Citizens of the World and their Religion

Abstract

The notion of a ‘cosmopolites’ has diverged quite far from its philosophical origins, but may eventually serve a similar function. The hope of a global peace or any sort of global management is probably better fulfilled in a federation or complex network of self-governing communities than in a global empire. With or without such an empire though we need some widely shared ‘morale’ or ‘religion’ that will sustain cooperation and obedience to the common good. There are many such competing ‘religions’ and utopian ideals, such that an ongoing global war between superficially distinct but also alarmingly similar power blocks (as described by Orwell) may seem inevitable. A more hopeful future would be one where bourgeois values, a new respect for other terrestrial life, and an awareness of the vastness and strangeness of the cosmos provide a backdrop for such cooperation, on Earth or out among the stars, as we can manage. The rules of trade and transport in such a future may be in the hands of something like Kipling’s Aerial Board of Control, staffed by a new sort of cosmopolitan, subject to occasional popular rebuke. Whether such an order would avoid division must be doubtful still.