A Walled Culture

I crossed many sites with a plaque saying that the dirt pile next to it was part of the Great Wall, from far back to even older than 200BC to 1400 and further on. It was indeed quite amazing to think that someone that long ago actually was working on what was under my feet. That thought gave me the chill.

And so, in a way, for more than 2000 years, the culture of the “central kingdom”, the culture I was born in, has been building walls. And it seems like the habit continues. Any institution, company, any “unit” has walls around it.

Do we really need these walls?

These walls reminded me of those fences in the desert grassland. They look ridiculous. Sand buried them so easily it became a permanent job to repair them. Had the money used in keeping up these fences was given to the herders, they would be so willingly happy to put a halt on herding, if that’s the reason of the desert degradation — but that isn’t. Those at the bottom, those without a human voice are the easiest target for problems elsewhere.

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