Do you think we'll ever be from a planet, and not a country?

[Gooble]

In every (or most) sci-fi films and programmes you see, alien races always seem to be united, and it doesn't seem unusual to us, so why are we so comfortable with our notion of countries.

I believe that when it comes to the point of us colonizing another planet, it will have to be a multinational effort, but I still think that even then, each country would be vying for their own section of land on this new planet, giving an extension to their own Earth-bound countries. And I'm sure even if we met and could communicate with an extra-terrestrial race, we would still individual describe ourselves as "from Earth, from the country known as..."

Now, being an idealist I think that we should have a global economic/legal/social system. I think if we had one we would thrive even moreso than we have done already (ignoring the recent downturn). But I am also aware that this is probably never going to happen, due to history: countries have existed for thousands of years; greed: I believe countries would be unwilling to share their resources as opposed to selling them; the probable lack of equal representation: I'm pretty sure that all countries will want to have some advantage over the others in terms of power in this new global system which cannot be reconciled by a global vote due to varying population sizes, or mutual agreement; and finally nature: all animals have a territorial instinct, although humans I believe do have the brain power to be intelligent enough to ignore that instinct.

So what do you think? Can global union ever be achieved? Will we ever be known as Earthlings/Earthicans? And do you think we'd all be better off if there was a global system?

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

Not anytime soon, I'm afraid.

 

[Hearthing]

The only way we could possibly achieve Global Unity is more development of space technology...

It's sad but the last major push in space research was the cold war...

Same with the aircraft, think about it. 1909, biplanes used in warfare, suddenly they where rapidly produced and researched, 2009, most powerful war weapons ever made (ruling out ICBM's etc.)

Tank also... 1911, big steel box with holes, quite nippy massive cannon thicker steel box.

Humans seem at their best when we're at war.

If life exists outside of our solar system and we can rush to said war, the globe will unite. We have no choice... We can't fight wars in space and on earth.

 

[SmoothGlover]

Well the thing is only a few countries would even be able to colonise other planets in the still-pretty-distant-fututre. We will "Fallout 3 (or 1,2, b.o.s etc) ourselves" long before we manage to put civilians on another planet.

EDIT: When i say "Well, the thing is only a few..." etc etc, i speak with the authority of an oracle, for i know these things.

 

[Erana]

Only when we have a space colony to act as the "them" in our "us and them" mentality.

 

[Goldbling]

We'll need a single "universal" (IE: spoken all across the globe) language first. I think language and acceptance of something foreign is the biggest step we'd need to cross.

Whatever the most people speak is what we should use, that way it takes less time to educate people who don't know

 

[Mrsoupcup]

It will happen just not in our life time.

 

[Zer_]

I think once we meet or discover the first alien race we'll realize that there's more important shit out there then each tiny little country.

 

[fluffylandmine]

Accept that there is no race. The lowest scientific classification is species. Nothing below and a hell of a lot above.

Next we must use some tricky finances to move to world to a newer high in peace and stability.

The rest you can use your imagination for.

 

[nohorsetown]

Oh gawd, I sure hope not. I'm not down with the New World Order, sorry.

Too much homogenization is no good, I tells ya. If we have one people, one world, one government, then where do you go if everything goes wrong? There's nowhere to hide.

If you have a field of wildflowers, different grasses, plants and bushes and yams and rutabagas and all that, and all the different types of little animals running around in there.. does the field die if the rutabagas get a disease? Prolly not. But refine that field down to just rutabagas, "all-one", then your all gets wiped out by the one killer rutabaga disease and there's nothing left.

That analogy might not be perfectly apt, so let's invoke Hitler. That gets everyone listening!

Yeah, so we've got this one-world one-people government, and Hitler comes to power. Oh wait, he's long dead. Let's call him Shitler, then. Shitler comes to power. Who's gonna overthrow Shitler? That's right, no-one. "Oh, but with one beautiful perfect world that would never happen!.." ... well, let's hope that's the case. Hope seems to be what gets us by these days.. ugh..

