Peter Singer asks in One World, "Is the division of the world's people into sovereign nations a dominant and unalterable fact of life?" I submit that nothing is unalterable when the need for change is great enough. And but a cursory mental review of conditions in the world today plainly calls out for something to be done to effect change.
We should not fear change. Often, change is the only means by which problems can be effectively dealt with. And it is helpful to keep in mind that opponents of change are often the entrenched who are deriving benefit from the status quo, and all that it may stand for--frequently at consequent cost to the rest of us. The change that I recommend, and hope to one day see, is unity throughout the world--of government, of language, and of many of the other things that are today customarily "different" from place to place, for no other reason than because they "have always been that way." My primary reason for recommending unity across the globe is the fact that most, if not all, of the concepts, forces, and problems that we face, in one way or another affect all of our world. It is at this time more or less universally understood and acknowledged that seemingly trivial human actions in one place can affect people on the other side of the planet. This knowledge in and of itself produces a diminishing effect upon the value of, or necessity for, the sovereignty of individual nations.
Political, economic, and social activities are becoming worldwide in scope, and interactions among states and societies have increased on a wide variety of fronts. In recent years, isolation has become impossible. The fact that we all share a single world--and are thus a global community--is coming to be universally recognized. The affairs and challenges with which we deal of late are transnational in nature; and the consequent need for international institutions has thus become unavoidable. We should therefore all become cognizant of the future need for, and eventual likelihood of, a single world community.
In such a world community, location of or distance from the beholder ought not be relevant factors (except as regards logistics). In such a world community, the problems of neighbors who are ten yards away, and those of people ten thousand miles away, are equally deserving of the attention and effort necessary for their solution.
In the interdependent world that we have already become, cooperation appears to itself have become the only available means of attaining security. Confrontation does nothing to assist in this direction, and should be completely shed as a choice of action. Instead, humanity should attempt to work together to achieve economic vitality, environmental stability, and human rights--in short, a brave new world order which will serve to benefit all of us.
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The ever-growing singularity of our twenty-first century world has created an ever-increasing necessity for the development of common standards within society--of values, beliefs, political practices, and institutions. This is apparently due to the fact that at the most basic foundation of every human being lie the same needs and consequent desires. Yet a lingering persistence of outmoded and inappropriate political, economic, and social institutions, systems, and practices, in a number of places results in undue competition, distrust, conflict, and violemce.
Indeed, it seems that many of our wars and revolutions can be ultimately traced to such absences of common standards among the parties thereto. That is to say, everybody often wants the same thing, but are unable to agree on how to get it. Then, instead of working together to achieve our desires or requirements, we often blame the other fellow for our lack of them; and resort to conflict with him in commonly fruitless efforts to attain them. If we're "all in the same boat"--and most would agree that we are--we should all be paddling in the same direction, secure in the knowledge that in so doing we will eventually reach the shore upon which we are all seeking to arrive.
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No less a genius than John Maynard Keynes (who, in 1944, proposed the adoption of a common world currency, as well as global institutions to govern international commerce) once indicated that global collective action on an economic level was a necessity, because of the fact that in the "modern world" the actions of one nation spilled over into the affairs of many others.
Further attestation to the fact that our world has become a singular place, and that this condition should be acknowledged and acted upon, was well stated in 1970 by Nobel Prize recipient Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In his words,"...no such thing as internal affairs remains on our crowded earth. Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone making everything his business, in the people of the East being anything but indifferent to what is thought in the West, and in the people of the West being anything but indifferent to what happens in the East."
Today, in a society increasingly enmeshed by globalization, this characterization has become all the more accurate. And in today's world such an assessment applies to many other aspects of life on earth as well. Nowhere is the importance and desirability of greater global governance more apparent and compelling than in the realm of the environment and human welfare.
Environmental issues in particular know no political boundaries. Large areas of the earth, through which numerous national boundaries course, are affected by single ecological systems and problems. Pollution crosses borders without so much as a momentary pause. Disposing of toxic waste particularly requires a worldwide approach. So too do issues such as climate stabilization, protecting the ozone layer, and global warming, concerning which only a cooperative global effort can suffice.
Regarding subjects such as human welfare, human rights, and human development, I must confess that I firmly believe we are all our brother's keepers. In 1967, Pope Paul VI stated that developed nations were responsible for assisting developing nations. In a work entitled The Law of Peoples, author John Rawls declares that "Well-ordered people have a duty to assist burdened societies." However, if a single government directed the world, and the world consisted of a single political entity, there would be no destitute or "developing" nations. Instead, there would simply be areas of our world that are more "developed" than others. Under such circumstances, the fruits of man's accomplishments would, could, and should, come to be applied as necessary toward meeting the fundamental needs of all--without the necessity for international conferences, multi-state agreements, or--amazingly--consent by the political leadership within an impoverished nation (fearing that proposed assistance will fall into the hands of rebels or opposing forces).
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And now, terrorism has come to rear its ugly head, all over the world, and constitute the basis for a long and frustrating state of war. At root, terrorism is but a horrible means by which members of certain factions, national or otherwise, express their anger with and hatred for other factions, national or otherwise, if not the rest of the world. The causes for this anger and hatred consist primnarily of real or imagined wrongs or oppression on the part of such national entities, or factions within same, who become the objects of such terrorism. For example, Palestinians claim that they are being overrun and oppressed by the state of Israel. Hostile Arab groups harbor hatred for the United States and Western Europe by reason of their real or assumed support for Israel.
As we know, terrorist acts are virtually always committed in the name of a nation, a faction, or an ideal; or as a reaction to an alleged insult, injury, or unbearable set of circumstances that said actors, and/or those on whose behalf they act, are said to have suffered or to have been made to bear. Groups who commit themselves to terrorism are spawned, and/or harbored, and/or supported, by or within one or more nationbal entities--whose governments are usually too weak, corrupt, or themselves filled with hate, to prevent such groups from arising, or to deal with them once they do.
(to be continued)
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