Borders are abstracta. They don’t exist as chairs and people do; their existence is more transcendental. They don’t exist naturally. They are constructed so easily. To exist, they need only be countenanced.

Right now the congress of the United States of America is working on legislation to block Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border between the U.S. and Mexico. It won’t work, not in times like these. This is the era of fake news. Even our judges are affected by it. Should the legislation pass, Trump will just veto it. If the case goes to court, the judges will just uphold it. Fake news has caused us to lose our way in the world. We no longer think clearly. We no longer trade in facts. We only believe what we want to believe. Well, most of us, anyway.

There are others. Those who see past the borderlines, who see nature itself. They are falling apart now. It is sad to watch them kill each other. They should be joining forces to do the virtuous thing. We do not have to be beasts. We do not have to be dumb brutes. We can be what we would be.

Why should we be moral? What do we owe to others? To answer these questions, we need only look to the effects of normative practices. Normative practices include not just morality, but also various sorts of etiquette. I propose that the reason we put our napkins in our laps is the very same reason why we don’t run around killing. To the extent that we value a functional society, we ought to value the normative. The effect of the normative is to uphold society itself. We could have no stability without our little customs. The norms may be conventional, but over time there has been a certain balance struck, a sort of homeostasis.

Who needs society? Most of us. There are some who truly flourish outside the constraints of manners and morals, but these people must go away from society to accomplish this. No one can live outside of society while living in society. Not successfully, anyway. You see, the norms enforce themselves within their jurisdiction. I don’t mean that there is agential intention at play, no. Rather, the meat machines we are do the work. The norms live in our minds, and our bodies are their conduit.

This post is descriptive in nature. It is just a fact that aberrations are transient in society. Those of you who deviate from the path will learn this soon enough. The rest of us will ascend to heights as yet unattained.