The Wall

 The Wall has always existed. The people know this without knowing it. It is just a way of life: it is there. It is not always a physical wall. A wall, yes sometimes of concrete and brick and stone, of metal and razor wire and electrics; and sometimes a barrier of desert and ocean, of land impossible to cross; but also a wall of the mind.

At first it had been of mud bricks, baked in the sun. It wasn't to keep the Others out: it was to keep our treasures in: like all the walls to come. And like all walls in all times eventually, it came a-tumbling down and the treasures were taken.

Those treasures were gold, or food, or ideas. Or sometimes a face that launched a thousand ships. Those walls could seem impossible to breach. But ways can always be found to break them, by force of arms or subterfuge or by Greeks bearing gifts.

But soon everywhere walls sprung up, around this town and that city. And within each city, no longer did the treasure belong to all the people of the city, it was hoarded by a few – and so there were walls within walls, citadels within citadels, to keep the treasures for ever fewer people, and they now controlled the people: the Few. But people had built the walls, so they knew how to break down the walls of the citadel. And those from outside – the Others – knew how to break down the walls of the city. So then it was necessary, to protect the treasures, to invent a new type of wall: the wall of fear.

So then there were gods, who forbade the people to break down the walls, who would curse them if they attacked the citadels, who would send them plagues and droughts and floods if they disobeyed. Because, the Few told the people, they themselves were anointed by the gods, were descended from them even, and the rules they gave out came from the gods, and the gods were content to allow the Few to keep the treasures: and this is why they must not break down the walls. Of course not everyone believed that the gods favoured the Few at the expense of the people, and they brought down the walls, and took hold of the treasures. The Few were overthrown and the people made use of the treasures until the next city heard all the commotion and set out to take over. Thus one city became many, the Few became fewer, and the lands they controlled through walls of fear grew bigger and bigger.

They became so big that they had to build huge walls, stretching for thousands of miles, over mountains and plains and deserts, from sea to sea, to keep out the Others. These great walls will protect you, our people, said the Few; but mainly they were there to protect the Few and their treasure. The people were forced to labour to build these walls – and the walls within walls for the Few, vast palaces at the heart of these new empires, where the Few could count their treasures in peace. And to make sure the people believed in the gods, they made them build vast temples to the gods, too, to demonstrate how important the gods were and to remind them to bow down in fear.

And for the most part, the people feared the gods enough, and believed what they had been told – that the Few were god-like and it was the duty of the people to labour for them and let them enjoy the treasures. But sometimes there were natural droughts and floods and famines and the people thought the gods were angry and the Few were not propitiating them adequately. And then the people with great effort overthrew the walls of the palaces and took control for a while. Sometimes they even lost their fear of the gods and threw down their temples too. Then the people would rejoice in their freedom and the treasures until the next great empire saw their weakness and absorbed them. Or some among them, the brightest and best perhaps, or the most ruthless, would seize and take control of what the deposed group had kept to themselves – the treasures and the palaces and the walls of fear – and become the new Few.

And so the world continued, and empires waxed and waned, each with its group exercising absolute power over the people and the treasures. Empires continued, generation after generation: and this was a great weakness, because instead of choosing the brightest and best of each generation, it was the children of the Few, the blood relatives, that took control from their fathers. Because, after all, if the fathers were demi-gods, then surely their children would be likewise, chosen and blessed with the skills to maintain the walls? Some in the new generations were better at this than others and their fortunes grew. But frequently they were bad at it – lazy, weak-minded, corrupt – and they allowed the people and other empires to prevail. They were not blessed by the gods, because the gods had been invented by their forefathers. And so their walls were overthrown by the brighter, the stronger, the more ruthless.

So many times the cycle continued – build the walls of stone and fear, overthrow, build again – that eventually the people started to see through this and demand a new world, where they would all share in the treasures and decide who would control and maintain the walls. In one empire after another, the citadels and palaces were attacked, the Few taken away in tumbrils and executed, and the treasures distributed. And for a while in these places there was an illusion of a better world for the people. But still there were ruthless people amongst them. It was necessary to invent a new fear, a new wall of the mind because the people now knew that the gods at best had little influence, at worst were dead.

The new fear was the Others. Before, the Others had merely been an inconvenience, to be kept out by the walls. They wanted our treasures, the people said, just as we wanted theirs; you couldn't blame them, you just had to protect what was ours. Now, the gods held no fear – so the people must fear the Others. The Others were not just greedy, they were evil; they were inferior; they were destroyers of civilisation; they were Other. And they were not necessarily outside the walls – they could be your neighbours, or the people who acted a bit strangely over the road, or who didn't follow the rules. And they needed to be weeded out, because they would subvert our new life within the walls.

So the new nations came into being, one by one supplanting the old empires. And every time anything went a bit wrong within the walls, the Others could be blamed. Of course, once again, the Few were still building their walls within walls and their palaces. And if the people complained that they weren't getting a fair share, it would all be the fault of the Others. Soon the people were actually rioting against their neighbours and the people across the street, the ones everyone said were a bit different, a bit Other; soon they were smashing their windows and beating them up, and bringing in discriminatory rules to stop them being Other, even rounding them up and expelling them or exterminating them. The Few encouraged this as they quietly built their treasure mountains. Because if the Others were evil, then we were good, they said, and the way we lived was right, and the ideas and customs we followed were correct, and everything else was wrong. So each nation built up its own way of life and hated the ways of life that were different. And the Others were so wrong that they needed to be overthrown and so there came a time when nations attacked each other. Millions upon milions of people died and the nations suffered great trauma.

By this time, the people had had enough and called on the Few to stop this nonsense. Of course, some nations were very similar: they built up alliances, with a view to stopping the destruction, and soon there were only a few alliances: but they eyed each other with great suspicion. And the walls now stood between these great alliances: walls of ideas, and real walls of steel and guard towers and guns. People on the other side might like the ideas and the prosperity on the other side, but the walls were built ever higher to stop them crossing.

So now, it is as if the walls have always existed. The people think this without thinking about it. It is their way of life. It has always been this. The Others have got it wrong: they need to be kept out. The Few sit in their palaces and occasionally stir up the fears to strengthen their own position. We need to fear the Others, we need to fear their ideas, their influence, we need to keep them out.

Because now we are all in the citadel, they tell the people. We are all equal within our wall of shared values. One day there will be a wall right around the world, a wall across mountains and deserts where we keep out the Others who want what we have; across oceans where we stop the Others' boats; in our heads where we stop the Others' ideas. And we need to fear those inside our wall that sympathise with those outside, who follow their ways, who spread their ideas, because they are the enemy within, they are Other too. We must stop them so that only we, the right-thinking people, are within our wall, sharing our treasures, they say. But the people don't see what the Few, more subtly now, are quietly amassing in their hidden walls within walls.

The Wall has always existed, to protect what is ours, because we are right, the Few tell the people. One day it will be all the people hear, and all they want to hear. Before, all walls in all times eventually fell. When there is just one Wall, will it also fall?