Towards global thinking.

The recent elections in Europe embarrass me. In so many ways we have come so far. We are remarkable. But when we are pressured by circumstance we have let ourselves down, and old instincts have beaten our reason.

Nationalism; them and us; blame the tribe next door; be wary of those that aren't exactly like us. It's all just so ludicrously small.

We live on a planet where we are one of 8.7 million species, all of which we share an ancestor with at some point in our history. Our species, Homo Sapien, has its origins about 200,000 years ago in south west africa. That's all of us alive today. We're all the same. At that point, everyone of our species was exactly like us. We all share a great great great....etc ancestor who lived somewhere around the Namibia/Angola coastal border. 

Around 125,000 years ago our ancestors had expanded to the Middle East. From there, about 50,000 years ago they spread east into South Asia. By 43,000 years ago they had reached Europe, and 40,000 years ago they arrived in Australia. East Asia was reached around 30,000 years ago. Around the same time they may have reached North America, although this is disputed and it could have been as late as 14,000 years ago. The Polynesian islands were reached from Taiwan around 5,200 years ago. (Please forgive this very rough summary of dates!)

It was only 10,000 years ago, with a move towards warmer consistent weather and the development of agriculture, that we stopped being nomadic hunter gatherers. (interestingly in those societies there was often much greater social and economic equality and often sexual parity, than we know today!)

And so from the travelling tribes settling came the farmsteads, and from the farmsteads came the towns. From the towns came the trade routes etc etc But still it was hundreds of years before we thought of ourselves as from any given "nation". Arguably, most of the nations in Europe have only developed in the last 700-800 years. (based on most definitions "of nation state")

Only in our most recent history have we had nations to be nationalistic about! On the other side of the political borders of our nations, are the very same people who prior to that time had similar journeys, similar histories. "They" are not different from us. They are us!   

Perhaps one might better argue that nations are like clubs. Clubs that can compete against each other at sporting events. Clubs that have taken along their own refreshments and resent it when people from other clubs want one of their sandwiches. Clubs that get protective of their pork pies. Members of other clubs, coming over here, eating our salad. Perhaps if you've paid your club's subs to fund that picnic you might resent a member of a different club taking a pickled onion from your jar. But if you turned away a hungry competitor with a "Sorry, this picnic blanket is full" would you feel proud of yourself?

What would it be like if we got some perspective on what's important? How would it be if we stop expecting our politicians to be drawn into arguments and debates about the petty and pointless - just because it makes quick copy to sell papers? If we vote entertainers into roles of state, we shouldn't be surprised when they turn out to be clowns.

In the early 90s Carl Sagan said "The old appeals to racial, sexual, religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervour are beginning not to work, a new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognises that an organism at war with itself is doomed." 

If I had to be the one to tell Carl about the recent election results in Europe I would do so mumbling, looking at my shoes, ashamed of what has happened. 

The real threats to us do not come from nations, towns or picnic blankets. They are threats that can only be dealt with as a species. Climate change will only be controlled by global consensus and action, not the childish tit for tat of nations run by the childish soundbite mongers pandering to the press which in turn panders to the stupid so as to sell adverts. Impact events will only be averted by a global effort to fund and build a system for detection, interception and movement of threats. How can decisions of that magnitude be taken whilst the biggest effective unit we have is the nation state? The threat of self destruction, of nuclear war; of a rogue state releasing chaos through some sort of bio weapon or even bio or nuclear accident... these things seem less likely in the world today than in Sagan's time but the threats remain, and again, they are either threats caused by the nation states, or threats that would be best dealt with by units bigger than the nation state. 

Communications and business have now outgrown the nation state, and it becomes increasingly more futile to try and frame discussion of one in the context of the other. Human's greatest achievements in recent years always cross national boundaries, be it disease control, the space station and exploration, or the power and speed of social media to bring local issues to a global audience.  

Consider then a Human Council. One decision making body, responsible for all citizens of Earth. Protecting world resources, and working to ensure distribution of those resources as needed for the benefit of the majority, not those who happen to be born near them. Making decisions in the interest of all citizens of the planet. The idea seems so alien to us who've grown up in tribes/nations. How would "our" economy work? What would happen to currency exchange? How long would the queues at Disney Land be!? But these are all problems of transition. The transition from a world formed of tribes to a world of just one combined tribe. Think how one big tribe would look, and what would and wouldn't be possible then!  

The transition from a planet divided into nations, to a planet united as one species looking forward is a very tough thing to envisage. In today's short termist inward looking, border conscious climate, few politicians would be prepared to state their ultimate aim is to dissolve independent nation states into a single world Human Council. Yet, long term, our survival as a species seems to me to be dependent on the population getting behind just such an idea and requiring the governments of our nations to consciously take every possible step towards their own succession. 

Just because the transition seems impossibly difficult to navigate, doesn't mean we shouldn't start to travel. I wonder how that journey will look; how long the journey will take, and how long it will be before we set sail.