This is but a sample of my siblings and our brood. There are ten more siblings. They and their brood are not pictured here, as this photo is from my father and stepmother's annual holiday card. However, it captures the essence of what I want to write about tonight: That the world needs to unite, on every level, now.
I grew up with a Ghanaian Aunt.
I grew up hearing stories from far away lands that my Grandparents travelled to and how the people there were always just like us, only with different customs and resources.
I grew up with music, literature, art and news from around the world.
I grew up in a world that advanced from phones with party-lines (one neighborhood on one phone line) to face-time on phones (universal across time zones).
I married and divorced a Dutchman; my children have EU and US passports.
One sister married an Englishman; a brother a Scottish gal; another brother a Vietnamese soul-sister.
In 8th grade I was given a writing assignment. It asked us to write a story set in the future and be specific with how we imagine the world would be. This would have been 1976. The US had just had Watergate break down our sense of government and governing. I think Barbara Jordan's Democratic Convention Speech and her warning of special interest groups seeped into my head some, too. Plus, I'd been very aware of the assassinations in the first decade of my life. Most kids wrote stories about technology, gadgets, efficiency home designs and such. I wrote about a global government.
I distinctly remember writing that there were no longer any international borders. That I'd imagined a global currency. That there were summits of elected officials from different Hemispheres and Continents who had been elected to those positions because of the humanitarians they were, not because of where they went to school or worked. In my minds eye there were 6 officials. The oceans were looked after by the Cousteau Society, as he was my hero, since taking the train into Boston to see him at the Hines Auditorium with my brother Mike (now a rural Dr. and just below me in glasses above). I must have been 12 and he was 11. So much of what Cousteau warned and taught us that day has come true, but that is another story.
I wish I'd saved the story of my imagined future, because it is a ghost that comes up and taps me on the brain when another piece of it comes closer to happening.
As the Cold War came to an end, I was in Vienna in the December of '89. I remember seeing entire Czech families smooshed in tiny Eastern Block cars. The first time they'd left their country in 40 years. All you could see before they open the doors were elbows and knees. I remember how the Austrian Government instantly imposed VISAs and an amount of money one had to have to enter the country, so as not to be a drain on society. But then the Wall came down. The Cold War, the tension that had been locked at the top of our subconscious, and occasionally active, mind was released. The world was giddy.
Then an odd thing happened. Some walls went up. Yugoslavia broke into 6 countries, after being one nation for roughly 80 years. A genocide happened and it took years for European and American allies to enter the conflict. African nations have been experiencing genocides my whole life. The Middle East has had waves of near-peace in my life time; when Rabin was killed in the fall of 1995, I was devastated. Same with Benazir Bhutto in 2007. I remember when she was in exile, she sent missives to the US via John Irving, which I knew, since he was married to the head of Curtis Brown, Canada; Janet Turnbull Irving.
The Internet, the Kyoto Accord, cell phones, and G8 happened. The world became more connected than ever before and more fractured than ever before simultaneously. New technologies and scientific discoveries have grown exponentially beyond the human evolutionary pace.
To quote Dickens, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Clean water, food and air should be a global citizen's right. But I'm afraid not everyone feels obliged to think that way. How is it that some countries can live with an embarrassment of riches and grow sick with excess, while others shrivel under the stress of poverty?
How is it that the citizens of the world, in this time of science and technological advancement, and spiritual leaders like the Dali Lama and Pope Francis, are still killing each other over who controls land or controls the ownership of faith?
We have Arab Springs and Umbrella Revolutions. We are trying to break down the barriers that divide us, but those in power don't want to let go of control nor do they want change for the common good. But that is what democracy, goodwill and truly being humanitarians should be all about!
I must get some sleep, and I'll dream of how we can innovate a new global political system. One where you can stay true to the spirit of the place you call home, and benefit by being interconnected to others around the world ~ a true global government intercourse!
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