It is a small world. It sounds like a cliche but it really is not. More and more we are seeing the impact of actions around the world having reverberating implications geographically far away. Some of the largest threats that face us now and in the future are global threats.
It is about time we start thinking of the world as just one big community. If everyone felt like a child in Africa, or a grandparent in India, or a farmer in China, were in fact our neighbors, then it would be a heck of a lot more difficult to ignore their needs.
Despite how much smaller the world has become with our myriad of means for communication; the internet, television, phone, etc. we have yet to warm to the idea that we are all in fact now one big community.
Social websites have become a place to congregate, Facebook is the next big open source hit, MySpace, if it were a country, would be the 8th largest in the world. We are all neighbors. Collaboration in the workplace, where an MBA grad in China starts work on a project when a co-worker in Canada goes to sleep, has become the next big wave in workplace productivity. The world is shrinking, which is both a good and bad thing. It is up to us, however, to start spreading the word - we will not stand by and watch our neighbor suffer and die.
This idea is somewhat difficult to wrap your head around but Bono's organization ONE sums it up best by simply saying we are all One. I also like Desmond Tutu's description of the word Ubuntu, which means 'I am because you are'. We are more than ever interconnected, which means like never before we are able to work together in harmony. Lets just embrace our small world with our large community. It is here to stay.