Building More Fences

On the occasions that I have shopped for an apartment or home or have joined friends through the journey for a personal castle, similar requirements have been mentioned about the neighborhoods. At least middle class cars should be in the driveways, no furniture or cars on the lawn and the surrounding homes should be at least neatly maintained.

Conventional wisdom also goes that neighborhoods of homes with bars on the windows and steel gates on the doors are probably unsafe. Or at least that is the logic.

Perusing antiwar.com today, an article about China got me thinking about the global neighborhood. China has erected a fence along part of its border with North Korea, it seems, for much the same reason the United States intends to wall off Mexico - to keep out people who are escaping poverty and oppression.

Building fences is nothing new of course. The Chinese, at great expense, built a wall to keep out the marauding Mongols from the north. Germany was split in two for decades. The Palestinians are being cut off from the olive groves of their ancestors by the giant wall that grows with each new day. America wants to electrify the line between California and Tijuana and now China comes full circle in its own history, adding a southern fence as a compliment to the northern one that serves no purpose other than to attract curious foreigners.

If bars on the windows are signs of an unsafe neighborhood, then the global move to build giant fences between countries speaks volumes about the evolution of humanity. After thousands of years of so-called progress, we imprison ourselves in our nations in the name of being safe, losing all connection to the outside world.

Sometimes I wonder if humanity is either too lazy or has abandoned all hope of living in a safe neighborhood. It is easier, I suppose, to put bars on the windows than make peace with your neighbors, but the neighborhood never feels as welcoming and the home starts to feel like a prison.