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WORLD GOVERNMENT and YOU

 

Macrobiotic World Congress

Becket, Massachusetts

31 August 1984

 

I first want to express my appreciation and delight at having been invited to this podium to share with you some thoughts about peace. Frankly, I am in some awe at being here.

Michio Kushi's advocacy of peace through world government dates approximately from my own. When I read in Aveline Kushi's preface to Natural Healing Through Macrobiotics that George Oshawa had christened Michio "number one ambassador of world government," as far back as 1950 I knew our destinies were intrinsically linked. It has taken thirty four years for our paths to join, shall I say, organizationally. I know they have already been joined in our joint acceptance of what Michio calls, "The Principles of the Order of the Universe." Now, we move together in our noble crusade for humanity's emancipation and well-being. That is good news, indeed.

"Peace" is a word venerated throughout the world and, indeed, through all of human history. But what does it mean? There are many definitions of peace.

There is the personal and mystical "peace which passeth under-standing," the intellectual peace of the fulfillment of a creative task, the emotional peace we call "love" expressed first in the family unit then to the neighbors and to God, the social peace of a community and the political peace of larger human societies such as the nation.

So what peace are concerned with here today? In a nuclear-triggered world, we are suddenly impelled not only to define but to practice a new kind of peace: "world peace."

The alternative is not only personal annihilation but racial suicide...at least on planet earth. All past revolutions, therefore, were merely prologues compared to the one facing each one of us. If our crisis is total it follows our response to it must also be total. Viewed, however, from a national perspective only, world peace is impossible, a chimera, a fantasy. Anyone who seeks world peace is condemned as a dreamer, a utopist or a crackpot.

Just the monstrous amounts nations today spend on armaments underlines this fact. This year's global nationalistic military budget is over $650 billion. In all of World War II - in which I was a United States bomber pilot - three megatons, or three million tons, of explosives were used. Today the combined nuclear powers possess over 16,000 megatons of explosive power available for immediate use against us.

We must draw the proper conclusion. All our previous definitions of peace must be urgently re-examined from the most intimate to the most universal.

I would put the first question to you: Is there then an essential characteristic, a common denominator linking all the various definitions of peace?

Having studied and lived the principles of macrobiotics, you are thoroughly familiar with it. You apply it in your food choices and in your very lifestyles. You know of it as the principle of dualistic monism; I apply the same principle in my political life as a world citizen. It is, of course, the principle of dynamic balance, maintaining a balance between opposites, yin and yang, or in psychological terms, bipolarities; in political terms, making peace between seeming opponents. It is this dynamic balance principle which is often forgotten when discussing the word "peace" which otherwise seems to be static or passive. Socrates called the process "dialectical," or the method of recognizing the bipolarities of a seemingly conflict situation under a superseding unity.

The new Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary states that the root of "peace" is the Latin, "pax" and "pacis." Now the root of "pac" means to agree, hence the word "pact." For there to be agreement or a pact, of course, there must first be two or more parties. But prior to this, the parties seeking agreement must have cognition or awareness of themselves as capable of such discernment. For most of seeking world peace, this recognition of personal capability is, I have found, a blind spot. We are conditioned into believing that world peace begins only with nations and the individual has no part to play in the process. Exactly the opposite is true as Michio teaches us daily. The entire peace process, whether local, global or cosmic must begin with ourselves as individuals. I know you appreciate this personal decision-making quality in our present lifestyle.

Once realized, this discernment must then be communicated which introduces another factor. Peace cannot be achieved without a common language. There is no peace in the jungle: a rattlesnake just can't communicate with a lion. There is constant war between them. The modern national Tower of Babel continually frustrates those trying to establish peaceful communication across frontiers. That was the reason for such secondary and neutral languages as Esperanto, to serve as a communicative tool for the establishment of world peace. Let us peacemakers continue this noble attempt to bridge the communication gap.

These pacts we call "laws." We formulate them on family levels, local levels, state or country levels and on national levels. On all these levels your personal agreement is necessary for these pacts or laws to be maintained. They represent a many-sided equals sign between all citizens in a given community.

What social word defines an individual involved in that lawmaking process? "Citizenship." But Webster's Dictionary surprisingly doesn't link citizenship and peace together. In fact, it doesn't even mention law with peace, yet ironically, it defines "peace" as a "freedom from war," and a "cessation of hostilities." But it doesn't define the one basic characteristic essential to arrive at that freedom: common citizenship.

You can see quite clearly that the 1917 Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War was not a "peace pact;" it did not bring about a common citizenship between the antagonists. On the contrary, it maintained the very political bipolar conditions which led to the war in the first place. It was a treaty between nation-states and had nothing to do with humans as such.

