Analysis: A Very Bordered World

How does the way we use borders affect our lives in the world today and the lives of those around us? Living in a world that has so many borders, physical, social, political, and mental forces us to choose between building borders up—causing conflict—or, tearing them down—bringing peace—to one another. How do we understand them so we can better navigate the roles they play in our lives? Looking at borders inside and out we are, in a way, a sort of gatekeeper for all of the borders we experience. Acknowledging our role as gatekeepers brings into focus the choices we, as humans, need to make about what is important versus what is not concerning the various borders in our lives. In the article, “A Very Bordered World,” Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen explain that we all create these spaces that separate, but they …show more content…
This reminds me of how some of the people living in the South today seem to be stuck in the era right before, and during, the Civil War. These people still reenact battles of the war, and wave their confederate flags among other things. They seem to think that the South will rise again. It seems to be, in their minds, a reliving of that era over and over again. Almost as if they have never gotten over that loss, and are still stuck in that territorial trap.
Diener and Hagen say that, “The primary function of geographic borders is to separate the social, political, economic, or cultural meanings of one geographic space from another.” In light of some of the events going on in the news today we see some of the, in my opinion, negative aspects of these borders. For example, one of the Presidential nominees, wants to build a wall separating the United States from Mexico. Not only that, but this person wants Mexico to build it. In doing so, that affects more than just the land itself. It affects the people living on both sides as well as the