Let’s face it: when we visit our preferred news sites, we see a consistent stream of gut-wrenching articles. Innocent people are killed in hate crimes, countries are plagued by war, and children get shot just for going to school. On top of this news, language used by the media amps up a societal feeling of hatred of other people. It is hard to go online, or even walk down the street without hearing language that pits different races, religions, genders, and sexual orientations against each other. Every catastrophe is automatically assumed to be a terrorist attack by the media. A single person’s violent action is considered to be the standard norm or belief of an entire population. We claim to be a country where a person is innocent until proven guilty, but racial prejudice runs high on the streets and in the courtroom, making the legal system highly unjust. We have words like homophobia, anti-Islamism, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and sexism.

This fear and hatred of different people needs to stop. It doesn’t need to stop eventually; it needs to stop now.

So how do we stop this hatred? How do we stop getting programmed by society and written down in history as people who were always against each other?

We start identifying as citizens of the world.

Now, half of you reading this probably think that my statement is ridiculous. How is identification going to stop hatred? Well, how you perceive yourself and your position in the world has a lot to do with how the world works.

Allow me to provide an example. Let’s Open Our World, a project designed to bring down the borders that separate us, shows individuals that they are connected to many different nationalities through a DNA test. The linked video is a powerful one; it starts with people declaring how they are all Kurdish, Bengali, French, British, or Icelandic. Instead, these people find out that they are so much more than one nationality. They are actually citizens of the world.

Although a DNA test changed the minds of all the participants in the video, we can change ourselves without taking such a test. All we have to do is look into the eyes of another person and stand with them. We can stand in support of all sexual orientations, regardless of our own. We can join in friendship with people of different races and religions, regardless of our own. All people around the world are united--- we are all human--- and that alone should make us stand in solidarity with each other. The older I get, the harder it is for me to understand how we can continue to ignore that we are all connected.

Contrary to what society has suggested, hate cannot and will not dominate us. Hate does its best to drive us apart and create suspicion, fear, and paranoia. Hate feeds on the fights and all the –isms and phobias of the world.

Hate cannot win when we are all citizens of the world. If we can start identifying as global citizens, we can start pushing the hate away. Why? Well, when we identify as global citizens, everyone becomes our brother or sister. Everyone becomes valued, important, and worthy of love and respect.

I ask you to join me in identifying as a global citizen. It may be the only thing we have left to repair the damage we have inflicted upon each other for centuries.