Dear CAP students,

Its great to be back writing another blog post after the very candid discussion surrounding human unity today. Today we revolved around two different theories of global humanity and how global citizens can be realistically modeled.

Our dear friend Judith Butler, or Judy as I call her, navigates with fine brush strokes how humans are valued by other humans. In a quick thirty pages, Judy theorizes that humans value one another based on similar identity, in other words we value the people who are in our interpretive community. In short I am me because I am not them. With this identification, she also suggests that we as humans can show our solidarity through understanding all lives, including the ones that are popularly demonized, have a spiritual core.

After this painfully academic discussion we then moved onto the theme song from the 2015 Pan Am games. The theme of this anthem was quite different as it promoted an image global unity through the idea that we have all have the ability to simultaneously unite as one people. The song incited people to rise against indifference and stand up for a human essence that binds us strongly together.

I have always seen humanity as a single entity that has an underlying spiritual dimension encompassing everyones soul. Speaking to that single entity, I always believed that the world needed parallel values in order to establish a single cooperative society, however, I realize that parallel values uniting humanity may not be what Judy truly wants or is arguing for. Although through my understanding of her work and seeing value in every human life, it makes sense to me that if everyone has correlating sets of morals that we all live by, we could potentially create a world where all human life has the same value. I know that this idea is completely an idealist approach to human value but the whole philosophy of human value could be is idealist as well.

I would love comments about cosmopolitan values, and thinking about this I wonder if there are any current underlying values that eclipse current cultural differences? Or would there have to be influence or coercion to make a set of values the norm?