Welcome to the Garry Davis WebSpace! menu Imagemap
Main Menu, Welcome Page My history My life in the Media An Archive of important documents relating to my life My Thoughts on things.

W O R L D G O V E R N M E N T ,

R E A D Y O R N O T

WHOLE LIFE EXPOSITION

Symposium on World Peace

 

1 September 1984

 

 

I feel highly honored to be able to share with you some brief thought about world peace. In five days, there will be a world holiday; no I am not referring to Labor Day. We world citizens will be celebrating the thirty-first anniversary of the founding of a world citizens' government. It was declared by your speaker on 4 September 1953 from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, twelve miles from my birthplace, Bar Harbor. It was then and still is the only government on this planet which represents me and many others who are equally stateless, politically.

The full declaration, known as the Ellsworth Declaration, is available here at the exposition along other world government literature.

When I received this invitation to address this important gathering, I had just announced my candidacy for world president to this global government. This moment presented a good opportunity, I thought, to further explain just what this candidacy meant and how you could support it if you so desired.

But this presents a problem. For many of you in this audience certainly do not accept the idea or the practicality of a world government on any terms. Like Thoreau and Lao-Tse, you may agree with the philosophy that the best government is that which governs least. In fact, that is also my philosophy, but more of that later. It would be foolish for me, therefore, to use this opportunity as a campaign platform for a nonexistent world office to this embryonic government without first at least preparing the conceptual ground for my mission. After that, I will just have to take my chances on your comprehension and generosity.

So, with your permission, I will indulge in a sort of mind setting and perhaps fanciful opening.

Fellow Citizens of Planet Earth,

As your World President, I have grave news. Our planet has been invaded by an alien race. They call themselves "nationalists." Their principal strategy is the age-old divide and conquer. Their master plan, now in its final stages, is to separate our world community into what they call "nations" and our common humanity into what they call "nationalities." They use every subtle trick and educational device to condition us to accept ourselves and each other as "nationalists" rather than world citizens. They have even made a religion of it, claiming falsely that the deity "protects" each separate nation.

Furthermore, they cleverly maintain that the particular law of any nation is absolute and eternal; some even use the deity to justify that absurd claim while others claim, ironically, that the state itself is God.

Further - and here is the ultimate danger - they have used our common technology and planetary resources to construct weapons of such power that there use would cause global destruction and possible elimination of our species itself. But even with this prospect in immediate view, their national strategy, continues to threaten each other with these nuclear weapons. Our common humanity itself therefore is, for the first time, in mortal danger.

We cannot divine the ultimate purpose of this alien race, the nationalists, for it would appear that their strategy would eliminate themselves as well as us. Could it be that they are sacrificing themselves for another race waiting to take over the planet itself once the radioactivity reached a tolerable level?

Fellow citizens of the world, we have been too complacent until now about humanity's future; we did not even consider it could be in danger. We must now unite our forces against this monstrous and treacherous invasion. We must claim our rightful ownership of our home planet or we are doomed.

One might open a speech from a World Citizen president on 31 August 1984 addressing a planetary audience.

If you think my imagery is too far out, even treasonable, please consider these facts.

-item: there are 35 national wars going on as I talk.

-item: the nationalistic military budget for 1984/85 is over $650 billion. This is $1,780 million per day or over $74 million per minute.

-item: in all of World War II 3 megatons of explosives were used. Today, over 16,000 megatons of explosives are available to the nuclear superpowers.

-item: there is a six minute lead time from the launching of nuclear missiles to target going East or West.

-item: a nuclear exchange will result in a "nuclear winter" over the northern hemisphere reducing the temperature for six months to -40 degrees; furthermore, there is the likelihood the ozone layer will be eliminated by the rapid production of nitrous oxide resulting in deadly exposure to cosmic and ultraviolet radiation.

-item: there are over 5,000,000 young men in national armies.

-item: there are over 16,000,000 refugees throughout the world, victims of national conflicts; over half are women and children; starvation and near starvation is rampant among millions of them.

-item: the national economies are tottering on the verge of collapse; whole nations are so debt-ridden their very survival is questionable; the national debt of the United States is over $1.05 trillion. Third world debt is now over $500 billion.

