Segments of humanity that are ready and willing to sign up as world
citizens already enjoy world consciousness, carrying world passports;
and are experimenting with various aspects of worldist thinking,
contact, organization. They are ready and willing to take part in a
multitude of planetary experiments in world-wide human association.
The great revolution of 1750-1970 has made two notable contributions to
the institutions of western civilization. In the field of politics it
has contributed the nation state. In the field of economics it has
contributed industrialization with its twin sociological consequence,
mechanization and urbanization.
Machines and cities are the Siamese twins of the modern age. They are
also the twin forces that helped to push the nation state into its
strategic position of sovereign independence.
Nationalism today is a unifying force inside the frontiers of the 140
nations that presently litter and clutter the earth. Beyond each
frontier, however, nationalism has become one of the most divisive
sources of misunderstanding, controversy, disruption and conflict
presently cursing mankind. In the exercise of their sovereignty the
oligarchs who make policy and direct procedure in each sovereign state
put national interests first. On a planet which currently hosts 140
sovereign states this policy of putting the interests of the part before
the interests of the whole results in controversy, conflict, and may
result in collective self-destruction.
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