Fences, Walls, and Boundaries

FENCES, WALLS, BOUNDARIES

BY

DONNA BRUA

Preface

Fence—from Middle English fens, short for defense, which means defense. It is a form of protection for those who build it.

Wall—Old English from the Latin, vallum, meaning palisade or stake. Thus it can mean a row or line of stakes.

Middle English wale. Old English weall, meaning rampart.

Boundary—past tense of the verb to bind. Middle English bindar.

These provide boundaries to separate areas, to enclose areas for control, or protect something or someone from outside forces. They can prevent others from entering and or exiting an area in effort to provide protection and security.

This essay is not an attempt to write about every wall in history or every fence ever built or all boundaries ever changing, but I hope to select certain walls, fences, boundaries that represent functions that have served and do serve to support my thesis that human societies must recognize the sovereignty of the individual and plan policies that allow the individual preeminence and promote individual choice as the basis of governance.

“I believe . . . deep in the soul of every man, woman and child on the face of the earth is the desire to be free. It is a desire to have their voices heard and it is a desire to live under governments that are responsive to their needs. . . . It is clear that it takes time for freedom to take root . . .sometimes the seed is planted on rocky soil.”

George W. Bush

10/19/2017

INTRODUCTION

In 2019 as physicists confirm an expanding universe and distances between galaxies increase, they also discover the small, the quark, smaller than an electron or a proton. Our small, spherical piece of matter on which we live, doesn’t alter in size, but it seems smaller because of the speed of trade and communication and our greater understanding of the vast universe(s) in which we live. As our globe seems smaller, people begin to talk of global government, some vast global structure which manages the whole globe and all in it. But scientists also discover life at its fundamental, microscopic level. They know the significance of small things. Scientists are as absorbed with the small as the vast. They know small things, like cells, which are the foundation of life, have walls; cells must maintain their integrity, their sovereignty; cells must interact with other cells; and cells must maintain and repair themselves to hold off their eventual entropy—which is the disorder that comes to all living things. They know the second law of thermodynamics says that everything moves toward disorder, or entropy.

Some years ago, after reading Stephen Hawkings’ A Brief History of Time, I wrote a poem that contrasted nature’s bent toward chaos with man’s efforts to order and control his world.

ON READING A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME BY STEPHEN HAWKING

Men like equal signs, balanced scales,

the ticks and tocks of clocks

calendars with life laid out in blocks,

each organism in classes, phyla,

their world sectioned off in imaginary lines

of latitude and longitude.

They mark places with tacks and tags

like butterflies forever pinned on black velvet,

label bottles, number books, alphabetize files.

Afraid of things escaping, they wall,

fence, glue, staple all their stuff in place.

But every moment they are putting things in rows,

placing colored pins in maps,

plotting points on graphs, even

as they write formulas of order on blackboards,

the universe is scattering

like flecks of chalk disintegrating in air,

spewing dust into space, just as

Stephen Hawking writes his story,

his ordering mind in an unruly body.

Man is cognizant of his insignificance and impotence in the universe. Because he often cannot understand the workings of nature and the universe, he feels compelled to order and control what he can. One way he feels he gains control is to divide his world into manageable parcels. He divides spaces with fences, walls and boundaries. Things of the world he places in categories, numerical series, alphabetical order. He can then find them, compare them, feel a sense of order and control. The fences, walls, and boundaries also provide for his safety and security from those who might do him harm. Security and safety allow him freedom; freedom induces creativity; creativity, with work, is man’s essential tool to push back against the disorganizing, atrophying march of entropy.

Walls, fences, and boundaries are largely about control and order. In The Gene Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, “The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organization, and maximize chaos. Life is designed to combat these forces…. ‘It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe, James Gleick wrote.’” Controlling and organizing our world allows us to repair and renew it, attempting to keep entropy at bay as long as possible.

Man has a need to order and control what he can in his world. To do this he must have the pieces of his world be small enough to understand and control. He must also have the power to make decisions to order and control his environment to the extent he can, while at the same time respect the rights of others within his society. Thus these are essential to man’s sovereignty: a defined and controllable space, individual control over the space, and rules or an ethic that respects others’ space and right to control their space. This is the struggle for societies: to balance the rights and power of the individual with the rights and powers of the rest of the individuals in the society and the welfare of the whole. I argue that in nature’s universe, that small things are vastly important, that small things cooperate with larger entities—the individual, the cell, the tree, the state, the nation—and how they protect their sovereignty, their existential being, while existing with others in an organism, a forest, a community, a world. I argue that one principle way they shield themselves from large often suffocating biological, social and political structures is by building fences, erecting walls, and forming boundaries.

All things in nature have an external “wall” that holds them together and identifies them. A tree has bark, an orange has a peel, humans have skin, a cell has a wall or membrane.

The bark of a tree can identify the species. The exterior of a frog, a leopard, a petunia tells its identity.

Even man-made things are distinguishable by their exteriors. We can tell a washing machine from a toaster, a Mercedes from a Tesla, a Maytag from an LG. The exterior of these objects brand these products and make them identifiable. What chaos there would be if everything looked alike.

Cells in their organisms, trees in the forest, animals in their territory, humans in their communities, nations among nations have their own identities and some common conditions that permit them to function, survive, thrive, and some that will produce failure, unrest and even violence. Finding a balance between the cell and its organism, the tree and the forest, the animal and its territory, the human and his communities, nations in a world of nations, and providing ways of communicating with others in the community is a path toward peaceful and flourishing communities.

I am here advocating for the importance of the particular, the individual, even as the individual appears to be losing his voice. As a writer, I believe that if one writes of the particular, he will illuminate the universal. And if one examines the particular, the individual, one will discover universal truths.

I am not a biologist, forester, scientist, or historian, but I find some analogies in nature from some basics of cell biology, trees and their forests that support my idea that having a balance between the cell and its organism, the tree and its forest, the individual and his community, a nation and its global components, ensuring the cell, the tree, the individual, the nation are sovereign, and allowing each sovereign freely to interact with its organism or its community for mutual benefit. Each cell, tree, person, country needs in some way to have an identity. Often that identity is recognized by its exterior, but it is critical that individuals particularly can individuate themselves from others, recognize similarities and differences, and communicate to achieve mutual benefits.

