Unacknowledged global interdependence

Nature

A prevailing and counter-productive concept is that survival is insured by insulation and independence. This fails to acknowledge global interdependence as a present-day fact. Such egocentric understanding is manifest among irresponsible technological leadership as the philosophy of survival of the fittest; it results in the energy and other resources of technological systems being directed away from the meeting of real human needs and diverted into the duplication of non-essential goods. Conversely, it is manifested at the grassroots level in a sense of helplessness and victimization, or isolation from external sources of power and goods.

Claim

In the midst of the emergence of the "global community", the community values of adults have remained parochial and nationalistic. There is no question of consciously adopting a positive stance towards collective experience and the traditions which contribute to common wisdom; no adequate means for symbolic expression of world citizenship; and no conscious demonstration, whether at the individual or the community level, of either their interrelatedness or their self-identity.