My theory, now I'm not sure if anyone else has ever thought of it before, but I came to it by my own conclusions and I would like some feedback on this theory.
"Diversity needs to be replaced by unification - order out of chaos if you will."
I came to this conclusion by thinking about where most conflicts come from - which is opposing beliefs/opinions/goals. How do people formulate these differing beliefs? Through knowledge acquisition throughout their lifetimes. I admit I do feel a bit of cognitive dissonance at my own conclusion, as my moral intuition tells me diversity is a wonderful thing.
However, I thought of the following scenario, which solidified my belief:
"If there were two beings of omniscient nature, what would they fight over?" Think deeply about this scenario!

With this in mind, I believe a One World Government is the best solution for the human race. And we have already taken the first steps toward unification, just look back on history, never before in all of humanities existence have we been so interconnected. The internet, vehicular transportation, phone lines - all sharing knowledge.

Problems I thought up, two main ones come to mind:
BIOLOGICAL FACTORS: this harks back to the nature vs nurture argument. I'm of the opinion that nurture accounts for the majority of our actions, with nature being the minority. That said, biological factors will continue to feed diversity; and opinions and predispositions may stem from there.
ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT: corruption is a big issue, I have no idea how this one world government would work - but if everyone starts getting taught the exact same thing at school - are they being taught the "correct" thing?

Please, your thoughts.

Isn't that just the same as saying: "We need to unify"? But alas, no, I don't think the problem is with government. I think the problem lies within how arrogant, ignorant, blind, careless, etc, humans are. Government would work out if world leaders weren't so power hungry, so greedy. The problem lies within the biggest flaw of the human body, the brain, not the structures of government.

/two cents/

(EDIT: I don't necessarily* disagree with what you're saying, but I think that this is the bigger issue.)

People will always fight no matter what you do, I bring this idea up from two theories I have heard.

People (usually) will find something to over-dramatize or blow out of proportion if not enough is going on in their life. It sorta goes along with the whole

The next idea in this is the common practice of discrimination against ones' own race. You've all heard it/experienced it. In the USA, it's common practice to view the South as inbred, provincial, and utterly ignorant. The South doesn't look kindly upon the North, either. This phenomenon occurs in many countries.

Putting these two together, one could theorize that people are... well not going to unionize in any way shape or form to a perfect degree.

My one friend once came up with an interesting idea, a "singularity" where all people are one stream of consciousness and there is no "individual." I see that as being the only way to make perfected unity.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 10 2010, 11:27 pm by TiKels. Reason: Put "unified perfection" instead of...

So am I to understand that you think humans are inherently like this? If that is your argument - then that would suggest that we are doomed. This is sorta touching on the nurture vs nature debate but I believe nurture is responsible for the majority of our actions; if children are taught the "right" things - we can eliminate these problems. Hence why I think it does come down to government.


Both of those arguments stem from the logical fallacy known as the Appeal to Nature. Just because this is how it is now, doesn't mean we can't change. Once again this touches back on the nature vs nurture debate; are we inherently doomed to everlasting conflict: or is it something we can teach our children not to do?

Remember my friends, today, present day is not the apex of humanity by far: though there have been many advancements in a short space of time, we still have much, much to do. I for one am an advocate for Eugenics, in the sense that we guide our own evolution as a species towards betterment. That, combined with Biological Engineering on both our brain and our body - well at this stage our imagination is the limit!

Of course, this raises the question: what is it to be a human? If one is a proponent of Human Evolution, like myself, one must ask oneself; at what point did we become "human" in our evolutionary growth? If you say, well - we've always been human throughout our growth, then I see no reason why we should oppose modifying our own species for our own benefit.

I desire more input on these thoughts!! They are much appreciated!

Many are taught one thing but do another. The human mind is not perfect and therefore your belief that all humans can be taught something and will forever do that same thing and continue to teach it is extremely naive. You also act as if it's easy to teach a structure that will beget nothing but good deeds, you make that statement but yet I don't think you've thought it through very thoroughly. Nurture is of course responsible for the majority of our actions at this juncture in time, however to think that it will be easy, or even possible, to start off from scratch and nurture us into perfection is just plain ignorant.

This is true. However we must ask ourselves why this is the case. You seem to think it is biological factor, I believe it is nurture. We must remember that we learn things through various external sources, not just teachers and parents. Our friends sometimes "teach" us to wag school or rebel against parents; just using a blunt example. This is once again touching on nature vs nurture.

Just because the human mind is not perfect does not THEREFORE mean anything. Regardless, the human mind is something we may well be able to modify in the future.
I am also baffled as to how you came to this obviously incorrect conclusion, let me give you some blatant examples.
Humans have been teaching other humans language for centuries.
Humans have been teaching other humans how to swim/ride a bike/drive a car for quite some time.
Humans have been taught how to use a knife and fork/any other eating utensil.
Humans have been... sigh, must I continue?

I never said it was easy (re-read my post), nor am I "acting" like it will be easy. You have made an incorrect assumption and misinterpreted my post.

I'm a supporter of unification in general, but for the pursuit of a specific goal, fragmentation might help.

For example, a fragmented Europe is good for the US because it's easy to manipulate. Same with a fragmented USSR. And a fragmented Yugoslavia. And at the same time, they were more peaceful (not necessarily nicer places, but this isn't a socialism-discussion) when they were unified.

Yeah but your talking about national interests. When we remove nations, when we become one government. We are known as only one thing - humans. It is at this stage that we are well and truly unified. We will all be united and working toward ONE GOAL - which is the benefit of our ENTIRE SPECIES, not our own country.

We can still be fragmented by yes, having different people working on different things. But when we are all under one government one country it just removes all those squabbles of people out for their own countries interests.