I write these thoughts because I am a concerned, even if momentary, inhabitant of this earth, this universe, trying to discover ways that it works.

FENCES, WALLS, BOUNDARIES

NATURE

It is the small, the individual that supports life. The basis of all life we marvel at depends on the cell, the smallest unit of life that can replicate itself. If we looked at nature’s walls, we would find at the most basic level of life the plant cell encased in a wall. It is a miracle of complex particles working together to provide the cell with the functions it needs to survive.

A plant cell has a semi-permeable wall that protects the cell from enemies like viruses and harmful bacteria; it gives the cell structural integrity, protects its hereditary characteristics (DNA), yet still allows nutrients to enter, waste products to exit, and the cell to communicate with other cells in the organism.

Inside the cell is a fluid cytoplasm in which the nucleus and other working particles move. Each particle has a job. Some produce energy, some guard the cell, some deliver nutrients to the cell or excrete waste out of the cell. Some escort products through the cell wall to other cells, some send messages to other cells about what is needed by various cells within the plant. Some cells repair the cell, some make cell copies to prepare for the cell to divide. The diversity of the jobs these particles do is vital to the health of the cell and the plant. It is an amazing unit of life at a microscopic level.

Sometimes a virus will attach itself to the cell wall and enter the cell to multiply or perhaps lie dormant for a time. Sometimes the cell will actually bring in the virus— much like the people of Troy brought in the great wooden horse from the Greeks.

If a cell wall is breached or its walls fill with fluid until the walls burst, the cell dies immediately.

The great trick for the cell is to maintain its sovereignty while still communicating with the other cells in its organism. The balance between individual sovereignty and the community is essential for the cell to live and reproduce, to transmit nutrients and signals to other types of cells in the plant, and for the plant to flourish.

In a recent book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben documents fascinating information about trees and their forests. These larger forms of plant life are analogous to the cell in an organism.

Trees tend to protect their own species but also contribute to the welfare of other trees and other plants. In so many ways plants cooperate with each other to survive and to deal with conditions that effect their health.

For example, if a tree is attacked by an insect, the tree can detect the particular attacker by its saliva and emit a particular toxin for that insect. Or it might emit a particular fragrance that attracts enemies of the attacker. Not only does the tree defend itself against this insect, but it sends warnings to nearby trees of the coming enemy by emitting fragrances.

Trees also protect their space. Trees growing at a similar height grow their branches outward but stop as they reach the branches of neighboring trees. This protects their space, respects the space of other trees, and allows light to get through to lower plants.

Trees seem to understand that in their forest it is important to protect and preserve a variety of species. It is important that one specie does not dominate the forest. Variety protects the viability of the forest should the one dominant specie be devastated by disease or insects. The variety of species provides balance. “ . . .[A] tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it. . . .Their well-being depends upon their community, and when the supposedly feeble trees disappear, the others lose as well.” The Hidden Life of Trees p. 17. Each specie can contribute different things to the forest—some shed leaves or needles protecting them from winter storms and hold moisture in the ground, some provide food like acorns for animals, some store sugar, some die and provide nutrients to others. Trees share with other trees, particularly trees not doing as well. Tree seem to understand that unhealthy trees do not help other trees or the forest. Trees attempt to share in order to provide more equality among the trees in the forest for the welfare of all.

“ . . .we do know that higher species diversity stabilizes the forest ecosystem. The more species there are around the less chance there is that a single one will take over to the detriment of the others, because there’s always a candidate on hand to counter act the menace.” p. 130 The Hidden Life of Trees

Interdependence on the planet is ubiquitous. Life forms are interdependent. They depend upon the sun, wind, and rain. These natural forces supply energy, water, fertilization—sources of life.

Plants supply their own food through photosynthesis and then supply the food for every other plant, animal, bird, insect, fungus on earth. Some animals eat plants, some eat other animals or both. Some animals and birds feed on dead animals (nature’s garbagemen) and fungi turn dead plant life back into nutrients for the soil which plants use again for nutrition.

Plants depend upon insects, animals, wind to carry their seeds to other sites to germinate, if possible. Plants attract animals and insects with seeds and nuts, fragrant nectar or colorful blooms.

Birds, animals, humans use natural materials for their homes. Woodpeckers build homes in tree trunks and these holes are used by other creatures when the woodpecker vacates, birds build nests of twigs and grasses, people build homes of stone and wood. Beavers build dams from fallen trees (many of which they felled). Many animals dig holes in the soil for shelter and safety. These interactions have developed over generations as every specie strives to survive.

Nature’s forces, plants, animals, insects, birds all interact in complex and creative ways to survive. If some specie (or species) dies or is crippled in some way, the whole biosphere will be effected. The job of the harmed specie may not be able to be replaced and the system suffers. The maintenance of diversity in nature is critical to survival.

Some animals are territorial. Animals like wolves, lions, birds, and others mark off territories, mostly to secure space for mating and raising their young without competition, particularly from other males. Birds mark their territories with sound, mammals mark with urine, feces, or leaving their scents on trees, on plants, or objects or a combination of these. Their territories vary in size depending on their needs. If food is scarce, they will need a larger territory to ensure supply. Some only secure their nesting areas. But the overriding purpose of animal boundaries is to ensure their survival with sufficient food and protection for the next generation.

Nature also has boundaries among various species. Unless animals are of the same species as another, they cannot produce offspring. One exception is a horse and a donkey. They are different species with chromosomes of 64 and 62, respectively. A mating of these two species occasionally produces an offspring, the mule, with 63 chromosomes. Generally the mule is sterile although there are instances of the female mule producing offspring when mated with a horse or donkey. (The exception proves the mule.)

If there can be no propagation between species, but only within a specie, a strong argument for nature’s protection of the integrity and sovereignty of the specie begins at the foundation of organic life.

Nature also provides boundaries of mountains, rivers, gorges, cliffs,

seas, oceans that have protected people from enemies and natural elements.

Rivers, cliffs, mountains have also caused natural catastrophes such as

floods, avalanches, rock slides, etc. that have harmed people. Nature is not necessarily a moral arbiter but an amoral force which can be a friend or foe to people depending on often random circumstances.

