People must take the position of being part of human-kind first. That is the basis for right human discourse, or truly civilized discourse.

That does not mean that you dissociate yourself from your nation, or your birthplace, or your citizenship. Rather, it is about having a disposition that transcends any kind of particularity of orientation—looking at all human problems as part of humankind’s collective concern, without any “angle” on anything whatsoever. On that basis, you get down to dealing with the issues in concrete terms, whatever those terms may be relative to any particular issue.

To become part of humankind first is a kind of egolessness. That disposition is not Enlightenment per se, but it is a disposition that transcends the separate and separative “point of view” characteristic of the usual mode of participating in world-business or human happenings.

There are lesser identities that people commonly presume: There is the personal identity—and there is the immediate identity of your associations, your upbringing, your family, your town, your country, your race, your religion, your culture. All of these “point-of-view” images of “self” encumber people’s understanding. And these identities are characteristically the first thing that people put out front.

Everyone is play-acting this collection of characteristics of “self”-imagery, this objectified persona that each one tends to identify with. When someone says “I”, that persona is who they mean. However, if everyone is part of humankind first, that universal context becomes the basis for examining everything, and it cools all “self”-imagery discourse.

This is how cooperation and tolerance become possible—because people are not wearing their separate identities first. Instead, they are wearing the rather universal identity of being a human being, part of the totality of humankind—participant with all other human beings in simply handling the business that everyone has in common.

Then the handling of business can be focused down to all the particularities, including matters that relate to particular segments of humankind and particular regions of the world. But such (more localized) matters can be addressed in the context of the totality of humankind—rather than in the context of presuming to be a separate and separative identity.