BORDER CROSSING
Bergano: Town on the hill sleeping in what was left of the pink-newborn sun. Drinking summer breeze and proudly perched at the foothills of the Italian Alps.
Eight countries in 24 days. Each one has its own water, each one has its own people. If there were no borders, would there still be a cultural difference between people? We distinguish ourselves by our family, where they came from, what was "the norm" here or there. Traveling from place to place has allowed a more natural state of being to transgress. There is no need to fit in, to a sort of cultural paradigm, only what the self is drawn to, your own habits; therefore, integrating a new custom into the standard preordained plane. Being on the road and blowing in whatever direction the wind is moving feels atmospherical. Considering that it is definite we know nothing, it seems like second nature to be in a position of constant curiosity. There is no adapting to a certain attitude or need to "fit in" with specific people. We always have a tale that will interest even the vitreous of souls. We are full of sun and salt, excited about every wrong turn we take. It is almost as if right and wrong don't exist anymore. What is wrong? If everything is a lesson then nothing can be wrong, because you will have learned from the experience. You will have learned about "wrong" about pain, about hurting. These are things that you could not learn anywhere else except from words such as wrong or unfair. We are traveling to the volcanic cinder-cone remnants left with a church and the virgin Mary on top of them. How does someone become purely themselves? If there is a thing. Is it by not being around too much input? No T.V., barely any internet, not a bunch of conversation with different people... But is it those things that activate minds in the first place? The catalysts of thought? Invoking the cause and effect law here. I suppose not being sheltered has its benefits, specifically naïveté.
The world with no borders, what would happen to the economies set up? Trust is too broken to even have a communal world. Maybe this is naïve to even consider, but to have a world where there were no borders/lines/town lines... What would people do? They wouldn't fight for land because you wouldn't be able to own any. Nor restrictions on how to build your house. Any style, campervan, cargo container, brick, stone, and color, etc., and you could live anywhere in the world for as long as you like because there is no such thing as nation or citizen - at least nothing more than a definitive context. Would people go different places and travel more? Would they be more nomadic? What if the only restriction was that you were imposed to contribute SOMETHING positive to the land, and it could be yours. If you had a garden, vegetable, herb, flower, alternative energy set up, an art installation, opened your house to people once a month who needed food? Aren't these things more redeemable than money? Why taxes? It is so exclusive to say that you can't live here if you don't have the right amount of money, because otherwise you wouldn't fit in to the town aesthetic. We are such a judgmental species who are only holding ourselves back from evolving and accepting love as the universal maxim. If we didn't have any borders, would we group up with people who were like-minded or go somewhere we enjoyed geographically or environmentally... or would we do what we do now, move to a place where the people look like each other or you. Economics and keeping the great machine stabilized would be the most difficult aspect of this concept. payment payment payment and taxes.. public works, funding for things, insurance of any kind... how would we control that or mediate civil payments?