The initial point of civilization, no matter what the origin was, was of people creating offspring that ultimately do the same act over and over, which resulted in movements throughout the globe in search of pastures new, for reasons of wealth or escaping adversity, or whatever the reason may be. It lead to a situation where civilizations were brought up, through years and decades, in isolation; and although some civilizations lived in harmony; many more battled each other for reasons they had left in the beginning: wealth, religion, new pastures. Isolation, coupled with a weak/strong version of greed, and possibly a form of idealism created drawn-out territories; that may have protected the internal members of that territory, but on a macro level, it created discrimination; based on whatever anyone can think of: nationalism, pride, a belief system, monetary differences… In the end, the result is discrimination

Its funny how many aspects of our life can create discrimination; you can think of many, although for the purpose of this piece, I’ll focus on the territorial, border-related, map-drawing aspect of it. The first point is nationalism; it’s intriguing how people can be so proud of a single entity, a single nation, because they belong to it, it’s perceived as an act of loyalty, an act that inspires self esteem, and places one above others – like a largely positive personal characteristic; the reality of the matter is that if a person idolizes a single territory/country/region, he or she is placing it against a world of other territories/countries/regions in which a feeling of protection and possibly hostility might arise – current events serve as a perfect case in point.

Religion can also be a point of discrimination in terms of territories; since a lot of borders are drawn up to protect people of similar faith, that leads to ‘religious borders’ so to speak. And again, walls are brought up, fights are initiated, and people are put in harm’s way – because of a few people’s ideologies.

To me, it strikes as quite darkly humorous how disillusioned people can get without investigating the root cause of what they stand for, what they believe in, and what they commonly fight for. The borders are nothing but lines drawn on a paper, nothing natural came about to create them, they were all the doings of men (and women) that felt it necessary at the time, for whatever reason; and is no way, whatsoever, a reason to draw lines between humanity; while some might argue that it is human nature to create territories and it is human nature to create division, I argue that jealousy, envy, and lots of other negative emotional reactions are also human nature, it doesn’t mean we should embrace them and act on them, but rather, as human beings with sound minds and critical thought, we should work towards a better outcome.

And at the risk of saying “why can’t we all just get along?”, I say “why can’t we all just get along?”