Natural boundaries play a significant part in the history and fate of countries. Europe has been rife with wars from the earliest times. Europe has few real natural boundaries to prevent marauding warriors from sweeping across from one side of Europe to the other. Various countries in Europe have been conquered, their borders changed, their very existences challenged. Old countries have vanished and new ones are created. When nature fails to provide man protection, then men have created their own protections, often in the form of fences, walls, or boundaries.

On the other hand, countries like Japan, the British Isles, Australia are surrounded by water, making it difficult for enemies to come in force to attack it or have supply lines to reenforce their troops. Geographical areas that are isolated by water or other factors have cultures and animal and plant life that evolve in different ways from areas that are exposed to interaction with different people, animals or plants. There are animals and plants in isolated areas that exist no where else. Examples are the kangaroo and the koala bear in Australia.

The United States has been protected from foreign wars because on our east and west coasts are vast oceans, on our northern border is a friendly country, even though the border with Mexico has presented border crossing problems. When America has been involved in foreign wars it has been on foreign soil, except for wars before we were a nation.

HISTORY

Historically the origin of fences, walls, boundaries began when ancient people began gathering in groups or communities. As communities grew, the people needed security, mostly from marauding enemies. They built walls of large blocks of rock around their cities to protect the residents from invading tribes. These walls could be 20 feet to 60 feet high and some wide enough to allow chariots to ride around the top.

There were often watchtowers or fortifications along the wall and one or more gates to allow the coming and going of commerce, to let workers go to the fields outside the walls, and for workers to cart refuse outside the city. Sentries could be posted along the wall to watch the horizon for any disturbance, to see storms coming, and even to watch for any disturbances inside the city that might need their attention. Wide walls were desirable in case chariots would have to be repositioned to adapt to the position of the enemy.

These walls functioned much like cell walls long before man had ever seen a cell. Within the walls were bakers, weavers, cobblers, farmers, masons, men and women producing children, rulers, soldiers, garbagemen—people, like cells, providing a variety of functions needed to supply the needs of the community. There were fortifications to keep harmful elements out, gates to allow traffic and commerce to enter and exit and for farmers to go to their fields. The communities were not self-sufficient. They relied on material and foodstuffs from other parts of the world that they didn’t produce. They established trade and trade routes to obtain products other places produced. Often spices or silk were commodities sought in trade by European nations from Asian countries. So while walls were built to keep out menacing hordes, gates were built in the walls to allow commerce to flow back and forth and merchants to come and go with their goods.

The first known walls built by man were in Turkey at the temple Gobekli Tepe about 11,500 B.C. Other early notable walls were around the cities of Jerico, Babylon, Mycenaea, Troy.

Jerico’s walls famously came tumbling down as per the instructions of the Lord. Joshua, as the leader of the Israelites, was told by the Lord how to conquer the city of Jericho. Seven priests with trumpets made from rams’ horns would march around the city with the ark of the covenant, horns blowing, for six days. On the seventh day they would march around seven times and then the Israelites would shout. Joshua gave these instructions and when on the seventh day, the people were told to shout, they raised a great shout and the walls fell. Joshua’s army rushed in and slew all the people, except for Rahab and her family who were promised protection for helping Joshua’s men, and then burned the city down.

Babylon’s wall was a monument first to Hammurabi and then Nebuchadnezzar II and was built and fortified under successive rulers. Although the wall around Babylon was primarily for defense, it shouldn’t be dismissed that kings and rulers built walls as monuments to themselves. Their walls were also what we would now call infrastructure projects and in many ways, just as our current infrastructure projects, were a mix of transportation, monuments to politicians, and worker-intense jobs to keep people employed. In ancient times these walls were often built by slaves who were brought into the territory as conquered peoples in war. The walls were for defense, safety and also for economic and social purposes, as well as personal aggrandizement.

Walls were not always impregnable. Warriors did breach city walls and conquer cities. Certainly one of the most cunning ways to invade a city by permeating its walls was the building of the Trojan horse and hiding soldiers within it.

According to Greek literature, Eris, goddess of discord, offered a golden apple to whoever of three goddesses was deemed the fairest. Paris of Troy was to choose whether Athena, Hera, or Aphrodite was fairest. He chose Aphrodite, who then caused Helen, wife of Greek Menelaus, King of Sparta, to fall in love with Paris. Paris carried her off to Troy, and Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon chased her down and battled for her return for ten years.

As a last effort the Greeks built a huge wooden horse and placed it outside the gates of Troy and sailed away in their ships. The Trojans, thinking this was a trophy from the Greeks, brought the horse inside the walls of their city and celebrated. As darkness fell and the city slept, soldiers hiding inside the horse climbed out and opened the gates allowing the Greeks who had returned to shore to enter the city and claim victory.

Scholars still debate whether the story of Troy and the Trojan horse is

historical fact or myth as presented by the poetry of Homer’s The Iliad and Virgil’s The Aeneid, but if it is not true, it should be. One of our most useful metaphors is the Trojan horse. It is how we express a foreign element entering our bodies, our houses, our countries in a stealth manner or even a pleasant and obvious manner but then destroying us from within.

About 717 B.C. Assyrian King Sargon II at Khorsbad built the city

Sargon, a square mile of land, surrounded by walls and watchtowers, with

houses and storage buildings within, but before it could ever be inhabited

Sargon was killed. The structures gradually deteriorated, never occupied—an example of the disorder of entropy. No one made efforts to maintain or restore the city.

Other early walls were not built around cities but were built as buffers

against specific or possible enemies. (With a multitude of marauding

peoples roaming over the lands, an enemy could come from a number of

places.) Often these walls marked boundaries of a people’s territory which

crossing would violate a breach of their self-recognized territory. Such a wall

was built by the Sumerian king Shulgi of Ur from south to north between the

Tigris and Euphrates rivers to keep out the Amorites. This was the first wall

known effectively to be a border between territories. In 1750 B.C. the

Elamites skirted the end of the wall and conquered Sumer.

Hadrian’s wall in England (2A.D.)served a similar purpose. It had a fort every five miles along its 80 mile length, ditches on both sides, a castle at both ends, and fighting garrisons at each fortification. It now marks approximately the border between England and Scotland, although the wall is entirely within England.

