Universality

For a long, long time I was infatuated with the concept of one world-one government. The idea that we could all somehow come under a single government, an entity governing all of earth, as one. I had imagined multiple scenarios in which such a government could come to fore, most of them involving an adversary bigger than anything we had ever faced. I was so much in love with the idea of it, that even after I had read Balaji Vishwanathan‘s answer on Quora about the same, I found myself resenting the answer, the counter-argument. But then, something else happened.

Universality, the desire for earth as one is bad. Why? Because along with it comes the desire to abhor individuality.

I was talking to a friend of mine about religion, and my views on it; about how I was an atheist Hindu, and how lucky I was that I could be one; about how Islam, and Christianity were two of the most dangerous religions on the planet; about how millions had been killed, and millions converted by the people in charge of these religions. It was when I was thinking about the conquests, that I realised the thoughts I had about seeing earth as one, will not be possible without a conquest of some sort; and having earth under a single government, would result in a conscious/sub-conscious desire to mould most of the population in that one image, which whoever is in power considers suitable.

That was when I found my beliefs shattering, and the arguments dissolving.

Throughout our history we have had many-a-great massacres when people decided to take over the world, or even when they found a new place, and deemed the inhabitants of the land unfit, their ways crude, and or evil. It was not anybody’s fault, after all the victors always write their histories, but it becomes hard to argue against the fact that we as individuals are so bound by the rules of the societies we grow up in, or the belief-system that we develop over time, that anything different from it seems wrong, something we could change, something we could make better. The fact is we can’t, or rather, we shouldn’t.

Individuality is beautiful, it brings newer, brighter shades to an otherwise monotonous world. Imagine a world without the variations, imagine a world in your colour, imagine a world as per your wishes, and then walk through it, and then, hopefully realise the beauty in blemishes.