Walls, Peace Lines, Barricades and Boundaries in Human convention

wall

/wôl/

noun

noun: wall; plural noun: walls

1. a continuous vertical brick or stone structure that encloses or divides an area of land. "a garden wall"

synonyms: barrier, partition, divider, enclosure, separator, barricade, fence, hedge

verb

verb: wall; 3rd person present: walls; past tense: walled; past participle: walled; gerund or present participle: walling

2. enclose (an area) within walls, especially to protect it or lend it some privacy."Housing areas that are walled off from the indigenous population"

synonyms: enclose, bound, encircle, confine, hem, circumscribe, close, shut, fence, block, seal

3. block or seal a place by building a wall around or across it. "One doorway has been walled up"

4. confine or imprison someone or something in a restricted or sealed place. "The gray tenements walled in the space completely"

Painting on the Israel-Palestine wall near Ramallah by Suleiman Mansour

Everyone these days are talking about walls.

In the US, President Trump has shutdown the government to force Congress to sign-off on his plan to begin building a $5 billion dollar border wall on the US-Mexico border. The migrant crisis in Europe has spurred the construction of at least 800 miles of border fences and walls, preventing those fleeing war to seek asylum in many European countries. The number of border walls constructed since World War II, according to USA Today, has risen 1000% -- from 7 to 77.

Walls are part of human history. We learned about the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s wall in grade school. We know about the Korean DMZ, the Berlin Wall, the Peace Lines in Belfast, the Israel-Palestine wall, the Moroccan-Spanish border wall - almost too many to count in recent history.

We remember these walls because of their significance as turning points in human history: the great conflicts that created them and the desire to tear them down.

Peace Walls in Belfast, Ireland. Photo Credit: Frankie Quinn

Walls are not new. They separate “us,” from them. They allow us to psychically categorize and separate people who are “different” from us. Even if they are called "Peace Lines," they still divide.

Psychologically, categorization is also not new to the human brain. To make sense of the physical world, our brain categorizes objects together so that we can process the infinite amount of data we perceive. Otherwise, we would not be able to function - we need to categorize to make sense of our world. For example, our brain categorizes the object "whisk" with "kitchen" or "baking" so that we know what it is used for.

This process is used for us to relate to human beings as much as it is to relate to objects around us. We use categorization to create societies. We categorize to make group distinctions for functional reasons (like hunting and gathering groups) and social reasons (male and female).

We categorize and create boundaries to create an identity for ourselves, and in this make definitions for otherwise ambiguous or intangible ideas like “society” and “nationhood” (Ibid, pgs 28-29).

Indeed, “...the foundation of inter-group relations is the basic process of categorizing the world and identifying individuals as belonging to different groups.” (Moghaddam, Fathali. Multiculturalism and Inter-group Relations, pg. 29)

To me, walls are a psychical manifestation of the human drive to categorize and differentiate.

The Great Wall, is of course, one early and obvious example of physically separating and differentiating between "us" and "them" for security reasons. The Great Wall was created to prevent outside attack by the Manchurians.

Security, or feeling that what is "ours" is safe,

Me on the Great Wall, 2010

Walls are innately related to security - hence the debate today. Those other than us, by infiltrating our borders are trying to destabilize our security. They are not one of us, not one of the group, not part of our category. Therefore they do not belong. They are a threat from the outside.

Security – a need for a stable border, or stable relations with the outside – drives isolationism and populism and the construction of more and more walls to separate us from each other. Even a, “key feature of groups associated with terrorism is the threat they perceive from the outside world” (Moghaddam, pg 58) - so they utilize violence to preemptively attack perceived threats.

Rather than securing the border from physical attack, however, border walls today are built to protect from different threats, namely economic or immigration threats (or as I like to think, existential threats). According to David B. Carter and Paul Poast, most border walls are created to protect economic security and prevent migration - they are used as an economic defense strategy (Carter, D. B., & Poast, P. (2017). Why Do States Build Walls? Political Economy, Security, and Border Stability. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(2), 239–270).

Carter and Poast write that, in fact, “the border wall trend suggests that aggressive border management strategies are on the rise because of the increases in the volume of goods and people moving across them… [and ] have less to do with traditional security issues and fortification against rival states than with fortification against unwanted immigration and illicit trade” (Ibid, 263).

While the perceived threat has changed, our knee-jerk response to build a wall hasn't.

Men hammering through the Wall as E. German guards fire water cannon through the crack, soaking everyone in that freezing morning. Photo credit: Alexandra Avakian

And for all this doom and gloom, it is important to remember that while we all have this drive to categorize and protect our borders, we also have the drive to break boundaries.

Why else are we so triumphant when walls are torn down, when we break convention, or learn about a new culture? We break down social injustices and social barriers just as much as we seek to overcome physical ones. So, while we as humans have the drive to protect ourselves against unknown “others”, we also have the desire to leave our “comfort zones” and reach beyond to see the similarities in other peoples.

Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar makes installations with pieces of barrier wall to bring attention to border walls and the indomitable human spirit. In an interview, he poignantly comments about his work: “This is about power,” he says. “It is us who decides what should be made from the walls that surround us. If we want, we can make them into something positive, a bridge between us.”

While there is great turmoil in this world, with more and more walls being built and more countries turning inward, there are still people breaking boundaries and pulling back the iron curtains. We can use this conflict to build peace – now is an opportunity to challenge our own nature and refrain from labeling and categorizing.

It’s the perfect time to remember that we are all “us”.