THE COLONIZATION OF OTHER PLANETS AND THE SURVIVAL OF MANKIND - PART THREE Team USA is gearing up to butt heads with Team China, Team Japan, Team Europe, Team Africa, Team Mexico, and countless other teams waving their country team flags because they think we're in direct competition to be the best and to take home the trophy. But what are we really competing for? To be the best baseball team? To be the best runner/jumper/racer in the world? No. Ultimately, all of those are small potatoes in the sceme of things, and even though mankind has established its dominion over all other species on the planet, what we really need to be looking towards is how we can work together towards species survival off-planet. In truth, this is no baseball game because there are bigger things at stake, especially because everyone now has nuclear weapons at their disposal, radar to detect if another country fires their missles, and one finger near the button 'just in case'. The real question is this -- why aren't we cooperating more with each other? As you'll notice in this article about countries racing to plant their flags and claim the Arctic waterways, (aside from the fact that they're plainly ignoring any global warming effects, as well as excellerating the demise of polar bears and the Arctic itself), they're still more concerned with conquering more territory because it'll boost a single country's GDP by a few zeroes. Meanwhile, even if the Olympics pit specific countries against each other it is in the spirit of worldwide competition, and at least the 'space race' has historically garnered some teamwork. Perhaps in mankind's infancy it was sufficient to think of our individual countries as competing directly with each other to establish dominance and a way of life. That is no longer sufficient. We now need to escalate our game from baseball among countries to baseball among planets. Baseball among countries is now Triple-A, while baseball among planets is Major League. Are you ready for the big leagues? We still, of course, have some huge hurdles to overcome. Throw in some language barriers, custom and culture differences, and a touch of racism/fear -- and there's your hurdles. But the world has shrunk considerably in the last few decades as technology has made communication quicker and information more readily available. Transportation has minimized travel times and widened horizons as people visit, explore, learn about, and learn to appreciate and accept other cultures. We've got our hurdles to overcome, but we continue to make progress. I'm not asking you to forget who you are, where you've come from, or what you've overcome -- I'm simply asking you to stop waving your single country's flag as if it indicates some sort of supremacy over another country. The time has come for us all to carry one flag -- a flag representing the same planet that we all inhabit.