Bridges v Walls

All the houses I have ever lived in have had hedges, fences, or walls marking out my land. We humans don't pee to mark out our territory, but we do seem to need to repel borders. It is very defensive. No moat & drawbridge, but the message is clear. 

The only 3 disputes I have ever had with neighbours as the owner of 6 houses & renter of 2, have all been about borders or noise. On the other hand, we bought one house in Gloucestershire which had a very long line of huge Leylandii trees between us & a neighbour, cutting out their light completely over a huge swathe of their garden. The previous owner had refused to even trim them. We agreed to cut them all down & my husband & the neighbour did all the work. There must have been well over 20. We gained garden & they could actually grow things all along the border. Leylandii are thugs, probably causing more neighbour disputes than other things. They also cause unhappiness, anger & despair. They take up a huge amount of water year round.

That made for a really good relationship with my neighbours, who I am still in touch with, even after moving 3 times. It immediately built a bridge. 

Trump wanted to build a wall along the US border with Mexico. The Israelis have built a wall between themselves & the West Bank. Both have been in the news & have caused huge issues. These two countries are not alone though, as this website shows clearly.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-border-walls

The longest border wall is the India-Bangladesh border wall at 2,030 miles. We Brits don't need a wall. We are an island & have the sea all around us. We are trying very hard to repel all borders though.

In the current climate, I find myself wondering if, instead of trying to stop population movements, the peoples of the world could work together to acknowledge the problems that beset us & solve them together for the benefit of everyone. Fighting wars to defend your territory seems to me to be a very masculine response. History shows us that actually no one wins a war. The cost is always too high.

So shouldn't we be trying to build more bridges? Shouldn't we recognise that everything we have been blessed with in this world belongs to everybody, to be sharded more equally? If you are starving, displaced & homeless, injured, orphaned, shouldn't everyone who has everything they need be doing all they can to help you? 

If more of us were bridge builders rather than wall builders, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we are at the moment.