Fences : The Separation of Humankind
While I was working in my bedroom, a big bee involuntarily flew into my house. With a buzzing sound, it strenuously tried to seek its way out of this man-made maze, distracting me from my peaceful working. In normal circumstances, I would not hesitate to reach towards the window and get him out of my way. But this time I stopped myself and thought: Do I even have the right to do that? This place belongs to him too. My family were the ones who built a house on top of his flower field where he could find sweet delicious nectar… Who am I to obstruct him from this shared land? So instead, I eagerly typed into Google for an answer:
‘What causes me to be territorial?’
To answer that, let's trace back to the time when the land belonged to everyone. When there were no such words as country nor territory. When a man lived freely and animals could walk wherever they wanted. At the time, our ancestor’s lives were not as comfortable as today. Many of them encountered countless injuries and deaths from uninvited wild creatures. And of course, whenever humans face problems, they try to solve them.
For this reason, the idea of the ‘Fence’ was born.
In middle English, the word “fence” means ‘the act of defending.’ Just like its name, the early stage fences were used as a defensive material that protected humans from uncontrollable dangers. By doing so, humans started to mark their territories and eventually began to develop a sense of ownership. In the book Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau states that: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.” The civil society, in this sense, disconnects a man from what Rousseau claimed as the “state of nature” in which humans were free and morally good. With a sense of ownership, a man developed an unhealthy form of self-love, or selfishness: Amore propre. Thus, humans began to think in the basis of “what will benefit them” rather than “what will benefit the world” as a whole.
But little did our ancestors know that the invention of the fence would forever change the history of humankind…
The crucial part of the story started when humans began to not only isolate themselves from other species, but also within our own species. With technology advancement, fences developed into many forms and altered into many materials. And the one that turned mankind’s history upside down was when they were no longer built to (de)fence, but also aimed to attack— barbed wire was invented to hurt those who tried to cross into prohibited territory.
Apart from separating lands, barbed wire also segregated beliefs. The European colonies in America invented barbed wires in 1874 with the means to claim the new pieces of land for themselves. The spiky wire became the main object that separated Native American from their holy mother lands, which is the center of their spiritual belief. The conflict in ideologies ignited a destructive ‘fence-cutting war’ in the 19th century.
As time passed, the fence became a symbol of containment, unwelcomeness, violence, and war. Barbed wire and razor wire were used extensively and repeatedly in world history. It was used, for instance, to separate the territory between Belgium and the Netherlands. The locals called them ‘dodendraad’ or ‘the wire of death.’ Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish holocaust survivor, also described wire, in his book If This Is a Man, as a ‘monstrous web of slave camps.’ This is not to mention countless walls between the borders of countries that caused people to starve and be shot to death around the world…
In today’s world, the concept of the ‘fence’ may not be as cruel as what is portrayed in history, yet its mechanism still remains. We all still hold an invisible fence, a sense of possession, in our mind: ‘This is my home’ ‘This is my shirt’ ‘This is my partner.’ When someone tries to violate what we label as “Mine,” the conflict tends to emerge. And this can be as simple as fighting with a roommate over unwashed dishes, or as big as the destructive war between Russia and Ukraine.
The next time, when this invisible fence occurs in your mind, I encourage you to ask yourself where that fence comes from, and whether it is possible to remove it from your mind. I assure you that the world would look different once you put yourself out of the equation and begin to look at the situation holistically.
In conclusion, I have a lot to thank to that big bee who flew into my room on that day.
