Originally Posted by
Skroesec
I have nothing but disdainf or utopian one-worlders. Even worse than obnoxious internet wanna-be communists (you know what kind of people I'm talking about), who at least have a developed if discredited philosophical foundation. Utopians want to skip to the end for some nonsense ambition of making Star Trek real or something. They arrive at an endpoint, that humanity is better off resembling something united they've seen in a work of fiction, then work backwards. Since when is that approach legitimate in any way about anything?
Nothing could be further from the truth. Nevermind the fact such a dream is tremendously insulting to the immense number of non-Western traditions that utopoan one-worlders sideline or gloss over, it completely (and disrespectfully) plays down the entirely legitimate and intractable differences between countries. I mean hell, look at US and Western European beliefs about pretty fundamental things like jury trials, social wellfare, and civil rights. There are some things we have nothing in common about. And we're the most alike peoples in the world on most issues. Saying that people who respect and want these differences to be maintained are warmongers is ridiculous. Utopianism isn't enlightened... it's delusional, and it's foundation is ignorance and disrespect to the immense ways the multitude of humanity is different from each other, and frankly, really doesn't care for those who are different from themselves.
Don't get me wrong: nothing would be better than a united world without war. But that's the same way as saying "nothing would be better than faster than light travel". In the very real world we live in, both are far harder to accomplish than in fiction. On whose terms is the world united? American terms? That means 95% of the world loses. Broadly Western Terms? What about the other 5.5 billion people in the world who will be subject to that? Some kind of international compromise? Really. And how has compromise worked out for countries as a whole so far? How achievable is it? Does every country have an equal voice? Is that fair to larger richer countries? If it is proportional, what about the rights of small countries? As we see with Climate Change, even with the treat of catastrophe, the world cannot agree to even modest collective action because of fundamental disagreements (in this case, particularly, developing countries shaking down rich ones for hundreds of billions of dollars per year, which is never going to happen).
You call it "middle ages". It's not that. It's the world in which we have and will continue to live, because the differences that the US has with Russia, the US has with China, the EU has with everyone, the "Global South" has with the West, China has with Japan, Australia has with Indonesia, so on and so forth... are extremely legitimate and pretending that if we somehow just all took a step back and threw down our arms, it would fix it, is immature and without credibility. If we were to listen to you, we would skip to the end, without actually working through these immense differences... slowly and painfully. How legitimate would such a world be in that case? How lasting? Human history isn't guided by the good things that has happened to it - no one celebrates United Nations Day. It is guided by the absolutely horrible things have happened to it though.