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I. Friends, Enemies, & the UN
It is time for humanity to evolve toward a one-world government and away from national borders and the self-interested patriotism and petty tyrants they spawn. Too many of the issues we need to address are global in nature. Too many things are stretched to the breaking point. The stakes are too high these days.
As human society evolves it becomes ever more fragile and inter-dependent. International relationships become ever more complex and intertwined. In an Information Age driven by a global economy, borders do more harm than good.
National borders can’t protect us from Bird Flu, stock market manipulations, or suicide bombers. But they do imply that North Korea and its idiot dictator have the right to pursue nuclear weapons. They imply that Saudi Sheiks can do whatever they want with their oil. They imply that Japan can kill all the whales and Brazil can chop down the last rain forest. They imply that ‘we’ are different from ‘them’. As long as national borders exist, we can’t protect ourselves from the global dangers that lie beyond them.
The above are not the types of issues that can be left to the selfish whims of the petty tyrants, self-serving politicos, and revolutionary councils that rule most of the nations on earth. These are global issues, not national ones, and need to be handled as such.
Evolving to some sort of one-world government would seem to be mankind’s only hope of getting any control over its future. As a species, we have an awful lot of important decisions to be made in the coming days. …decisions that will probably determine who and what we are for the rest of our earthly existence. …decisions that will mold our great grandchildren into the human beings that they will become.
A one-world government is the necessary first step to resolving the tribal disputes, laying down the arms, marshalling the resources, and protecting ourselves from disease, Mother Nature, petty tyrants, and Armageddon. Can we, as a species, have any hope of a long and prosperous existence unless we handle these kinds of things, and handle them soon?
Perhaps the greatest single threat to the diversity of mankind as we know it is the unchecked onslaught of capitalism. Our grandchildren are all going to be speaking the same language, wearing the same clothes, eating the same foods, and staring at the same screens all day. Diversity as we know it will be wiped out in the interests of Dow Jones conformity and Dot.com unity. Culture will be something we visit in a museum.
A one-world government is our only hope of providing effective checks and balances to the global economy. The biggest of the international conglomerates already wield far greater power than most of the nations on earth. …with far less oversight. Governments come and go but corporations are eternal. Governments stop at the border. Corporations don’t. And, operating in the netherworld between those borders as they do now, how long before they subvert those governments altogether? Perhaps they’ve already done so: 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations, not governments. Obviously they’ve already done so.
Some sort of one-world government would seem to be the logical starting point for any hope of a peaceful and prosperous future. But perceiving the need and getting from here to there are two different things. It will only work if it is done for all the right reasons, in all the right ways. It will only work if we all put aside our selfish national interests and work toward the common good. It will only work if we subvert short-term profit selfishness in the interest of long-term investment altruism.
Necessary though it may be, a one-world government will never get the hearty support of those who currently wield the political, economic, and spiritual sticks. Therefore, its only hope lay in getting the whole-hearted support of the common people of our world: the farmers, accountants, and mothers. For this to happen, those people need to see, and know in their hearts, that their lives will be bettered by the change. They need to know they’ll have full bellies and warm beds. They need to see schools, hospitals, and ballfields sprouting up around them. They need to see their bank accounts growing and their Golden Years provided for. They need to know their kids’ lives will be better than their own, but not quite as good as their grandkids’.
The money is there: Tons of it. Mankind has never been richer. Were we to use our wealth, resources, and manpower efficiently and in common cause, we could build a gold-paved paradise of an earth for our grandkids. Were we to take the riches we waste on international saber rattling, Homeland Security, corporate short-term thinking, inefficiency, old fashioned greed, and plain old corruption, we’d have the resources to accomplish darn near anything.
National borders in the 21st century are the unnatural by-product of thousands of years of warfare, migration, monarchies, madmen, and Mother Nature. Yet for most of our existence it was the neighborhood, village, or self-contained community that provided the basic building block upon which we built our lives. We rarely ventured far from them. We always returned to them. The tax collectors, army recruiters, and marauding bands would come and go yet life went on. Life was local. These days all of our attention is diverted thru the tube and over the horizon, trivializing events in our own backyard.
Evolving to some sort of truly representative one-world democratic government would again make the community the canvas upon which we painted our lives. When the tax dollars get spent on the people, the results tend to be noticeable and close to home. When we no longer have to worry about what is happening on the other side of the world, we might just start taking better care of our own little piece of the rock.
Fairly drawn up representative districts ought to enable Red to live next to Blue, Sunni next to Shiite, Catholic next to Protestant, Black next to White, Anybody next to Anybody. Allow our communities to again become homogenous representations of the values we share with our neighbors, changeable from region to region and town to town. Let us learn to respect our neighbors’ values in return for their respecting ours. Let the one-world government take care of the bigger picture while allowing us to live in communities built upon the values we share with our neighbors.
The wealth generated from the efficiencies of one-world thinking ought to be enough to ‘buy-off’ most of the world’s problem areas. It is always about the money. Peace would give us a lot more to play with. The richer (former) nations would have to carry the burden until the poorer (former) nations were brought up to speed, but they would have the most to gain in the long run so it all evens out.
Build schools, hospitals, and roads. Dig wells, irrigate fields, and generate power. Make education the #1 human priority. Let us nurture every human life to be the best it can be and build from there. Let’s make a conscious effort to learn from our mistakes and not pass them along to our children.
