The first step from pure egoism to an enlarged identity is concern for family (both blood ties and love ties), then to clan (the extended family), to tribe, and to nation. This last step gives us ethnic identity. Two of the Ten Commandments tell us not to kill or steal from fellow citizens of our nation. That is the law, both in the Old Testament and in modern society. But it does not prohibit killing or looting in wars with other tribes or nations. The Old Testament God often urges genocides during the wars of conquest of Canaan (Palestine).
An obvious next step would be to identify with humanity as a whole, and finally with life on Earth as a whole. The prohibition of killing and heartless exploiting would then extend to these new realms. These steps have not yet been taken, except by an enlightened few. What would such a transition entail?
It would be a step from Ethnos to Ethos, from a limited community of belonging, to a sense of universal belonging; from conventional morality to principled morality; from Kohlberg’s Stage 5 to his Stage 6. It would mean a full recognition of the common human essence (the theory of mind) and thence, beyond that, of full respect for life as a universal value.
In the Ethnos mode, we identify with individuals who share certain characteristics with us; it is a system of extended egoism, of extended or inclusive fitness in terms of sociobiology. That theory claims that we so act as to preserve the survival of our (selfish) genes. In ethnic theory, we assume a common (racial) kinship with our fellow state citizens. But there is a snag: most modern states are multi-ethnic. So do we identify with our fellow citizens regardless of racial kinship (so-called civic nationalism), or with our presumed kinship group (ethnic nationalism)? This has been the basic problem in modern ethnic wars, either for secession or (more modestly) autonomy.
There is another snag in the ethnic kinship assumption: a great deal of genetic mixing has occurred throughout history across previo~sly homogeneous ethnic groups. No one has traced the family trees in detail (that would be a gargantuan task), but there is enough evidence to show that considerable mixing has occurred. Whenever there is intercultural contact, whether friendly through trade or hostile through war, genetic mixing has occurred. (Some wit has quipped “soldiers drop their genes, or jeans”, however you spell it.) So the kinship link between ethnic co-members is a very thin link of commonality.
What about other links? Language, territory, cultural customs, common history? Let us examine them one by one.
Everyone of the 200 or more languages across the world has several dialects. These vary continuously from each region to adjacent ones. Initially the variations are slight, but when one considers the extremes of the spread, speakers of the dialects may have trouble understanding each other; then we are tempted to say that these extremes speak different languages. For example, among Slavic languages, there is a continuous variation from Czech to Slovak to Polish to Ukranian to Russian. As a Czech by birth, I can sometimes understand Polish, but have great trouble with Russian, even apart from the different alphabet. So again, we have mixing and varIation in language, as in kinship. (An example of mixing is French words in English introduced since the Norman conquest, and now English words in French, both in Quebec and in France.)
Territory? Political (state) borders have changed through history by wars and conquests, secessions and state mergers. Alsace-Lorraine has gone from being part of France to being part of Germany and back again. Poland was divided into three parts between Prussia, Austria, and Russia in the 19th century, reunited in 1918, then moved Westward like a “nation on wheels” in 1945, when the USSR annexed the Eastern part and gave Poland part of East Germany instead. And the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia and a large territory from Mexico. Again, we detect no stability here, only constant change.
Cultural customs, like language, seem to change in continuous manner from one locality to another, regardless of borders. E.g. Vietnamese and Thai music and musical instruments have great resemblance to each other, while Russian and Ukrainian customs (e.g. holiday feasts) have both similarities and differences. And for claims of common history, examine our section on territorial changes (shifting borders) in a previous paragraph.
If we want to go from Ethnos (of dubious definition) to Ethos (human commonality), what similarities can we quote? Obviously we are all members of the same biological species, Homo sapiens. According to almost all religious traditions, we are all children of the same God, and therefore brothers and sisters. We share 99.99% of our genes. Someone has figured out that each one of us is at least the 50th cousin of every other human individual. We all speak a language with a similar grammar and syntax, only the vocabulary is different. We can all do basic arithmetic unless mentally impaired. As far as we know, we all have similar mental content, feelings, reasoning and will. As Shakespeare has Shylock say in “Merchant of Venice”, “When we are cut, to we not bleed?”
Homo sapiens and several other early-enlightened religious and secular advanced thinkers. It is our only hope for any future at all. This is my version of the theory of His Second coming. It will mean, not the End of Time, but the Beginning of Time.