Is there a chance that a single defining moment can bring us all together? Would contact with an alien species be enough to fully unite humanity once and for all? Would it cause all of us to put aside our differences and bitter disagreements and come together as one?
Here is what I believe
Humans have a single culture and this culture has many various sub-cultures with many different variations depending on where we live, how we were brought up, and influenced by the people and events in our lives. As humans, we associate ourselves with whatever closely matches or benefits the sub culture we live our lives by. I think this separation ultimately holds us back from truly becoming a unified species. We are in essence, a threat to ourselves.
In the US, aside from cultural differences between other countries and politics, race has always been a topic of controversy and discussion. Even though the world is a lot better place today then it was, incidents regarding race have constantly come up as a driving point for conflicts.
As a human being and a citizen of the world, I believe that if one day, we were to discover an alien species, not necessarily be attacked by one, but just locate and identify one. It would peak our interest as a species, but not necessarily unify us. It would ignite our passion and curiosity to work together to learn more and advance our study of the species, but would not extinguish our differences.
Bill Clinton himself said "It may be the only way to unite this increasingly divided world of ours … think about all the differences among people of Earth would seem small if we feel threatened by a space invader." Ronald Reagan made a similar comment where he said “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside of this world.” This however, is assuming we were attacked though, by an alien race. In my belief an incident such as this would only unite us temporarily. We would come together to eliminate a single threat to our existence, but if we were to rise above and defeat them, we ourselves would eventually divide again and focus on that which benefits us individually.
This is not to say that unity among our people doesn't exist or won't happen at all. Everyday there are amazing examples of humanities ability to unite. Pockets of us, such as myself, cherish the idea of a unified world. The Steemit community is an example itself of this belief. We as a whole, have a unified outlook and support each other across borders, religions, beliefs, and cultures - This makes me believe it could happen one day.
I look forward to the day where we don't designate ourselves by the color of our skin, the flag that we live under, or the religion we believe in. Black, white, yellow, or brown we are all the same inside - we are all human.
Please let me know what you think in the comments below