Of course, if we've got a zillion planets and all that sci-fi stuff, it's a bigger scale, so 'planet' prolly doesn't mean what it does now. But if we're dealing with the real world here, I totally agree with mean ol' God in the "Tower of Babel" legend (tho I'm not Christian) - basically, the idea is that everyone was coming together and building this great new monolithic reality, learning each others' languages and becoming one people.. and the Man Upstairs gets angry and smashes the whole thing and does some kinda god-magic so people can't understand each other anymore. Good move, God, you asshole! Cuz, see, different peoples and different countries and religions, and yes, WARS too.. that's what keeps us all alive. Put us all in one basket, and, well, that's a pretty scary risk to take.

 

[Thewolfman]

It'll be a miracle if we live long enough for that too happen. But even if we do survive forever I fear for the fate of humanity for a few reasons.

1.Because of the miricles of modern technology people with conditions that are deadly in nature live long enough to put their genes into the gene pool. Thus we have people with mental retardation having mentally retarded children.(in no way am i saying "kill those with problems")In a few hundred years humanity may reach a state that everyone on earth is suffering from some sort of physical or mental disibility. (See the movie "Idiocracy" for a look at what i mean)

2.Assuming that that the world is not impared by genetic issues another problem is the fact that modern technology may replace our need to do what we usually do. We wont walk cause we can use hover chairs, we wont work cause machines do everything. We could end up as living blobs where our progress foward stops before we can get to space. (See "Wally" for a rather frightening view of the world where technology does everything for us.)

3.Also with the internet "twitering" and all the other stuff that is around now it seems that peoples every thought is now brodcast for all to read. At this rate it may not be to plausible that sometime in the future we develop a "hive mind" of sorts. where no new ideas are formed because no one is an individual, just part of the hive.

4.Most likely however is that we will all blow ourselves to hell. Causing our own extinction long before we reach that point in time.

5.LEAST LIKELY is that the mayan, aztec, or whatever it is, calendar is correct and the world ends in 2012.

But i do hope that someday the human race makes it to space and can say "hey im from earth, what planet are you from?"

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

The only way we could possibly achieve Global Unity is more development of space technology...

It's sad but the last major push in space research was the cold war...

Same with the aircraft, think about it. 1909, biplanes used in warfare, suddenly they where rapidly produced and researched, 2009, most powerful war weapons ever made (ruling out ICBM's etc.)

Tank also... 1911, big steel box with holes, quite nippy massive cannon thicker steel box.

Humans seem at their best when we're at war.

If life exists outside of our solar system and we can rush to said war, the globe will unite. We have no choice... We can't fight wars in space and on earth.

If you ask me, you will find everything humanity is made of when we are at war, love, anger, hate, ingenuity, honor, courage, fear. Everything we have to offer is on display.

 

[Jimmycanuck]

Global unity may come about, but it won't mean anything. Being Terran instead of Lunar or a Marsie, will only be one more layer on an ever-expanding stack of identifiers we use to define ourselves, and hate others.

Earthers are better than colonials.
Canadians are better than other nationalities.
Albertans kick ass compared to the rest of the provincials.
Edmontonians are #1, Calgarians suck!
Riverbend people are higher class than Mill Woods trash.

We live as if location is an inverted pyramid, with the smallest piece being ourselves. The closer to the bottom point, the better we relate to one-another.

So planet is just another tier, where we will get along with eachother, because at least they are all still earth-born humans, not some colonists from Io. Next it will be solar systems, us Sol-born being preferable to those damn Alpha Centauri's. And it just goes on from there.

I agree with most points in that post.

Earthians are better than colonials,
and Canadians are better than other nationalities.
BUT
Alberta is Nova Scotia's *****.
Halifax FTW, Sydney is a horrible, dirty place.
Lunenburg over Bridgewater, which has more trash than an inner-city dump.



Besides those points, I really have no other arguements with those thoughts.

 

[Shurikens and Lightning]

When the covenant attack us, we shall become earthlings, and beg the aliens to attack the terrorist. Once that threat is gone then we shill kick their asses and become earthlings, once settled we shall get pretty damn angry at eachother again.

Here is the perfect example, 9/11, When they attacked us, we became americans. All of us got together and all had a common enemy, white or black or latino or asian wasnt an issue because we need to become one to survive.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

pfff....Lets do it right now!

World War 3, everyone picks their own side or forms a side by themselves.

Apocalypse baby!

Whatever country or coalition of countries that already join together as one is still alive, will be the sole rulers of this planet.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

Once we begin to live on other planets we will divide ourselves again by that. But then countries and region and cities and districts, even streets will seperate who we are.
We will never be truely united.