Civilization and Walls.

Civilization and Walls .
Andre Willers
21 Jan 2011

Synopsis:
Civilization is described as a reliable prescription of human behaviour .This can only be obtained by putting boundaries on humans from the outside . Ie walls.
Young civilizations , before human nature exerts itself , controls itself .
But humans quickly ruin this .

Discussion :
There are good reasons for this . The main long-term one is that non-walled systems do not generate sufficient discretionary surplus wealth to enable the equivalent of Universities : Long-term storage of skills and knowledge . The people can also skedaddle .But Civilization is created by the ones that have to remain . Bound by their walls .

Chinese Walls :
"The Great Wall" by John Man described this well .The Chinese word for wall and city is the same . They see something like the Great Wall of China as an Arcology . An extended city . Hence their willingness to embark on huge arcologies like the nuclear bomb-shelters under Beijing (of doubtful use) or the latest craze , underground trafficways to relieve congestion . The Hysterical Focus Strikes again !

Basically , the Chinese do not consider anybody without a wall as civilized , because they cannot be trusted .

Europeans have the same attitude , for the same reason .
Sad history .

The USA does not have this history , and is thus regarded as an "Enfant terrible" .
Also not regarded as civilized .

This is easily remedified , since this effect is completely unconscious .
Just build some faux walls around some major cities ,
Las Vegas has already done this .
Simply connecting up existing earthworks on a map and on the Internet will be sufficient to convince a large number of Far East and Middle East inhabitants to see the Americans as Civilized .

US military outposts in Iraq or Afghanistan might benefit from faux walls outside the real fortifications .

It is not a conscious response . I hate to use the word Epigenetic in this context , but epigenetic memes is a strong possibility . Once again , it is not conscious .

Historical examples :
"The Great Wall" by John Man described this well . Faux walls in Mongolia stretching for thousands of kilometers . Convincing Chinese that the Mongols are their friends . It worked for hundreds of years .

The same thing happened in Europe .
Anybody outside the city-walls was a peasant , and treated accordingly . If they put up even minuscule walls , they switched categories to a threat and was crushed or got a treaty .

Africa the same .
Mugabe gets exaggerated deference because of the Zimbabwe and Makgadigadi ruins denoting walls .

Australia :
I do not know of any , but I predict earthwork ramparts hundreds of kilometers in length in North-Western territories .Hardly visible by now . Watch at dawn or sunset .
(Nobody has looked)

To put it really , really simply :
No walls , no books .

Andre