Walls

of walls all around us. We have walls that we've erected, walls that are physical walls that are made of stone, that are made of wood, walls that are legal walls, walls that are mental walls that are from those just of ideas, ideas of legacy, ideas of division, hidden walls, the walls naked to the eye, firewalls, censorship. With any situation with the wall, you have an outsider and you have an insider. Generally, when we're contemplating walls, were on

one side of the other. I guess it's possible to stand on the top of the wall, but that's a that's a different situation, a precarious position to be in. Yeah, right, you don't want to star out of the wall. But this is one of the oldest ideas really in human civilization. But we've been building physical walls to protect cities and towns for ages. Walled cities are one of the earliest

symbols of civilization. How do you protect a settlement against marauders who were using their horses to try and steal your agricultural excess? And in fact, the Chinese word for city and walls is the same chain, which I found is interesting because that's how that's how important walls were in the emergence of cities in Chinese history. Yeah, and if you guys haven't already figured out, we are seriously

talking about walls today, like the actual physical structures. One of the things that I was thinking about is that walls are these concrete abstractions of what I think of as maps. Right, This this way to delineate territory, to try to say my power base is going to be here. And it's kind of like it's a very interesting way that we took this abstract notion of ownership and then said, ah, we'll show you will put up a wall through our points. It's like when you're in your back seat with your

sister on a long car ride as a kid. You each have a side of the back seat that you're supposed to stay on, and your stuff is supposed to stay on those sides. But during borders disputes, it becomes necessary then to point out exactly where the line is. It may become necessary to put some tape down that line to market in the physical world, and maybe even

construct a barrier out of luggage or pillows. Yeah, and from time to time, though, one might want to show their might by crossing that border and knocking down luggage and making a political statement really about how they feel about you humming for three hours in the car, right. Yeah, And then of course you end up with everything that has a symbolic power. In human culture, walls take on

multiple purposes, and I found this particularly a telling. In ancient Chinese tradition, you have the city gods cheng hung, who protect the moats and walls of towns, so that they're important because they're helping protect your very livelihood. Your very life and everything you hold dear is protected by these walls and moats, and therefore by the deity that

attends to them. But the chiang Hung also make sure that the king of the dead doesn't take any souls away without his permission, And so not only is he a lord of walls and moats, he's also a lord of death, and I find that's an interesting just symbolic economy thing. What I like about this is that this city God are these lords of walls and moats, it's

another name for them. Uh, there's a bit of bureaucracy involved with us, and that they're usually considered to be the reincarnation of a human being who had been an official in earlier times. And the city God was thought to change every three years, just like a living magistrate would change office every three years. And both the magistrate and the gods hold sway over the same administrative area.

So as you say, you know there's some supernatural areas there, but there's this expectation that there's formal reverence paid to the city God. So in that you see both Chinese efficiency but also this very important notion of venerating your ancestors in culture, combined in this idea that that someone was dispatching their souls to the underworld realm. Speaking of China, this brings us, of course to the Great Wall of China, which is when you when you talk about walls, there

are various examples that come to mind. There's the Whaling Wall, there's the Berlin Wall, there's Hadrian's Wall. There are plenty of examples, but the big one the main landers of the world is the Great Wall of China. And the history of the wall is really fascinating because it's easy to just sort of you've seen a picture of it. You know what it looks like. You know, it's a something to see if you're a tourist in China. But what is it? What is its history? How is it conceived?

