I’m currently reading David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series. Excellent, excellent speculative fiction about a One-world government.
In this lengthy series, China takes over the world by building a massive city over its entire country, then expanding across Asia, Europe, and so on and so forth. People flock to its dictatorial stability and prosperity because they are terrified/worn out by decades of squabbling in local areas. Those who resist are crushed. (Japan gets nuked early on.) Blacks are exterminated. Religion is banned.
Individuals who worship once joining Chung Kuo are killed, as are their parents, Grandparents, children, and grandchildren.
After a few years the same is done for those who talk about non-govt-approved history.
The impetus for all this is the lack of water, food, and basic environmental destruction caused by our current way of life.
No one said that we would negotiate our way to a unified world government.
My point, however, is that (given enough time) Asians and North Americans won’t be very different. The number of languages is being slowly but steadily wittled down to one, as the quality and frequency of contact between cultures (in whatever form) increases. At the same time, the number of common cultural touchstones or reference points is exploding. For every civil war in Africa or the Balkans, there are rapidly disappearing borders in Europe and the Americas.
Acco:
Again, you’re not thinking about the big picture. War between the Israelis and the Arabs assumes that there will always be some appreciable difference between the two groups, or even that the two groups can properly be classified separately. Given enough time, intermarriage will ensure that everyone in the region has both Isreali and Arab blood and, more importantly, kin. As cultural, familial, genetic, and lingual barriers disappear, so will religious barriers. This will surely be the most unbelievable part of my argument for the devoutly religious, but I simply do not see how religious strife can continue when everyone has an otherwise common culture.
The key is intermarriage. When everyone is a mutt, politics will change (incrementally) to reflect that reality.
And this one time
at band camp
we watched tank girl
I still think that not only is a OWG likely, but unavoidable, provided that individuals continue to desire progression in comfort, luxury, and so on. It will be the only way, realistically, to get a successful space program up which includes humans on it.
Is a confederate group of independant nations serving under one blanket of rules really so outlandish to everyone here?
The number of languages is decreasing? Cite please. I don’t claim the number is increasing, but how the hell do you arrive at the conclusion that it’s headed for one? Here in PA, the Pennsylvania Dutch still speak Pennsylvania Dutch. There a plenty of people in Ireland still fluent in Gaelic. Neither of these languages is needed. They exist only because of cultural pride.
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Oh let’s see-I think we can clasify the two groups based on religous beliefs. Jews- Holy book is the Torah, dietary laws forbid shellfish, pork, cheeseburgers (I know this is a vast simplification but I’m trying to make a point about cultural differences, not start a hallachic discussion)
Muslims-Holy Book is the Koran, dietary laws forbid pork and alcohol.
Again, conflict between Muslims and Jews goes back to the founding of Islam. Actually, there were LESS differences during Muhammed’s life. Roughly 500 years after he died, a group of Muslims “found” a “lost” document. The Pact Of Umar reccomended all kinds of discrimination against Jews and Christians.
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BullSh*t! To many Jewish families, a child who marries outside the faith is dead. I assume that many Muslims follow a similar practice. There will be some intermarriage, but this will be between Jews and Muslims who believed religion to be unimportant to begin with. The orthodox groups of both faiths will remain unchanged.
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The USA is pretty thorouhly homogenized. Religous differences are not going away. A person does not have to be devoutly religous to see this, just realistic. No faith is going to discard its culture and beliefs because of Big Macs. There may not be suicide bombings by zealots here, but religous differences remain
The important part of the quote is that you admit that you don't understand how the fighting and the hatred can go on when two groups have so much in common.
In Spain, there was a golden age for Jews. They and their faith were accepted at all levels in society. It lasted two hundred years. During this time, roughly the tenth and twelfth centuries, the Muslims ruling the country were tolerant of and oten friendly to the Jews. Then, Almohades gained control of Spain. He gave the Jews three choices-exile, conversion, or death. Two centuries of common culture doesn't seem to have helped them.
Of course two hundred years after that, came the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was happy to torture and kill not only Jews, but many Christian sects that were declared heretical due to minor differences in belief or ritual.
If you examine history, it becomes clear that a common culture does not eliminate religous differences. You may have trouble understanding why it happens, but you can't deny that it happens.
Not to hijack this into a book review, but I’ll simply disagree – I read the first novel and was so nauseated that I simply refuse to read the others. Aside from a formulatic “overthrow the tyrants” plot and some gratuitiously graphic horrors, the characters were taken from the “sinister Fu Manchu” school of scheming Asians/noble Aryans from the late '50s and early '60s. Bleagh.
