Walls & Ghosts.
I’ve had a heavy couple of days, starting with contemplating walled cities and ending with wondering whether we live in a world of ghosts.
1.
There is something about walled towns and citadels, such as St. Malo or Avignon, that intrigues me. The Pyrenean hilltop towns have the same fascination. I like the edges. I like the fact that the place is contained. Constrained.
Sadly, I’ve never lived in one for any length of time. The closest is a rural village. Similar, though its edges are open fields. The centre has a square, a church, a pub, and a manor house. There’s an accountability in a village that I imagine exists in a walled town. A Lord who collects rent and employs a good share of the villagers to farm, hunt, cook, and maintain. Feudal, I suppose, but real. You see the bloke in charge in the lane or at the hall.
2.
Year-on-year economic growth. Why? Because the financial system is built on compound interest and debt. Without growth, the entire machine comes to a standstill. And so we’ve come to believe that growth equals progress.
So: print more money, create more debt, make things cost more. Innovation — which likely generates real growth — is swept up in the debt-based betting system.
Inflation makes the numbers bigger. House prices climb, wealth is created. However, a pound today is not the same as a pound five years ago. Imagine if we did to inches what we do to money. Last year, my house was 900 square feet. This year, it’s 975. Wow. More space. Except, of course, not. Same walls. Same rooms. Just different numbers.
It’s a simulation. Edges blurred.
3.
I’ve been studying Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies this week. Written in the shadow of the war, it argues that institutions — courts, parliaments, universities, the press — should stand between nations, open to criticism, tempering the excesses of nationalism and avoiding tyranny.
Heavy stuff. And influential. You could argue it became the intellectual scaffolding of the EU: openness of borders, trade, and ideas—the removal of edges.
4.
I read that one in twenty people works for the NHS. Then I dug further. About half of us work for the state, either directly or indirectly. Which makes sense: the state itself is nearly half the economy. But it got me thinking about inefficiency. All those contracts subcontracted, and subcontracted again.
In a village, trimming the hedge is straightforward. In a hospital, it’s a maze. Accountability dissolves. About as tangible as a ghost.
5.
So this week’s conclusion: we live without edges.
No walls around our financial, spiritual, or societal worlds. Popper’s institutions — the ones meant to be criticised and challenged — have hardened into faceless ghosts. They’ve drained energy from family, faith, and the small local things.
I remember reading Ian Angell’s The New Barbarian Manifesto back in 2000. His answer to the information age was to form tribes of like-minded people. He said the nation-state was too heavy-handed for mobile workers. Winner-takes-all. The strongest survive. All very “off to Dubai.”
6.
If you gave me 20 acres, I’d build a wall. Not to keep the world out, but to keep the institutional ghosts from drifting in. Four gates. A square at the centre. Decisions made by people you can look in the eye. Not perfection. Not equality. Just reality. Edges you can see. Walls that keep life, family and faith from dissolving into shadows.
All the best
This Week’s Links:
22 Most Impressive Walled Cities in the World.
57 brilliant bookshelf ideas for every type of space.
Life lessons from The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper.
Main Image credit: Walled cities once gave shape and edges to life. Today, the walls are gone, and we live among ghostly abstractions instead. (MidJourney)
