Wall Disease
March 29, 2019 | Miscellany
In the nineteen-sixties, Dietfried Müller-Hegemann wrote as though the physical presence of the Berlin Wall were itself the cause of wall disease. But most psychologists who study borders today see a more abstract relationship between those structures and mental health. Christine Leuenberger, a sociologist at Cornell University who has studied walls around the world, says that barriers are best thought of as part of a “wall system.” That system includes both physical markers, such as no-go areas and checkpoints, and ripple effects, such as job loss and the breakdown of social networks.
Comic idea – Robot and Francis visit a planet where the indigenous species went extinct from sadness.