To the stars

As political entities grow, from individual to household to city to country and beyond, their goals expand in parallel.

Aristotle notes in the Politics that at the level of the city (polis), the smallest self-sufficient entity existing in his day, the citizens ought to be truly united in pursuit of their common goal of promoting the good life.

Perhaps the city could self-sufficiently pursue the good life in his day. With the advent of nuclear weapons (at the latest), this dynamic changed: we no longer can be secure in our pursuit of the good life without engaging in some kind of multi-city strategic alliance--typically a country.

In fact, even beyond the security requirement, the challenges of today require greater common effort to solve. Ultimately, unless we're comfortable with individual countries establishing colonies in space to the exclusion of others, the effort to move off-world will require some unified planning. Thus, we have to take a broader view of our "fellow-citizens" than Aristotle did.

No longer can we simply be citizens of a city or a country. The future lies in recognizing our common humanity.