With the Eurozone issues right now, particularly since it was just announced that the leaders in the EU have approved a much-needed financial package for Cyprus, I was reminded of a journal entry I made for one of my favorite professors, Dr. David Victor, that I made last year; and his comments of it:

One of the things that shock me every so often is the human capacity and want to help each other; even when things are at their worst.  Right now, the world is experiencing some of the goofiest [for lack of a better word?] financial challenges we’ve ever faced.  No doubt, due in part to our globalizing economy.  Every day we march forward into the 21st century, our planetary economy globalizes that much more.  We, as a people, now don’t have the luxury of not doing anything to help a national neighbor when they’ve fallen on hard times — but the willingness to do so is something different all together.

I’ve never been a fan of bailouts.  My staunch criticism against the bailout of General Motors a few years ago prompted some of the most heated debate I’ve ever been in — and in fact, I think I may have lost a couple of friends doing so.  But anyone who knows me knows I keep it real.  I didn’t like it then, I still don’t care for the idea of them — but I’m glad they had the overall effect they had.  I guess you could call it a necessary evil, when it’s appropriate.

Going back to the main point, I’m wondering if the European Union and, say, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations aren’t the precursors for a larger community mankind may take part in one day.  Will the nations of the world continue to hold onto their ideals of nationalism and wanting to keep a distinct financial and national identity, or will we start doing what the nations of Europe have done, and start banding together into larger communities to help each other even more?

United Earth, 2154
Star Trek franchise

Star Trek, one of my favorite television shows, had a history that paralleled this.  The nations of Earth came together after the third world war, and formed a federal parliamentary republic called “United Earth,” headed by a planetary government that begins in the year 2150, when “the last holdouts joined.”  One of the things that I find fascinating about such an idea is the willingness of humanity to look beyond it’s own self-interest and it’s own pre-conceptions and step forward to help it’s neighbor.  Will the future of the world did what two enemies did at the height of the Cold War?  Communist Russian Cosmonauts and Astronauts of the United States met each other and shook hands in friendship and peace during this time, to work together in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.  Will we, in the future, have the intelligence and willingness to cooperate together and move forward as “one” people?

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