And the wall dates back more than two thousand years to a time of unification in China, and this is when you had the Chin dynasty uniting seven warring kingdoms that's including itself. And if they do that, they have all these separate walls that were built by independent kingdoms, and so dynasty be instiling them together. And the idea is to protect against marauders, so they can script hundreds

and thousands of workers. We were talking groups of prisoners, political enemies, peasants, soldiers, and they worked for ten years on this project. Thousands upon thousands die, as tends to happen, and legend has it that the bones of individuals who died constructing the wall are then then become a part of the wall, making it in some people's words, the

longest cemetery on earth. Yeah, and much of this is because this is happening during the Chin dynasty, right, And this is again you talked about the neighboring territories that were finally united, these little fiefdoms that had a lot of strife, but it was united under what I guess you could say was China's first emperor, because China wasn't China until this. This guy united them. And when I say guy, I mean thirteen year old, and this thirteen year old is Chin Chow Wong d He is I

guess you could say a bit of a megalomaniac. He begins to actually think about this unification and becomes obsessed with this idea that demons in these barbarians are going to take over China. And so that's where he mandates this length of the wall to be constructed. And again there are bits of construction of these walls throughout these thousands of years. But this is the guy who decides that it's really important to have from the Gobi Desert

to the Yellow Sea this fortress. Yes, it's fascinating the idea that the wall is protecting not only against actual barbarians, but also against demons, so that it's not just a military barrier, it's a it's a spiritual barrier as well. Again, keep in mind with all if this is two thousand years ago, so this is a time when spiritualism, megalomania and abuse of the peasantry we're pretty much in vogue everywhere.

So so this is, you know, not unique to China by any aspect of the imagination, but the idea that that you're you're protecting against not only things, but against ideas. I think he's very telling because we see the symbolic power of the wall rather overtly, as we'll see in various examples of walls. We look at here too, when when humans build walls, they're almost always thinking of that symbolic power as well, not only to the outsider, and to the outside or the wall is a clear statement

of hey, you're not welcome here. You stay on your side of the back seat and I'll stay on mine. And then to the insider, the wall says I have built you a wall. You were protected, you were safe, you know. It is saying there is a physical barrier between you and the things that you were afraid of. And you can thank me for it. Well, I mean, yeah, it's very much like the Boogeyman, right. And to this point, this emperor decided that he wanted the circuitous wall built

and not a straight path. And the reason is because a straight line, in demonology is great for demons because they're able to navigate only on straight lines and not on curves. So he's gonna make it even more difficult for these demons by making this this serpentine wall that's twenty four ft high. And certainly that's one of the

things that's amazing about. Examples of the wall today and again, examples of the wall today, as we'll discuss fees are the wall has been added to and renovated numerous times throughout history, so we're not necessarily talking about the same physical wall in the same bricks. But you still see that shape. It's like a serpent lying across the hills. Yeah, and it is fascinating because it's one of those things that people had long assumed was one big, coherent, linked

up wall, but in fact it's not. That was one of the myths. Another myth is that you could see this from the moon. Yeah, I see it from space and it's it's just not so no, it's not so lovely story, but it is lovely. But to go back to this emperor and talk a little bit about Chinchu Woandi and how he treated peasants. You refer to this

as the world's longest cemetery. At least some people have talked about this the Great Wall of China being this Again, he's sort of indulged in soothsaying and a little bit of paranoia, and it is said that his sus sooth sayer told him that the wall would actually never be built, which he was mortally frightened of right, because the barbarians were gonna come get him in the demons unless ten

thousand men were entombed in the wall. Wow, what what sus can you imagine being that guy being on the payroll that takes a lot of comments really to you, like, you know, this is the message ten thousand You gotta you gotta execute them, throw them in there. So Shinchu Wonghdi decides, you know what, he's the ruler. He realizes that he full well can't just spare that many men, So he finds a loophole in the form of one guy who has the word or the character for ten

thousand in his name. I guess what his fate is. He is killed and burying the wall. Yeah, he's tossed into the wall. But again there's this idea that this wall begins to take on meaning of forced labor, being subjugated. As you can start to see, peasants are not really digging this wall right. The symbolic power to the insider is not just an idea of protection, but an idea of This is the kind of thing that governments and

rulers create out of your blood. Right. It becomes a symbol of oppression and actually is very much a symbol of that for a long time until we get to the twentieth century. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But let's talk about this as being an imperfect barrier.

