A reader named Ray Storer makes a popular yet pertinent point over at the BBC NEWS Have Your Say pages:
Our common values are; We’re all human: All living on the same floating ball in the cosmos and if we don’t learn to get along with one another then the consequences will be our own doing or undoing.
Whenever a news programme brings us tidings from elsewhere in the world, they invariably begin with a map showing where they are reporting. The BBC uses a globe, which spins around from the Greenwhich Meridian, then zooms in on the flash-point of the moment (sometimes it spins the wrong way, but we can forgive that). During the Lebanon crisis, I felt there was something very disconcerting, about being reminded that we are marooned on ball of rock, immediately before watching images of the house-by-house destruction. Watching the tragic images of war in close-up, one gets lost in the complexity of the situation, and the grievances of both sides. However, the image of the globe, in all its enormous, lonely glory, streches our perspective, and we begin to look like a bunch of Liliputians.
Douglas Adams and his Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series. I think that these guys have a better conception of our world and the humans on it, compared with the Holy Books of the God in whose name we maim and kill.
Have you had a play with Google Earth? It’ll give you a similar perspective.
If you feel the world is a bit small and we are too close to conflict areas for comfort, I advise you take a train trip or two across Russia.