One look at a map of all the world's regions, while looking up their history hand-in-hand, will tell you a tale that's wider than what any of them stand by as their cultural identity today. You will easily notice a filtered down version that's only a figment of the big picture that was decades and centuries ago. Countries came, changed, got abolished and went before the century could blink into the next one. What was communities and freer movement became polities and boundaries. When did this happen? When did we become myopic? More has become less. Multiple has become singular. Heterogeneous is becoming homogeneous. Multilingual has become unilingual. Multicolour has become black and white, or just black and white. If this hasn't happened yet, it's happening.
At a closer look, the crux of the issue is between identities (where you're from, what you eat, how you dress, what language you speak) and boundaries (i.e. political divisions i.e. countries i.e. lines that separate what was once vast regions of lesser politicized society that was home to a block/blocks of similar, and sometimes different, identities). Communities and people were separated by lines drawn by a few men (and women) seeking power through them. Order enables power and makes it easier to establish control. In order (no pun intended) to get there, we take the route that involves culling all this variety, leaving us smaller and stupider, up to our noses in inflated border-influenced nationalist loyalties.
Barring these few, the vastly outnumbering majority was happy living their lives without boundaries celebrating everything they defined to be the good life (if they could). Life was lived on an individual level by everyone where they made their associations beyond the boundaries, on a personal level, without any taboo. But power came along and the new lines they drew started to define more than just boundaries. It was the gateway to more power, disrupting the majority's boundariless lives, and telling them that their boundaries, instead, were right (and no other), with some even going to point of murdering, killing and punishing for it.
Go centuries and decades forward, and we are here with you reading this. You've been told where your community's boundaries are and how sacred they are (though they came about through a sub-human push and pull of power). You've been taught to judge the people on the other side to be less or more worthy of you. You're probably also fuelled with jealously or pride basis who's on what side of that line. All of this because it was taught to you within and by these man-made boundaries. All those days and years converted imaginary boundaries into real ones, and very silly ones too.
The truly unimaginary value boundaries are economical, as are most things. They help lock in where the beginning and end of your general happiness quotient is as a larger national community (i.e. a nation). Everybody who's legal homeland is the area within gets the benefits that is reaped/of the land and resources as governments allow. Beyond these two, they have no meaning. Overrate them and you start digging your own grave. Underrate them and you thin out your happiness quotient.
As with your house, you won't let in anyone who doesn't belong. You will also choose your guests and your compassion. Countries will continue to find ways to keep their guest policies useful to their own people, and their requirements and advantage. Some governments are cautious, while some turn into full fledged corporations themselves in the process.
But sometimes, it's more than just guests. There are times that we are the closest, only or (one of the) biggest hope(s) for those outside our boundaries who don't belong inside. If you want to be crude enough to reject them because they don't belong, and only if, think of it like maintaining your backyard. If you want to live in a nice neighbourhood, you may have just have to assist cleaning up. Of course, you can set your own terms. A part of this compassion is rooted in the fact that you enjoy a land that's perfectly home and fellow human beings don't. It should be the yearning of every citizen of Earth who has this privilege to see it through for those who don't.
The line should be drawn at making imaginary lines real, and making real ones imaginary. So, then, which is which? The answer to that is abolishment of boundaries themselves, at least in the minds of people. The more evolved humans on Planet Earth live as people outside boundaries, while understanding that they grew up in them for practical reasons (but they don't let the boundaries necessarily define them). The lesser evolved ones define themselves by their boundaries and only know and recognize that world. The highest evolved humans value boundariless learning while staying stuck to their roots.
Boundaries should at best serve administrative purposes. They should be bridges instead. They should never inhibit or prevent transfer or exchange of anything good and desirable by people on both sides. The best ideas inside one should also last equally well outside it. The worst ones stop breathing or have to go on life support. That's your litmus test of whether you're living in a well protected bubble to believe them in the first place.
With the almost death of boundaries, come the almost death of states (or just their power). While being stateless in a boundaried world is hell personified, being stateless in a boundariless world is human paradise. There are no limitations to anything good that you can borrow from your neighbours. Statelessness as a frame of mind can be much more liberating and educating than statelessness in reality is. It's simply a case of nationalism vs. humanity (i.e. borders vs. bridges).
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