78/100 How to Be in a World of Strangers
A Question on Ethics
A basic fact that continually astounds me comes from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.
“…if I walk down New York’s Fifth Avenue on an ordinary day, I will have within sight more human beings than most of those prehistoric hunter-gatherers saw in a lifetime.”
Hold this: our world today is vast.
Think of this the next time you are in the parking lot of traffic, see a map, or listen to the news: those are lives, as human and as soft like your own.
And so, as the subtitle of the book hints, how is it that we should live in this world of strangers? How should anyone one of us live knowing that there are so many people who are not you than there are who actually are you. The world literally out numbers you.
What is the best way to live with the implications of this basic and staggering reality?
Move soon,
Trevor