The Information Age will be forged by undiluted greed and misguided faith, if the headlines foretell anything. Both are international forces and that gives them incredible advantages when it comes to global wheelin’ and dealin’. Unfortunately, neither Big Business nor Big Religion provides any real avenue for the people’s expression of their will. In the grand scheme of things, that is the role of government.
National governments and, therefore, ‘We, the People’, are at a huge disadvantage when dealing with economic and spiritual issues. And the disparity grows wider every day. One crazy ayatollah could set half the world on fire. One crooked financier could crash the global economy. The voice of humanity needs to be heard but that voice is getting drowned as Big Business and Big Religion dominate the airwaves to tell us what we and our neighbors think. We need to get beyond the paid shills and televangelists to find out what the farmers, accountants, and mothers think for a change. Regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation, it’s probably a good bet that they pretty much want the same things.
The biggest obstacle to any hope of a one-world government will undoubtedly be the patriotism stirred up at the thought of losing national identity. But those who will do most of the stirring have bank accounts in Switzerland, private jets, and loyalties that will be in direct conflict with the patriotism they’ll try stirring up in us.
A global government providing checks and balances to capitalism may be our only hope of retaining any regional cultural identity whatsoever. Most countries are already a hodgepodge of races, faiths, and cultures built around a strip mall full of franchises. We all drink Heinekens, drive Hondas, and watch Hollywood movies. Cultural diversity is being replaced by corporate homogeneity at an alarming rate. And national governments are virtually powerless against the onslaught. When our patriotism gets stirred up, exactly what are we supposed to be patriotic about? Let’s face it: ‘We’ are ‘Them’.
The concept of the nation state as the basic building block for human civilization has outlived its usefulness. They no longer serve the purpose for which they were intended. The strongest nations can no longer protect themselves from the weakest. Borders can no longer keep ‘us’ safe from ‘’them’. One suicidal maniac or calculating madman could drag us all into some science fiction nightmare of a future. On September 11th, a few of them already did. One hundred years ago that was impossible. Obviously it no longer is.
Humanity is at the dawn of an era for which we are totally unprepared. We must completely rethink the way we do things, or our future is going to look a whole lot like our past. Only on steroids.
Mired in the middle of them as we are, it is easy to view present times as a natural progression of things as they have always been. Yet, one long lifetime ago, information still rode on horseback, our lives were candlelit, and horseshit was the aroma of the day. We left virtually no ‘footprint’ when we left this world.
It is mind-boggling how far we’ve come in such a short time. Yet we don’t act boggled. We thump our chests and proclaim ourselves Masters of the Universe. We act like monkeys with the keys to the armory.
Humanity went global and we forgot to notice. We are hurtling into the future at an unprecedented pace without a plan, not a safeguard in sight. We are up to our eyeballs in an awful lot of new knowledge and technology for which there is absolutely no precedent. Powerful stuff. Dangerous stuff. Global stuff.
The media, the ‘net, & Madison Avenue
Wall Street, franchises, & trillion dollar deficits
Spin Doctors, focus groups, & polling gurus
Stealth technology, suicide bombers, & 40 virgins
Biological, chemical, & nuclear weapons
Bird Flu, weaponized Anthrax, & frequent flier miles
Stem cells, the Genome Project, & Drug Companies
Climate Change, over-population, & the ozone layer
…and don’t rule out Armageddon, for crying out loud!
Everything has changed and, unless we do too, our future is going to be a nightmare. With all these unprecedentedly powerful new toys at our disposal, it is only a matter of time before one or a dozen of them blow up in our face. Without some sort of unifying global plan, the future will know only chaos.
America is humanity’s best, and perhaps only, hope of bringing any unity to our world. We are so incredibly unique in the history of nations that we take it for granted. Never have so many faiths, races, and cultures existed so peacefully side-by-side, proud to call themselves members of one tribe: the American tribe. We are the children of every nation on earth. Obviously we must have done something right at some point.
For much of our history, we seemed to do things mostly for the right reasons, mostly in the right ways. We did it kicking and screaming but at least we tried. When George Washington walked away from a crown and returned to Mount Vernon, it made one helluva statement about who we were and what we were to become.
For most of her history, America’s strength lay in the richness of her land, the isolation of her shores, the nobility of her cause, and the self-sufficiency of her people. These days the riches are being squandered on the empire, the oceans no longer keep us safe, our cause is debatable, and we are dependant on sweatshops in Asia and wars in the Middle East to maintain our disposable, extravagant lifestyle. Once we were a Republic, independent and focused inward. Today we are an Empire, entangled and focused abroad.
America needs to redirect that focus and rebuild the bridges we’ve burned with most of the other nations on earth. Bullies don’t have friends. We need to rejoin the fellowship of man and find common cause with which to build a future. And we need to do so for all the right reasons, and in all the right ways. Make the other nations of our world an offer they can’t refuse. Do an inventory of what we’ve got, what we need, and where we want to go. Then let’s find a way to equitably steer mankind through a peace-filled 21st century.
America is composed of the children of every other nation on earth. If we can’t do it, it can’t be done. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. The future will be just more of the same. Were America to reconnect with the Good Guy values that defined us Not That Long Ago, much of the rest of the world would eagerly follow our lead.
Evolving to some sort of a one-world government seems to be the solution to an awful lot of the problems facing the world today. In addition to the problems that would disappear virtually overnight, it would dramatically improve the life of every individual human being on earth in noticeable, close-to-home, build-for-the-future kinds of ways. It would be like the whole world won the lottery while falling in love during the Holidays. United we stand. Divided we fall.
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