What follows are some further elaborations on remarks I made when I was invited to address the General Convention of the UNESCO on 9 November 2023 on the question of what humans shared in an otherwise fragmented world. The UNESCO, as is well known, was set up after the Second World War motivated by the recognition– as the website of this organization still proclaims – that only political and economic agreements between nations were not enough to bring about lasting peace between humans. It needed cultural and educational work to strengthen “the intellectual and moral solidarity of the humankind through mutual understanding and dialogue between cultures” (as the organization’s website puts it). My remarks here also pertain to the “Man and the Biosphere” program that was launched by the UNESCO about fifty years ago in 1971. But, most importantly, I wanted to honor the founding spirit of UNESCO, its mission to seek “objective truths” that could bring humanity together regardless of their religious and political differences.
What indeed do we still share in a world that sometimes appears to be so fragmented?
The irony of that question, of course, lies in the fact that it is often over what they already share that groups of humans fight one another: shared pasts, land, water, territories, animals, plants, resources and so on. The two wars in the shadow of which we think these days remind us of such conflicts. In the discussion here, I want to focus on some of the things that we do indeed share in this intensely globalized and connected world – but not as possessio…