A Barrierless World: Character Strengths and Peaceful Steps Toward Global Harmony

In this chapter, we identify the two typical visions humans have developed for how to attain worldwide peace, neither of which has worked, and in their place, we argue for a barrierless world that encompasses global human belonging while also enabling people to retain and treasure their local identities. The two prototypical, failed notions are that (1) nations should not go to war even though each retains its power to deter aggression from others—consistent with the principles of the Peace of Westphalia and (2) all countries unite and become one big country encompassing all of humanity—a lofty idea that implies that people must give up their historic national social identities, which history shows they do not easily do. Therefore, we propose a third model that shows promise of working. In it, people achieve a sense of global identity and citizenship, and simultaneously sustain and treasure their national and ethnic identity. In doing so, they develop both a local and a global sense of belonging. Thus, the territorial imperative may be mitigated through the development and fostering of character strengths in individuals and leaders such as creativity, teamwork, fairness, compassion, and a perspective encompassing a world-minded value orientation. This would involve, over time and perhaps several generations, a sense of interdependence by the engagement of global institutions and entities such as the United Nations, NGOs, and other transnational entities to promote and strengthen global human belonging with active and purposeful engagement by all.