The world has witnessed a vast mixing of the human population in the last 30+ years. If we give ourselves to this experience of globalization, we might be led to a new consciousness of great benefit to the future of humanity.

In 1997, early in my global interfaith organizing work for the United Religions Initiative, I experienced humanity in microcosm in the office of a Jewish lawyer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As I surveyed the room, I found myself part of an extraordinary group of 20 people, including a Chinese Buddhist who was learning to speak Spanish, a Brahma Kumari sister, the Dalai Lama’s representative in Argentina, an Indigenous woman, and a wide variety of Jews and Christians.

In the ensuing nine years, I have traveled to over 30 countries. In each of those countries, I encountered humanity’s diverse nationalities and faiths in microcosm. This causes tension in some situations. But it has the potential to transform our understanding of who and whose we are in a way that leads away from the precipice of violence and hatred onto the solid ground of mutual respect and commitment to a common good large enough to encompass all people. The following experience points the way.

A couple of years ago, I successfully hailed a cab on the deserted streets of lower Manhattan at 4:30 in the morning. As we sped toward John F. Kennedy International Airport, I asked the cab driver where he was from. Through the opening in the barrier that separates passenger from driver in a yellow cab in New York City, he answered my question with a question: “Where do you think?”

I work with people from all over the world and recognize accents easily (like the Iranian accent of the man who runs the Mexican restaurant just down from the Jewish Community Center near where I live), so I offered a guess, “The Middle East?”

“Pakistan,” he replied.

“I have many friends in Pakistan,” I told him.