World Government

A friend and I were talking about the hypothetical situation of a world government. The conversation started when I came across a video about Hiroshima on YouTube. Of course I am aware that the lack of moderators on the site makes YouTube a troll haven, and unsurprisingly came across the odd comment proclaiming that the Japanese deserved the atomic bomb attack. Now whether it was necessary for America to drop the bomb or not is not the issue, but to say that innocent people who were merely going about their daily business deserved to be either vaporised, receive third degree burns or radiation poisoning was going a tad too far, especially as many of the victims were children who had no say in what their government were doing. I will not deny that the Japanese Army were pretty brutal during the Second World War, but it is unfair to put the entire population of a country into the same category. I feel the same way about the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. A number of attacks on behalf of the Israeli army and government took place at the beginning of this year, and a worrying number of my friends joined online groups entitled “death to Israel” or similar. They had not bothered to do their research, because if they did, they would have known about the Israelis that were exiled from the country for their refusal to fight for a cause they did not believe in. (Israel has a compulsory military service.)
Anyway, it is for this reason I mentioned to my friend that I was opposed to the concept of countries (Think John Lennon’s “Imagine”). Because if religion was the main cause of rivalry and war in this world, countries came a firm second. Somebody once said that we were all people before somebody drew a line on a map and called it a country, and I couldn’t agree more. People hear a statistic about the British, and assume we are all the same. It’s upsetting that so many people will have formed an opinion about me before even knowing anything about me, purely based on the combination of earth, grass and concrete on which I was born. You would think that, in the 21st century, people would have matured a lot more than our bigoted ancestors, but many still hold the archaic belief that all stereotypes are true.
My friend then told me that I sounded like an anarchist, which is certainly true, but I am not an anarchist. You could say that I sympathise with the ideology, but I don’t think it could work, certainly not in this current situation. So I suggested a global government. An elected leader of the world. It sounds farfetched, heck you could even call it stupid, but it was a moment of fantasy which generated a conversation. The world will no longer be divided into countries, what used to be countries will be a collection of states, much like the United States, so each one would have its own laws, but there will be certain laws which every country has to follow. Certain things such as war and theocracy would be illegal. Each state would elect their own equivalent to an MP but on a global scale, so these “Members of Global Parliament” would deal with the issues in their constituency (formerly their country), and raise concerns within their constituency with the global government. The situation in North Korea will be dealt similarly to how the allies dealt with Germany after the war. It would be occupied until it can sort itself out, with their own elected assembly.
So obviously this concept is flawed. For one, how would elections go about? We’re talking about more than 6 billion people, so counting votes would be a nightmare. Also, although it is an elected government, you cannot really be pro-democracy and pro-global government. It would be like forcing everyone to get along, or else... as nothing else seems to work. So the whole idea is crazy. But it is something to think about nonetheless.
In reality of course, there will always be something that sets people against each other.
In reality, people need to grow up.
Sad, but true.