What the World Needs Now

World Loyalty & Local Bonds of Mutual Care
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Many of the world’s problems today involve a conflict between two ethical ideals: world loyalty and local loyalty. Trouble arises when either is held in isolation. When world loyalty is held supreme, it can lead to rootlessness, abstract idealism, and a neglect of the local textures that give life meaning. Moreover, world loyalty can easily lapse into a shallow cosmopolitanism—the kind that becomes the luxury of a well-traveled and well-heeled elite, disconnected from the everyday struggles and loyalties of ordinary people.

Likewise, various kinds of place-based loyalty—national pride, for example—can easily lapse into defensive isolationism, ethnocentrism, or even xenophobic exclusion. When the love of one’s own becomes fear or resentment of the other, it loses its moral grounding and becomes a source of division rather than solidarity. The challenge—and the hope—is to hold both together: to care for the world through our care for particular places, and to love our places with a view toward the well-being of the whole.

Love

For those of us who believe that love is the answer—and I count myself among them—we would do well to recognize that both world loyalty and place-based loyalty are, at heart, forms of love.

World loyalty is love stretched wide: a compassion that embraces strangers, ecosystems, and generations yet to come. Place-based loyalty is love rooted deep: a devotion to the people, cultures, and landscapes that shape who we are.

The task is not to choose between them, but to hold them together as expressions of a wider and deeper love—one that honors both the part and the whole, and that sees the whole reflected in each part.

Each face, each person, is a place where the whole concresces—where, to use Whitehead’s term, the universe becomes concrete and particularized. Thus, love for the local is never merely local; it is a way of loving the whole through the part.

And love for the whole is only meaningful when it is embodied in acts of care, attention, and presence in the here and now and foreseeable future.

In this light, both world loyalty and place-based loyalty are not competing virtues, but complementary expressions of the sacredness of relationship itself.

But here we must be honest. There are attitudes of mind and heart to be overcome, if this love is to be realized. These attitudes are not merely chosen by us as individuals; we inherit them, consciously and unconsciously, from our societies, and there may also be aspect of them that have bodily origins. They include the fear of the other, which disguises itself as loyalty; the pride of superiority, which masks itself as patriotism; the lure of abstraction, which forgets the concrete; and the seduction of cynicism, which paralyzes compassion. We must also confront the temptation to divide the world into competing camps—us versus them, local versus global, tradition versus progress—rather than seeking the creative possibilities that arise in the tensions between them.

To overcome these obstacles is not simply a matter of intellect, but of practice: cultivating habits of empathy, listening, reverence for place, and responsiveness to the needs of the whole. It is, in Whitehead’s terms, a spiritual discipline of feeling the many, integrating the contrasts, and aiming toward harmony—not by erasing difference, but by weaving it into something more inclusive and alive.

It is also important to recognize that systems can be in place that are obstacles—and sometimes outright enemies—of such love. Economic systems that prioritize profit over people and planet, political systems built on polarization and fear, media systems that reward outrage over understanding, and educational systems that separate knowing from caring—all can undermine the cultivation of both world loyalty and place-based belonging. These structures shape our imaginations and habits, often reinforcing the very divisions and indifferences that love seeks to heal.

To realize a wider and deeper love, then, requires more than a change of heart. It calls for the reimagining and reshaping of our institutions. Love must become embodied not only in personal relationships, but in policies, economies, and cultural practices that reflect compassion, justice, and relational integrity. A process-relational world is not simply a vision of individual transformation, but of communal and systemic metamorphosis.

Further Reflections

When I first encountered Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of world loyalty, I was moved. The phrase, borrowed from Josiah Royce and reimagined by Whitehead, calls us beyond narrow allegiances—beyond nation, tribe, or ideology—and into a deeper devotion: to the Earth and the interconnected web of life. It’s a beautiful and necessary vision, especially in a time of ecological crisis and political fragmentation.

But as I sat with the idea longer, I began to sense something missing—not in the concept itself, but in how it is often embraced. Among process thinkers, there’s a tendency to elevate world loyalty as the moral high ground, a progressive virtue that supersedes all others. In this enthusiasm, it’s easy to forget something else Whitehead held dear: that the aim of life is to enjoy richness of experience, and that such richness is most often found in local bonds—family dinners, neighborhood walks, shared traditions, regional accents, and cultural memory.

For many, including Whitehead’s influential follower John Cobb, the local is not a threat to the global. It’s where life becomes real. Yet in today’s polarized world, we’re often told to choose: be loyal to your community or to the planet, to your nation or to humanity, to your roots or to your ideals. Liberals champion world loyalty; conservatives champion local belonging. Both fear that the other leads to loss—loss of culture, or loss of conscience.

But perhaps the deeper problem is the forced choice.

Whitehead helps us see a better way. His process philosophy invites us to hold together what others separate. In a relational universe, local bonds and world loyalty are not opposites; they are co-constitutive. We love the world best not in the abstract, but through the particularities of place and people. And we love our place best when we recognize its kinship with all others.

I once heard someone say, “I’m tired of being told I have to choose between loving my country and caring about the world—between honoring my community’s traditions and working for global justice. Why can’t we do both?” That longing—for wholeness rather than sides—feels deeply process-relational. It’s not a call for middle ground, but for new ground.

To live with two loyalties—local and global—is not easy. It’s a tension. But it’s also a creative opportunity. We can build communities that are rooted and open, grounded and generous.

And we are.

In a small Arkansas town, a local farmer’s co-op feeds nearby families using regenerative methods that protect the global climate. In Seattle, a neighborhood interfaith circle welcomes refugees and plants trees along urban streams—honoring both sacred traditions and planetary ecology. In Kenya, a village school teaches children in their mother tongue while engaging them with global questions of justice, science, and sustainability. In South Korea, young activists revive traditional musical forms while advocating for climate action on the world stage.
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These are not exceptions. They are seeds of possibility—where world loyalty and local bonds grow side by side. And they remind us that, even in a divided world, we don’t have to choose between belonging and becoming. We can do both. We must.

When World Loyalty Is Emphasized and Bonds of Place Are Neglected:
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1. Loss of Cultural Roots
   Individuals may become detached from their own histories, languages, and traditions, leading to a sense of disorientation or rootlessness.
2. Abstract Idealism
   Ethical commitments can become disconnected from the concrete realities of daily life, resulting in grand visions that lack practical grounding.
3. Weakened Community Ties
   Families, neighborhoods, and local institutions may erode, leaving people more isolated and vulnerable to loneliness and despair.
4. Disregard for Particularity
   A universal ethic may flatten or dismiss the beauty of difference—regional, ethnic, or communal—and unintentionally promote a form of cultural homogenization.
5. Fragile Identity Formation
   Without local anchors, individuals may struggle to form stable identities, leading to confusion about where and how they belong.

When Bonds of Place Are Emphasized and World Loyalty Is Neglected:
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1. Parochialism or Tribalism
   People may become overly insular, prioritizing “their own” at the expense of others, leading to suspicion, exclusion, or xenophobia.
2. Resistance to Global Solidarity
   Issues like climate change, global poverty, and refugee crises may be ignored or minimized, seen as someone else’s problem.
3. Nationalism Turned Toxic
   Patriotism may devolve into ethnonationalism or supremacist thinking, where the local or national identity is seen as superior and under siege.
4. Injustice Toward Outsiders
   Migrants, minorities, and outsiders may be scapegoated or denied basic rights in the name of preserving cultural purity or community coherence.
5. Failure to Adapt to Interconnected Realities
   In an interdependent world, local-only thinking can hinder economic, environmental, and technological adaptation, causing harm to both local and global well-being.