The Walls of Eden

The notion of a 'wall' has different meanings in a wide range of disciplines/fields, such as architecture, engineering, biology, psychology, sociology, etc. Despite the differences, the wall demonstrates separation, a border or a boundary, whether in a tangible or intangible form.

Walls are the main pillars of any building, but walls can also be assigned various intangible social meanings, it can represent division, exclusion, separation and confinement.

From The Great Wall of China to our neighbour's green hedge, we are all familiar with walls. Walls are practical and can keep us safe, secure and create privacy. But they also create distance, physically and psychologically.

In the early 1960s, Lewis Mumford argued that cities evolved primarily as military entities, and their walls were the most obvious sign of their profoundly warlike character. City walls were built as social armour, sometimes protecting an entire region.

The Garden of Eden was walled. A wall separating the holy area from the profane. It was a protected area reserved for the holy. At their creation, Adam and Eve were holy, placed in a holy environment. You know the rest of the story and how they lost their holiness. Walls have been around us since then and continue to be.

Walls tell us a lot about a place. They convey a variety of messages about the history, culture, and society of a place. They tell us whether we are welcome, how to behave, and the character of the people behind them. They reflect the characteristics of the community by defining the relationship between private versus public space.

If walls create social barriers? Would we be better without?

But what if we didn't have walls?

I.

It ultimately comes to the difference in whether; we design walls to live, or walls design how we live.

Walls are ubiquitous in every social institution we have today. Residential houses, schools, hospitals, government buildings, countries even our own language. When buildings have no walls there are still signs of passaging between the outside and inside, an entrance and an exit.

There seems to be an idea that walls enabled us to progress. We needed security before we could achieve other things such as writing, culture, education, otherwise we would be at war all the time. Until a society achieves security, it can't think about anything except the dangers all around it. As a consequence, its progress will be limited.

But on the other hand, what would the world have looked like if the Berlin Wall had not fallen? Arguably tearing down a wall allowed us to progress. Is choosing to oppress or progress really a dilemma?

II.

And while we put design ideas and building materials into walls, we also project our own values into them. Walls are merely a reflection of our sense of belonging, our group identity.

Building a house is not the same as building a home. That is a feeling we attach to the house, the walls and the people inside the house. But it is the need for a home that created the walls in the first place.

Once a person sees herself as part of a group, she derives self-esteem from that group membership and adopts behaviours that are consistent with the stereotypes associated with the group identity. Humans are more altruistic and positive towards an ingroup member.

A study by Yan Chen and Sherry Xin Li found that humans are more likely to reward an ingroup match for good behaviour, compared to an outgroup match. And experiment participants were significantly more likely to choose wealth and social welfare maximising actions when matched with an ingroup member.

Without the group identity, we would have no walls. People who experience high levels of well-being don't tend to have a sense of group identity.

People who live a fulfilling and meaningful life have a sense of appreciation, a heightened awareness of their surroundings, and a wider perspective.

People who lead a meaningful life define themselves as global citizens, sharing community with all human beings. If they have any sense of identity at all it goes beyond the groups and the walls. People lose the need for group identity because they no longer feel separate and so have no sense of fragility and insecurity.

The point of having walls was to build security. Find meaning, not mortar.

Sources to share:

• Americans and their gated communities
• Amy Chua and tribalism
• How Brazil is building walls around the poorest neighbourhoods in Rio