Notwithstanding obvious weaknesses and deficiencies in the United Nations and other international organizations, it nevertheless seems self-evident that mankind's paths have in fact converged more and more in recent years. Convergence, in fact, to quote historian J. M. Roberts, appears of late to be the dominant theme of world history, and people are behaving more and more in accordance therewith, as "more common experiences and assumptions are now shared more widely than ever before." (History of the World).
Another pattern which this convergence has assumed consists of a phenomenon that the years following World War II are said to have provided conditions for, and thereby promoted. It is most widely referred to as "regionalism." Defined as "clusters of supranational, though subuniversal, interests and sentiments...." (Alfred DeGrazia, Political Organization), his might in fact constitute a next-to-last step in the process of which I speak.
From another vantage point, we must view the post-World War II world as one in which we witness a vast growth of the contemporary welfare state. In an increasing number of places, we behold higher and higher priority being assigned to social objectives, such as the right to a suitable job, government compensation in the event of unemployment or disability, social security in old age, free or subsidized health care, and the redistribution of wealth and income through progressive taxation. Moreover, in recent years, these benefits have become available to many, if not most, people within a place--instead of being confined, as in less recent times, to only the poor and disadvantaged residing thereat.
In 1947, answering a Soviet charge that America's program to distribute aid (the Marshall plan) was divisive, President Truman urged world cooperation, and an end to the barriers that do in fact divide our world.
1948 saw a movement toward unity in the sphere of religion. A World Council of Churches was founded, an exponent of the ecumenical novement. As an organized effort to unite the many branches of Protestantism, and eventually all of Christianity, ecumenicism represented but another example of the process of consolidation that is taking place in society. In the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church also began to encourage ecumenical concepts as well as dialogue with the non-Christian world.
In the same year (1948) as well, a former United States fighter pilot named Gary Davis interrupted a session of the United Nations taking place in Paris to announce that he was a "citizen of the world," and to call for the formation of a world government. He was expelled from the hall; but his exclamations, as well as expressions thereafter of a like nature on the part of others of a similar mind, seem hopefully to be a portent of mankind's future.
In the 1950s, Western Europe began to shed a good deal of the nationalism that had been such an overriding influence before. The Marshall Plan and NATO were factors that initiated the beginnings of integration within the Continent. This apparently signaled an end to an era of warfare among its component states, and the substitution of cooperation and negotiation, which has promoted and encouraged political unity for the region--unity which has culminated in the formation of the European Union.
In the late 50s and early 60s, man began to become more extensively interested and involved in ventures into space. At first as a sort of race to accomplish "firsts," between the United States and Russia, it produced, among other things, a lot of wasteful duplication and very little cooperation between the two programs. However, as time went on, this error was somewhat corrected (as evidenced by the first joint US-Soviet space mission in 1975); and space exploration has since become more of an international activity.
During these same years, another technological phenomenon began to unfold, as the world of computers slowly became established as a method, later the most efficient method, and finally the more or less only method, of dealing with our data, as well as the conduct of our business and personal affairs. Today, one of the primary components of our computer-driven world is the Internet, also known as the "World Wide Web." The Internet has been credited with spawning a worldwide "information revolution," and transforming our globe into a "global village," in which people across the planet are exposed to the same information, share the same problems and concerns, and are able to maintain instant contact and communication with one another.
The Internaet has been called "the pinnacle of the democratization of information," in that it is totally decentralized, owned by no one (and therefore by all), and capable of potenbtially reaching into every home in the world. It has compelled people everywhere to change "from thinking locally first and then globally, to thinking globally first and then locally." The three resultant fundamental changes that have come about via the computer--in how we communicate, how we invest, and how we learn about the world and each other-- have been said to have enabled the world "to come together as a single, integrated, open plain." (Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree).
One observer of all this, the noted historian Palmer Colton, speaks of recent years as being a time of "a kind of unigform modern civilization which overlies and penetrates traditional cultures...an interlocking unity, in that conditions on one side of the globe have repercussions on the othetr. (Palmer and Colton, A History of the Modern World)
Historian J. M. Roberts describes this as "a creeping unity" that has overtaken mankind--causing clashes among cultures to decrease significantly. And when conflicts do occur (as in the Middle East today), they may actually be more appropriately characterized as being, or having originated in, conflicts between contestants who share somewhat common backgrounds. (J. M. Roberts, op. cit.)
In 1989, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down; and the era of the Cold War ended with it. The U.S. and Russia, former rivals, began working somewhat toward common aims in Europe and Asia. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, conscious of the advent of this new age, identified modern-day progress in science and technology as progress requiring "a different road to the future." Referring to the current existence of an interdependent globe besieged by nuclear, ecological, and economic dangers, he declared that our highest concern must be "universal human interests," and the "universal human idea."
Patrenthetically, to quote one G. Frering, chairman of a giant Brazilian company, "The Berlin Wall fell here (i.e., in Brazil) too. It wasn't just a local event in Europe. It was a global event." Or, in words recited at about the same time by one Raul Vivo, rector of a school for advanced studies in Cuba: "Cuba is no longer an island....There are no islands anymore. There is only one world." [emphasis supplied]. Such declarations from so many quarters make it obvious and clear that these concepts have by now come to be noted and acknowledged by a great many people in a great many places.
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