There’s been a lot of talk in the news about borders.
The fact that some imaginary line that some guy drew hundreds of years ago defines a major
part of my identity and differentiates it from a person who lives on the other side
of that imaginary line is kind of weird right?
I mean being born in California makes me an American citizen, yet California is much closer
geographically to Mexico than it is to say New York, yet I identify much more closely
with a New Yorker than I do with a Mexican.
This leads me to question, why do borders exist in the first place?
And as we enter into a more globalized world, wouldn’t it benefit us to get rid of borders,
countries, and divisiveness so that instead of focusing on protecting ourselves from each
other we can focus on developing our world as a whole?
Kind of like in Star Trek.
At least I think that’s what happens.
But I guess if we do that we’ll eventually have to fight off aliens.
I guess the wars never stop huh?
Hello everyone.
Thought Monkey here.
Today we’ll explore why borders and countries exist.
If you think about it, countries don’t exist.
They are only an imaginary idea that most people in the world have agreed with.
But that’s probably not the answer you were looking for.
As with most aspects of our lives, countries first exist because of our genetics.
Humans evolved in small hunter and gatherer bands instilling a great need in us to feel
part of a group.
While most modern humans don’t live in hunter-gatherer bands you can still find us satisfying our
need to belong by identifying with different groups.
In high school you see this in the hierarchical division of students from nerds, to jocks,
to the popular crowd.
In adulthood you see this with how many identify as particular sports fans, parts of a particular
religion, avid consumers of particular brands, etc.
As more and more hunter-gatherer bands formed, competition between such bands increased.
The need to belong to a group continued to become more important for self-preservation
of both the individual and the group.
Hierarchy in the group also came about in order to allow for efficiency.
Usually this meant having some kind of leader, who may have been the strongest, the most
charismatic, or the one with access to the most resources.
At the same time bands of humans began to either work together or fight each other.
Those that worked together might have formed a kind of coalition and worked together to
gain access to more and more resources.
Eventually with the introduction of agriculture, hierarchy became more well defined as some
haves were able to collect, store and gain control over the food supply and other valuable
resources - allowing them to gain power over the have nots.
Over time civilizations developed, along with unique cultures, language, food, etc that
comes with them.
But countries were yet to exist.
Instead, there were empires, kingdoms, city-states, or tribal lands.
There were no politically set boundaries, outside of natural barriers that acted as
borders.
And if you look at ancient maps, the idea of having an arbitrary line to delineate one
empire from another or one tribe from another, was non-existent – instead it was implied
and often fought over.
So the question remains, how did the world end up how it is - where every single piece
of land is accounted for by some kind of government and the people that live in those imaginary
lines consider themselves to be citizens of that government.
Some call the transition to the modern country that we are all familiar with and live in
as the rise of the nation-state.
Before the nation-state most people probably identified themselves with their region or
local lord.
Most did not leave their villages and knew little of the world at large.
Around the middle of the last millennia – say around 1500 when economic, scientific, and
philosophical change was rapidly occurring in Europe – many monarchs began to try to
conquer and unify all the territories and people under their control in order to become
more powerful.
To encourage unity, many monarchs encouraged their subjects to feel loyal toward them which
would mark the first steps toward the idea of nationalism.
One example is Russia.
For most of the medieval period Russia was simply a small kingdom located around the
city of Moscow.
Over hundreds of years the rulers of Moscow took more and more land through both diplomacy
and war, and eventually conquered much of what is now considered to be Russia.
When Ivan the Terrible came of age, he was throned as the first Czar of Russia.
He destroyed the nobility and granted bureaucratic positions to successful traders of the commercial
class.
Similar occurrences happened all over Europe in, for example France, England and more.
By the 19th century most, if not all, of the western world had been divided into new political
units known as countries or nation-states.
But what about the rest of the world?
The rest of the world did not have the luck that the west did where countries developed
organically.
From the Age of Exploration to the Industrial Revolution, the dominance of Europe’s economy
and military allowed it to colonize pretty much the entire world.
Part of this meant dividing up the world into colonies agreed upon by European powers.
At times this meant drawing a simple arbitrary straight line to make things easier.
After WWII and the start of decolonization, the borders stayed put and grouped together
people with different cultural, racial, and linguistic identities, while splitting apart
others.
This created a sh*t load of chaos which, 70 years later, can still be felt.
Many argue this is one of the main reasons as to why the Middle East and Africa are so
f*cked up.
However, borders may be an idea of the past as we move into the 21st century.
Currently in Europe, national borders have little meaning.
It’s similar to how the United States works.
All citizens who belong to a country that is part of the European Union can travel,
live, and work freely throughout.
All internal tax and trade restrictions have been removed.
And many identify no longer as a citizen of their country, but as a citizen of the European
Union.
Many of us however, refuse to even think about what citizenship and border lines actually
mean - and instead of working on fostering friendship and partnership across borders,
we subject ourselves to our most basic human emotions.
Those that may have allowed us to evolve into what we are today, but that may keep us from
evolving into what we might be tomorrow.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Thought Monkey!
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