Human Rise

A New Start for the World

By John S. Hamalian

In December of 1968, something extraordinary happened in the annals of human history. The inhabitants of Earth gazed their eyes on a colorful image of their own world brilliantly rising above the horizon of the moon, a remarkable photo now known as Earthrise.

All of humanity stared in awe. One planet. One place. One people.

It was at that precise moment that we began to understand that our planet is small, that it is precious, and that we all share it together as one common home.

The COVID pandemic and other relatively recent catastrophes such as the 1918 flu, smallpox, and two horrific world wars, have shown us that, rather than sitting on isolated points, we all lie on the same arc of humanity.

That global epiphany in 1968 helped connect us back to ourselves, evoking a deep, perhaps forgotten, sense of belonging in humanity. At some point we were all together and over the millennia, we slowly drifted apart, gradually reuniting with arc connectors such as the Roman highways, the Silk Road, and the rediscovery of the Americas, and now we are more linked than ever before.

With the planet now facing an ever-growing number of mutual, global threats such as infectious diseases, climate change, weapons of mass destruction, rogue asteroids, solar storms, and the unknown risks of super-advanced technologies, we have a historic opportunity to rethink the only home we have, to redesign how we cooperate, and to rebuild the world we live in.

Rivers know no borders, winds know no frontiers, ideas know no limits, and missiles know no bounds. So it only makes sense to build a world where we collaborate to solve common problems, share and exchange innovations, respect each other even as we disagree, and look at each other through the prism of mutual human kinship.

While working on his film Apollo 13, Ron Howard recalled that several astronauts “described the feeling of looking back at Earth and finding our conflicts so ludicrous when the planet was viewed as a single entity alone in space.”

Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders.

Despite a lot of ugliness, the coronavirus has shown the world that we can be strong in the face of adversity, united when we need to be, and possess a limitless spirit of love, innovation and positivity. Let us leverage our amazing potential to work together to face mutual challenges in a new Age of Cooperation.

With the amazing photo of Earthrise and its vision of a shared homeland ascending in our minds, it is now time to act upon this image, only this time instead of the Earth rising, it will be us rising…rising high above the horizon of our old animosities, mistrusts and self-interests. Out of one there was many, and now out of many there can be One.

Let’s honor the many victims of the COVID-19 crisis by doing a deep reflection on humanity and using the lessons we have learned to collectively build a new future.

We were inspired by Earthrise, now it is the time for Human Rise.

Let us rise up together to create a new world…a new dream…a new start.

John is a US citizen and an avid explorer with a passion for travel journalism and photography. He has visited more than 65 countries, including the entire Far East of Asia. He has written for The Straits Times, Shanghai Daily, The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, My Paper, The American Women’s Club of Korea and the in-flight magazine of Royal Bhutan Airlines.