The Great Wall of China is also a linear structure which was to defend

against barbarians from the north. It winds 1400 miles along the northern

border of China. Its average height is 20 feet and it is wide enough for six

horsemen to ride abreast. Built by the first emperor of China (221-210 B.C.),

it served as defense against invading barbarians, such as the Huns, but also

helped keep disgruntled Chinese inside the territory which helped establish an identity and cohesiveness within China. Walls around cities and territories tended to give these areas a sense of cohesion, of identity, of “nationalism” before there were nations. This sense of territorial loyalty undoubtedly helped rulers to motivate their citizens in times of crisis. Some historians also speculate that if the wall discouraged barbarians from invading China that they then turned to easier prey like Europe. Thus they conjecture that the Great Wall of China may have changed world history encouraging the Huns to invade Europe when China proved difficult.

Inside city walls families built houses which were often protected

by courtyard walls. These walls protected their owners from burglars, from

weather, from unwanted visitors. These walls created privacy and security for families. Walls were also a place for ornamentation. Artists painted and carved on walls. One can imagine that the quality and extent of the art was in proportion to the wealth and/or renown of the owner. (Human nature has changed little.)

Some territories had less need of constructed barriers. They had oceans

or seas protecting their lands. Some lands had mountain ranges keeping

them safer from invasions. Macchu Picchu in Peru, probably the palace of the

Inca emperor Pachacuti, was built atop a mountain. It had terraced walls for

ease of living and growing crops, but also provided a barrier for safety. They were designed for convenience for walking and for drainage for arable land. The site was so remote that only local people were aware of the ruins until historian Hiram Bingham came upon them in 1911.

In the dark ages, walls often protected monasteries. They provided security for the monks and their communities. This security allowed many monks to transcribe manuscripts for future generations and help preserve humankind’s culture.

In the middle ages, castles were common for rulers and knights to protect their kingdoms. The inheritance of land among family members dispersed large land areas into small kingdoms and cities largely disappeared for the time being.

Walls were also used for more governmental uses such as providing limited entry points for travelers and merchants. They were a location at which the city might collect taxes on goods entering or exiting the city walls. Some cities had to build a series of walls as their population grew. In Paris and Constantinople, for example, several concentric walls were built to accommodate the cities’ growth. Paris’ walls are still an integral feature of the layout of the city.

Thus man built fences, erected walls and drew boundaries to protect his cities, his territories which functioned much like plant cells long before he ever had seen a cell. They also provided paths to interact with the outside world. With the advent of the cannon ball which could be fired over the wall, walls became less effective.

BOUNDARIES AND CREATIVITY

Man’s creativity is often produced by the compression of boundaries man creates for himself.

Art forms have boundaries, borders. Painters begin with a blank canvas, limited in area and often later to be framed. This self-imposed border limits the size of the area the artist can put his paint. That may limit his choices of subject matter that would best fit in the size frame he has chosen. A poet who chooses to write a sonnet, restrains his word choices, his line length, the length of poem. The composer is limited by the notes in a measure and by the key he chooses, among other things. But the artists do not often consider these to be limitations as much as challenges to their creativity to find material that will fit the form they have chosen, or the reverse, choosing the most appropriate form for their subject. I think most artists would say that the restrictions placed on them make them more creative. They must learn to manipulate their ideas, their paint, their words, their notes to fit the boundaries and that forces them to rethink or recreate their ideas. Creativity is often forged by compression.

Most artists work alone. They have a core or solitary self that is the

creator. They are most content and at one when they are by themselves.

When they must interact with others, their inner selves must adapt and

compromise which may be why many artistic people spend time by

themselves and find inspiration when their “core self” has interchanges with

nature. With few exceptions paintings, poems, symphonies are created by individuals working alone and not by groups of people working in collaboration.

This, too, enforces the importance of the sovereignty of self. The odd

chance that two people would be of exactly the same mind and reciprocally

transcend all outside influences is highly improbable. Whereas one might pick up an idea from outside, the idea will be consummated internally within the self. Studies have shown that individuals working alone are more creative than when people work in groups. It might be that an individual produces a purer idea than a group that comes to its conclusion through consensus. A study of 3M scientists and advertising executives found “in every case four people working individually generated 30 and 40 percent more ideas than people working in a group. Their results were of a higher quality, too: independent judges assessed the work and found that the individuals produced better ideas than groups.” How To Fly A Horse by Kevin Ashton; Anchor Books, New York, NY 2015, p. 50. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and so many others were people tinkering or thinking in their garages or dorm rooms to come up with ideas that changed our world.

Our reality is our interpretation of whatever reality we see. Each individual internalizes his experiences, his reality, in a way unique to him. It compromises his individual vision if it becomes influenced or contaminated by another’s vision; tension is created between the visions. Each person creates metaphors of his existence, his own world. That does not mean the artist cannot learn from others, but he processes that knowledge in his own way.

The core self is the only entity with which one can be in complete harmony. Thus the frame of a picture or the lines of a staff do not define the artist. He can be as staid or whimsical within those boundaries as suits his expression. It is his challenge to find authenticity of self in whatever form he chooses or he is given. The compression provided by boundaries and rules often produces his creativity.

In How We Got To Now, Steven Johnson suggests that with the advent of the mirror, people focused more and became more aware of themselves, became more introspective. He correlates writing novels, which explore individuals, to human awareness of themselves as individuals. Fiction focuses on the individual and an individual reads novels, usually alone, to discover other individuals and how they cope with their situations.

People make boundaries also when they play games. Robert Frost connected art with sport, commenting on free verse: “Writing poetry without meter is like playing tennis without a net.” Rules, standards, restraints can make life into art or play into a game.

Tennis has service lines, baselines, alley lines that proscribe where the tennis ball must land in order to still be in play. Croquet, soccer, football and many other games have boundary lines players or their ball must stay within.