That’s certainly true – and given current circumstances, it might well be the United States which steamrolls over everyone else to form a OWG (much to the delight of certain radicals, no doubt).
Good point. The Italians and the Irish in American cities used to hate each other, but now that so many Italian grandmothers have Irish grandchildren and vice versa, it’s all good.
Sorry to disagree with the hijack, Rjung, but I have to disagree. I’ve found the books to be much more morally nuanced than that, even though I was disappointed by the 6th book, and haven’t read the 7th, but hear it was supposed to be really bad. I did enjoy the first 5, even though you’re right, and some of the violence was gratuitious.
Let’s remember that there’s a difference between Global Government and Global Governance. We are seeing increasingly more global governance…environmental standards, trade pacts, mutual defence treaties, multinational NGOs, etc. But that is unlikely to lead to a global government for the forseeable future. Sure, at some point all bets are off, since we really can’t predict what will happen. I mean, imagine if strong AI is ever developed. What is that going to do to our projections of global government?
But even if things carry on more or less recognizably, even if NAFTA, the EU, Japan, Russia and China united in some form of federal system there are still going to be pockets outside the “world” government. Switzerland could be one. Even if 99% of the planet is united there are still going to be pockets that don’t recognize it. Unless they are crushed by force they will remain independent for generations. And I have a sneaking suspicion that constitutional democracy is going to prevail for the long term…and so when New Caledonia refuses to federate with the rest of us, we’ll shrug our shoulders and let them.
But it is true that we are losing languages at a fantastic clip. Not major languages, but minor ones. There are hundreds of tribal languages that are only spoken by a handful of elderly people, and in a generation they will be gone. There are plenty of others that are being taught to kids, but not as their first language…they are being kept as mementos or badges of pride. But many of these won’t survive for the long term. Yes, some minor languages might hang on for hundreds of years as family languages, but most will become extinct.
It seems to be part of an evolutionary process in history. Villages to Small fiefdoms to city states to confederated states to Nation States… etc.
As resources shrink and population grows we have to work together and manage not just small territories but the whole planet.
I believe it will not based on the UN Model. For it to work Countries must willingly give up certain powers but maintain others (much like states and Provinces in a nation) The New Government would have to have representatives from each nation and vote in a democratic manor, Vetos would probably have to go.
Sounds pie in the sky but hey.
As for those who oppose on the grounds they are afraid this is part of a Satanic conspiracy, let me ask you what you would think of a group who refused to act in the interest of others because Saturn was not in its zenith and Taurus was in ascension?
There’s a difference, I think, between asking whether there will be a one-world government and whether there will be a permanent one-world government. In the past, characters like Genghis Khan have occasionally popped up and created vast empires, but they didn’t last long. Since ruling the world is administratively possible these days (which it wasn’t for most of history) I can conceive of some future conquerer declaring himself Overlord of Earth or something, but I doubt he’d create a lasting regime.
Of course, our friend SPOOFE has already declared himself Overlord of Earth, but he seems to be ruling with a light hand…
I don’t have a cite for culture disappearing, but I think a broad case can be made for it. This is hardly scientific, but listen to the accents of 20 year olds verses accents of 80 year olds. In general, the newest generation sounds much more like television accents. I am not saying that a good wholesome southern accent will die quickly, but 200 years from now, everyone will sound much more similar.
Or, if that argument doesn’t appeal, look at the smaller scope. 40 years ago, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York looked, acted, and felt entirely different. Now, you can tell Toronto from Chicago only by noticing that the big chain bookstore which serves Starbucks coffee is called Chapters instead of Barnes & Nobles.
Personally, I think it’ll take a llloooonnnnggggg time for there to be a OWG. To many people would be opposed to it. I would be one of them.
On the other hand, I await the day when the UN desperately sends a colony ship to Alpha Centauri and the colonists split into diff…oh wait, I’'m getting reality and fantasy confused again, aren’t I?
It was…they met on election day, and didn’t come home until the next morning. The McCoys wouldn’t allow Roseanna to have Johnse there, so they moved in with Devil Anse Hatfield, who refused to allow his underage son to marry, but allowed the two to live there. Johnse was never faithful to Roseanna, and she eventually went back to her family, after giving birth. Her daughter died when she was no more than two, I believe.
I’ve always been of the mind that the (ominous voice)One World Government would actually be named SuperCorp, Inc. or something along those lines. William Gibson’s mankind seems more plausible to me than Star Trek’s. The increasing trend of various governments becoming tools of multinational businesses certainly seems to support it.
