The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.[1] All of us belong to humankind, but our society has yet to grasp the full meaning of this spiritual truth. Without understanding this principle, it is impossible to fathom or envision what is happening to society--what one great thinker called the ``planetization'' of humankind. As a result, humankind has yet a long way to go before we can finish the transition from the old world order, organized along the lines of ``sovereign'' and ``independent'' nations, to the new nonviolent civilization that is now only in its embryonic stage. Without the principle of the oneness of humankind, it is indeed difficult even to imagine a world ordered and governed globally through interdependent institutions of planetary scope. How can the earth become a common homeland if all of us are not fully and equally accepted as part of a single humanity? Indeed, it cannot!
The oneness of humankind is a lofty spiritual truth. Before contemplating its abstract, philosophical meaning and its higher implications, it might be instructive to look at it in more concrete terms through the scientific eyes of biology. We are a single biological species. According to a simplified rendering of contemporary biological thinking, when different communities of individuals of the same biological species stay isolated from each other for sufficiently long periods of time, biological speciation can occur[2]. This means that the distinct communities can no longer be considered a single species, for they lose the ability to interbreed viably and consistently. Humans, however, are very much a single biological species. People of every race, religion, and nationality can viably and consistently reproduce biologically with members of every other background. Indeed, today, we find that marriages between members of different ethnic and national backgrounds are steadily increasing. In fact, the offspring of such couples are potentially more healthy since there is less inbreeding and due to ``hybrid vigor''--a biological term refering to the fact that genetically diverse offspring (hybrids) are more fit for survival (vigorous) than non-diverse organisms (``mutts are healthier than pure breeds''). Hence, the unity of humankind is a biological fact.
This fundamental truth was not clear in centuries past. In those times the peoples in different parts of the planet were to some extent isolated from each other. Such isolation allowed differences of race, language, and culture to grow and to self-perpetuate. Such ethnic and cultural diversity is not in itself sufficient to generate division and conflict. Nevertheless, when hatred and violence enter the picture, the results include disunity, racism, ethnocentrism, unbridled nationalism, religious bigotry, etc.--the stuff that fuels war. Hatred and violence directed towards those who are different from ourselves is the clearest sign that the principle of the oneness of humankind has not been understood and assimilated.
The principle of the oneness of humankind implies that all people are part of a single organism. In the Bahá'í view, recognition of the oneness of mankind ``calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world--a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.''[3]
From a spiritual perspective, the concept of the oneness of humankind implies that our spiritual state is independent of our religious and cultural backgrounds. Differences of race, nationality etc. are less important to our spiritual condition than our spiritual qualities, such as our knowledge, our selflessness, and our zeal for truth and compassion. Moreover, no human being--however ignorant and sick--should be considered ``bad'' or ``evil,'' because all of us are part of humankind. The spiritually sick must be nursed back to spiritual health, through any means available, including the wise application of as much force as may be necessary to ensure social order. Finally--and perhaps most controversially--the oneness of humanity suggests that the humans alive today, those who have already died, and those of the future are one and all parts of a single, indivisible, living spiritual organism. People who have died no longer have physical bodies, but in many cases the ideas, actions, etc. that they have left for posterity continue to bear fruit even today--evidence suggesting that the living and the dead are not entirely separable.
The principle of the oneness of humankind is a central teaching of the Bahá'í Faith, and can also be found in the writings of Gandhi. The following pages discuss their respective views in greater detail.