This is a map of imaginary nations. The colored ovals stand for the ruling elites. The green stands for ordinary people. The elites are different colors because various small groups are in power in different countries: religious or not, capitalist or not. But they’re all very rich.

The elites appear to be separate from one another. They pretend they have more in common with the masses of people in their own countries than with elites elsewhere, but that is not true. Elites everywhere are connected by their interest in staying in power. Their lives are quite separate from the lives of ordinary people: they don’t live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, or buy from the same merchants. The super-rich are their own country. They form a secret international union that treats the rest of us like interchangeable, expendable servants they can safely ignore.

Now look at the imaginary map without national boundaries. There are just ordinary people everywhere; the ruling elites stand out like the spots of a nasty infection on the body of humanity. That disease is the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands.

The tragedy of the masses, aka ordinary people, aka the meek, is that we don’t realize our own power. We think nations are real, though we have to imagine them afresh every day. We think our interests align with the rich, though we know by now they don’t really care about us. If the ordinary people in different countries ever realize that we share the same interest in human survival, and that together we vastly outnumber the elites, the power in this world will shift to our hands.

The ruling class tries to persuade us that other nations are our enemy, but our real enemy is the elites’ bottomless greed. They fear our solidarity. Ordinary people around the world are natural allies, if we only knew it. The boundaries that separate us are imaginary. Instead, we must imagine sharing the earth.