That's the thing. Obviously the wall is important, like we said, is an idea of protection, but does it actually offer protection On one level, you're building these walls often at the on the extremes there on the frontier there between civilization and the barbarians and the demons, so you're having to basically establish colonies there. I mean, think of it in almost in terms of like an off world colony

kind of a situation. You're having to have soldiers there that are also growing their own food, and there are more a part of the frontier than they are of the homeland, so they actually end up having some sort of rapport with the local populations with the barbarians, and as such are susceptible to bribes. Just here's there are a few bucks, look the other way up while we march an army through and join our army or join our army, then that happens as well, So it becomes

very difficult just to to man and protect it. And then you're gonna have gaps as well. For instance, just in terms of the wall itself, the wall is not you might think of the wall as being in this NonStop wall that actually sneaks across the entire country, But there are gaps in it, and there are places where just natural barriers are depended on to to serve as the wall well, and it has been maintained, so there are there are parts of it that are in ruins.

So you have Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan is he some country for two k the big g K he brings with him a huge army and martial arts and a flair for psychological terror, and he reaches the wall. Right, and for a good hundred years, the rule of China comes under Mongol. Yeah, they were the ones in charge when Marco Polo visited. That's right, that's right, And so Mongols are really taking over. But then in thirteen sixty eight, a Chinese peasant leads a rebellion against Mongol rule and

this helps to establish the Ming dynasty. I only mention this because the Ming dynasty is really important and actually giving a lot of shoring up to the wall. Yeah, this was thirteen sixty eight, and the Ming dynasty looks at the wall and says, you know, this is something we need to fix up. You need to get it going because we don't want to be conquered by the

barbarians again. Right, And with it, they actually are responsible for architectural embellishments on it and beginning to document various points in history. So you really begin to see more of a coherent picture of the Wall with the Ming dynasty. But then here's another thing that happens under man Chew rule. The wall no longer matters since the land on both sides just ruled by Man Chew. When China is invaded yet again. Yeah, this is seventeen hundreds, the Manchew invade

the Ming dynasty. The Man a number of changes to it, added to its length, to its width, double and triple walls in some places to really reinforce it. But then when the Man Chow's invade in seventeen hundreds, it's largely abandoned as a military power. It kind of stays that way for a while, pretty much the until very recent times.

During that time, the wall crumbles, the wall is looted for building supplies because you have all of these stones right there are ready to use, and so people carry it off to build things that are of actual value to their lives because the walls just sitting there, it's

not even a military factor anymore. And then when Mauston comes to power, he encourages Chinese people to use this, to use the bricks, to use parts of the wall to build things, and now brings in also this idea of the modern you know, part of the cultural revolution, cultural revolution, and a huge part of it is we're going to focus on the modern China and the future China. Yeah,

we're going to obliterate the past. Right, the wall is very much a piece of the past, and a piece of the past that has still leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's lives because it is this thing build out of their blood. It is this symbol of the domineering, violent rule. Yeah, it's not the one of the wonders of the world that we now think of it. But this it begins to to recast itself

in modern times. Right around nineteen four, there's this idea that the wall begins to take on national pride, and they actually say, let us love our country and restore our great Wall. This becomes a big mission for them. Yeah, you have important foreign heads of state visit. Reagan visits, Scorba Chop visits where they go to the Great Wall.

Nixon visits. You know, and as I say, Nixon, who wasn't he the person who said something like only a great people could build this great wall, which starts to even then recast its image. Yeah. Luckily he was a wall enthusiast. He was all about putting Floyd but this wall is in general. So yes, he added to that vibe that this was something that was important and worth celebrating.

