Global Village

Patsawut Rattanakarn, Benjamarachuthit Pattani School, Thailand

A world in which all countries depend on each other and seem to be closer together because of modern communications and transport systems, a world viewed as a community in which distance and isolation have been dramatically reduced by electronic media such as television and the internet, a world considered as being interdependent economically, socially, and politically, allowing the planet to become interconnected and act as if it were a single unit is a world we are about to discuss. Some people may point to the problems associated with collective action, but the issue at hand is one of getting along with one another regardless of race, religion, language and culture. We need to embrace each other's differences with understanding and compassion towards one another without fear and hate, which lead to violence and destruction. It is true that though media such as telephone, television and, more recently, the personal computer and the internet, we are increasingly linked together across this planet of ours and this has enabled us to connect with people on the other side of the world as quickly as we contact and converse with those who inhabit the same physical space. We can now hear and see events that take place thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds and it is the speed of this electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication. This has given us the new ability to experience almost instantly, the effects of our actions on a global scale, just as we can supposedly do in our physical surroundings. Thus we are forced to become aware of our responsibility on a global level rather than concerning ourselves solely with our own smaller communities. In a broader sense, the village represents community and the idea is that we can all have a role in shaping our global society. Looking back through other cultures and religions, there has long been a sense of connectedness between people and nature in both the spiritual way and the material way, with Buddhists believing in the oneness of everything, and belief of the Thai people, that if you take from the earth you must give something back. Unfortunately, our ignorance of these ancient beliefs has lead us into creating a divided world, in which we quarrel over petty things. This blinds us from the true fact that we are one universal conscience and that we can

flourish together on our planet only as a whole. With an organized, functioning system of trade and commerce, we can be assured of all of the necessities of life as human beings, lacking nothing that is essential to our survival, without having to attack or kill another to take what they have. Selfishness and greed separate us from each other and keep us in perpetual fear of one another, creating a society where no one wins. What happens to one will eventually happen to the whole. It is a universal law. Sure, technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past 100 years, but we as a race, lacking a strong code of morals, ethics, values and principles, can only remain in a spiritual stone age, in a constant state of conflict that accomplishes nothing but perpetual misery and suffering. A man for whom I have always had the greatest admiration, Nicola Tesla, attempted to introduce to the world his amazing system of free, wireless energy and a global transportation system that world have enabled our world to not only become globally connected but would have saved our planet from becoming the polluted, contaminated world that it is today. Tesla said in an interview in 1926, that with this system, one day we could instantly communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, that we would carry a telephone that would fit in our pocket ( today we have that the cell phone ). But, because of the greed of the wealthy industrialists of that time, Tesla was stopped from realizing his dream of giving the world free energy and bringing the world together through the introduction of his system. This small group of millionaire businessmen suppressed Tesla and promoted the systems of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, resulting in the dysfunction nightmare that we are burdened with today ( noisy, polluting gasoline driven cars, life threatening nuclear power plants, ugly, unsightly posts wires cluttering the landscape of our world, toxic smoke and fumes contaminating the air we breathe, and the list can goes on ).

Selfishness, greed, lack of money and power: if not for these, the world as we know it today would have been totally different. And it is these same conditions today, which are keeping the human race separate and divided. We cannot come together as a global community until these negative forces are removed from our planet. I chose to write on this topic with the hope that we are coming to the end of this negative cycle and are about to enter a new cycle of awakening that will bring the human race together as a global village, resulting in the healing of our collective conscience and finally allowing us to thrive in a world of peace and harmony together as a global, human family, working together to form a society of cooperative people striving for the betterment of the human race, sharing the worlds resources with one another so that there can be no more haves and have-nots.