Violence is often measured by what can be counted: wars fought, bodies buried, crime rates logged. By those metrics, humanity appears to be improving. Fewer interstate wars, declining homicide rates in many regions, longer stretches of relative peace. On paper, it looks like progress. But violence has never been limited to what leaves visible wounds.

A border looks simple on a map: a line, a colour change, a checkpoint. But long before walls, fences, or coordinates existed, borders lived in the human mind. Children learn borders before geography, ours and theirs, inside and outside, safe and unknown. By the time a physical boundary is drawn, the psychological one has already settled in. Geography doesn’t create belonging; belief does.

We like to think personality is a product of upbringing, childhood homes, parents, schools, culture. That’s the story most of us grew up with because it feels right. But there’s a whisper beneath the surface of that assumption: what if something else is doing the shaping now? Something less visible, less acknowledged, and far more pervasive?