LEGO, I did you the favour of trying to understand your position without putting words in your mouth.

The point is this: humans are highly social creatures, notwithstanding the high proportion of antisocial types on this site.In order for humans as a species to prosper, there must be a way found to overcome the irrationality of racism and separatism. If no such way can be found, then the human species will not prosper.

And you're right, I am suggesting that if people can work out new ways of interacting, then the positive consequences are immense.

It doesn't require everyone to be rational all the time, quite the opposite - humans aren't Vulcans, we have intense emotional drives. The problem is that sometimes, we allow our emotions to be the sole means of evaluating choices.

We no longer live in a paleolithic world, or a Bronze Age world, or an Iron Age world, or a medieval world, or a steam age world. We no longer live in nomadic tribes of around 100-200 people. Our human population has increased in 2000 years (just 100 generations) from a few million to nearly 9 billion; in just 100 years (5 generations) it has gone from 1 billion to nearly 9 billion because people who did live in those worlds were able to imagine better ways of doing things and to cope with the changes that occurred. Our own country, in just over 200 years has gone from a ragtag bunch of convicted felons and their guards to a modern nation of over 24 million that people from all over the world want to live in.

Why do you think we in the modern world are so much less competent than our ancestors?

The human race is not going to prosper, Craig. Population growth is so alarming that the only things that can reduce our populations are the traditional factors of war, disease, and starvation. Racism is not "irrational." Human beings lack armour, teeth, claws, or horns. What made us the top of the food chain is that humans evolved very early in our existence the deep psychological need to form self protecting groups. The tribal social structure combined with the territorial imperative is an essential survival tool hard wired into our consciousness. You are not going to change that just because Westerners have lived for so long in prosperity that we have forgotten that you may have to get blood on your hands if you wish for you and your people to survive.

Other races from other parts of the world don't think like that. They come from dog eat dog worlds and their tolerance for other tribes is rudimentary or non existent. It is hardly surprising that if you mix together two different races with two different attitudes about the need for tribal loyalty, you are going to end up with a civil war, with my money on the more socially cohesive tribe.

So, what is your "solution", Craig. With 100 million people being added to the world's population every year, we just let every one of them immigrate to a western country and the problem is solved? Or we simply let the UN redistribute the world's wealth from the rich countries who created it to the poor countries? If we can't make everybody rich, we can sure make everybody poor. But at least we will be equal and so there will be no more war, right?

Wrong.

In a world where the only expanding resource is human beings, human life is becoming cheaper, not more valuable. Racism will increase as competition for resources increases. Separatism will increase as more and more people see their tribal identity as crucial to their survival from other tribes who are also increasing, in a world of shrinking resources.

May the strongest tribe win.

Conflict is not a given, there are many examples of groups living together peacefully for long periods of time. Conflict occurs for a few main reasons: shortage of resources leading to resentment and fear (which is your personal motivation from what you said earlier); selfish grabs for personal power by individuals in authority (Napoleon for example); misunderstandings caused by poor information flows (which is why there are hotlines between the leaders of various countries). Conflicts are rarely driven by ideology or religion, although they may be used as a pretext for one of the reasons above.

Shortage of resources is not going to be a problem into the future unless we continue to breed in an uncontrolled manner. That's possible, but unlikely. Further to that, the rise of automated manufacture and additive manufacturing is going to make consumption goods so cheap as to make conflict over things that are currently seen as signs of wealth completely meaningless. Work as we know it will disappear and with that there will need to be changes to our financial models.

Human life has always been cheap.

How many other countries have you lived in? I've only lived here in Oz and in PNG where I grew up. My experience among those "savages" was that I was able to freely roam about as a child with absolutely no fear and with confidence that if I found myself in trouble someone would help me out.

To be honest and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, I get the sense that you are struggling to cope with the rapid pace of social change and you're looking for reasons to justify slowing it down. I don't mean that pejoratively, it's an entirely normal response for people to become more cautious as they age. The danger is that if we allow such fear of change to be our guiding principle then we will be left at the mercy of forces we can't manage.

The history of the world
Follows a simple plan
He takes who has the power
He holds, who can.

The indisputable point about groups living together peacefully within the same territory is a factor of the minority groups unquestioning acceptance the primacy of the majority group. No two cultural or religious groups with widely differing concepts of acceptable behaviour can ever live peacefully within any territory where immigration or birth rate differentials threaten the primacy of the majority group The result is always, serious social strife, demands for separatism, and eventually, civil war. I hold this to be self evident and as immutable as The Law of Gravity.

In the past seventy years we have seen civil wars, coups, or national separations in Lebanon, Fiji, Cyprus, Georgia, Afghanistan, Biafra, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Liberia, Kashmir, Punjab, Sudan, Nigeria, Bougainville, East Timor, Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, New Zealand, Bhutan, Angola, Burma, Yemen, Pakistan, Chechnya, Guadalcanal, Aden, Malaya, Oman, Congo, Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, East Timor, Thailand and recently, Ukraine.

Multiculturalism is just like Socialism, Craig, how many times does it need to fail before you can figure out it can never work?

Every attempt throughout history to create an all encompassing group identity has failed. The Romans tried it and they failed. The Christians broke up into three main sects and a score of smaller sects. The Muslims broke up into two main sects and a handful of smaller sects. The Soviet Union tried to destroy national and cultural identity within the USSR by deporting Lithuanians, Chechens, Uzbecks, Tadjics, Mongolians, Siberians, Ukrainians, and every other minority by the tens of millions at bayonet point, and mixing them up together. They failed. The USSR even tried to destroy class identity, and they failed.

There can be no all encompassing group identity because people are not just different, they like being different. And there can be no common identity on a planet where some people have a high standard of living and others live on $2 dollars a day.

LEGO, I'm sorry, I really thought there was a chance at a proper discussion.

Enforced cultural homogeneity is doomed to fail. Cultural heterogeneity, as is found across the world, can work well, provided there are measures in place to ameliorate the impact of rabble-rousers and would-be demagogues spreading fear and playing the politics of resentment.

I have no idea what you mean by "cultural homogeneity." Or how this will Save The World.