“Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.” —Carl Sagan
I know this will sound blasphemous to hundreds of years of cultural norms concerning the exclusivism of family and heteronormative romanticism, but I have started to realize that the broadly accepted belief in “blood is thicken than water” and “the one”, while emotionally comforting and convenient in their own right, are far from the highest forms of love. Both in their ideal forms prevent all who are “external” from having the unconditional love and emotional intimacy that you give to your family and your partner.The truth is that these constructs exists by means of the reinforced belief that all of the parties included are more special, if not more important, than any other people in the world...