Answering this Tribesteemup weekly question largely comes down to different ways of interpreting the question. I’ve read a number of great answers that are each framing the question in a unique and interesting way.
Are we talking about unity of a world of all lifeforms and energies? Because then the world is already united. (Thx 
Are we talking about an individual's capacity to contribute to peace among humans? (Thx 
I resonate with all these ways of framing the question and the answers other tribe members have given in response. I’m going to deliberately reach for a different way of framing the question, so as to offer a different answer.
Responding to: Is it possible to achieve unity within the human species?
I do believe unity is possible, but not sameness. We don’t want conformity, but rather ever increasing diversity within a context of harmony. We want things to keep spiraling away from the center while the center continues to hold. Things do not fall apart.
The challenge for humans has been that we are needing to continue advancing the frontier of our greatest strength, and right now we are bracing against those edges.
What Makes the Slowest Animal Most Dominant?
Well okay, snails, turtles, sloths, and snails are slower than humans, but I’m pretty sure that’s about it. Most animals are so much faster than us that our eyes can’t even fully track their movements. (I learned this trying to use a pellet gun to hit a raccoon that had attacked my dog in our yard. The darned thing was over a 6 foot fence from half-way across the yard faster than I could even blink.)
They're faster, stronger for their body size, and even more aggressive than we are -- as hard as that is to believe looking at what we’ve done with the planet.
And yet, we have clearly won the battle for dominance over what happens on this planet. How?
Community.
I know that one is especially hard to accept as true. I mean, look around. We’re constantly at war with each other. And even when it isn’t outright bombs and fighter jets, we’re just slashing each other to death each day with a constant assault of meanness, what are called microaggressions. And then there are our systems of institutionalized abuse and exploitation, best represented by politics serving only the interests of the rich (with a few special privileges allowed for penises and white skin… but mostly just the rich).
Even with all that, it’s still true.
We have had the ability to band together in groups of a size that would be impossible for any other mammalian species and work together to accomplish an aim.
Whether that aim was hunting an animal much more powerful than any of us alone, or organizing a waste management system for all homes in a city so that we didn’t poison ourselves with our own excrement, we’ve been able to get it done. As much as we fight, we sometimes communicate, cooperate, and think as a mastermind.
What If We Could Do More of What Works Best?
The natural next question is what we would be capable of if only we would lean into our strength. If community cooperation was able to get us to the level of dominance where we’re capable of destroying the planet’s ability to support most current lifeforms, might it not also help us save that life?
And I think that may be where we’re at.
I think that may be the matter at hand.
And yes, I think we can do exactly that.
We can do it by learning to appreciate diversity as a strength, whether biodiversity, cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, gender perspective diversity, etc. When we see that a system is more resilient when it is more diverse, and that this applies to us too, then hopefully we can stop treating our advantages as burdens to be overcome.
We can also learn to communicate better, and here I’m mostly talking about men. Specifically, men need to learn from women how to communicate better. Appreciate this about us, so that the entire species can benefit from it.
We can also learn to see compassion and consideration for the needs of others as strengths, not as sissified weaknesses. It does not make me less to help someone else become more, even if they don’t look like me or in any way directly reflect upon my own value. Helping others simply because we can is a mark of higher competence within this survival of the species game we’re playing. Somehow it seems we lost track of that game and started playing 'my survival/dominance within the species' instead.
I could probably go on and on like this, but I think you get the picture enough to start adding your own “we can” statements. The fact is, there is a lot of room for improvement, so many things we can do to work together more effectively.
Progress
But let’s not be too hard on ourselves. There’s a lot we’ve already done. We must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good, to where we can only ever condemn ourselves, and never celebrate our many successes along the way to an ever advancing frontier.
To quote Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The line of progress is never straight…. Focusing on the ultimate goal and discovering it still distant, they declare no progress at all has been made…. [yet] A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters.
He’s speaking of a particular type of progress here, but more broadly speaking I think the same idea applies, only there isn’t even any finality ever available. There is only the series of “short-term encounters,” and who we each contribute ourselves as within those daily encounters.
And who are you contributing yourself as on a daily basis?
Are you cooperating with others or condemning them?
Do you greet the imperfections and wrongdoings of others with a desire to punish or with a more compassionate desire? (adrienne maree brown has eloquently stated: “We are so deeply socialized into punitive systems that it feels impossible to us to consider that when someone has caused harm, harming them might not be the move.”)
Do you face your own imperfection with gentleness and patience?
Do you truly value encountering different opinions, particularly when they come from a different set of fundamental assumptions about the world? Do you assume you’re right and they’re wrong and that you just have to convince them before there can be peaceful relations between you, or can you peacefully find the workable goals within continuing differences of values and perspectives? Can you build an irrigation system with people who marry off their children at the age of 12, for example?
I’m not saying you should do this or that. I’m simply observing that the more we have the ability to answer questions like these a certain way, the more we are personally able to contribute to our species working together for survival. Now one might argue that some principles are more important than survival. I’m not addressing that, but only the question of the path to achieving the unity necessary to keep our species alive.
And so I now turn the question to you. How do you frame the title question, and what’s your answer? Share in the comments below or in a post of your own.
(Photo source: Pixabay)
Resteems always appreciated!