该发生的事终究要发生，而且总是会在最意想不到的时候发生。距今二十年前的11月9日，随着 风雨飘摇的东德政府辞职下台，柏林墙失去了最后的存在理由。
柏林墙的建墙者深深意识到，在与其敌对的意识形态和社会制度的竞争中，自身已经处于绝对不利的劣势地位。不建立起这座用机枪守卫的高墙，不足以阻挡其被统治者们大规模地用脚投票。当砖石之墙建起来的时候，信念之墙已经倒塌。围墙越多越高，越坚固，守卫的越严，说明自信越少，潜在的危机越大。围墙的建立是因为自身社会制度的危机，围墙的倒塌是因为自身意识形态的坍塌。只要是柏林墙，终究会倒塌。没有苏东意识形态与社会制度的危机，就不会有柏林墙，因而也就不会有柏林墙的倒塌。
表面上看，柏林墙是一堵企图阻止人们的身体自由移动的砖石之墙。实际上，柏林墙也是一堵精神之墙。作为砖石之墙，它要阻止的是人们用脚去投票。但是，那些企图逃离被关在这个天堂里的人在用脚投票之前就已经用心投票了。脚的驱动力来自心，否则脚是不会不顾性命地朝某个方向移动的。所以，柏林墙表面上要禁锢的是人的身体，实际上它更禁锢的是人的灵魂，人的追求自由的心灵。那些笃信物质决定意识的统治者，以为禁锢了人的身体就等于禁锢了人的心灵。然而，人不是物质的动物，人更是精神的动物。如果物质决定不了意识，如果人的心灵不会因身体而被禁锢，那么这样的禁锢就是无效的，而不论墙有多高，多坚固。
柏林墙是一个意识形态的象征。这一意识形态把个人看做是国家的财产。在这种世界观之下，人不过是一个没有灵魂的物体，即便有一些意识，也是由作为物质的身体决定的。意识不过是大脑的一种功能，而大脑不过是头壳里面的一个器官。在这个庞大的躯体里面是道德真空。柏林墙的倒塌说明，苏联与东欧的人民不接受这种视个人为国家财产的意识形态与道德真空的社会制度。
柏林墙从建到塌的历史表明，把人去人化的意识形态与社会制度终究不能长久。任何企图去人化的意识形态与社会制度都不要低估每个人身上追求自由、回归人性的灵魂。
The Berlin Wall：Witness of Freedom
By Liu Junning
What’s destined to happen will happen, and always when most unexpected. Twenty years ago on November 9th saw the East Germany government give up its power, and thus the Berlin Wall lost its only remaining raison d’être.
The builders of Berlin Wall fully realized the complete inferiority of their system in comparison to other opposite ideologies and social systems. Without their high wall guarded by machine guns, they could not stop those who they ruled over from voting with their feet. As their wall of bricks was build, their wall of ideas collapsed. The higher the wall rose, and the more solidly the wall was built, and the more tightly it was guarded, the more confidence they lost, and the more dangerous the crisis became. The building of wall stemmed from the crisis of their social system, and the Fall of the Wall was a direct result of the fall of its ideology. The Berlin Wall was doomed to fall. If there wasn’t a crisis of ideology in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen.
While the Berlin Wall was a wall of bricks that served to stop the free movement East Germans, it also had the effect of stopping human spirit as well. As a wall of bricks, it stopped people from voting with feet. But people who had tried to escape from “Paradise” had also voted with their hearts. And their feet were driven by their hearts, otherwise they wouldn’t move towards the West, with all the danger that journey entailed. In other words, it looks as though the Berlin Wall not only imprisoned the body, but imprisoned the heart’s pursuit of freedom. The rulers who believe “substance dominates consciousness” believe that once you imprison one’s body, you imprison their mind. But, human beings are not mere material things, but more have a spiritual dimension as well. If substance can’t dominate consciousness and the spirits can’t be imprisoned in their bodies, then such imprisoning will be nothing, no matter how tall and how solidly one builds a wall.
The Berlin Wall is a symbol of ideology, which treats the individual as state owned property. Under such an ideology, the individual is a soulless being, even though they have some consciousness, but such consciousness is just the consequence of the flesh. The consciousness is just a function of the brain, and brain is just an organ in the human skull. And they think that the whole human body is a moral vacuum. But the Fall of the Berlin Wall showed that the people of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe didn’t accept an ideology that treated them as so much state-own property.
The history of Berlin Wall from its creation until its fall shows that a dehumanizing ideology and social system cannot last. Any ideology or system that strips individuals of their humanity faces the greatest threat possible: the human desire to be free.