So, between 1917 and 1939, there was no peace but merely an interlude between war...between national warriors. The cessation of hostilities in 1945, likewise, did not lead to a common world citizenship, though many nations at the San Francisco conference were willing to give the United Nations General Assembly real legislative power. This was rejected, incidentally, by United States delegate while the Soviet delegate completely acquiesced. So the very same war conditions prevail in the world of states today.

Taking a leaf from American history, it is easy to understand why the founding fathers insisted on a common citizenship above and separate from state citizenships for peace to come about throughout the whole American community. You can also immediately see why there is no peace "between" the Soviet Union and the United States, nor can there be. There is no common citizenship between the humans in these countries or any other two countries, no political equal sign. This, in turn, leads to two startling conclusions: first, there can be no lasting peace between two exclusive sovereign nations; second, your national citizenry has become, in the twentieth century, a collective suicide pact. There is only one way out of this dilemma. A common citizenship between all humans becomes by definition a world citizenship.

This brings me to the underlying concept directly connected with any citizenship, whether local or global. It is probably the most debated concept in the English language. Because on its definition and utilization hangs the issue of world war and world peace. It is "sovereignty" or, in the terms already mentioned, the freedom to exercise balance. The same Webster's Dictionary defines "sovereign" as "supreme in power," or "the person having the highest power or authority in a state, as a king, queen, emperor, etc." Thus, "sovereignty" is "the state of being sovereign."

If you or I, as individual humans, have the inalienable right to choose our own political allegiance, as the founding fathers of the United States did, then we are sovereigns or the "supreme power," each one of us. If that is so, the we are, each one of us, supreme arbiters of that value known as freedom of choice. This is the discernment I spoke of earlier. We can choose politically to become the balance, or equal sign or law between the seeming opponents.

If we seek world peace, do we personally have to make a pact with every single other human living on planet earth? That seems impossible, on the face of it, but is it? We know the process by which the civic pact was achieved on the national, state and local levels and we certainly didn't know everyone with whom we made the pact even locally. That process is called, simply, "government." We should not be afraid of the word. It is simply housekeeping or the legislative, administrative, executive and judicial consequence of the original contract or agreement between humans. A world government then would be their collective recognition that if inalienable rights, such as life, freedom, security and, the famous, pursuit of happiness, are to be protected for one and all, the laws guaranteeing such rights must be duly legislated, executed, adjudicated and enforced for the good of each human and all humans identified as a species.

Let's now break down the peace process into realizable steps. The first step is to realize ourselves as individually capable of discernment or decision, that is, as sovereigns. The second step is to accept the fact that we must make a new pact or civic agreement with fellow humans living in the same geographical area. If it is world peace we seek, the geographical area is necessarily the world itself. The third step is to identify both ourselves and this pact in civic terms. Thus, we identify ourselves as world citizens exercising our inalienable right to relate to others who so define themselves in a worldly agreement.

Already many models of such common agreements exist, starting as far back as the Decalogue. The most recent is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was proclaimed by the nations themselves in 1948 as a "common standard of achievement."

The fourth step is the logical consequence of these now multilateral agreements: their evolving into an embryonic government representing both the sovereign individual and sovereign humanity.

The fifth step is to energize or activate this government thus spreading its influence, its capabilities and its services. These five steps are practical, concrete and perfectly legitimate. Beside, many of us have already taken them.

I made my personal declaration of world citizenship over 38 years ago. Hundreds of thousands throughout the world made the same declaration in the next few years. The concept of world citizenship was broad enough to encompass many seemingly divergent notions from spiritual to economic.

The next evolution took place in 1953 when the actual government of world citizens was declared on September 4th in Ellsworth, Maine. You may read this declaration at your leisure, for it is available here.

In January of 1954, a provisional administrative agency was founded for the new government in order to identify the newly declared world citizens. Thus, the World Service Authority was born. We now had our own "city hall" based on our fundamental human rights.

Many concrete identification symbols already exist to give legitimate evidence to this citizenship and government. The World Passport is one, a document representing the right of freedom of travel on planet earth. Already over two hundred thousand individuals hold this document and are using it. Six nations have recognized on a de jure basis and over 70 on a case-by-case basis. Then, there is the World Birth Certificate, the World Identification Card, the World Marriage Certificate and, of course, the World Citizen Card, itself. These are powerful identification tools because they represent the sovereign individual and his or her inalienable human rights as outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Recently, I have declared my candidacy for election to world public office as a world citizen; that office is world president of our government. The World Service Authority, acting under the mandate of article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which mandates such global elections, had these World Ballots printed for registered world citizens. What has the current national political process to say about all this? Does it even address the issue of world peace or world war? Does it mention world citizenship, world law or world government?

Maybe we should start right here in the United States since we have just been treated to two national party conventions and their alleged platforms. The first tip-off is in the Republican platform statement about human rights. Only one sentence is given to this vital subject and I quote,

"The American people believe that United States foreign policy should be animated by the cause of human rights for all the world's people."

