Chapter 4. Drive or Be Driven: The Cage
#Thoughtpreneur Soul Thesis Series
The Cage
We won’t even question the invisible boundaries, the fences, the invisible cage, as we become conditioned, as it becomes the societal “norm.”
What if we are already, and we don't even know it? Like caged animals in factory farms. Are we really any different?
They can’t see beyond their cages because this is the only life they’ve ever known, been born into, brought up into. And we, we’ve got our continents, countries, regions, counties, cities, boroughs, towns. All these borders. Are we not the same?
As we get accustomed, as things become the social norm, as past generations forget, it’s easy to see how this could be. Maybe the animal rights activists freeing the caged factory-farmed animals, maybe that’s what AI will be for us!
Humanism. Setting humans free. Showing us the outside of the cage.
Or, maybe the complete opposite, building the cage even stronger and tighter so no one can get out.
I mean, already, our freedom of movement is restricted. We have zones. We have travel routes. We need permission. You can't leave your country or enter another without your passport.
We go through passport control (another funny phrase) possibly named because it’s exactly what it does - control people’s movement.
The word ‘passport’ means:
an official document issued by a government, certifying the holder's identity and citizenship and entitling them to travel under its protection to and from foreign countries.
Lets break that down, an official document (approved by authority) issued by a government (a controlling body decides if you have permission), certifies (attests or confirms, stamps you as legitimate) that you are entitled (gives you a legal right (but only the rights they grant)) to travel under its protection (their conditions, their rules, their safety net) to and from foreign countries (land that “belongs” to someone else.).
So my passport says "British Citizen”. Ok, what does this actually mean?
Well, as a “British citizen”, I have the right to live and work in the UK permanently. No immigration restrictions. I can travel to around 180 countries with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access but these aren’t rights, they’re permissions agreed between governments. I can’t live in another country, not automatically. Each country decides if I can stay longer than a short visit. After Brexit, for example, I lost the right to freely live and work in the EU.
So if I travel without a passport, I’ll be denied boarding by the airline, or refused entry at the border. Without this document, I have no legal right to enter, so basically I'll be classed as an “illegal immigrant.”
What! I’m the same person, the same identity, the same life, the same beating heart but without the right paper, I am invisible. With it, I am legitimate.
So basically what my passport is really saying is as a “British Citizen”: I belong here. I may visit there. I may not stay unless invited. Without this paper, my existence in certain spaces is not recognised.
My passport is a booklet that looks like freedom, but is actually permission. Sounds very “cagey” to me!
Where did this come from? Who decided these borders, these permissions?
How the Cage Was Built
In medieval Europe, people carried only letters of safe conduct.
By the 1500s, passport slips into English: “to pass through a port.”
1414: Henry V’s Safe Conduct Act gives it teeth.
1855: Britain standardises passports for its nationals.
1914–15: war hardens borders. The modern passport emerges: photo, signature, mandatory.
1920: League of Nations sets the first global standards.
1922: the Nansen passport for stateless refugees - a document that proves without paper, you are nobody.
1980: machine-readable passports.
2006: biometric chips.
2025: Europe’s Entry/Exit biometric system.
What began as a courtesy becomes a requirement. What began as permission becomes identity. The cage closes tighter.
We have seen this play out in front of our very eyes! During Covid, if you didn’t have the vaccine they told you to have, your right to travel vanished.
The perfect blackmail: Holidays. Freedom. Movement. Travel (because we all love a holiday, need a holiday to ‘escape’ our real lives! Ha!) But seriously, how easy was it to control people when the threat was: comply or stay in your cage? Well it worked on me and all the people I know. I don't know anyone who didn't. The thought of not being able to go on holidays and travel, for the sake of a tiny little vaccine, I did it without question.
See how easy it was? To control everybody. To force compliance. To make the cage invisible until the door clicked shut.
Seems to me like there's a pattern to this cage: permission > identification > digitisation > automation. War gave us mandatory passports, terrorism gave us biometrics, COVID gave us health passes. What's next? The climate… “carbon passports” are already on the horizon. According to the Daily Record (July 2025), “carbon passports” could be introduced to limit how often UK residents travel abroad, framed as part of climate action. What!? I haven't heard anyone shouting against this and to be honest I hadn't heard of “carbon passports” until this deep dive.
So what are we looking at? Possibly a single digital ID wallet, merging passports with health, finance, and carbon budgets, enforced not by human officers but by AI systems that score your right to move before you even reach the border. A new bar to our invisible cage?
Factory-farmed animals don’t know freedom, so they don’t miss it. We have never known a borderless Earth, so we don’t demand it. We accept without question. I mean its literally happening right now, and we’re just going along with it, no questions asked, just following the herd like sheep!
And as each generation forgets, the more the cage feels like safety, not prison.
AI now stands at the fork, the crossroads. Is this why so many fear it? Will it take us down the road of locking the bars tighter with surveillance, biometric scoring, predictive borders. Or down the road of breaking the lock, revealing the system, the cage for what it really is, reminding us that movement is a birthright, not a privilege.
This chapter is part of the ongoing #Thoughtpreneur Soul Thesis - a living series exploring the rewilding of humans and reimagining of systems.
This is not a rebellion against tech. It’s a reunion with humanness.
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We walk inward. We rewild. Then we rise and create something worth sharing.
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