Isn't what you just said... self-explanatory and obvious? Yes, obviously, if we unite we can resolve some disputes and progress further. What of it?

Nothing, I was just saying that your talking about fragmentation as a positive from a national interest point of view, whereas I say one world governments remove that from the equation.

What I am really after is advocates for diversity, and any arguments they can offer that will actually bring this crashing to the ground.

Well, the obvious argument is that nothing will necessarily change, because people naturally diversify and segregate. What I mean is...well for example, if all the different countries became one country, there'd still be people who hate blacks, people who hate people living in australia, people who hate people supporting an opposing soccer team. Perhaps big wars would cease (not that a one-world government will ever happen for long) but there will still be a lot of infighting.

Surprisingly, not a lot has been said about this.

The problem is that there is no one "correct" thing. Because different cultures have different values, unification would be impossible. Every religion has its own code of laws, every ethnic group has its own traditions of justice, etc. To be able to decide on the one "correct" thing in a world government would only display ignorance on behalf of those leaders.

In addition, there will ALWAYS be people trying to be better than the rest of the world. Corruption and crime will always exist. Similarly (and perhaps in this same way), fighting will always exist.

Sigh, this is an Appeal to Nature - just because something has happened consistently in the past does not mean it will ALWAYS continue in the future.

Another Appeal to Nature...

This is true. Someone (can't remember) once famously said that the world will inevitably be under one government, the question is whether this will be via concession or conquest. It's these sort of facts that make me sadly think that conquest; ie. a country taking over the rest of the world and then imposing those beliefs and eradicting other beliefs, is perhaps the most efficient way.

I still like to think that there are several things that people can be "correct" on; I would also like to add that a One World Government could still have disagreements and differences WITHIN the government, I'm not imposing we populate the world with clones! I'm just saying that we could have one government (must find solution to ensure this government isn't corrupt) manage not just one country, but the entire world, and the entirety of the human species. Naturally, this would be a democracy; and I would hope a technocracy as well.

Still looking for thoughts, devoid of logical fallacies if you please.

Just because one is appealing to nature, doesn't mean his statement is false. You haven't noticed, but logical fallacy doesn't equate to an invalid argument. It is through inductive reasoning that his statement is right.

Allow me to explain more. People have conflict through several reasons. There might be more unreasonable reason to hate- such as just being different; which might be the case. However, most of the times- it is due to a lack of resources; and the insatiable cravings most Humans experience once they know what it is like to be abundant. Without infinite resources, then conflict will always continue. So, how will you gain infinite resources? I'm skeptical of the possibility of having such- and as such, when the reason of conflict remains, then conflict will continue.

Yes this is true, akin to flicking the light switch and expecting the light to come on.

However, it becomes a fallacy (or at least I believe it does) when applied to the human race. For millions of years before we became what we are today we were just as wild as animals, living under the rules of natural selection. If you were to look at all the aeons we had acted that way and use inductive reasoning you would be making the very same logical fallacy.

As for your infinte resources problem I will admit yes this is true, however I think your looking at it through capitalist lenses. Communists (well this is what I understand the principle) are all given equal portions of resources so infinite resources is not a necessity. Am I saying communism is the way to go, hmm not sure; I am however pointing out some biases in this train of thought.

I still believe One World Government is the best recourse for humanity. That, and the elimination of faith-based thinking.

This is getting off topic.

My thoughts in red. Personally, unification is both appealing and unappealing to me. My subconsciousness tells me I long for unification and acceptance, my upper functions calls for fighting to the death to preserve my position of self-pity and misanthropy. I'm a living example of why an OWG is so unlikely. But, yea, it's not like it's impossible. We do have the UN. Maybe we could get something better. Maybe. Maybe. Too many factors, too many variables...

EDIT:
Quotation from Dune: "The safest path is the path to stagnation."
What you present to me is a "safest path." IMO, OWG would not be successful if it were too powerful. However, if diminished, OWG would be too weak. I find OWG flawed by basis (of single unification).

Humanity hasn't been around for millions of years. Over the years that we HAVE existed, we've acted consistently. We aren't going to change that much.

Well it depends on what you class as "human". We have been evolving from bacteria all the way up to homo sapiens for millions of years.

@Hydrolisk - finally, a sound argument! I definitely agree that there are a lot of variables to consider, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to do it. Hell - there are a bunch of variables to consider the moment we walk out our front door every day!
I agree with most of what your saying, there is just one thing I disagree with.

OWG does not assume all of the above. I think your getting OWG confused with utopia.

Yes I think you raise a fair point when you say it should just be something like the UN. Major issues with corruption, singular teaching, and majority rules problems as well (everyone in America votes that Denmark now deals in American sewage disposal... majority rules!). I am not sure of the answers to these questions, I believe its possible - but its certainly going to be hard. I think if we look at the way resources are currently being spread around the world though, separate countries actually makes this a major problem. Whats the statistic again? 5% of the population owns 80% of the wealth? Is that it? Something shocking like that. We don't need infinite resources, just evenly distributed ones. As for overpopulation, well that can be controlled - just look at China's one child policy.

Thanks for the good post!

OWG just reminds me of utopia a lot. >_<

Unfortunately, some cultures, religions, etc. promote procreation. (Unrelated to cultural-religious influence: India's population is booming, but does not do anything about overpopulation.)

Population is something every country wants because larger populations generate more overall wealth. Or, at least, that's my theory, based on (prompt for more).

As shocking as the wealth distribution is, it would be difficult to convince the majority of people to shell out their own assets for strangers. Presently, IMO, people are too selfish, especially in the countries that have wealth.

Errr, but, that's all a lot of my own opinions. Despite being in the SD forum, I don't do much research on these civics topics. Not my kind of thing, but interesting anyway.