wall tale

  The task was to write about a wall, or walls (walls being much in the news), and in the third person.  This turned into a rather biblical epic, which I hav enore revised substantially

The Wall has always existed.

Yes, sometimes a wall of brick and stone, of concrete, of metal and razor wire and electrics; sometimes a barrier of desert and ocean, of land impossible to cross; but mostly a wall of the mind.

Most of the time, most people inside aren't even aware of it. It's like the machine hum that you only notice when it stops.

At first the Wall had been of earth or mud bricks, baked in the sun. It wasn't there to keep the Others out: it was to keep our treasures in: like all the walls to come. And like all walls in all times eventually, it came a-tumbling down and the treasures were taken.

Those treasures were gold, or food, or ideas. Or sometimes a face that launched a thousand ships. Those walls could seem impossible to breach. But ways can always be found to break them, by force of arms or subterfuge, by Greeks bearing gifts.

Everywhere walls were erected, around this town and that city, to keep safe the common wealth of the people. But soon, the people found another wall being erected within their town, within their city. No longer did the treasure belong to all the people of the city, it was hoarded by a few of them – and so there were walls within town walls, citadels within the cities, to keep the treasure for ever fewer people, the Elite, and they now controlled the people because they let enough of the treasure trickle out to keep them fed and loyal. But the People had built the walls, so they knew how to break into the citadel and overthrow the Elite. So then it was necessary to invent a new type of wall: the Wall of Fear.

So then the Elite invented gods, who forbade the people to break down the walls, who would curse them if they attacked the citadels, who would send them plagues and droughts and floods if they disobeyed. So said the Elite. They themselves were anointed by the gods, were descended from them even, and the rules they gave out came from the gods, and the gods were content to allow the Elite to keep the treasures: and this is why they must not break down the walls. This is why they must fear the gods.

Of course not everyone believed that the gods favoured the Elite at the expense of the people, and they still pulled down the walls, and reclaimed the treasures.

And the People made use of the treasures until the next city heard all the commotion and taking advantage of the confusion, overthrew them. Thus one city became many, the Elite consolidated their control, and the lands they controlled grew bigger and bigger, and their gods more and more fearsome.

They became so big that they had to build huge walls, stretching for thousands of miles, over mountains and plains and deserts, from sea to sea, to keep out the Others. These great walls will protect you, our People, said the Elite; but mainly they were there to protect the Elite and their treasures. The people were forced to labour to build these walls – and the walls within walls for the Elite, vast palaces at the heart of these new empires, where the Elite could count their treasures in peace. And to make sure the people believed in the gods, they made them build vast temples, too, to demonstrate how important the gods were and to remind them to bow down in fear.

And for the most part, the people feared the gods enough, and believed what they had been told – that the Few were god-like and it was the duty of the people to labour for them and let them enjoy the treasures. But sometimes there were natural droughts and floods and famines and the people thought the gods were angry and the Elite were out of favour with the gods. And then the people with great effort overthrew the walls of the palaces and took control for a while. Sometimes they even lost their fear of the gods and threw down their temples too. Then the people would rejoice in their freedom and the treasures until the next great empire saw their weakness and absorbed them. Or some among them, the brightest and best perhaps, or the most ruthless, would seize and take control of what the deposed group had kept to themselves – the treasures and the palaces and the walls of fear – and become the new Elite.

And so the world continued, and empires waxed and waned, each with its group exercising absolute power over the people and the treasures. Empires continued, generation after generation: and this was a great weakness, because instead of choosing the brightest and best of each generation, it was the children of the Elite that took control from their fathers. Because, after all, if the fathers were demi-gods, then surely their children would be likewise, chosen and blessed with the skills to maintain the walls? Some in the new generations were better at this than others and their fortunes grew. But frequently they were bad at it – lazy, weak-minded, corrupt – and they allowed the people and other empires to prevail. They were not blessed by the gods, because the gods had been invented by their forefathers. And so their walls were overthrown by the brighter, the stronger, the more ruthless.

Many times the cycle continued – build the walls of stone and fear, overthrow, build again – that eventually the people started to see through this and demand a new world, where they would all share in the treasures and decide who would control and maintain the walls. In one empire after another, the citadels and palaces were attacked, the Few taken away in tumbrils and executed, and the treasures distributed. And for a while in these places there was an illusion of a better world for the people. But still there were ruthless people amongst them. It was necessary to invent a new fear, a new wall of the mind because the people now knew that the gods at best had little influence, at worst were dead.

The new fear was the Others. Before, the Others had merely been an inconvenience, to be kept out by the walls. They wanted our treasures, the people said, just as we wanted theirs; you couldn't blame them, you just had to protect what was ours. Now, the gods held no fear – so the people must fear the Others. The Others were not just greedy, they were evil; they were inferior; they were destroyers of civilisation; they were Other. And they were not necessarily outside the walls – they could be your neighbours, or the people who acted a bit strangely over the road, or who didn't follow the rules. And they needed to be weeded out, because they would subvert our new life within the walls.

So the new nations came into being, one by one supplanting the old empires. And every time anything went a bit wrong within the walls, the Others could be blamed. Of course, once again, the Elite were still building their walls within walls and their palaces. And if the people complained that they weren't getting a fair share, it would all be the fault of the Others. Soon the people were actually rioting against their neighbours and the people across the street, the ones everyone said were a bit different, a bit Other; soon they were smashing their windows and beating them up, and bringing in discriminatory rules to stop them being Other, even rounding them up and expelling them or exterminating them. The Elite encouraged this as they quietly built their treasure mountains. Because if the Others are evil, then We are good, they said, and the way we live is Right, and the ideas and customs we follow were correct, and everything else is Wrong. So each nation built up its own way of life and hated the ways of life that were different. And the Others were so wrong that they needed to be overthrown and so there came a time when nations attacked each other. Millions upon milions of people died and the nations suffered great trauma.

By this time, the people had had enough and called on the Elite to stop this nonsense. Of course, some nations were very similar: they built up alliances, with a view to stopping the destruction, and soon there were only a few alliances: but they eyed each other with great suspicion. And the walls now stood between these great alliances: walls of ideas, and real walls of steel and guard towers and guns. People on the other side might like the ideas and the prosperity on the other side, but the walls were built ever higher to stop them crossing.

So now, it is as if the walls have always existed. The people don't even about it. It is their way of life. It has always been this. The Others have got it wrong: they need to be kept out. The Elite sit in their palaces and occasionally stir up the old fears to strengthen their own position. We need to fear the Others, we need to fear their ideas, their influence, we need to keep them out.

Because now we are all in the citadel, they tell the people. We are all equal within our wall of shared values. One day there will be a wall right around the world, a wall across mountains and deserts where we keep out the Others who want what we have; across oceans where we stop the Others' boats; in our heads where we stop the Others' ideas. And we need to fear those inside our wall that sympathise with those outside, who follow their ways, who spread their ideas, because they are the enemy within, they are Other too. We must stop them so that only We, the right-thinking People, are within our wall, sharing our treasures, they say. But the People don't see what the Elite, more subtly now, are quietly amassing in their hidden walls within walls.

The Wall has always existed, to protect what is ours, because we are Right, the Elite tell the People. Any that disagree are Other, and must be expunged. One day the People will hear only the word of the Elite, and it will be all they want to hear. Before, all walls in all times eventually fell. When there is just one Wall – between one People and one Elite – will it also fall?