Fragmentation of humanity

We divide ourselves race by race, nation by nation, religion by religion, sect by sect, through even further derivatives until the fact of our shared humanity becomes irrelevant. It becomes ‘us’ vs ‘them’, as if we were somehow constituted a different way. We fail to see that our belonging to a particular group is superfical in a way that our being human is not. Yet we identify with these groups, feeling affinity with those we share them with, and so long as this continues there will be no unity. Until we can see all of humanity as our group, as like us, there will be no peace because we ruled out that possibility the moment we began to see in colour, nationality and religion, to justify our difference and raise a mental barrier between us and the rest of the world.

The fragmentation of humanity arises because of the difference between the ideas each group holds and the extent of this chasm even leads to war when it is pronounced enough. For peace to be possible we have to give up the ideas we divide ourselves by and come to regard other people as equal to us by virtue of being human. If something so simple and in line with reason seems beyond us, it will be the world itself that we burn down in flames.

A Conservationist Philosophy

Blue Marble

So long as we feel the world belongs to us there will be little hope for our survival here. Believing that it is our birthright to rule the earth we neglect its care and take from it unsustainably. We set ourselves up as the sovereign power and seek to secure our position by whipping nature into submission. Failing this, we do not fall back to earth but reach out to the stars for absolution. Though we belong to the world we do not feel our destiny is to remain here. This is clear, as climate change takes hold of the world, we plan out our route to another potentially hospitable planet. We divorce ourselves from our home, leaving it to its fate and damning ourselves along with it. Until we realise that this world is our home, that we came from it, were born of it, we will fail to save it.