1/ Tricky question: what is the opposite of a “border”? The typical fearful-right idea of a non-border is a vague fear of a massive flood of people, suggesting a dam-like containment of pressure. The idea of developing world “overpopulation” encourages this mental model.
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2/ This sort of human flooding does happen on occasion, but generally it takes an unbelievable kind of pressure. The India-Pakistan partition is an example. 5 million flooded in 1 direction, 6 million in the other, with 1 million dead.
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3/ But this sort of massive social disruption is rare. In practice borders are places where you disconnect from one social graph to connect to another. Usually via a social “bridge” like a migration “chain”.
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4/ Humans are far more social than we realize. Migration is not isolated atomized things flowing anarchically along a pressure gradient. It is more like a careful, minimal kind of making and breaking of bonds.
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Replying to @vgr
This feels like the sort of ‘principle of minimum energy’ that could drive a real-world psychohistory. (With the unusual person that dislocates as a quantum tunneling effect that creates Mules.)
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