Notice how quickly the current financial crisis or 'credit crunch' spread around the world? News one day from New York meant an instant reaction in Sydney, Australia, Toronto, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. It's instant because all nations share in a connected financial banking system. Money flows to where it'll gain highest returns, beit Dubai or Beijing, Shanghai or Chiangmai.

So with this woven web of inter-relationship our hearts and minds must now open to a new awakening: One World. Just as the human brain has two connected hemispheres, the right and left cerebral hemispheres, so too the world has two hemispheres with constant communication going on at the synapse. One world, one brain. Our ever growing portfolio of global problems needs to be viewed and approached in this new spirit, this new unfolding consciousness.

Global warming and climate control. Depletion of the world's fossil fuels and the need to change to renewable energy sources such as wind power, solar power, geothermal power and even the nuclear energy industry. Add to this set of problems, those of our human making: financial greed, social inequality and religious intolerance resulting in continuing barbaric wars. We don't seem to be able to help ourselves towards global harmony and world peace. It only happens for a fleeting moment at beauty pageants. Miss Congeniality.

After the horror and massacre witnessed during World War I there came hope in the form of The League of Nations. Then after the holocaust and the evils of World War II there came renewed hope with the formation of our present day global institution, The United Nations. Each flowering from the bud of world unity. So we have an evolving trend here of institutions working for world peace and global harmony. There's the International Monetary Fund to stave of poverty, and The International Court of Justice in The Hague to punish war criminals.

But the system needs more. Now it's financial regulation that needs to be crafted and constructed on the world stage. Rogue nations still upset the apple cart of trade and finance. Self-seeking nations prosper while others sink into the abysmal gutters of failure and poverty. Then they rear their heads like crazed military monsters boasting their inter-continental ballistic missiles.

So the dream of One World needs to be pursued by every man and every woman, every child of this planet. It seems to be an inevitable evolutionary step in our harmonious development, as we refine the institutional frameworks and structures that govern and protect us, keeping us in balance and emotional equilibrium.

All parts belong to the whole, and we are the parts. Our actions are playing in the global game. Are you part of the problem - - or part of the solution? Do you want boom and bust, instability and wars, or harmony? Think about it.

Geoff Dodd