Session 7 - One Body
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Whether we like it or not, this picture of our mutual interdependence, which we can already see before us, clearly demonstrates how interdependent and bound together we really are. An understanding of this interconnected, united view will necessitate me and all of humanity to change our attitude toward others, and toward our local and global environment. It is clear that we are interdependent in the areas of food, clothing, education, culture, technology and industry, energy, water, power, and even in our communal air, since if anyone doesn't keep important air pollution regulations these days, the environment will not be able to produce the oxygen we all need to breathe.
We know the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, which determines the amount of toxic gasses permitted to emit into the atmosphere, and how we can ruin our environment if we don't all work together to keep these protocols.
Additionally, we've already mentioned the numerous international organizations that exist and connect all of us around the world, dealing with a large variety of topics for the best benefit of the entire world. Some of them are located in Paris, some in London, and some in New York, but the majority of them work out of Geneva. Through these organizations we can sense the tight interconnections among us, giving us a sense of strong mutual dependence. This mutual dependence is far more significant than even that of family members, since in a family, one may be angry with another and even stop talking to that person, or disconnect all ties. Yet among countries, there really are no such prerogatives.
The hundreds of countries around the globe are set up in a kind of a "mosaic" from which none can escape, nor exercise one's own self-interests. We can evidently see that each time a country wishes to carry out an independent move that it fails, and after some time, that country is forced to abandon the idea if it is not in the best interest of everyone. Sometimes countries do perform such acts of separation, but it is more in words rather than in actual action, because today it is simply impossible to make any truly independent moves.
There is much more we can say about the connections between us and how they obligate us to be connected even in our minds and emotions. And this is not just because of the laws of ecology, industry, the global banking system, our common education, healthcare needs, and other areas. Today people must establish good connections between one another—each and every person must do this, and accordingly, each and every country.×
Our technological and cultural developments throughout all of our entire common human evolution has reached today's interdependent and interconnected state of development. The inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of Nature, as well as the human level, have evolved to the point where we are actually becoming one entity, like a superorganism, as one single person.
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Today's system of worldwide interconnections is transforming us all together into "one person," like a superorganism.
Main Points
- We are one interconnected and united global human family that has a role in Nature's entire system of existence in our world and because of this, we cannot detach from one another.
- The system of close interconnections between us forms a state in which it is given to us to imagine ourselves becoming as "one person."
References
"The global spread of ideas, information, and experience 'constitute[s] the overarching structure of human history.'"
Summary of: The Human Web: A Bird's-eye View of World History
"The clue of how we might proceed lies in the notion of connectivity. ... A diagnostic characteristic of contemporary globalization is that the component parts of the world economy are increasingly interconnected in qualitatively different ways from the past."
Book - Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy
"The use of social networks, trust, and reciprocity to enable cooperation among citizens beyond that required by law or employment – can lead to higher levels of economic and civic success."
Summary of: Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy