We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King has provided us with so many challenging statements and in them so much truth.  The trouble we have is that we continue to associate them with a single issue. An American Issue. We do not see their value for a bigger concern.

Yet a man with such vision and courage could not fail to speak beyond his boundaries.  A man so driven, though deeply flawed, who could speak of injustice and mobilise the hearts and minds of so many that the impact of his words overpowered a system and generated the impetus for a huge shift in a society.

But let’s not be naive and suggest that the problem he addressed has all gone away, because it has not.  It lies beneath the surface of every heart and in every nation still.  It is the “knowledge” that we are all different from each other, and separate, and have a right to be “better” than the other, more valuable than the other and of greater worth.

We still consider it our right to kill and abuse workers when we buy products from overseas, sweat-shop factories or less regulated “industrial nations” where it is OK to poison the land and the people.  It’s our right to force foreign farmers to accept lower prices for their goods, use chemicals that bankrupt, poison and drive to suicide for our lovely cotton fabric for this season’s clothes, because they are not us.

We live in a deeply divided and unjust world.  We continue to support a deeply divided and unjust world when we do nothing about it.  For as long as we do not engage with each other as fellow human beings and continue to hide behind ignorance we will continue down a road where we perish as fools.

If we considered the people of China our brothers could we not find a better approach to solving climate issues than the poor excuse of economic falsehood that we have at the moment.  Perhaps if there was the trust of brotherhood.

If we considered the people of the Arab nations our brothers we could work together for peace and break the falsehood of religious division a little more easily.

MLK’s birthday is remembered today.  Perhaps his legacy can be to spawn a greater vision where hatred and division is tackled again but beyond our shores as well as on them.