My grandfather, Leon Mourad, had a dream of seeing, one day, a unified world. While I try to articulate this dream, I will inevitable inject some of my own thoughts and interpretations. Please excuse my indulgence.
As utopic as this sounds, it is a world that we should aspire to. However, if we do not talk about work towards building it, we will never see progress and we certainly will never achieve this dream. Rome was not built in a day!
Imagine a world without border, without nationalities, without divisions... A world where an individual is not judged based on birth place, ethnic background or nationality. A world where the socio-economical background of your parents has no impact on your chances to succeed other than the effect of the gene pool you inherited. How can you even conceive judging someone based on the color of their skin or their gender or the color of their eyes?
As the French put it "Il faut de tout pour faire un monde"! Indeed this world is made up of our differences. That's what makes its beauty. If we were all clones the world would be a very boring place. We should thrive from our differences. We should embrace them and cherish them. And we should certainly not foment wars around these differences. While most wars stem from economical impetuses they are typically driven by grouping people along religious, ethnic, national, socio-economical, or other lines. It is always easy to judge and hate your enemy as a group. It is a lot more difficult when you look at them in the eyes. And grouping and judging people based on these discriminatory criteria never leads to a good end. It is easy to generalize and associate characteristics to a group. It is easy to build hatred against a group based on these characteristics.
Imagine a world where a person is judged on their own merits -AND ONLY ON THEIR MERITS -. A world where people are judged on their achievements. A world where your actions is really what matters. This world has no room for greed, shenanigans or scam. This is the world of the brave and the competent. The one who nails his math problem, not the one who needs the influence of his parents to make up for his mathematical inaptitude.
Greed, Scam and Shenanigans hurt people. They hurt the competent. They are the weapon of the less competent to gain financial leverage when on they feel they are not up to par on the subject matter. This is why it is bad. The source of the problem is the emphasis our society has put on financial gains. A large majority of the adult population associates wealth with success and pays (a different level of) respect to wealthy people. In other words we tend to stack up people based on their bank account.
The reality is that we tend to confuse, too often, happiness and wealth. I have heard that happiness was attained when you set a goal and reach it. While meeting an object brings a sense of happiness. This happiness seems to be short lived and often followed by a feeling of void. Our life turns into a chase of the next goal. It has been argued that there was a wealth threshold under which it would be difficult to be happy. I question this argument. I know that happiness is not tied to wealth. I have seen poor people laugh and smile. I have seen overly wealthy people stress over material matters. Happiness is a state of mind and soul. It has no ties to wealth. Happiness is a smile. It is taking the time to smell the roses. Happiness is a laugh. It is being content with what you have. Happiness is enjoying the company of friends. It is kissing a girth first time. Happiness is kissing your wife for the thousand time. Happiness is your national team winning the world cup. Happiness is seeing your blood and flesh succeed.
Utmost happiness is transcending oneself: It is about the other.