-item: industrial pollution is becoming endemic; over 5 metric tons of plutonium now exist with a half life of 25,000 years. Less than one millionth of a gram causes cancer; twenty eight nations have nuclear reactors producing plutonium; the emission of sulphur into the atmosphere causing "acid rain" is 75 to 100 million tons per year.

-item: the world's forests are disappearing at the rate of 18 to 20 million hectares a year; by the year 2000, 40% of the remaining forest covering the less developed countries will be gone.

-item: increased population will cause water requirements to double in nearly half the world; extreme deforestation will make water supplies increasingly erratic.

-item: soil erosion is increasing exponentially worldwide; an area approximately the size of Maine is becoming barren wasteland each year.

-item: extinction of plant and animal species is increasing dramatically as their habitats vanish, especially in tropical forests.

-item: atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and ozone depleting chemicals are significantly effecting the world's climate and upper atmosphere.

-item: the world population projected for the year 2000 is 6.35 billion; 90% if this increase will occur in the poorest countries.

The list goes on and on.

Our crisis is both individual and worldwide. That's why I call it a "planetary invasion." It may be useful to recall how we came to this dreadful if foolish predicament. The late Marshall McLuhan developed the theory that the extent of communication determines the limits of social organization. That makes sense because you can't organize society without communication.

If we take a quick look at human history starting with say 2000 B.C. until the present day and extrapolate to 2000 A.D., in comparing the rate of speed of transportation which determines communication, we arrive at a startling conclusion.

We can see that from 2000 B.C. clear through the birth of Christ up until latter 19th century communication was largely determined by the speed of the horse. From there, we see a rapid increase in a tight span of one hundred years until speed of transportation and, thus, communication goes out of sight.

But note what also happened during that short period. Four major revolutions took place: industrial, electronic, nuclear and space. Inventions of global import proliferated. First, goods and services crossed oceans and continents. Technology became a global phenomenon. Then the radio eliminated distance between people, likewise the telephone. After that came electronics and suddenly the world became a village in terms of communication. Now, with a gridwork of 4,000 satellites, television sets and computer becoming indispensable even in the home, our world community has become interlinked and interdependent. The world community for the first time to our knowledge has a "nervous feedback system." But in 1945 we entered the "nuclear age." Physical power crossed from relative to absolute. In 1957 man launched the first space satellite. According to McLuhan, global society can now be rationally organized.

But where are our politics, the very science of of social organization? Back in the 18th century...the horse and buggy era. Pre-industrial, pre-electronic, pre-nuclear and pre-space. In other words, nationalistic. Whereas every other human endeavor has become global, politics remains parochial, feudalistic and thus suicidal. It becomes clear that, if we are all to survive, politics must also go global.

That means some hard decisions for us all. Decisions which will determine whether the human race will continue or go the way of the dinosaur and the Dodo bird. I realized in 1947 that as a so called national citizen, I had no input to the question of world peace whereas I had definitely been a part of world war as a bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force.

After returning to my profession in the theater in 1946, after the explosions over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I started to think seriously about whether national citizenship could protect me from war any longer. If it couldn't, then it wasn't really citizenship but a kind of modern serfdom or even worse, given the new dimensions of war. It was a collective suicide pact. In other words, if i didn't have any control over my very life as a national citizen, then why should I give my human allegiance to the nation? But this thinking led to the major question: to what should I give my allegiance?

The more I thought about it the more I realized that national citizenship in the twentieth century is a contradiction in terms. After all, the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens. But no government can prevent war between nations. Quite the contrary, all national governments consider war as a part of their legitimate right. I finally realized that, in a nuclear age, that is formula for global holocaust.

The only valid citizenship able to protect you and me is common world citizenship since that was the only citizenship which linked up all humans on planet earth in a common agreement or social contract. That led to my public claim of world citizenship in Paris on 25 May 1948. Why not? Who was to deny it? Besides, was there any law against it? Does the U.S. Constitution prohibit it? Does any national constitution? Quite the opposite. They all claim that the people are sovereign, that they really are the ultimate power, not as citizens, mind you, but as humans. All governments are fonded by humans.

