile, remain remarkably familiar with one another. Poverty in Harare may wear different clothes from poverty in Johannesburg, Lagos, London or New York, but hunger still feels like hunger. Exploitation remains exploitation. A child denied opportunity experiences that deprivation irrespective of the anthem playing in the background. Political boundaries may determine which passport a person carries, yet they possess far less power over the basic experience of human suffering than our politics sometimes encourages us to believe.

That is where nationalism begins to lose some of its moral force for me. A border does establish jurisdiction and determines citizenship, taxation, voting rights and the responsibilities of a state. These are useful and necessary political arrangements. However, I struggle with the proposition that an accident of birth should determine the extent of my moral concern for another human being.

This is neither an argument for anarchy nor an invitation into the strange world of sovereign citizen theories, States exist. Borders have legal meaning and governments have obligations to their citizens. My point is much simpler, the humanity of the person standing before me precedes the passport in their pocket.

I therefore find it difficult to accept a morality in which suffering becomes more deserving because it occurs on my side of a border. I may have particular duties towards my community, just as I have particular duties towards my own family that I do not have towards every family in the world. Particular obligations, however, need not require the denial of universal humanity.

Perhaps that is ultimately where I differ from much of contemporary political discourse. I am less interested in asking whether the next person is Zimbabwean, South African, British, Congolese or American before deciding how much dignity they deserve. Citizenship may determine their relationship with the state. It does not determine their value to me as a human being.

The way I treat the next person should therefore depend less on the political boundary within which they happened to be born, and more on the fact that, before any nation claimed them, they were human. Let me go back to listening to Richard Bona…