The concept of a border can easily be understood: it is a marking that divides land. Although that is the very definition of it, a line on a map does more than that, the effects of it being long-lasting, sometimes for centuries even.
The most important aspect is that they divide people as well; communities that were once thriving together end up living totally different lives, even if they still are just a few kilometres away from each other. And once this change happens, it takes even more to undo the differences, even in the case of the border ceasing to exist.
This can be especially observed in countries with a sudden change in political regimes.
Authoritarian ones have made people less comfortable with new arising ideas, wishing to keep their ways. This can be seen throughout many former soviet states, eastern Europe, and East Asia. Even if some of them find themselves in democratic regimes now, the people still hold the same ideas and are reticent towards more “westernised” ideas and values.
The same can be said the other way around: people living in old democracies tend to criticise socialist or communist government techniques, even if those are not oppressive.
Previous regions of conflict or that have been conquered experience the same effect as well. Germany is perhaps one of the best examples of this. An indivisible country now, but that was split into two just a few decades ago, after the Second World War. More commonly known as Western and Eastern Germany, the two regions have had such a different style of ruling that even today, after more than thirty years from reunification, the people of the nation still remain divided.
The West is more optimistic about the future, has a more positive attitude towards the European Union, and its citizens are happier, and with a higher GDP per capita. On the contrary, the East of the country is mostly non-religious and more reticent towards outsiders and minorities. Such differences can be explained by the previous management of power. Western Germany was controlled by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, meaning the ones who were living on that side benefited from more freedom, more democratic values at the time, and more openness to the rest of the world. However, Eastern Germany was under the influence of the Soviet Union, thus the people on that side had to live in a more restrictive environment, with no contact with the outside, focused more on agriculture, and whose citizens lived in constant fear. Therefore, because of those different systems of belief and of thinking among the people, the country is politically divided today.
There are numerous other examples, from China to Poland, to India. But the key aspect of this phenomenon is the fact that once people are marked by a specific regime, it sticks around even after its fall. Numerous philosophers, historians and social analysts have observed a pattern as it generally takes people around twenty, to even thirty sometimes, to adapt to such major changes in terms of politics and borders.
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