And so over the last few decades you see this increasing restoration of portions of the wall, increased commercialization of portions of the Wall. I'm treating. In the Lonely Planet China Guide, they point out that there are sections of the Wall that are just insanely populated. Really, I mean, you just have tourists there almost all the time unless you go in the dead of winter. Their gift shops, their tourists, there are people selling things, and I mean

that's just the way it goes with popular locations. But there are still plenty of portions of the Wall that are not super innovated, that are still beautiful and don't have like a restaurant in them. Not that their portions of the restaurants of them, but you know what I'm saying, don't have as in them. Yeah, there are places in China where you can go if you look into it and you do the research, where you can get more of a serene views the wall as opposed to a

hyper commercialized version. But it's it's still it's even if you go to those areas where there are a lot of people and there's a lot of commercialization, it's still a stunning site. Indeed. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to move beyond the Great Wall of China and discuss some more modern examples of walls in our lives, including cosmic walls. All right, we're back. So when you think beyond the Great Wall of China and you think of modern walls,

what comes to mind? Okay, Well, I mean, you know, I think about Berlin Wall. I also think about the Atlantic Wall that Hitler was. I think it's like eight hundred miles of sea coast, at least in France that he had been constructing as a barrier of and and a bit of military might. Yeah, the stuff from saving brabt Ryan of remember that. Yeah. But of course, here in the US, one of the most strikingly obvious walls

is more like a fence. The US Mexico border. Well we call it offense, but it sure as heck looks like a wall in many areas. And it's been in the news a lot, especially with the conservative primaries leading up to this year's presidential election. You've had a lot of people touched on this as a hot is a hot topic issue immigration in the United States. A lot of our listeners are US based, but a lot of you are based in other countries. US Mexican migrations are

very much on voters minds, especially conservative voters. So you have people like Herman Kane, the pizza mogul, who came out and said we're going to build an electric fence

made out of pizza, not made out of pizza. He did not rule out alligators, as I remember, so moats and walls, and then there were some other half cocked ideas that were thrown around by some other candidates, but it all comes down to this idea of the wall right sending this message to Mexico, saying Mexicans are not wanted here, and sending more importantly really, because these are politicians talking about wall building, sending this message to their

constituents in the US to say we care about what you care about so much that we built this thing. We're going to erect this giant symbol of what we're talking about, even though their YouTube videos of people scaling up these things up and over them in seconds, and and it's the same situations coming to play that came into play with the Great Wall of China. They're gonna be gaps. They're gonna be places where care of the border is either less maintained or or it is not

maintained at all. Well, here's the thing. Last year was the biggest sustained drop in immigration from Mexico to the United States, leave to be surpassed and scale only by losses in the Mexican born US population during the Great Depression. So we're actually seeing a drop in immigration to the

United States from Mexico. And much of this is because well, first of all, the Mexican cartel are are acting as border agents on the Mexican border, and they're demanding money, and sometimes they actually use immigrants as drug mules, so it's become far more dangerous as if it weren't already to try to cross. But also um on the U. S side, it's become much more difficult and rigorous in terms of trying to prosecute people for for doing this.

But of course there's been an economic downturn as well, and also you can factor and changes in legislation in some of the southern states that have cracked down on

the use of migrant labor. Right, Yeah, So it is one of those things that we wanted to point out because it is a huge symbolic effort by the United States, but in terms of efficacy and really getting at the what they think, or what the United States politicians think is the root problem doesn't isn't really solved by this right and and those some people may have giggled at the idea of building a wall to keep demons at bay.

Like I said, that is just an avert statement of what all walls ultimately symbolized, Like even this wall is about keeping demons of the mind at bay. To some people on the inside, it is a demonization of the threats that in a simple vocation of the threats that

that lie outside and are waiting to get in. It's also worth noting, though, that when you build walls or fences of this nature, you're building them in environments that did not previously have barriers, So you're you're going to cut into not only the migration of people, but the

migration of animals. So there have been a number of studies that have looked into what effects order fences on the US Mexican border have had on migrating animals, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture, you know, I mean,

you're altering the psychic and the geographical landscape, right. Yeah, And it's interestingly mentioned the psychic because that was one of the things that has also been brought up about the Great Wall of China and throughout China's history, that there were people who thought of it as a disruptor of g You know, this is disrupt disrupting the earth energies. You're building this unnatural thing that breaks up natural flows