Baseball parks have walls. One purpose of the wall is to keep spectators out who have not purchased tickets and to allow those in who paid for seats. Inside the ballpark, there are foul lines and base lines which limit the area where a ball can be hit and be in play and paths for base runners to stay within when running around the bases. There is also a fence at the perimeter of the outfield which marks the boundaries of the playing field. If a batter can hit the ball over that fence and still be inside the foul lines, he gets to trot around the bases at his leisure without fear of being tagged out. He has hit a home run. Thus the batter, in order to be rewarded, must learn to hit the ball within fair territory and far enough over the fence to avoid have the ball caught by a fielder. This is how baseball stars are born.

Golf is a game with boundaries. There are red lines, yellow lines and white lines that mark penalty areas and out of bounds. When a player hits his ball over the red or yellow lines, he can play the ball where it is, but certain rules apply, like he cannot touch his club within the penalty area or he is penalized. Or he may drop the ball outside the penalty area in ways determined by the rules and take a penalty stroke. If he goes outside the white line which denotes out of bounds and also usually marks off private property, he gets a penalty. In this circumstance, he may not hit the ball from an out of bounds area, because in most cases he would be trespassing, but he must drop in bounds and take a two stroke penalty.

The rules of games limit where a player can and cannot play or can or cannot hit the ball, but it also forces the player to perfect his skills in order to stay within the limits set by the rules of the game. Thus by making borders and boundaries for himself, man induces himself to become more skillful, more precise, more creative to stay within the limits he has set. Boundaries have the ability to force greater excellence.

In life we are not as constrained in the narrower sense of the artist by canvas, page, form; we are constrained by time—often an unknown end, an unknowable boundary. We are free to roam. We could think of life as art since it is bound by time. The limits of time pressure people to create, produce, perfect.

In art as in golf or life we are always working to pare away all that is not essential—all distractions, extraneous movement. As we work to understand our art, our game, our life, we gradually, through knowledge, focus on its core. Boundaries reduce the complexity of art, the game, the prose to its simplest and purest form, its essence. Boundaries enhance art and better the artist.

Art is an expression of the self, the individual. Thus all art is different because it is the expression of an unique person. And that person is trying to perfect his craft to communicate better his self expression. Whether through writing, painting, sculpture, music—all art is created by individuals, and individuals, within themselves, interpret what the artist created.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND BOUNDARIES

If cell walls protect their sovereignty, their security; if trees protect their space, depend upon a variety of species, interact with their own and other species to fend off enemies, help other inhabitants of the forest to survive; if animals secure a territory to protect their future generations; if communities build walls to secure the safety of their members, what can we draw from those examples to apply to an individual’s relationship with his neighbors and his community?

Is the individual as essential to his community as the cell to the organism or the tree to the forest? Is the individual’s sovereignty as vital as the cell’s to his organism? What happens if the individual is totally sublimated to the whole? Who or what makes the decisions for the whole to chart its course?

There are those who have attempted and even succeeded in herding people into a mass to convince them to act in one certain way. To do this they must work to erase the individual sense of self, his self-esteem, his independence and convince him or her that the goal of the whole warrants the sacrifice of the one. With ideological movements like ISIS or Nazism one sublimates one’s sovereignty to the group and loses one’s individuality to become an indistinguishable part of a mass. Thus the boundary between an individual and a group is eradicated or blurred. The individual loses his self-esteem, his sense of self and becomes an indistinguishable part of a group, a mass.

In a recent novel, A Gentleman from Moscow, by Amor Towles, the narrator is Count Rostov, a member of the aristocracy of Russia during the age of Tsar Nicholas. As the Communists seize control of the country and the culture, the Count bemoans that all the wine labels with the vintages and grape designations have been removed. All wines are now either white or red. Wines are generic with no specific identity. Those like the Count who had been discriminating in their selection of wines were now left with no way to distinguish individual wines. He notes that people also lost their individuality when all are referred to as comrade without a personal designation of a name. Both are an anathema to people accustomed to being discriminate—discriminate in wine, in food, in manners, in art. The loss of a uniqueness, an individuality, is abhorrent to Count Rostov.

One of the most tragic and dramatic cults in our time is the Jim Jones cult. He began his church in the 1950’s in Indiana and then moved it to California when he was getting more closely examined. In California he set up several churches and even was commended by more left-leaning politicians, like Walter Mondale, Rosalyn Carter and Jerry Brown. When things heated up in California, Jones moved his operation to Guyana, South America, a very isolated place where his communist-inspired community working together for the common good might survive.

Then Congressman Leo Ryan of California arrived on a fact-finding mission and found he and his party of reporters were under siege by Jones. Ryan was killed as he tried to leave from the airport. Shortly after that, Jones knew the U.S. government would be landing. He told his members that the government would be torturing the children and elders and they should prepare to die. He mixed grape Flavor-aid together with cyanide and Valium, force-fed the children and demanded the members drink it and die like communists. From this incident, “drinking the Kool-aid” has become a metaphor for people who follow blindly and swallow the idea that the purpose of the group overrides the individual’s sovereignty.

What if the individual exerted his sovereignty without regard to those around him? That would be anarchy. Neither extreme of complete sublimation nor complete sovereignty produces a peaceful, creative or free society.

An individual’s freedom must be bound by every other individual’s right to act. Thus we are only free to the extent that we do not use or abuse another’s rights to pursue his happiness. In my view all individuals are born with an equal right to exist and to exist with the equal right to life, liberty and to pursue their own happiness to the full extent of their talents and abilities. Each individual’s freedom also has a boundary which exists at the line where another individual’s freedom abides. Freedom is not unlimited but is restrained by the moral standard that one individual may not use, abuse or deny another individual’s freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thus an individual’s freedom must also maintain a balance between the individual and those in society whom he encounters or with whom he interacts.

The founding fathers of the United States wrestled with the balance of individual states and the federal government to try to find the proper balance. They got it wrong the first time and made a second effort. They also knew they needed to protect the rights of individuals against a government should it become oppressive, like their experience with England. They drew up a Bill of Rights to protect individual rights to speech, religion, assembly, property, bearing arms, etc. If governments’ pervasiveness and control begin to usurp individual rights, citizens must be prepared to protect themselves from the suffocating, overpowering governments that attempt to stifle individual expression.

