The Borderless World

I have crossed a lot of borders in my time-—not just in the process of migrating from Shanghai to Glasgow to Singapore, but also in the course of extensive travel. I was fortunate enough to have experienced, among other things, sunset slowly spreading over the Himalayas, the hopeful new dawn of Beirut when it was relatively peaceful and the Alhambra and its tranquil gardens exuding a serene sense of past Moorish glory.
When one crosses borders so often, especially at an impressionable young age, they start to lose some of their significance. The child may notice that the words people use and their outward actions differing slightly across borders, but he would more likely remember that on both sides of the border people go about similar daily business, that they react in happiness or sadness or anger in similar ways and to similar stimuli. Borders, to such a well-traveled child, are not severe boundaries separating distinct groups of people, different “nations”, different “cultures”; they are only lines drawn on a map, for mere administrative purposes. Unity in diversity, when he grows mature enough to understand the notion, becomes to him more than an abstract truism, it becomes an irrefutable truth built upon a wealth of personal experience.
So it was for me. Internationalism has always been a natural instinct, because I couldn’t figure out just what was so different between the various groups of people that called themselves “nations” that mutual hostility were possible between them.
Such a tendency to see arbitrariness, in some degree, in every boundary extends to other realms. Thus, instead of distinct and mutually exclusive “Eastern” and “Western” systems of thought, I see a universe of possibilities consisting of all the combinations of elements of both. Individuals would navigate their way through such a universe influenced by their social and cultural environment but also having a certain amount of autonomous choice, ultimately arriving at their own unique value systems, which may be more “Eastern” or more “Western” or a heterodox mix of both in equal proportions.
Nowadays it is in vogue to talk of globalization and infocommunication technologies creating a borderless world. For me the world was borderless long ago—only that people insist on continuing to artificially draw borders.