Our global civilization

I was surprised when I realized that a global civilization isn’t something that we have figure out how to create; it already exists. It’s in its early development stage. It’s not clear whether it’s in the process of emerging or if it has already emerged as an embryonic whole.

This is just the reality we find ourselves in. As our society evolves, we inevitably move closer together. Our technologies connect us, both physically and emotionally, and as our relationships become more and more complex, our society becomes more like the natural systems that we emerged from.

Giving it a name

We don’t recognize it as a real thing because there is no central authority that we can call the global civilization. There’s no President of the Global Civilization. It’s not a world government in the way we usually think about those things. It’s self-organizing and decentralized.

What does it consist of?

It’s a loosely coupled collection of diplomats, cultures, religious organizations, multi-national corporations, international laws and trade agreements, traditions, international organizations, and individuals.

Think of all the embassies, international agreements, laws and treaties that tie our countries together politically. Add in multi-national corporations with supply chains that span the globe, as well as transnational religious organizations and charities operating across borders. Then, add all the individuals, connected together through the internet, and you can start to see our global civilization is coming together.

A cooperative civilization

A civilization is not something we can create ourselves; it has to emerge naturally from the ways we interact with each other and how those ways of interacting get encoded into our cultures. Our global civilization is emerging from the ever-increasing interactions that we’re having without regard to borders, especially our cooperative ones. The more we cooperate and collaborate across borders, the stronger our global civilization will get.

At this stage, the members of the global community compete with each other more than they cooperate. Even when we cooperate, it is usually to define the rules of competition.