Global Development as Road to Peace?

As a species, we find it difficult to step beyond competitive biases into authentically (and sustainably) collaborative behaviours oriented towards Global development. The rank antitheses of adversarial conflict and shared sense of community (as self-identity) are so deeply entangled in our histories, our cultures, our linguistic assumptions and our psychological experience that effective and enduring developmental goals are dramatically problematised before we even begin.

The dilemma(s) of fair and equitable development are not isolated from a generalised (and, yes, all too Utopian) ideal of peace and cooperative, constructive inter-state and inter-organisational synergy. Where the psychological as much as any cultural notion of identity and nationalism (or for that matter – corporate identity) is always already defined by difference and competition, we start to see the shape of an underlying enigma.

Peace and an enduring cooperative resonance in collaborative socioeconomic development are on the whole and despite all best efforts quite markedly conspicuous by their absence. Curiously, this is actually a subtle hint as to the complex symmetry and underlying logical substrate of any prospective and lasting or peaceful solution.