It was not as a Virginian that Thomas Jefferson claimed to be an American, nor was it as a Bostonian that John Adams did the same. They both exercised human rights to claim a new political allegiance along with their fellow co-founders.

Besides there were both moral laws and penal code implicitly supporting my new citizenship: Thou shalt not kill or murder as a civic crime. Six months after I had staked my claim to world citizenship, a new declaration of human rights which the General Assembly of the united Nations proclaimed in 1948 actually sanctioned that citizenship. Article 21(3) states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." Article 28 states that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." These articles certainly confirmed the fact that we, the people, are indeed sovereign.

But let's examine this word "sovereignty" a little closer because it's a key issue. Every nation claims to be sovereign, but then, as I said, all national constitutions claim the people are sovereign. There seems to be basic contradiction here. If we, the people are sovereign then the ultimate sovereign is humanity itself. If that is true, then the claim to national sovereignty is a myth and a deadly one at that.

First of all, is sovereignty determined by quantity? The number of persons under a given government? Let's have a quick glance at comparative populations of equally sovereign states. We see by the headline of our chart the fallacy that population has anything to do with sovereignty. Seventeen cities with populations over five million surpass 70 sovereign states: Mexico City, Tokyo, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, New York, Peking, Paris, Sao Paulo, Calcutta, Moscow, Manila, Bombay, Seoul, Los Angeles, Chicago, London and Cairo. Sovereignty obviously has nothing to do with numbers of people.

But does this have something to do with political power and political choice? For instance, I legally renounced my national citizenship in 1948 in Paris. That was actually a sovereign act performed by a national citizen. But did I renounce my sovereignty as a human being at the same time? No, I couldn't have, because sovereignty - or freedom of choice - is inalienable. That's the essence of democracy and of human rights, their inalienability. In other word we have rights because we are human, not because some state says we do. One of the most basic human right which was clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence was the right to choose one's political allegiance. That is precisely what the founding fathers did; they exercised their inalienable sovereignty and created the United States of America.

So what is stopping us from choosing a higher political allegiance than that of a suicidal nation? Is it fear? Is it ignorance of why or how to do it? World citizenship is ours to claim and then to use. It is the key to our survival. It is the only way to protect what we already hold dear. For only by protecting the whole can we protect the parts. Do not be misled by the arguments of the nationalists; nations are not really enemies of each other. They continually protect each other's alleged sovereignty. Witness the United Nations Charter itself. Secretly all nations agree with each other that their most deadly common enemy is humanity and the sovereign human.

To illustrate, let's go on to our second chart. This chart reveals a total human communication process. For purpose of simplicity, I have indicated only four levels, though there are no doubt many intermediate levels. These four levels of communication are "dynamic" in character since each involves continual feedback to the individual.

The first dynamic identification is one to one, the most intimate relationship we have with our spiritual nature. Call it God, call it the Higher Self, Truth, Wisdom or whatever, still it is personal, subjective and the source of our entire conceptual value system. Our whole life is spent identifying with and identifying this first dynamic.

The second dynamic identification is with the family, the first social and even political unit. As we pass through life the family takes various forms: biological, legal, social, and spiritual. But it si the most intimate group identification where we first apply our value system outwardly, first to test our strength and expose our weaknesses.

The third dynamic identification is that which we personally desire or accept beyond the family. Here is immense variety. Here we have major and minor identifications. Two of the major ones are our particular nation and our religion. Being personal the dynamic is still partial or relative; its institutions are both exclusive and competitive. While it stimulates internal cooperation and sharing, it breeds aggressiveness, distrust and fear outside its closed circle. Often its philosophy and attitudes totally contradict the first and second dynamic identifications which are based on moral and human values. It pits human against fellow human. Economically it promotes scarcity thinking and unjust patterns of ownership of property. Being essentially derisive it leads finally to warlike attitudes and to war itself.

From the third dynamic identification comes alliance, treaties, charters between equally so-called sovereign states and the accumulated debris of wartime history. Here we find the mortal contradictions partial exposed by our first chart. For in terms of communication of information we live in a "global village," yet in political terms we live in exclusive "villages" called nation-states. Here precisely is where communication between citizen and government has broken down. Let's face it squarely, no exclusive national citizen has any say in his or her survival.

