Keeping things isolated from each other is exceedingly difficult
Summary
- Keeping something hot in a cold environment is very expensive and difficult to maintain. Substances seek an equilibrium.
- Likewise keeping cultures or people away from each other is almost impossible
Details
- Throughout history, walls have been built (The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's wall, the Berlin wall) and all of them have ultimately failed in keeping people or ideas apart.
References
Quotes
Sometimes, however, for various political or cultural reasons we decide we don’t want social or cultural equilibrium and so choose to erect an insulator in the hopes of keeping the two systems from mixing. Humans have been putting up border walls for millennia. They often serve a physical and psychological purpose, and are a line demarcating some sort of contrast. Us and them. My land, your land. Our values, your values. Our resources, your resources. These walls, however, never seem to work. From Hadrian’s* Wall to the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, these complex, expensive structures stopped the movement of neither people nor ideas. Why? Because contrast is hard to maintain. It is hard to keep groups of people from sharing ideas, customs, or language, just as it is difficult and expensive to keep a cube of ice solid on a hot summer day. Through social structures such as trade or marriage, borders tend to be places of exchange and social evolution. Two different states, whether of matter or people, will be impacted by what they are exposed to. An ice cube will undergo a temperature change if left outside in warmer air, and similarly a group of people will undergo changes in custom based on who they interact with outside their group.
To keep two substances in direct contact from adjusting to the same temperature is difficult. It requires an insulator and preventing any temperature change in the two substances is only possible with a constant investment of energy. The concept of equilibrium is a useful lens to understanding the inevitable fall of physical walls that humans have built around the globe. It is difficult to prevent two cultures in direct contact from sharing ideas and customs.