I've been thinking of relocating for a while, but also feel a sort of guilt about it. I must admit that the main reason for my doing it is that I feel increasingly disillusioned with the United States, where the paths of both the "left" and the "right" seem equally disappointing. There is a deep sense of social malaise that I feel, while here, and I cannot help but attribute it to that form of neoliberalism that is spreading across the world. And so I feel that my migration would be not so different than the spread of a pestilence of sorts, infecting what I hope will save me.
I am reminded of Society of the Spectacle, specifically thesis 165.
165 Capitalist production has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next. This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive process of banalization. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass-produced for the abstract space of the market shattered all regional and legal barriers and all the Medieval corporative restrictions that maintained the quality of craft production, it also undermined the autonomy and quality of places. This homogenizing power is the heavy artillery that has battered down all the walls of China.