According to Voltaire, "If there were no God, it would be necessary for man to invent one." While I'm not certain on the God issue, I believe the sentiment holds true for borders. There is an inevitability about them. Nature and man both seem to need to break things up into manageable segments. Borders provide self-definition, a sense of belonging, a framework for development, and a springboard for diversity.
Borders and boundaries are endemic in life, and it is clear that the level of complexity achieved by living organisms and societies depends critically on the establishment of borders. Life could probably not have originated without the emergence of cells, which sequester certain delicate chemical reactions – buffering them and isolating them from external chemical processes that would otherwise overwhelm them, or rob them of critical molecular building blocks.
Higher life forms are multi-cellular, with different cells performing different functions (skin, bone, nerve, blood, etc.). These distinct functional roles could not be maintained without the existence of the membranes that bound cells, compartmentalizing the distinct chemical processes that underlie these distinct biological functions.
Let's face it, without borders, we'd have probably not gotten out of the primordial soup.
Borders are everywhere and not all borders are physical. Not living next to a physical or geographic border does not mean that we don't deal with border issues all the time -– we construct (or inherit) borders of the mind that can be as limiting or binding as a real physical border. Or, as I will argue here, as useful and promising as a real physical border. Even real physical borders have a mental correlate, which is our attitude toward that border. If we treat it as a wall, it will impede us, but if we treat a border as a transition point, we can make something positive out of it, even if it is a solid wall.
The naïve reaction to a border or boundary is as solely a bad thing: a wall, something that impedes or prevents the free passage of ideas, material or people.
However, as we look to the definition of the term, we start to see other, more promising aspects of borders. In Merriam Webster, the first definition for border is as a boundary, a thing that binds us in. On this definition, a border can appear to be constraining, not only physically but also ideologically.
In this sense our borders define us: they are the static corporal lines of demarcation, which discriminate between self and not self. They are the outer edge of who we are with no other context than self-reference. They are critical for protection, for a sense of self-respect, and for establishing a reference point from which to move forward.
Yet there is a second, more dynamic, sense of border: to be on the verge, brink or threshold. This leads one's imagery not to constraint but rather to possibilities. This view exposes borders as interfaces. Insofar as they are at all permeable, borders allow for the flow of information and/or material back and forth between the entities on either side. The role of a border is seen to be more subtle: a border is not just a wall, but a filter, providing the context for a diffusion of information, and setting the stage for creativity and innovation at the interface between two people, two cultures, or two countries.
By allowing this broader definition of borders, we see that borders can provide dynamic environments for change, innovation and evolution.
If we look to historical evidence in geology, biological systems, and human thought, it becomes evident that borders together with the entities around them create a natural dynamism worthy of exploration.
Biological evolution, modern philosophy and even geology owe a significant debt to the dynamics of borders. In the case of biological evolution, borders have served as islands for the production and preservation of diversity -– far from the pull of the center. In the case of human thought, borders have played an important role as transition zones -– capturing, morphing, buffering and transporting ideas. And, in the case of geology, borders serve as generators of gradients -– transformable into new forms of work. Each case highlights a border in the sense of verge, rather than in the sense of wall.
In evolutionary biology, we observe that innovation in species typically does not originate at the center of a species' distribution, but rather at its fringes and borders. The gene-flow at the center of a species' distribution tends to homogenize the gene pool and stifle the creative upstarts of mutation. Out at the species' further reaches, however -- away from the homogenizing pressure of gene flow -- we are more likely to see new forms emerge, stabilize and eventually propagate back to be incorporated throughout the entire species. Suddenly the new is old and the borders are back at work generating the next innovation.
As in the case of biological innovation, intellectual and/or cultural innovations appear to be more likely to emerge at the outer reaches of a culture – especially at locations where two or more cultures "bound" upon one another. Safe from central dogma, where to many new concepts could be considered heretical or dangerous, novel concepts -– or concepts imported form other cultures -– can survive long enough to mature and become integrated into the dominant culture in non-threatening ways.
We see many examples of this in the early development of Western philosophy in the colonies of Greece, where some of the most lasting novel ideas came from the likes of Thales of Miletus, who lived in a Greek colony in what is now Turkey, and Pythagoras, who developed his early thinking on the island of Samos, another Greek colony near Turkey.
The benefit of being on the edge, far from the suppressing effect of "mainstream" thought, interacting with the local thinking "across the border," and exposure to the passersby on the trade routes to the east provided both the grist for innovation and the freedom for such innovation to mature. Later the ideas of such early philosophers were criticized, developed, and finally incorporated into the greater body of knowledge in Athens -– the center of Greek culture.
Living in northern California, it's hard not to appreciate (and sometimes fear) the transformative power of borders. Rolling hills and craggy shores -– the landscape of California is beautiful. However, the generator of that landscape is the tectonic dynamic occurring at the North American and Pacific plate boundary. Topography doesn't happen from nothing, and what we need to do is look at the hills and valleys around us to see that even our footing is under the evolution of border struggles.
Tensions and pressures from our tectonic plate boundaries, while often violent and turbulent, create the great schematic we live on. We learn that the smaller quakes and tremors help relieve the mounting pressure, and we're not surprised when more intense quakes happen. We just hope that we are prepared for them.
Moreover, when we turn our attention to the opportunity created by these volatile borders, we find that it is at such crustal plate boundaries that have facilitated the exploration of geothermal and hydrothermal energy, thus creating some of the relatively cleanest, sustainable energy resources available.
In many current arenas such as music, art, architecture, infrastructure, social norms and family traditions we can see the innovations emerging at the interface.
We will continue to be faced with the challenge of borders every day. Some real, some imaginary, some internally or externally imposed. They might come forward or move back, become more rigid or more permeable. The question we might ask is: can we see beyond the constraints and instead view them as the verge.
(Privacy advocate Tara Lemmey is CEO of Project Lens, a cooperative environment between government, public, and the private sector arenas at the converging point between society and innovation. She is also a founder of TrustE, a nonprofit organization focused on industry-based privacy practices on the Internet).
