Borders: The World’s Longest-Running Inside Joke

I’ve been thinking about borders.
Not just the dramatic ones on maps—the ones with dotted lines, patriotic fonts, and names that sound like a politician scribbled them during a lunch meeting.

I mean all the borders.
The tiny ones.
The petty ones.
The ones that turn normal people into full-time emperors the moment they buy a house.

Somewhere back in human history, a small group stood around, pointed at the scenery, and said:

“Okay, you see that rock? That tree? That suspicious hill? And the waterfall Gary slipped on last summer? Everything inside those four things is US now.”

And everyone else said, “Yeah, that seems fair,” and just like that, civilization had a blueprint.

We’ve been improvising ever since.

Level 1: Property Lines—The Baby Borders

Buying a house is the closest most of us get to running our own country.
You get a deed and suddenly you’re the Secretary of Defense and the Minister of Lawn Care.

“This is my grass.
That is your grass.
And this tiny strip of dying crabgrass between us?
That’s basically the DMZ.”

We build fences tall enough to keep out a giraffe.
We install privacy screens like we’re shielding nuclear launch codes—when really, we just don’t want Karen next door to see us eating Cheetos shirtless on the patio.

But we treat these lines like they’re sacred.
We measure them with the intensity of scientists studying tectonic plates.

It’s adorable, honestly.
A tiny empire you mow twice a month.

Level 2: State Lines—Now With More Drama

Then you zoom out.

You drive forty-five minutes south, cross the Red River, and magically—you’re a different kind of American.

Nothing about you has changed.
Your DNA didn’t shift.
Your blood type didn’t update.
You did not download a Texan expansion pack.

But suddenly:

• the speed limit changes

• the accents change

• the gun laws change

• the queso gets thicker

• and somehow your patriotism relocates itself to a new polygon

Why?

Because the river said so.

The Red River is just water.
It’s not assigning citizenship.
It’s too busy eroding the banks and minding its business.

But someone, somewhere, looked at that wet squiggle and said:

“This looks like a great place to divide identities.”

And everyone nodded like that was normal.

Level 3: National Borders—The Final Boss of Imaginary Lines

Zoom out even further.

Entire continents. Whole land masses. Oceans. Mountains.
And humans stepped back, cracked their knuckles, and declared:

**“Everyone born in this giant shape?
US.

Everyone born in that giant shape?
THEM.

And we will now organize all of society around this.”**

It’s evolutionary psychology gone corporate.

Early humans:
“This side of the cave is ours.”

Modern humans:
“This side of the cave is ours, but now it comes with taxes, passports, drones, and a very opinionated Twitter account.”

We took caveman instincts and gave them nuclear budgets.
That’s bold.

The Joke Hidden in Plain Sight

Borders are sold to us as protection.

“We take care of our people.”

But… do we?

Inside these sacred lines, we ask citizens for:

• pay stubs

• tax returns

• trauma reports

• rental agreements

• childhood hardships

• blood pressure

• and sometimes the tears of a single father

just to see if they qualify for groceries.

We sort people inside the same borders into:

• deserving / undeserving

• documented / undocumented

• “good” neighborhoods / “bad” ones

• the worthy poor / the suspicious poor

• desirable zip codes / inconvenient ones

It’s like we built a giant border—and then built smaller borders inside that border.

A Matryoshka doll of bureaucracy.

You can be inside the “us” border and still get treated like “them.”

The polygon does not protect you from poverty.
Or illness.
Or rent.
Or the cost of medication that should be free but isn’t because capitalism woke up one day and chose violence.

So… What Are Borders Actually Doing?

If borders protected community, then people inside them wouldn’t be:

• one medical bill from bankruptcy

• one paycheck from eviction

• one life event from food insecurity

• one unlucky break from homelessness

Borders separate countries, not suffering.

Suffering crosses every line like it has VIP access.

So what do the imaginary shapes really give us?

Do they keep us safer?
Not really.

Do they bring us together?
Absolutely not.

Do they stop inequality?
Let me say that one out loud: no.

What borders do is give us a convenient reason not to help each other.

If “they” are over there…
we don’t have to face the “we” who are struggling right here.

Borders don’t protect us from outsiders.
Borders protect us from accountability.

The Dark Comedy of It All

The thing that hits me every time?

We built these borders to keep ourselves safe,
and in the process, we isolated ourselves so thoroughly
that most people feel:

• disconnected

• anxious

• overworked

• under-supported

• over-scrutinized

• and just lonely

Not because of invaders.
Not because someone crossed the river.
Not because of outsiders.

But because we put up so many imaginary lines
that we forgot how to be human with each other.

We fenced ourselves in
and then wondered why we felt alone.

We divided the world into “us” and “them,”
and then discovered “us” wasn’t even united.

In the end, borders aren’t protecting us.
Borders are protecting the illusion that we don’t need each other.

And that’s the funniest, saddest part:

We drew lines on a planet that never needed them…
and somehow still ended up isolated on our own side of the fence.