Machines and cities are the Siamese twins of the modern age.  They are also the twin forces that helped to push the nation state into its strategic position of sovereign independence.

Nationalism today is a unifying force inside the frontiers of the 140 nations that presently litter and clutter the earth.  Beyond each frontier, however, nationalism has become one of the most divisive sources of misunderstanding, controversy, disruption and conflict presently cursing mankind.  In the exercise of their sovereignty the oligarchs who make policy and direct procedure in each sovereign state put national interests first.  On a planet which currently hosts 140 sovereign states this policy of putting the interests of the part before the interests of the whole results in controversy, conflict, and may result in collective self-destruction.

It is reassuring and encouraging to compare the rise of nationalism and Europeanism during the past thousand years with the rise of planetism and worldism from 1450 to 1970.  The development of nationalism and Europeanism is still incomplete, but the drive in that direction has thus far survived the fragmenting forces of self-determination and political independence which have played so vital a role in human society since the beginning of the present century.  Europeanization is still a dream rather than a reality.  The forces of regionalism, nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life.  But the ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized, accepted and put into practice.  The development of worldism seems to be following a parallel course.

Consequently, wisdom, foresight, and the acceptance of change as a major factor in all social relationships seem to justify our assumption that sooner or later man’s survival on the planet will depend on a degree of worldist thinking, association and institutionalism that will guarantee the preservation of order and decency at the planetary level.

Since conformity implies and involves a will to diversity, measures to establish and maintain order and peace would include the widest possible latitude and the utmost effort to encourage the greatest possible diversity at regional, national and local levels.  Thus diversity would become a virtue in much the same sense that conformity became a virtue in bourgeois Europe toward the end of the last century and in North America during the Joseph MacCarthy period.  Through the past dozen years American youth has reversed the trend, adopting a permissiveness under which the sky is the limit in language, clothing, sexual conduct and professional choice and behavior.