Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

When the expression used to evoke a fairy tale incantation of a once egotistical queen to reassure her of  her continued preeminent good looks, it is now a metaphor for society in general and a literal allusion to a border barrier that is the subject of heated debates. It is not just here in the U.S. but in many places around the world where the literal wall is at the same time a reflection of how humanity is dealing with one eternal strife - territorial boundaries, coupled with cultural, ideological and even religious differences. So, we go again to the extraterrestrial alien from whom it had its views briefly discussed in the previous musing. ET has a name now. Let's have 'It' explain the name selection and its views on Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. I continue to call it 'It' because it remains an enigmatic entity whose gender I could not determine.

Here's ET:

"I am slowly understanding my role. It is the context of time that I struggle relating to, because I am not sure of its relevance to my mission. Time as I observe here may not at all be relevant to the time of those receiving my reports. I am aware my dispatches from this planet may take centuries to circle back to me to and from the intended recipients and it is possible that those to whom I address my reports may no longer exist. But that's for another discussion. Meanwhile, I file this latest observation.

Before I go on, I think it is important that I select a name for archiving purposes. I am realizing now that perhaps there are others like me filing reports from various parts of the universe. There could be a few or there could be millions of others like me that were sent in all directions to observe and report. So, I call myself, "Seguey". It is appropriate, I think, because now I know that my existence here is one segue after another. And it is also a metaphor for how lifeforms here had developed. Of course, literally speaking, the development of their civilization is actually a series of one segue after another. (I added "y" to the original word segue - a literary practice which earthlings call "poetic license" and also to differentiate it from Segway - a two wheeled vehicle that is interesting but again still a simple technology compared to ours).

Today I discuss the mirror and the wall. Both have literal meanings and metaphorical connotations. Be aware that earthlings still do use a physical mirror to discern what they look like physically. They use a flat glass (made from silicon) with a silver-coated backing that reflects light back at the viewer - quite rudimentary but effective. Of course, they soon will get to a point in their technology where they will attain ours. Today, they use their smart phones on "selfie" mode to look at themselves - a slight departure from using an actual compact mirror. I observed one female do it to touch up her make up and fuss with her hair using her smart phone. While on selfie mode, of course. I will go back to the mirror in a bit.

I am reporting about the wall. I've been here now for almost five hundred years, at least that I am aware of. The time I spent as a simple organism is beyond my recollection. From my direct observation these past five centuries and from my reading of their history, earthlings were not very good at building walls. Let me rephrase that. They've built excellent walls with extraordinary skills throughout their history. The walls were built to last beyond the builders' lifetime and for generations to follow but the walls always failed. Over time. The Great Wall of China is a great example, pun intended. Whether walls were built to keep people in or out, prevention was always at best temporary, intentions were at worst damaging for generations that followed. The Great Wall was practically breached within a generation from the moment the last brick was laid. The Berlin Wall stood for 10,316 days, just barely 3 years over an average period of one earthling generation.

That did not stop earthlings from building walls anyway, to keep other earthlings away or to keep others from leaving. For organisms confined in a spherical space the size of a grain of sand, in relative terms that is, wandering the vast expanse of a limitless universe, they have spent an inordinate amount of time and resources to keep other earthlings out or in. Aside from national boundaries, those with the wherewithal to do so live in gated communities or mansions surrounded by walls. It is strange, in fact, that some of the loudest protesters against building walls (loudest because they have the megaphone of stardom or political clout) actually do live in places surrounded by walls.

So I have always wondered about walls and territorial boundaries because even natural barriers, like oceans and barren deserts and mountain ranges have not kept earthlings from overcoming them. I am, of course, reporting the way I do because I do not have any emotional investments in any of these.  Come to think of it, emotions are still something I need to understand. I am reporting purely from observing what seems like a strange behavior for living organisms dedicated to survival and propagation and whose lives are often co-dependent with others, yet they would inhibit others from entering or leaving their territories. But I am not an earthling and I have no great understanding of socioeconomic rules that are in play.  Least of what I have yet to understand are the political systems that seem to override common sense which, by the way, is a term that is one of earthling's most tragic misnomers.

I have not yet gone all the way back to how this all begun. What I know is that organisms below the category of earthlings are all naturally territorial. There are ample amounts of earthling research that prove that and my own observations conclude that territorial boundaries are part of the definition of species, i.e., habitats and environments not only determine the nature of the species, they are defined by where they live.

Best I can describe this is by the laws of physics on heat transfer. Temperature differences are what drives the movement of energy and, in some cases, the way matter moves. Energy that is manifested by the presence of heat flows from hot to cold. Earthlings move from habitats that are no longer habitable or difficult to live in to places that are more conducive to a better existence. I observe that earthlings, territories notwithstanding, always want to move from a bad habitat to a better one. The reverse - that of earthlings moving from well habituated environments to gravely habitable ones - was never observed then and certainly impossible to infer now. I can't express this any other way or with better eloquence.  Perhaps, someone will someday.

Now, the mirror - whether it is the still waters in a pond, a shiny flat metal surface in the old days or a real mirror late in the earthling's development - became the first tool for self awareness and connection to others. Once they became aware of who they were and with whom they can relate, or more accurately with whom they are related, earthlings' behavior is revealed in a manner we may not completely understand. They see their reflection but often have difficulty reflecting the woes and affliction of others. The fascination with solo selfies are horrible indicators of self-absorption. I am not here to offer conclusions or solutions to the current situation or judgments regarding the wall. All I know is that walls - physical walls - in the past  did not work as intended for a sustained amount of time.

What I do further know is that often in the past, walls did not play a part in the defense or collapse of civilizations; many of which have come and gone within the last 5,000 years or so.  The period is a mere blink of an eye but it was always from within that earthling's civilizations were destroyed. The Great Wall of China still stands today. The first dynasty, the Qin dynasty, that begun building it collapsed as did a handful of other dynasties that followed. Today's wall is the remnant of the Ming dynasty, the last one to improve on it. Hordes of conquerors came and went despite the wall. The Ming dynasty is gone except in the history books but the Wall is still there. The wall itself is a mirror to earthling's frailty.

I will continue to monitor and report this latest of many episodes in earth's history about wall buildings".

So, Seguey has its thoughts expressed. Still, it has much to learn. It was right about comparing the flow of people to the movement of energy. In its own extraterrestrial way, it stumbled upon a couple of nuggets of truth. First, walls did not have the sustained deterrence that their builders or proponents had hoped for. Second, those that built walls were destroyed from within.  The collapse of society within any wall is what caused the walls to be breached. 

Moral decline, social decay from all kinds of reasons, broken homes and the decline in family values and the lowering of social and educational standards were the hardest blows ever to land at the gut of any country. From within. The fall of any empire was almost always self-inflected. What appears in history books can be deceiving. All empires from the Greek to the Roman to the Mayan to the Spanish and British empires are filled with stories of decline. The emergence of successive empires and their ultimate tales of defeat, if looked at more closely, always begun with people gathering up strength and energy sustained from within and then they all failed when their societies failed, also from within. Only then did another succeeding empires came to invade. The cycle always presented that picture.