Uniting the world

People are different from each other but the differences are insignificant in comparison to the similarities. People are being separated by labels. We have created walls and fences instead of bridges.

Groups of people have started wars because of imagined differences, like religion, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. A genocide occurred in Rwanda because of two imaginary ethnic groups, the Tutsis and the Hutu. There was little difference between the two groups, both had the same language, the same religion, the same skin colour, the same traditions. A mother from one ethnic group could have a child belonging to the other ethnic group, so small were the differences, and yet people committed genocide for this imagined difference, 1 million people were killed.

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they were amazed to find that the native people did not know anything about Jesus or the Bible, they even wondered if these people had souls. Of course, these imagined differences helped them rationalize the genocide that followed.

Religious wars have been constant. Even now religious wars are being fought. Religion has been the greatest creator of conflict in history, its divisive power is unequaled by anything else.

We are being taught as children that there are divisions, like, we are Christians, they are Muslims, although children are no more capable of having a religion than having political or philosophical orientations. This, of course, maintains the groups and these divisions often create conflicts.

People are conditioned to feel that they are a part of the society they live in and to feel separated from the rest of the world. This is nationalism and it is another divisive force and it has also created conflicts. A lot of people really feel that their country is their home. Of course, this is helped by the fact that different countries usually have different languages or accents, different customs and traditions.

This tendency of classifying things and finding differences rather than similarities may be something natural to us, as Richard Dawkins called it: "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind".

I believe that we need to feel as a part of the global community in order to have peace on this planet. We need to communicate more, to travel more, to mix people. This way, they can see that people outside their group are not so bad.

Will we ever give up our divisions and embrace the global community? I don't know, but I sure hope so. This has already begun, it's called globalization, but will we be able to live in peace and harmony or will we keep creating imaginary divisions? The future will tell.

"My country is the world and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine