The former is the answer to the latter here. Humanity is trending to a more unified, globalized, monolithic series of structures. Smaller cultures, countries and people groups have been conquered, dimmed, and "globalized". You can easily observe this in art and architecture.
To be clear: you need both. Ironically, thinking that you can exist without a defensive military response is the real failure of imagination :/.
Humans used to exist in small roving bands.
Now we are organized into nation-states.
I don't see a truly compelling reason why that
trend towards greater organization can't continue.
It's reasonable expectation for a person to care about the others in their "small, roving band." Evolution has selected for those that do, or at least it did for most of human history.
But how far does that scale? Can we truly care about everybody in a village of 100? What about a territory with 1000 people? What about a small country of 100,000? What about a nation with 1,000,000 people or 1,000,000,000 people?
We're not robots. If we were, then larger organizational structures would perhaps clearly be the way. Look at all the wasted, duplicated effort between countries and states.
But we're humans and we need some level of empathy and compassion for our fellow group-members for this stuff to work. When the organizational structure gets large enough it becomes dominated by cliques, infighting, etc. Now you just have warring nation-states with an extra level of abstraction.
I think we're seeing this right now in the United States. This country is too big, too populous, too divided to be effective any more. Unified successes like Webb are quickly becoming the exception, not the norm.
We now have the benefit of awareness. We can know what is happening to far away people. If anything, the current obvious changes in climate/weather and the associated impacts are evidence that we should have some motivation to care about things that impact those beyond just our own group (even though selfishly speaking it is because we know it ultimately will benefit our local group too).
When there is a major disaster, you will see people with very differing opinions drop their "simple" conflicts and work together. There is some recognizable human drive to help those visibly in need. Or maybe it's just an instintive behavior to ensure human survival.
Really, most of our political and ideological squabbles are manufactured by "leaders", and adopted by followers because we all have too much time on our hands. If we were collectively operating in survival mode, I think we might be a more cohesive society. Not that I'm asking for that; I like comfort.
When there is a major disaster, you will
see people with very differing opinions
drop their "simple" conflicts and work
together.
But does it scale to tricky, nuanced, thorny questions?
A natural disaster is an entirely unambiguous event. We all think, "Earthquake bad. People trapped under rubble bad." and want to help them directly or indirectly. Some of us help more vigorously than others and some do nothing, but we all agree that the earthquake is bad and we would like the poor victims to suffer less.
It's harder to scale this cohesion up to tackle issues that are actually thorny and nuanced. Look at how fractured many countries were regarding COVID-19 and the vaccines, for example. Or the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict. Or whatever.
I think that's a failure of imagination, and that vision isn't one that history necessarily supports. Humans used to exist in small roving bands. Now we are organized into nation-states. I don't see a truly compelling reason why that trend towards greater organization can't continue. I am also certainly capable of imagining a world government that is responsive to the needs of people, maintains global peace and security, and focuses the vast majority of its budget towards constructive, not destructive, ends.
I recognize that this doesn't look likely in the immediate future, but:
- An alternative consisting of warring nations equipped with civilization-ending weapons is surely not the only path forward (it better not be, if we hope to stick around).
- We are increasingly faced with existential problems that require a globally coordinated response.
- Change often happens a lot faster than we think possible. The order of things is set in stone until suddenly it's washed away and everything is different.