Borders and Walls in Humanity :: History Barriers Society Philosophy Essays

Borders and Walls in Humanity When a wall is encountered literally and physically, there are many different ways in which a person can react to the situation. One group of people would generally just find a way over or around the obstacle. While some other people might pursue a way directly through the wall. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but they both exist as outcomes to the same dilemma. The basic wall has been around with humans for as long as the discovery of masonry has been around. Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall is one such example of how a wall can have conflicting properties of human interaction. The neighbor in the poem says that â€Å"fences make good neighbors† and that the two neighbors involved with the wall rebuild it each spring and they enjoy fixing the wall with each other. The poem just helps illustrate that walls are an important factor in human activities. Walls are not limited to any specific culture or region and still they continue to be built over t ime. Yet the general application of the wall has been used primarily to either wall something out, or to keep something walled in. The earliest walls were made with a human skill called stone masonry which is the skilled stacking of stones to form a cohesive structure. Walls as just a singular structure and not to be considered as part of an enclosed building with a roof, is a general subject that changes details from area to area. Walls the keep things in have generally been used as a way to border up local activities within a certain amount of space. Some more obvious examples of walls as barriers to keep things within the walls include; prisons, walled-in private communities, farm fences, and other examples where people want to maintain their own private space. Walls that can do the exact opposite of keeping substance inside are meant to be obstructions that keep other things outside from a space. National and private borders are an example of walling out unwanted factors . Security fences, walls as defensive locations, and walls simply placed for the sole purpose of obstruction are effective obstacles that humans have been building for centuries. Early building materials for a wall would be limited to the natural resources in the local area that the builders would want to build the wall in.