A common vision

I first started writing this is as a comment in response to a comment on the previous post, but realized there was so much to say, that I might as well make it a separate post in itself!

One of the things I should clarify about the post below was a statement I made about people, over time, growing to share a common understanding about some basic questions. Let me say straight off that this does not, in any sense, mean that we will all come to agree about everything - most definitely not! Diversity of opinion will always exist, and it is what makes us essentially human, and what makes each of us a unique individual. So let's be absolutely clear about that.

What I did mean, however, was that we would all agree on some fundamental issues. We'll get to some examples shortly, but let's first make sure that this scenario does not sound totally inconceivable. It might help to take a look at society right now, and realize that this is true even now to an extent - for example, most of us would agree that every human on earth has some basic human rights - something thats starkly different from what existed a 100 years ago, when a large part of the world was not even considered "human". Most of us would agree that science and technology are key to the further progress of humanity, and that therefore it should be an intrinsic part of our program for progress. Most of us would agree that education is important for development, and that therefore some amount of resources (though we might disagree on how much exactly) should be set aside to promoting education. Therefore we see, even now, that almost every country on Earth believes in the above, and institutes policies and allocates resources in a way that in some form reflects the agreement that the majority of its population have on these issues. And these are only a few of many such examples. So agreement amongst a majority on something is not a theoretical, abstract proposition - its a hard reality.

However there are still some very basic things people don't see eye to eye on. People fundamentally disagree on the direction in which society should move. There exist very basic divides on questions of life, purpose, values etc. Religion and politics tend to divide us into polarizing camps. Stances on issues dictate our political leanings - and therefore divide us and prevent consensus. An overriding selfish concern for one's own well-being, and one's country's well-being over the well-being of others means that the way we fundamentally view the purpose of life differs.

But given that even over the last 100 years, we have achieved a lot of commonality of vision - on things such as racism, basic human rights, equality of men and women etc - and that this is still evolving and growing; and given that with each passing year we interact more and more with people from vastly different cultures, people with diverse viewpoints, and so come to see all the different dimensions of any question; and given that we're increasingly faced with problems where we HAVE to come together with a common objective to solve (climate change is a great example, but there are many others) - I see no reason to believe that at some time in the future we would not have achieved even greater commonality in terms of the basic questions, and in terms of a program for society to move forward. Of course, there would still exist great diversity in viewpoints - and that always would, and should. In fact, that is our great strength as human beings, and something that would be exploited by a system where we can come together in respectful consultation and discussion to find a solution to any problem. But commonality of vision is something that I do see coming about in a greater and greater way over time.

What time scale are we talking about here? I don't know. But it will be a slow, gradual, organic change, and so not noticeable on time scales that we're used to dealing with in our lives. It is only by looking at different points in history separated by several hundred years, and extrapolating based on current circumstances, that we can realize that in the long term, this is not such a far-fetched possibility.

By the way, most people agreeing on something is not the same as everyone agreeing on something. And let's understand that mathematically, the former is infinitely more probable than the latter. Gauss got it all - most things in this world have a normal distribution. There will always be people who dissent from the norm. So let's have no illusions about getting every single person on earth on the same page - that will never happen. But there is always a majority opinion, a mean to the curve - and what we're really after is shifting that mean. And that is not all that difficult over a long period of time - and in fact has been a continual process in our history.