In my crazy dream now I see a reason why all of us might want to put up with each other, at least for awhile. A reason that makes crazy sense if you follow it through, from the right frame of reference of course.
The reason would be for all of the various, major (a negotiable variable for now) belief, and ideological/social, organizational forms of nation, monarchy, aligned group, or whatever, to say we'll tolerate others if they tolerate us, and we agree on the "no direct harm, no foul," dictum as long as every individual has the right to vote with their feet; for which, as I have already committed to, a new Federation of City States would provide means tested transportation for, as well as provision for helping those needing new habitat, to build their own new city state, wherever that can best be sited. We will all agree to all of this, but in addition, we will commit to work towards the ability have every one of these "established states" be a partner in our creation of a new migratory isthmus. And in that participation will be the implied goal of creating "The True Test."
At its most basic now (subject to technological change) is the realization that we will have to eventually build generational space ships. In more practical terms now you could think of it as making City Ships that would have to be big enough to hold what, say ten to twenty thousand people, starting out, might actually grow into in, say three or four hundred years; assuming, of course, you could get self sustaining bio systems right. And you could get fusion right. And you could get really big time, "accelerate in place" right, which could really be tough, beyond the fantastic new engineering it would require, but also because we're going to have to figure out how to have humans withstand high G loads, for relatively long durations (say even weeks at a time), so as to be able to withstand the acceleration, and deceleration, such trips would require to make them practical at all, even if you could self sustain a city for a few hundred years.
The technical details aside, though, what I am really talking about here is the idea that, if we could make such ships, what then would we do with them, and to that I would say that we, as humanity itself, should challenge ourselves. It should do this by engaging in The True Test. And all that would be is having all of our best astronomers tasked with finding the X best vectors of launching from our system, and then having at least one viable (negotiable) star system within two or three, or four hundred years of distance that we can, actually, accelerate humans to, and decelerate from. Where X is whatever number of Established States we decide are appropriate. And from that point on, each group agrees to continue to the next system in their vector, understanding that, as the distance from the home system increases, the range around each vector of advance, would also increase slowly, so that everybody would be getting a guaranteed increasing area to expand into; with everyone respecting everybody else's expansion zones.
In this way, with everyone having the best tech the entire world can provide, and everyone having been given a vector by lottery, we would see what luck, and the strengths of the particular belief systems involved, are truly capable of. We will see which of these belief systems has what it takes to survive going further and further into their own part of our immense galaxy. Creating their own realities if you will, if they choose to do so, in as much continuing isolation as they can; doing their way of life in whatever purity they think it requires, because that's what allowing for choice is all about; for both the individual, and the many.
See. I told you it was at least sorta crazy, and on a number of levels. I'd like to think, however, that it is just the right kind of crazy we need right now. A new kind of counter blast as McLuhan used to like to say. In any case, though, it is something you should be thinking about because it might be something to give you hope for an amazingly better future. There would have to be a lot of work that would have to be done to make this kind of crazy come true, and a lot of sacrifice. But it could be done. The biggest problem is in mustering the will to do it. Can you muster much of anything these days? Are you willing to get up off of your ass and do something difficult? Something that will most definitely take you out of your comfort zone?
Time will tell I guess.
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