Bi-Coastal Curious and words I don't get

**edited with transitions, happy now Flo. fucking grammar nazi.

I spent four hours in the car this weekend staring out the window and attempting to sort out all of the crap in my mind. Not much progress with the important stuff but one thing that came up after so much immobile staring was the concept of borders. Bi-coastal curious is definitely appropriate as the title of this blog or at least this post because as Google tells me it is the concept of land borders as unnatural. This post is not going to be a pros and cons list of capitalist society and how the destruction of private property will cure all ills (although this topic is particularly relevant to current cases of Aboriginal property in Canada, since they have different definitions of property than does the Canadian government) but instead I will try to explain why there are certain words that I might intellectually comprehend but will never truly understand.

Border is one such word or rather the concept of borders. I very well understand that practically the entire world is divided up and prettily color coordinated on my atlas, and that this is intrinsically linked with the world economy, war, and nation building. However, looking at a rock in the middle of the forest, my mind cant seem to understand what this means. This rock will last beyond the existence of this border and even this country - this rock does not and cannot belong to anyone. If I took it and placed it across its border will anything change? Of course not, because the property owner does not own the rock, but rather the idea of the rock or the manipulation of the rock into a consumable resource. Other than that, it stands on its own.

Whenever I think of the idea of borders, I am always reminded of my first failed attempts to understand Rousseau's Social Contract, and what I initially thought were crazy ideas about humanity, nature, and property. Rousseau wrote that there was a divide between society and true human nature. That man/woman was a "noble savage" (originally not Rousseau's concept) in the wild and that society extricated her from that natural and rightful place. I think that I initially reacted negatively because it seemed like Rousseau was arguing for a mass exodus back to the forests and a renunciation of all technology - a Luddite concept if I ever saw one. However, when I read his ideas on property I understood that he was defining characteristics for two very different societies rather than extolling ones virtues over another and expecting people to start packing their bags for the nearest frontier. Private property was the essence of political society and thus a necessary evil, which did not necessarily fit in on the map of his concepts of Man and Nature. I think that I am now a little closer to understanding what Rousseau was talking about and why borders are so hard for me to comprehend. Rousseau saw borders as a necessity for a political society but he understood that as a concept they were intangible - an idea rather than a physical reality. When I am pondering the nature of borders I tend to be outside, much closer to Rousseau's ideal natural society rather than our current political one. In this frame of mind, borders seem inconsequential and very very far away. Oh well, at least I understand the Social Contract now.

On yet another note, it also seems that the creation of geographic borders can be likened to America's habit of placing things into definitional categories and basically essentializing them. The creation of a norm creates a basis on which people within society can function. Things that fall outside of the norm are usually marginalized and expunged from the mainstream. While this is in no way a complete analysis of my problems with understanding "border making" I do see it largely as an externalization of America's obsession with categorizing things into good/bad, mine/yours, war/peace etc.

Following from my misapprehension of the word "border", I also have a shaky understanding of the word "patriotism", which is so dependent on borders. People who have attempted to explain patriotism to me usually use phrases such as "pride in ones culture/country/traditions/pick your poison." However, patriotism doesn't really work without the dichotomies "us/them" or "here/there." If there were no other culture/country/tradition, it would be pointless to be patriotic. Patriotism seems to be a transmogrified form of the word border - a change from practical to emotional.

That's it for now, but don't even get me started on financial terms. No matter how many times Wendy explains it to me, buying and selling debt just makes no sense.