Just as the cell’s wall cannot be breached or it dies, individual sovereignty seems vital to the flourishing of human existence. The individual must have a sense of self-worth and purpose to drive his life in a meaningful direction. Optimally if each person fulfills his telos, all society should be the beneficiary of his contributions. But the individual may not pursue his vision for himself if the path to that vision collides with another individual’s path to his vision. The borders of one’s aspirations stop at the borders of others’ aspirations. One individual cannot override another’s course of life, nor should a government. How important is it for an individual to retain his self, his insularity, identity, his privacy, his autonomy to keep humanity from falling into a pile of mush—an indistinguishable lump of humanity without its humanity? It is as important as life itself, if cells tell us nature’s truth.

In The Gene, Siddhartha Mukherjee writes that our genes are so complex that they can make every human unique and yet similar enough to identify him from all other forms of life. This fundamental way of nature to respect such uniqueness should also be respected in the way our societies operate.

What applies to cells and trees could well be applied to countries. If the world were one country I see two big problems: one, individuals would lose their significance, and two, if a world government made decisions for every country, leaving no ability for each country to craft decisions to fit the character or culture of various people with in it, bad decisions could be horrific. On the other hand when individual countries make decisions in their own interests, like the trees, a variety of choices tend to balance each other. Bad decisions by one country can be mitigated by other countries’ decisions. We can see this observing central banks around the globe as they move interest rates. If one country moves too quickly or too slowly, other countries making different choices can balance and mitigate bad outcomes, and perhaps even provide evidence of how different choices could have better outcomes.

We saw several years ago the effects in the European Union when Greece had not controlled spending and plummeted into debt. This produced an economic crisis in which other European countries, like Germany, had to bail out Greece to protect the EU. The effects of Greece’s failure reverberated like dominos through the world economies.

One can see that variety or diversity in communities also offers security. Just as in the forest if one species of tree dominates and then becomes diseased, the whole forest is endangered. If communities rely on one industry, like automobiles, steel or farm equipment, and that industry has hard times and closes or moves its factory, the whole community suffers.

Individual countries can protect each other through alliances from countries that attempt to overpower their neighbors. Trees, too, form alliances to protect their species and other species as well. We have diversity so that one person, one group, one country will not have the ability to control everything.

People tend to rebel against not having control of their own lives, not having free will. Trying to sublimate individuality to the mass literally brings out the instinct of self defense, self preservation. The individual is the basic unit of human life and his survival is critical to the survival of the species, just as the cell is vital to the life of the plant.

In the movie Schindler’s List, when Schindler set about saving the victims of the Nazis, mainly Jews, he did not say, “Get the Jews to safety” or “Save the people on the train.” He had his assistant write down every individual’s name. Schindler, at the end of “Schindler’s List” has one more piece of gold jewelry which he had overlooked. He says, “That was one more person.” That one person was as important as all the other people he had saved. We are far more involved when we see or think of specific individuals than when we think of groups or masses that are faceless, people whose eyes we do not see. The value of life must be the life of the sovereign individual, held together by skin and bones, acting in his own interest without abusing others. If the individual is not valued, then life is not valued. If one individual is not valued, no individual is valued.

People are frustrated when their lives are directed by events out of their control. They are more comfortable and happier when they are able to freely and willingly make the choices that direct their lives. An anecdote that vividly illustrates the need for individual freedom is my son Dirk. When he was three, I had chosen a pair of socks for him to wear which he didn’t want to wear. He said, “No. You are not the boss of me. I am the boss of me.” Besides being a warning of what might be coming for me, he was also articulating the basic desire of individuals to control their choices in their lives. Attempts to blend, obfuscate, or control the will of individuals is met with rebellion by sovereign individuals. All bureaucracies are a source of frustration for individuals trying to live their lives, whether it’s a home owners’ association proscribing paint for your house, cable companies who deal out their own packages of programs, or governments who tax, regulate and control our lives. Like Ove, in A Man Named Ove, by Fredrik Backman, it is critical that a person controls his life and environment, fighting the “white shirts.” Stephen Pinker in Enlightenment Now writes “[Countries] are happier when their citizens feel they are free to choose what to do with their lives.” p. 271 If bureaucracies become oppressive and the boundaries between the citizen and his government get out of balance, the spirit of the individual is crushed and he becomes angry and frustrated. Ruling bodies must strive to localize the structure of programs so individuals feel empowered.

Some of our science fiction books depict societies in which the individual is molded to look and think like every other. In 1984, a book that when written told of a society in the future, describes three divisions of the world all have similar philosophies—Ingson, Neo-Bolshevism and and “in Estonia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self.” p. 272 The same loss of individuality is depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, The Gift. That is a theme of the future of these science fiction writers. They are warning all of us to beware of losing our identity, our individuality.

It is, as Henry James, Sr., supposed, the self that is at the root of our problems; whatever truth is in that idea, the self is also the foundation of our salvation. The wonder of man is his individuality, his uniqueness. Societies must recognize him, pay attention to him, nurture that uniqueness and he will use his energies in positive ways for all. But if societies stifle his self, then at some point all his repressed individualism will explode in uncontrolled and dangerous ways. If one person is not important, no person is important.

Man’s creativity is his tool against entropy. Alan Greenspan in his recent book, Capitalism in America, credits “creative destruction” for human progress. “Creative destruction” is somewhat redundant. If a person creates a new product or a new method of doing something, the old product or method will be abandoned as inefficient. This creativity advances man’s progress and staves off entropy.

It’s a long way from the Pony Express and sailing ships to cell phones and jet planes—with many dead bodies of outdated communication and travel methods strewn along the way. Creative destruction is a two-headed hydra—the creative half produces more efficient way of doing things and the destruction part means old methods become obsolete. The creative part has a dynamism that pushes against the entropy that can come with stagnation or a static status. But it means that old methods and the jobs of men and women who did that work will be obsolete. The workers must also be creative to retrain themselves for work that is coming next or they must create new work that is needed in an evolving world. (Capitalism in America by Alan Greenspan and Alain Wooldridge, Penguin Press, NY, NY. 2018)

All living organisms from individual cells to large, complex organisms, such as trees or animals must die. All attempt to keep healthy, repair themselves, but the energy required to repair or rebuild is always less than the energy required to make energy. Entropy is the term describing the disorder that comes to all organisms, bringing on the wear and tear on their bodies and ultimately their deaths.