in the environment. Of course, we raise the walls not only against human and imagined threats, we also raised them against mother nature. In Japan, the sea walls because as an island nation and given its past history with threats from the sea, you want to be able to mitigate

that to some degree. Nearly half of the twenty two thousand mile coast in Japan actually has concrete sea walls, which would make sense, right because I mean that there's a lot of earthquake activity in that area and you would want to have some sort of structure try to protect you from really high waves. So there's something very practical about it. But some people, the opponents of it, say that it's not necessarily that effective, and in fact

we saw that with a tsunami. They are fascinating constructions though, that well worth doing a Google image search on because if you've never seen when, you may imagine just a straight up wall, but there are a lot different because stopping of flow, a massive flow of water, is different than stopping some marauders on horseback. It's not just about putting up the straight barrier, but putting up a structure that will slow and halt this approach of water. And

that's what proponents say. They say, Okay, well, maybe it didn't safeguard us against the nuclear reactors, right seawater got in there. The wall wasn't actually high enough. It should have been built much higher, but it did slow down the encroachment of those waves. Sometimes, you know, it gave people a couple of extra minutes to try to evacuate, which is, you know, the difference between life and death.

And another example of walls that comes to mind if you think back to our episode on the black Blizzards of the of the Great Depression of the dust Bowl, we mentioned the green walls that you see popping up in some portions on green wall projects in China in Africa, and the idea here is building a wall against desertification, building a wall that will try to prevent the desert from encroaching on fertile lands. Yeah, there's something called the

Yellow Dragon. And each spring, the dust from China's northern deserts are swept up by the wind and whipped eastward, and they blast into Beijing and they blank at the city in a huge coat of dust particles. And that has actually created a lot of respiratory ailments in the dust of also clogged machinery and posted down airports and destroys crops. I mean, it's a very serious problem. And really we see walls everywhere in the world around us.

We see walls in our body, cell membranes, our skin even is often seen as a wall, even though when you actually examine it, we're talking about a porous layer. Things move in and out off, there's a lot of traffics. It's kind of like the Great Wall of China in that regard. It's not not a perfect barrier by any stretch. There are gaps, there are ways to negotiate your way inside and more like calanders, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, and not only when we're looking in our inward, but when

we're looking outward as well. There's something called the Sloane Great Wall. And this is a far distant grouping of galaxies that spans over one billion light years. It's longer than any quote unquote structure ever measured. And I put structure in quotes because it's kind of hard to argue this is actually a structure. These are clusters of galaxies, so it's more it's no more a structure really than

a constellation in the sky. It's a structure. But we're so fascinated with walls when we define our limits on things through the symbol and the language of walls. So as we stare out at these distant clusters of galaxies, we can't help but think of them in terms of walls. Well, and I guess we could say these are sort of cosmic webs, right, and they do create borders between things. Yeah,

there's void beyond them. They're known as phalactic filament, so that's not like filaments in a giant light bulb the size of the moon or anything. They're actually known to span these vast distances and they're lattice like structures. And the cool thing about these filaments is that they are integral to the evolution of galaxy clusters in the way that they form. So there you have it, Walls. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Game of Thrones real quick finger with this book series, h and HBO

TV series. I have heard you speak of it, and I know of it. I have not seen it that well, it's very entertaining and part of the plot revolves arounding northern Wall that is built against our barians and demons, though in this case built out of ice, and the series explore some of the ideas of at least the military ideas that we discuss with a Great Wall of China,

like how do you maintain it? How does a political climate affect the maintenance and the staffing of the wall, and then is it ultimately an effective barrier against these outside forces? Well, I'm just gonna guess, Well, it would make a good story. How would you write seven books about it? Um? Seven plus books about it? If that's

how you would do it? Well, Hey, if if you have something you would like to share about walls, your own experience with walls, a wall that you found particularly mind blowing, a concept of a wall and reality or fiction that you have some thoughts on, let us know about it. You can always find us on Facebook where we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and you can find us on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind. And please do drop us a line. You can do

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