Two days ago, I flew from London to Belfast, which takes just over an hour, traversing the Irish Sea but remaining at all time within the airspace of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is not so unusual: flying from Melbourne to Hobart takes around the same time and – likewise – crosses a sea but not a national boundary; and the flight I took in December 2017 from Oakland to Kona took five and a half hours, travelling over a large expanse of the Pacific Ocean and across three time-zones, just to move from one of the fifty constituents of the United States to another.
Later that day, driving from Belfast to Co Donegal, on the west coast of the island of Ireland, took close to three hours. At one point in the journey – as I crossed the River Foyle, by the bridge that connects Strabane and Lifford – the road signs began to announce the speed limits in kilometres rather than miles per hour. Another helpful notice reminded me – in English, French and German – that I should drive on the left-hand side of the road, as both the British and the Irish have always done. These signs drew my attention to the fact that I had just crossed the border: I was now in the Republic of Ireland.
Here, the dark line on the map runs along the river, where it was drawn nearly one hundred years ago. What the line represents – for the past, the present and the future – is hotly contested on both sides. Like the water that flows down from the Sperrin Hills, into the Foyle estuary and out to the North Atlantic Ocean, the meanings that attach to the line are in constant flux and flow: you never cross the same border twice, as O’Heraclitus said. Drawing a line on a map and calling it a border is a simple solution to complex problem, merely delaying the need to find a better, more lasting resolution, and at the price of making this patch of ground (or riverbed) the focal point for seemingly endless conflict. Which side of the line you come from is supposed, by many, to determine which side you will find yourself in other disputes and disagreements.
The line on the map that now separates Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland was initially intended to create two self-governing provinces (one primarily Protestant and one primarily Catholic) on the island of Ireland, both of which would remain part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Now, one hundred years later, it seems as if it might soon become the hard border between the United Kingdom and the European Union, a barrier designed to control and restrict free trade and free movement. The boundary has therefore become economic rather than theological, but this has improved neither the quality of the debate, nor the level of responsibility for the consequence of their actions, among politicians about why a line might be needed and how it should be managed. Each century has its own dogmas, which attract the energies and enthusiasms of the dogmatists. Times change, waters flow, intransigence remains.
Drawing a line on a map, to segregate people according to their religion, became the standard British approach in the twentieth century, allowing us to abdicate responsibility for the social and economic consequences of imperialism, and to re-assert our “greatness” in world affairs, all other evidence to the contrary. The planned partition of Palestine, where Britain had been granted a mandate to govern after the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, failed in the 1940s leading to war and seventy years of displacement and exile for the Palestinian people. The partition of Punjab and Bengal, to carve West and East Pakistan out of the Empire of India in 1947, precipitated mass migrations, murder, rape and abductions, and in due course a civil war. (The British judge, who drew those two lines, around 3,800 miles in length, spent six weeks on the task having never previously visited India).
This is not to say that before these border lines were drawn, everyone in Ireland, Palestine and India lived peaceably with their neighbours. There have always been arguments between and within communities, sometimes based on religious differences, but often on other grounds too. Building peace and prosperity is a multi-dimensional project, which takes time, skill and resource. It is a task for us all, not one that can be delegated to the cartographers. Lines on maps do not change the way people feel about their neighbours, but merely give them a highly visible objects to fight over with their neighbours: the line concentrates the mind, accentuates the differences, focuses the anger.
Later today, I will fly into City Airport in East London. When the plane touches down I will feel that I am back home: not because I have re-entered the United Kingdom (an event that will take place hours earlier when I cross from Co Donegal to Co Londonderry) but because, however much I enjoy spending time on the island of Ireland, it is in East London that I feel most myself; where I feel I belong. Why? Because London it is not a nation but a city; not full of one sort of people, but of many; not a holy shrine, but a secular metropolis; not the place I come from but the one I chose to move to. It is a home that I share with many others who want to create their own sense of who they are, rather than inherit to it; to live in the present rather than inhabit the past; to be defined by character and not by location.
This cosmopolitanism ideal is not new. It dates to the Stoics, one of the early schools of Athenian and Roman philosophy, many of whose leading thinkers were originally neither from Athens nor Rome, but who travelled to those cities because that was where the intellectual life of the ancient Western world was primarily conducted. One theme of Stoic thought emphasizes that the truly ethical life can be lived anywhere, and everywhere; it is not where you are from, nor your current status in society that matters; rather how you choose to live you life, how you choose to develop your character. The Stoics were the original citizens of the world, for whom the person, not the place, matters most. Of course, it helps to live in a place where there are many others who share this belief: cosmopolitanism is not an easy choice when surrounded by those who believe in blood and soil.
Later this week I will board another plane to fly again across the water, this time to Boston, coincidentally a city with some strong Irish connections. There I will be met by Peter, and driven to his home in Maine, close to the border between Canada and the United States of America, a line drawn on a map, between two former British colonies, which has turned out to be less contentious than most. There we will be joined by Viktoria and one or two others, for a weekend of conversation alongside the sharing of food and wine. We all come from different places – different nations, cultures, languages, education and employment – and yet our lives have intersected in somewhat random ways, and we have discovered common interests and attitudes, shared values and ideals. We will make a mini-community – just a few of us for just a few days – but we will not need to draw lines on a map to do so.
I understand that out ability to meet as friends is premised upon our enjoyment of privileges – money, time, education, employment opportunities – that are not evenly shared around the world. I also know that many of those who are most determined to draw lines on maps, and to assert the importance of these boundaries, are themselves privileged people. Borders are generally not the work of the poor, but devices constructed by the rich and powerful, who want to keep what they have and not to share with others, whose wealth is measured by the quantity of what they own rather than the quality of who they are. Enclosed lands are the product of enclosed minds, another reason for wanting to pull down the fences.
While I am lucky enough to be able to cross the border, I will continue do so.