A World Without Borders

I've always said that the world would be a better place if we didn't have borders. Most people look at me like I am hopelessly naive at best and completely crazy at worst. I admit that I don't have a plan for how this would work, but I have a lot of evidence to support the fact that most of the biggest trouble spots in the world exist because somebody arbitrarily drew borders without  considering the ethnic, cultural or religious beliefs of those within them. Lately, a couple of very different people have found new ways to explore the concept of borders from unique angles.

The other day I heard an interview with Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, I don't know how she would describe herself, but I would definitely call her a "magical realist" writer in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez  and Isabel Allende. Sandra Cisneros, describing her writing said that she explores "the fluidity between the real and spiritual worlds, where people pass without papers…." 

I have recently come across a blog by Paul Salopek, a journalist who plans to spend seven years walking across the world. In his own words, 
"I am on a journey in  pursuit of a story, a chimera, perhaps a folly …retracing a path of our ancestors who first discovered the earth…beginning a continuum of today's many races. I hope to repair certain important connections burned through by artificial speed, by inattentiveness…."
Beginning in the great Rift Valley in Africa, …"the trails scuffed through the Ethopian desert are possibly the oldest marks in the world. Nearly a billion people are on the move today across the Earth. We are Living through the greatest mass migration our species has ever known.

Two approaches…suspension of belief and blurring the lines between worlds...on the one hand and slowing down, going back to our origins,,,on the other moving between the real and the spiritual...two unique ways of living in a borderless world. Perhaps in our own way, we Blippers are also dispensing with borders.