A cell must constantly turn food into energy. If the food supply is not sufficient, the cell will fail, dissolve, and turn itself into nutrients for the rest of the organism. The cell needs food to stay organized and maintained. Even when food is sufficient, the potential energy will decrease as some energy is created, but some is lost in heat of production. This decrease in potential energy leads to the disorder of entropy and ultimate death. If the death is sudden as in a heart attack in animals or multiplication of harmful bacteria, the death of the cell will be disruptive. But a more natural death results in the cell transforming itself into nutrients for other cells or simply dissolving. Just as when trees die, fungi transforms them into humus, contributing their nutrients to the forest floor.

Entropy is observed in our lives in all things. We can’t keep our cars running forever. We can work on them, repair them, even put in new parts, but the potential energy of the car gradually decreases. Even though the energy we put into fixing it is considerable, the energy remaining is always less, lost through friction and heat causing wear and tear. Entropy is the reason there can be no perpetual motion device. The same is true of the cell and all other life forms. Entropy always wins out. It is a law of nature and you can’t mess with Mother Nature, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The plant cell might be instructive in our current need to balance individual sovereignty with our community of other sovereign nations. Like the plant cell, we should control our nation’s borders to protect against harmful agents, but we must also be able to allow entrance for renewal agents needed for us to sustain life, be productive and continue to innovate. We must also allow communication among nations like the plant cell sends instructions to other parts of the plant to tell them what actions are needed. We cannot close our borders, nor can we open them. We must find a balance that keeps us protected but also allows new energy to enter to keep us from stagnation and decay; we must maintain variety in our society for balance and security, trying to stem the entropy that eventually comes to everything in the universe.

Man’s creativity and accompanying work is the energy that keeps us from succumbing to entropy. If humans weren’t so human perhaps we could produce them like cars or widgets, each perfectly calibrated to mesh with other parts. But for good or bad we are not given to succumbing to collective living or thinking, but are urged toward individual expression—the instigator of creativity and the impetus of progress. It is this freedom of individual expression and thinking that keeps our race from being crushed prematurely by inevitable entropy. We must maintain variety so one group doesn’t gain too much control and that various groups or individuals make their own decisions based on their interests to balance the different decisions made by others in their interests.

Since man has difficulty fathoming the entire universe, he divides it into pieces small enough to understand and control. Then he keeps working to make it the best he can. In general, one could infer from history that man strives for some Aristotelian archetype as he continually works at improving life around him.

The greatest of boundaries we all live within are the boundaries of birth and death. Possibly humans are the only life form aware of past, present and future. It is our knowledge of an historical past which leads to a better understanding of the present and a vision of a possible future. Man knows about death, seeing it recur in his lifetime as well as his historical knowledge of death. Death gives man what I call a “striving gene.” The question is how does our knowledge of our own death, consciously or unconsciously, inform our choices, our decisions, our goals? Is it a motivator to better ourselves, to marry, to have children? Is it what urges risk-takers to climb mountains, swim oceans, run races? Is death what prods artists, writers, actors, composers to share their ideas and feeling with others—to leave something of themselves, a seed, an organ transplant, a grafting? Isn’t art a self-expression of an individual saying, “This is what I think; this is what I am, and I was here, trying to make life better”? As poet Delmore Schwartz wrote on writing, “This is what one does, what one becomes/Because one is afraid to be alone/Each with his own death in the lonely room.”

Aren’t these life boundaries evidence that we are born as individuals and we die as individuals? There are times in which many persons die in the same event, but not necessarily at the exact same time, but those times are catastrophes. No doubt each person, even in a calamitous event, experiences his own end in his own individual way, through his own mind, separate from others. The more natural path to dying, the hoped for death, is at an advanced age in bed, without pain, withdrawing from life around us as we prepare to leave the only life we have known. We are more alone than among, more beside than unified.

Some philosophers prepare for us another and better life after this one, but that might be man creating a narrative that refuses to allow the only life man’s known to be destroyed. Self-preservation is at the core of man’s existence and religion creates a narrative for the self to survive. The theory of conatus describes how all forms of life do whatever they must do to survive. The theory of evolution supports that philosophy. All life forms seem to do all they can to ensure their species will continue.

The circumstances of our birth can put further boundaries on us. Are we whole, are we able? Are we put down in a place of freedom or oppression? Are we planted in a fertile field or fallow ground? Are we in a place of fear or security? So much depends on where our seed drops. We are then determined by the boundaries of mind, body, spirit and the ultimate boundary of death. We are bounded by our intelligence, by our physical abilities or limitations, by our appearance. Sometimes we are bounded by obstacles we create for ourselves, such as fear of failure, lack of confidence, poor temperament. Do those conditions force man to be more creative, more disciplined, to make his life rewarding within those limitations that nature and environment have placed upon him? These are hurdles that man must leap on his race to the finish. As humans we may be the only living things who understand we will die. We know about history and see the cycle of life. We know we have genetic limits and time limits that both impel and constrain our aspirations.

I wonder though even if people came into the world identical to each other, would we find ways to distinguish ourselves, divide ourselves from others—shirts and skins, dog tags, markings from the hospital, morning people, night people, mountain people, shore people? Even if we all looked alike would we find a cause for hate, greed, war, but wouldn’t we need also to create our individual identities to differentiate us from others?

The understanding of death does affect the choices in life we make. Knowing we have a final boundary provides an urgency to our choices and actions. We should be thankful for our mortality, for without that final boundary, lethargy and procrastination could rule our lives and our times.

That time comes for all of us. And while we wait, we live, we strive, we write, we floss and brush, waiting and hoping for the surprise.

CONCLUSION (SOME THOUGHTS)

It is at borders and boundaries that conflicts occur that either blur or dissolve lines or present a prospect of moving the line for gain or inclusion. After all, a line in the sand can fade with a blowing wind, a wash of water or the swipe of a foot. When we talk about lines we often are speaking of symbols or representations of lines. We draw a line on paper; it is particles of graphite that have rubbed off from a pencil. A line, as Miss Bush, my geometry teacher, said, is the meeting of two planes. Where one wall meets another at the corner is a line. A line is the meeting of differences—where sky meets land, where ocean meets shore, where the green of a leaf meets the brown bark of a tree. One cannot go to the beach and pull up the lines where water meets shore. But an artist might draw a line as symbol. Cartographers draw lines on globes to designate borders of countries, states or counties or draws lines of longitude and latitude, but one does not traipse across the globe and trip over those lines. They are ways of finding ourselves and our place in the world. Fences, walls, and boundaries define smaller areas which we are able to comprehend more clearly than vast reaches of space and time.