The legitimacy of national exclusivity was denounced at Nuremberg after World War II where German government officials were accused of crimes against humanity and of war crimes which transcended their national allegiance. Doesn't it follow then that all national leaders today, under these same Nuremberg Principles, are likewise war criminals in that they are willfully and deliberately preparing for World War II?

This bring us to the fourth dynamic. Only on this level do we recognize the essential unity of the human race and the planet as our common house. Only here can be seen and possibly prosecuted crimes against humanity. Before the ages of technology and electronic breakthrough fourth dynamic identification was left to the sages, prophets, philosophers, artists, poets and pirates who were no doubt the first empiricists of this level, the first practical citizens of the world though no moral code guided their actions.

Throughout our short human history from the Decalogue to the Helsinki Accords men and women have defined holistic and fourth dimension identification values. Invariably they relate the individual to his or her humanity and humane values put under pressure by exclusive third dynamic regimes. Here on this dynamic world law, human rights, world citizenship and world government find their natural and rightful place. It is on this level that I am seeking political office.

On the national level we are witnessing the obsolete political charade in the United States of the two presidential candidates vying with each other as to who is more patriotic to national interests. But both are in essential agreement that outside the United States, might makes right.

To take merely two examples: Mr. Reagan, in his acceptance speech, declared that "We shall keep the peace by keeping our country stronger than any potential adversary." In last Saturday's New York Times, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he is quoted as saying that "it would be indefensible and immoral to allow military strength to continue deteriorating as it was..."

Both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Mondale deny the very constitutional process which brought peace to this country two hundred years ago. Both deny every precept and teaching moral crime. This reliance on brute power is a reversion to jungle law, to the cave, a denial of the very concept of law and order which alone has brought the human race to its present. But further, now both are war criminals according to the Nuremberg principles.

As a candidate for world president, and a fellow human being, I hereby challenge both presidential candidates as well as all candidates for national office and all present heads of state to present to us, the world's people, their program for the elimination of war itself from our community. If they do not have such a program, then they betray the trust they demand of the people they presume to lead. I seek public office, on the other hand, as a world peace candidate. My program is world peace through law and its institutions. Government of, by and for the world's people.

Buckminster Fuller wrote in "Utopia or Oblivion" that "It is not surprising that man, burdened with obsolete 'knowledge' - his spontaneous reflexing conditioned only by past experience, and as yet unable to realize himself already a world man - fails to comprehend and cope logically with the birth of Universe Man."

This is a profound and startling statement. We can certainly appreciate and accept "world man" since our world , in the twentieth century has been transformed into a "global village," bu what did Bucky mean by "Universe Man?"

We claim to be on the threshold of the "Space Age." But there is not overwhelming evidence that the so-called Space Age came to our planet eons ago? Are we so arrogant on this cosmic grain of sand to think ourselves literally alone as sentient species in the vast universe? I don't believe so.

There is substantial reason to believe, many Biblical references even - I refer you to Daniken's books among others - that we humans living on this tiny planet of a minor sun in a solar system on the very fringe of a galaxy composed of billions far larger suns, in a universe of billions of galaxies , have actually been programmed ages ago by super intelligences. This universal programming not only has permitted us to arrive at our present state of moral and mental development, no doubt aided from time to time by superior beings amongst us but to achieve a quantum leap in consciousness - of which this very congress is a prime example, along with many, many other manifestations throughout the world - enabling us to metamorphose from what we now call the tribal or national to the global or human status. Maybe we will not know the truth of this statement until we do reach maturity.

In conclusion, we earthians undoubtedly face THE major challenge all primitive species face as a universal test of their intelligence: the recognition and organization of their unity as a species. For without this, we cannot justify our present existence or our future in the cosmic scheme and will prove it by destroying ourselves and our environment.

My dear friends, fellow humans, residents of the planet earth, as part of this cosmic revolution, you are enjoined by humanities need to survive to recognize your inalienable world citizenship, thus activating world peacemaking, in these latter prophetic days which, in Tom Paine's words, "Try men's souls."

Thank You.

 


Return To speech Index