The Global “Us”

Peace often seems far from the world of today. We are reminded daily of the violence that threatens us on all sides, the disastrous health of the environment and its consequences, and the hatred and distrust that we hold against our neighbors. Is this how we want to live? Is this how we want the 2010s to be remembered through history? We need to change this story and it starts with rethinking our concept of “us.”

Yuval Noah Harari, in his critically acclaimed book Sapiens, makes the argument that human society was originally limited to small local groups. This stands to reason; while we were still hunters and gatherers, “our” world stretched barely farther than the land in which “we” roamed, perhaps encountering a nearby group on occasion. As technology improved, agriculture led to permanent settlements, to cities, roads, and trade. “Our” world grew. Traders and travelers could bring news of people farther away. Rulers influenced greater areas of people. The creation of the printing press enabled newspapers which told large amounts of people what news “we” should know.

Our local tribe or family group became towns, city states, kingdoms, empires. “We” became a larger and larger group. Benedict Anderson picks up the story in his masterpiece Imagined Communities. Print journalism, among other factors, began to form the idea of a nation, not as a political body but as a social one. People who had never met each other, from long distances away (Alaskans and Floridians are both “American”), began to see themselves a single community. The people of thirteen North American British Colonies declared themselves (“We, the people”) a free state, quickly followed by the French (“[le] Peuple Français”) and Haitians. In 1848, Italy, France, Austria, and Germany faced popular republican uprisings, nearly simultaneously, inspiring democratic reforms also in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. By the time of the World Wars, nationhood had captured the western world and then some. As John Stoessinger describes in his book Why Nations Go to War, 20th century war was no longer a rational pursuit of gain, it was one nation’s way of life pitted against that of another. “We” and “our” way of life had become a politically vital (and deadly) force. In the following decades, the rest of the world asserted their nationhood, ripping themselves from their colonists, and declaring that it is no longer acceptable (if it ever was) for one country to control the affairs of another.

In 1981, International Day of Peace was created, “devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and people.” As UN Resolution 36/37, which created the International Day of Peace, explains, “wars begin in the minds of men [and women, so] it is in the minds of men [and women] that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” “Let us dare to imagine a world free of conflict and violence,” said Kofi Annan on 11 September 2001. “And let us seize the opportunity for peace to take hold, day by day, year by year, until every day is a day of peace.”

We’ve grown from understanding of “us” as our family group or local tribe to our country of 330,000,000 people.We don’t need to stop there. We can’t stop there. The technical and social innovations of the internet and computer technology have long since realized international culture of the masses. Furthermore, the problems we face today, including the economy, climate change, and safety and security, are problems that we are all facing together, as people not as Americans or British or anyone else in isolation. It’s time to move past a 20th Century paradigm that sees each country as an island, and into the 21st Century in which our island is our planet. We have more than enough work cut out for us to make it livable if we’re working together; we’ll never succeed if we aren’t.

Luckily, some of us have already started working together; if you haven’t, you can start today. On Monday, the United Nations will meet to discuss this year’s Day of Peace theme: Urgent Action on Climate Change. Yesterday, already, regular people around the world joined the global Climate Strike, possibly the largest ever, which was organized by a group of teenagers. Anyone can help us build the future we want and the UN has even conveniently broken our greatest issues down into 17 simple goals. For an easy start, see the UN Office in Geneva’s list of 10 daily actions to help accomplish each goal. It’s 2019; let us break out of 20th Century nationalist silos. Let “us” mean “us all,” across the world. Let’s start building a 21st Century world we can all live in.