I came across this Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from a speech he gave in 1967.  More than 40 years later, I’m amazed by its relevance - probably even more so today than when he first delivered it.  On the occasion of his birthday, thought it would be worth sharing.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

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Tags: globalization, interrelatedness, Martin Luther King Jr

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm by Joan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.