Should borders exist?

The short answer is maybe. Political borders the way they are defined and insisted on between the US and Mexico and between Israel and Palestine are definitely causing more harm than good, generating violence through an insistence on separating people that are connected. I do believe that a type of border can exist and, in our current society, would be natural. I’ve observed, and enjoyed the fact that people, in certain areas, have a tendency to develop a certain way of life, a culture, and I see a natural demarcation forming around them. I think in parts of Latin America and in Africa this happens where people go from one area to another and there is a rough line that separates the two areas loosely defined by a way of life. A strong example of this are the indigenous communities in Southern Mexico where you can go from one town/area to the next and people speak a different variation of the language of the region, sometimes so different that it is incomprehensible between the people of the neighboring towns. In these areas, separations or borders aren’t as affected by nation states as cities around the world and small towns in rural America. They are kind of left alone by the dominant culture (except when it comes to plundering for their natural resources, but that’s another story). The areas are often separated by natural borders (mountains, rivers, or just open space). So I think borders are ok as a way of just letting people know, when they travel, that they are now passing from one area to the next without any restrictions.

I definitely don’t think the border walls being constructed between Mexico and the United States and between Israel and Palestine established through wars should exist and I definitely don’t believe there should be a “Border Patrol”. There’s no need to protect one area from the other. The notion seems ridiculous to me. I don’t mean, necessarily, that there shouldn’t be some type of representation for a certain area. To ‘border regions’, like any other region, there should be a clear path for police and ambulance to arrive in case of an emergency. And this would be a good reason to make a line between two regions in order to know which area’s police/ambulance to call on. The free movement of people, the choice to get to know each other and form a way of life in any area they choose should take priority with the lines being drawn by the very people that live these ways of life.

With the internet and commerce without borders, I do see the world becoming ever more connected and see a possible future that the natural tendency of people gathering in certain geographical areas and forming a way of life uninfluenced by other ways of life and only coinciding in the natural human functions, diminishing and maybe even disappearing all together. Then again, the natural tendency to form separate groups could be stronger than these connections and continue to exist in some form.

If we remove the insistence on one area being separated from another, borders, in the sense I’m talking about where there is a simple demaracation emphasized as much or less than the one between California and Oregon or Spain and Portugal, it seems as though, in our current society would form, and as technology develops, may continue to exist in some form in the future or may disappear completely leaving the world with everybody having, roughly, the same perspective on life. In other words, I don’t really know if they should exist because what’s being called borders today aren’t natural and it’s hard to say what would happen if they weren’t there, which they shouldn’t be. I believe that what would happen upon removing this insistence that they do exist, we would remove violence and develop more of an openness to natural human connection.