A New Pangea

We humans love to define our turf: politically, socially, geographically. In the course of our species’ evolution we’ve embraced the concept of territories, city states, empires, and countries. We’ve delineated their borders in sand, and then we’ve fought and died for them—or killed to possess them—only to have them morph into something else with time.

We draw maps and point to them as proof of a world order. But not only is the map not the territory but the territory is a figment of our collective imagination.  Even the continents are ephemeral. The super continent of Pangea once covered half the Earth then broke apart 175 million years ago to become our current fractured land masses. In the process, millions of species were cut off from each other, their members forced to follow separate paths of evolution until they no longer recognize each other.

This doesn’t have to be our destiny. The rise of the worldwide web has brought the world together into a virtual Pangea even while it also has caused fault lines across societies and through humanity. How will we define ourselves now? What grouping will we choose to live under if countries no longer hold sway?

 Perhaps in the future we will no longer label ourselves by accidents of geographic birth and borders drawn on changeable maps. With our eyes on the stars, we may finally recognize our common humanity and create a new Pangea.