People have an interesting characteristic - when they face no significant danger, when they have neither an opponent nor a struggle to engage in, their ability and desire to cooperate significantly diminish. They fail to agree on a common goal they wish to achieve. Instead, they begin to bicker and argue over trivialities and... start looking for an enemy. Although we often speak about the need for peace and calm, one of our fundamental needs is, paradoxically, perhaps struggle... Fortunately, it doesn't always have to involve violence. People can, for example, struggle against nature. When conditions are sufficiently inhospitable, or even in the event of a natural disaster, we usually prefer to willingly cooperate with others for our collective survival rather than sabotage each other. Of course, there are exceptions, and even in such situations, there are individuals who are unwilling to cooperate or try to gain advantages for themselves through unfair practices. Usually, however, they are eventually exposed and "trampled" by the rest of the group pulling together - serves them right :-)
Once the challenging natural conditions subside, the willingness for mutual cooperation decreases, everyone goes their own way and - begins to look for a new enemy to fight against. Often, you find this enemy right next to you, you argue with your spouse or children, but if you're more insightful, you might set your sights on the neighbor. If you're clever, you can engage the whole family in the battle against the neighbor, which strengthens your bonds; you won’t argue with each other... just poor neighbor :-) However, to prevent neighborhood disputes, which history repeatedly shows could escalate into international conflicts, enlightened individuals invented sports. In sports, it's very easy to define who you're fighting against and what you're fighting for, and if you're sensible enough to limit your combativeness to the field of play, you can have a beer and a friendly chat with your artificial enemies, i.e., opponents, after the game. The advantage of sports, combined with media, is that you don’t even need to be an active athlete to see the unifying ability of sports to rally a group of people against others - you simply pick a team to support, cheer for them, and empathize with other fans in the same colors, even if just from home in front of the TV. This is clearly evident during world championships - at such times, entire nations come together, and even those who normally don’t follow sports get caught up in the atmosphere, watch the national team's matches, and momentarily forget about neighborhood disputes (unless, of course, the neighbor is of a different nationality that just defeated your team). But every championship ends, and soon the time comes when a new enemy is handy…
This was pragmatically resolved in the period after World War II when the world polarized, dividing into the capitalist and socialist worlds, NATO, and the Warsaw Pact. Back then, everyone knew who their enemy was, living in constant fear of a possible third world war, but at the same time, actually in relatively stable conditions and safety, because both sides of the barricade kept each other in check. We all "fought for peace" back then, and it beautifully unified both sides, composed of many nations within their communities - there were, of course, disruptors of this unity, but the security forces usually knew how to deal with them. At that time, there was a race in armament and in conquering space, and because there was a rival and the communities were sufficiently large and powerful, it was often possible to achieve progress and results that we could only dream of after the dissolution of these powerful groupings. Even with relatively primitive means but with greater commitment, it took only about ten years from setting the goal for a man to reach the Moon - humanity has not managed anything so ambitious in such a short time since, and unless someone presents us with a sufficiently powerful enemy, we might find it hard to ever achieve similar feats again.
To unite humanity a bit and move it forward again, we might have no choice but to find a suitable enemy. The efforts of environmentalists look quite promising, even though they sometimes struggle to rally the masses, because here, we are both the enemy and the fighter :-) It's amusing when we call for a fight against climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, while flying around the world in jets :-) So, a good attempt, but we are reluctant to give up exotic vacations, we don’t want to do without goods from China, and walking somewhere or cycling? Well, maybe in the summer, but certainly not in winter, when we want to be warm at home, and it actually doesn't matter to us what we use for heating :-) Please, suggest another enemy!
As I'm accustomed to being prepared, I would have one for you. Actually, make that two. They are enemies that a whole range of Sci-Fi movies deal with - they usually also show the kind of unifying effect such a threat would have on civilization. Yes, the first of them is a sufficiently large asteroid or planetoid hurtling on a collision course towards Earth. The second is any alien possessing the capabilities to wipe out our population. In both cases, therefore, something "from above" that initially, most people won't even have a chance to see, but according to the evidence presented, it will be approaching. Although it is evident from some blockbuster movies that humanity could, under dramatic circumstances, split any alien body hurtling towards Earth in half, and it would then miss us at a safe distance, I personally hope that this form of destruction of our home won't be on the agenda for a long time, because I'm not at all sure that it would turn out as nicely in real life as it did for Hollywood filmmakers. If more individuals were not certain of this, then it would also weaken the ability of this threat to unite us. Therefore, I am convinced that the absolutely ideal version of our enemy is only and exclusively an alien. It must let us know that it has enough power and determination to teach us a lesson, but at the same time, there must be hope that we can defeat it if we all join forces. This could be achieved, for example, by learning about the danger well in advance (maybe we catch the transmission of an interstellar fleet, target it, and calculate that it will reach the Solar System in a few decades), which gives us room for preparation and escalates our efforts to even higher speeds than those at which the teams in the Apollo program worked - this time, however, the entire world would collaborate. That would be a wonderful time - we would not be fighting each other, we would focus on a common task, and the enemy... might not even need to exist if someone very wise could simulate it convincingly enough and provide "irrefutable" evidence :-)
---
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Relevant comments will be published here.