Is there really a need for a Great Disaster to get humanity to fix its priorities and stop policing other people's identities?

Rori I. That's a very loaded question which I'd be super excited to answer!

I think so.
Or, I'd say, it would otherwise take a very long time for us to arrive at this same point. In the USA the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 are yet to have the desired effect of factual racial equality. Women have been able to vote in the UK (with limitations at the time) since 1918; that date is 1920 for USA. Yet sexism and violence against women prevail to this day. Only in Washington, DC in 2014 Jan-Oct more than 1600 women were murdered by men. Issues of immigration and ethnic hate are staggering throughout the world. To describe the particular difficulties of the LGBTQIA+ community would take another post.

Overall, there is progress, in this place or another. Yet there are regions in the world constantly taking frantic step back towards more hatred and divisive thinking.

Ultimately, I have decided to create a more utopic world after this "Great Disaster"; most post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on all the things which could go wrong. Understandably, with things as they are, it's hard to believe in the good of humanity, when the population faces global destruction.

But I have dared to believe in the ability of humans to do better, at least in the end. Some catastrophic event is perhaps needed to shake us out of this bewitched state of anger and hatred and madness.

When I imagined a bunch of Europeans and some Asian communities running to North America to save themselves from the consequences of climate change, I always thought it won't take long until the Europe crowd would start asking for their healthcare, their right to normal life, their proper education.

I suppose part of it was to force some of the White Western and Nordic European nations to see what immigration feels like for themselves, so all of a sudden they'd ask for better laws.

So there is some pessimism in the way I've built this world, some bitterness, but it all ultimately comes to a satisfying, positive end.

* * In Republic's Chosen, I have dared to dream about a world where humans have abandoned their differences and learned to co-exist. I've rewarded that society with everything good I could imagine: the end of poverty and senseless death, the end of hate crimes and bigotry, the rapid development of science and medicine to serve the needs of the people, to better their lives but also protect the planet. * *

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