A Ramble on Nationality and Humanity
Human society has existed, in some shape or form, for the past two hundred thousand years. In that time, approximately one hundred and seven billion people have lived, seeing the world through twice as many eyes. We’ve written around 130 billion books and been making art since at least 39,000 BC. This is immense. We are immense.
Now, in 2016 AD, the fields of man have grown a bounty of wisdom and perspective. Beside him, the crops of contemplation have grown, fertilised by the bodies and blood of all those who have died toiling the stubborn soil.if only he would harvest it. If only he might look upon his past not as something distant and behind him but as something before him; an open book; A vast catalogue of cultures, morals, ideas, beliefs and tragedy.
From this record he would surely learn a lot, but you cannot read a book when you’re too close to the page, and we are fully immersed in culture. We all see the world through our relative cultural lens, and when governments, or other groups wanting power, take credit for that history, that culture, we begin to see the world through a national lens. We look out at Earth as, for example, the United Kingdom and we see that China did this, Russia did that, the US said this.Rarely do we take the time to sit back and observe impartially, to adopt a cosmic perspective, to see life not as a nation but as a species.What would an alien watching human society think of us? Humans did this, Humans did that, because that’s all it is. How can you blame a nation for something? Its population is never stagnant; it’s always evolving, changing, merging with others.
Nationality is like genre; It’s how we naturally describe and explain this vast Earth and this vast Humanity. Despite the vicious acts of our nation through history, we know most people here to be normal and peace-loving, yet it’s so easy to lose sight of those same people in other countries when all you hear of is their political squabbles.
In the 20th century alone, an estimated 187 million people have died in our many conflicts. This century is widely recognised as the bloodiest in our history. Around 16,300 nuclear weapons are in the arsenals of various governments around the globe… Is this a time to continue our tribal divisions? A time to disregard our humanity.
If history can teach us anything, it is that the war mongers and the terrorists are not alien evils that appear from a cultural and historical void; They are mere symptoms of our deeper social ills.If history can teach us anything, it is that the fuel of genocide, war and destruction is our fear of misunderstood cultures. If history can teach us anything, it is that brutality does not belong to one nation, one creed, one culture.Borders are boundaries; they’re artificial segregations. Through national eyes, we so easily lose sight of empathy and are so easily dehumanised.
Humans killed humans in Paris. Humans killed humans in Iraq. Humans killed humans. We can no longer hide behind our separate geographical boundaries and pretend it’s not us.
2087
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