Fences, walls, boundaries are defined lines to keep things out and keep things in. They separate what is mine from what is someone else’s.People feel more secure with fences, walls and boundaries. They have more control of their lives, their families, their possessions. Man creates order in his world to keep the irrational, unpredictable ways of nature at bay in his life, as well as the inevitable entropy.

Man can’t trust nature to be predictable. He hasn’t the intelligence or adaptability to live a life of whim, buffeted daily by whatever way the wind blows, the seas flow or the lightening knifes. Man is impotent before nature’s randomness. He builds fences, walls, makes boundaries to order and control nature’s forces as best he can. He builds fences, walls, makes boundaries to keep himself safe from enemies and nature’s forces; he builds walls and fences, makes boundaries to define and separate his world into parcels belonging to specific people in an attempt to decrease strife among people and their possessions. Man builds fences and walls, makes boundaries to create areas small enough for man to understand and perhaps control. Too many disputes are over land or goods. As one of my friends said, “I could live with Alice. She uses her own toothbrush and has her name on her hair brush.” Marking possessions so everyone knows whose is whose eliminates many conflicts. That is a primary roll of fences, walls and boundaries.

In our modern era, freedom is threatened as our security is threatened. With jet planes, long range missiles, convenient travel, electronic devices, our borders, walls or not, can be breached and our safety jeopardized. As our safety is compromised so is our freedom, forcing us to defend our security with ever greater ingenuity or the much less attractive alternative of ceding our liberty in exchange for safety. Our outlook on the world has become less secure, more tentative. The developed world of democracies, where laws are boundaries to restrict people’s behavior, attempts to persuade the parts of the world in chaos and poverty that they can find peace and freedom only within laws that regulate the boundaries of human behavior and private property and they can find prosperity only by allowing all people the freedom to be all they can be within those boundaries.

There is also the prospect of global government which would greatly lessen the influence of individuals. The greater the institutional control, the less the individual can control his life. Individuals have more power when their governing bodies are local and accessible. It is difficult to reverse a trend away from local control once it has begun. Citizens must be vigilant to ensure their individual sovereignty and not cede it for some tempting promises made by institutions or politicians.

There is a long history of walls, fences and boundaries, nearly from man’s earliest time. They have been essential to his safety, to his peace, to his security, without which man cannot be free. These barriers are essential to his survival, like the plant cell wall and the animal cell membrane are essential to the survival and reproduction of life. These barriers are symbols of the necessity of sovereignty for the cell, the individual, the community, the country. Without the security boundaries provide we would not feel safe enough to live our lives freely, creatively, productively. We need to be free to have the right to life and liberty to pursue our own happiness while not infringing on others’ rights to the same. Without law, applied without bias, security that allows us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be in jeopardy. Laws are boundaries created by men to curb a person or persons from infringing on the rights of others. Freedom requires fences—limitations, restraints to ensure no one’s freedoms or rights are usurped or overridden. At every level, the safety of the cell, home, city, natio relies on making it secure to survive. We can only be free if we are safe. We can only pursue our lives, our happiness, if we are safe. Our laws are boundaries to protect us, our courts are to provide unbiased judgments which provide the safety needed to have life, liberty, freeing us to pursue our own happiness, our own aspirations. If a person or a nation loses sovereignty or the appropriate balance between individual and community neither the individual nor the community will flourish as it could—not for the cell in its organism, nor the individual in his community, nor the nation among other nations.

Along with laws, many religions try to urge restraints on man’s failings, to curb men’s worst impulses with shall nots and calls to avoid temptation with mixed success. Many of these boundaries are attempts to keep man from devolving to his lowest instincts, and at the same time to strive to better himself.

Fences, walls, boundaries are vital to maintaining sovereignty, safety, liberty, cohesion, but they must allow for the flow of goods, information, ideas and diversity of people and productivity to flourish. They can also provide limitations, compression, and hurdles that challenge humans toward greater achievement through man’s creativity, which is our defense against entropy—and as James Gleick wrote,“curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe.”

SOME SOURCES

Appleby, Joyce, Shores of Knowledge, W.W. Norton& Company, Inc., New York, N.Y., 2013.

Ashton, Kevin, How To Fly a Horse, First Anchor Books Edition, 2015.

Backman, Fredrik, A Man Called Ove, Washington Square Press, New York, N.Y., 2012.

Bishop, Morris, The Middle Ages, American Heritage, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1968.

Degler, Carl, Out Of Our Past, Harper Calaphon Book, Harper & Row, New York and Evanston, 1959.

Greenspan, Alan, Wooldridge, Alain, Capitalism in America, Penguin Press, New York, N.Y., 2018.

Haas, Richard, A World in Disarray, Penguin Press, New York, N.Y., 2017.

Johnson, Steven, How We Got to Now, Riverhead Books, New York, N.Y. 2014.

Kratz, Rene Fester, Molecular and Cell Biology for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hobokan, N.J., 2009.

Mayra, Besosa, Walls, Fences, Borders, and Boundaries, Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2010.

Mukherjee, Siddharth, The Gene, Scribner, New York, N.Y., 2016.

Orwell, Sonia Brownell, 1984, Harcourt Brace, 1945, renewed 1977.

Pinker, Steven, Enlightenment Now, Viking, New York, N.Y., 2018.

Postrel, Virginia, The Future and Its Enemies, Simon and Schuster, New York, N.Y., 1998.

Ruis, Andres, Llamas, The Life of A Cell, Sterling Publishing, New York, N.Y., 1998.

Warraich, Haider Javed, “What Our Cells Teach Us About a ‘Natural’ Death,” The Stone, New York Times, March 13, 2017.

Wohlleben, Peter, The Hidden Life of Trees, Ludwig Verlag, Munich, 2015.