by Jay Diamond

Created on: June 27, 2007

The history of the world is a sad indictment on humankind's ability to govern itself. Wars fueled by ideological power struggles are as old as time itself, and as long as the world remains politically, religiously and culturally divided, nothing will change.

Living in a world defined by nationalism and sacred political boundaries has its inevitable consequences. Each nation pursues its own enlightened' self-interest in the international political arena, and the results are devastating wars over ideological differences to satisfy a seemingly insatiable appetite for power and security, and over resources like oil, which fuel modern economies while simultaneously heralding the destruction of our planet. And while prosperous countries are fighting over resources and ideology, more than 1 billion people in developing nations face starvation, disease and destruction as they limp along without access to even the barest of necessities. Meanwhile, their political leaders exalt themselves on thrones of luxurious self-indulgence. Greed and human nature sets in, and enlightenment' goes out the window.

Naturally, the one arena where enlightenment is conspicuously evident is in weapons technology. As nations spend well over US $1 trillion every year on weapons development, the world's nuclear arsenal continues to mushroom as opposing nations expand their policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). All of this madness demonstrates what each and every one of us already knows: an adversarial, individualistic, nation-centric political model cannot bring about world peace. Such a model is geared to create war; to pit nation against nation like Gladiatorial combatants in the ancient Roman Colosseum.

In this era of advanced destructive capability, the natural consequence of this realization is that anything other than a single world government will inevitably tend to the destruction of civilization. May we all pray that this world divided is not the way forward as we press onward into the 21st century.

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