Cav's Place

Many say the only thing that’d make humans stop thinking in terms of differences, such as nationality, religion or race, and unite under a common flag would be a common enemy, a threat from space such as an asteroid or hostile aliens. But the more I see, the more I hear and the more I think about this, the more I ask myself if even that would be enough.
Perhaps an asteroid would be more likely to create a temporary unity, seeing as you can’t strike a deal with a rock, but I think there would be problems even then. There could be a lot of politics and economics, different solutions developed separately instead for working together and an endless debate about who takes the credit for solving the problem, assuming it would be solved. I even think that in case of a smaller asteroid, one that wouldn’t cause serious damage to all parts of the world, if it’s exact impact location could be predicted in advance, some countries that wouldn’t be too affected by it wouldn’t be too willing to help destroy or deflect it. Not to mention the many people who would oppose doing anything about it, saying things along the lines of “you have no right to change God’s plan”. In the end, managing to save ourselves from the impact might not start an age of peace and cooperation, but one of even worse tensions and conflicts.
On the other hand, being attacked by hostile aliens seems even less likely to make all humans work together, especially if some communication would seem possible. Just imagine how many would be willing to take the hostile aliens up on any offer they might seem to make. And they’d have few reasons not to make offers if that’d make us do their work for them. After all, they could just get rid of their momentary allies afterwards. I think it would actually be quite entertaining for them to take advantage of all the hate and hostility in our society, aid certain groups and just watch as we take each other out so they’ll only have to come in and clean up afterwards.
Still, whatever the threat, if we couldn’t stand as one against it then we wouldn’t be worthy of overcoming it, would we? And even if we would unite against such a threat, would that make much of a difference? If only something like this would make us put aside our differences, would it be much better? The galaxy would likely be better off without us either way…