Now, the phrase "human rights" itself implies transnational or global boundaries. The phrase "all the world's people" likewise identifies human rights as universal and bypassing frontiers, yet the political power being sought by the Republican party is, and can only be, national. Hence whatever policies deal with concepts beyond the nation must be classified as "foreign policy" which implies anarchy, the very antithesis of law. Yet without law, human rights have no social or political protection as the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states. So the plank referring to human right is fraudulent. Here in one succinct example is the Orwellian doublethink and doublespeak of national politics.

As to the foreign policy of the Republicans - which incidentally is mirrored by the Democrats - here is what Mr. Reagan and company say: "

We shall keep the peace by keeping our country stronger than any political adversary."

The Democrats merely echo this might over right philosophy with the statement:

"There is no higher goal for the Democratic Party than assuring the national security of the United States. This means a strong national defense..."

Both these statements are a denial of the very constitutional process which brought peace to this country two hundred years ago. Both are a denial of every teaching of every moral leader who ever lived on our planet who defined killing as a moral crime. This reliance on brute power is a reversion to jungle law, to the machismo of the caveman, a denial of the very concept of law and order which alone has brought the human race to its present day. But further, the man or men who promulgate might over right, according to the Nuremberg Principles, are legally war criminals and subject to indictment, prosecution and conviction.

The Republican platform continues its Machiavellian doublethink:

"Stable and peaceful relations with the Soviet Union are possible and desirable, but they depend upon the credibility of American strength and determination."

Just what does this really mean, "...the credibility of American strengthen and determination."? It implies nothing more than the willingness of the U.S. government to strike the Soviet Union first with nuclear weapons since should the Soviet Union strike the United States first, the possibility of retaliation would be lessened, if not eliminated, given what is now called the "electromagnetic pulse."

The dilemma is that, although both the USA and the USSR governments now realize that nuclear war will destroy both, no matter who strikes first, one or the other super-powers must strike first in order to avoid total or near total annihilation by the other. This is a formula for nuclear holocaust.

But not satisfied with provoking nuclear holocaust on earth, the Republicans promise to carry the nationalistic wars into space. I quote: "

We enthusiastically support the development of non-nuclear, space-based defensive systems to protect the United States by destroying incoming missiles."

Here the insanity and treason is fully exposed, insanity because inherent in such a proposal is paranoia carried to its limits. Paralyzed by fear, the proponents of such a "space wars" proposal cannot consider any solution to the anarchy dominating the world community but a suicidal policy in the guise of protection; treason because the United States does not "own" the space surrounding the planet; national law does not cover it; national officials have no constitutional mandate to consider it within their legitimate domain. Finally, such a policy encroaches directly on the sovereignty of each human and the human race itself which has seminal rights as to what is to happen in its outer space.

The Democrats, while claiming to want to "move the world back from the brink of nuclear war" via a negotiated nuclear freeze, have no proposals for a government beyond the nations to supervise such a withdrawal from war.

In neither the Republican nor Democratic platform is mention of world law, world government or world citizenship. Neither platform addresses the question of war or peace. Neither platform addresses the question of world poverty or environmental pollution including radioactive. Neither platform, of course, blows the whistle on the nation-state itself as an irrelevant, feudalistic, anachronistic carry-over institution from the 18th century imposed on the 20th century of instant communication and instant destruction.

I claimed that Ronald Reagan is, according to the Nuremberg Principles, a war criminal. These principles were used to indict, prosecute, convict and punish, some by death, the Nazi leaders. In the simplest terms, if a man points a gun at you on the street he is threatening your life. If he pulls the trigger, he has murdered you. Both are penal offenses. Ronald Reagan, not to mention his fellow heads of state, is pointing a gun at me, Garry Davis. It is both a conventional and a nuclear gun. If "nuclear" means "total," then no matter where it goes off I will be dead. A dead man cannot file a suit against his murderer. Moreover, omnicide cannot be tried after the fact. But the Nuremberg Principles clearly state that "Crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity are punishable as crimes under international law."

Legally, I am a stateless person; no nation represents me. I am "outside," as it were, the entire nation-state framework. Mind you, I am not alone; there are millions in my same non-legal position. However, according to Nuremberg, international law still pertains to me. Principle I states that

"Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible, therefore, and liable to punishment."

In brief, I am preparing, as a stateless world citizen, to sue Ronald Reagan in the International Court at The Hague as a war criminal under the Nuremberg Principles. The suit is to be filed in October; such a suit could, with equal reason, be filed against Chairman Chernenko and all other heads of state.

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 asyet 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 begin to understand "world man" what with our world having turned into a "village" in the twentieth century, but what did Bucky mean by "Universe Man?"

We claim to be on the threshold of the "space age;" but there is overwhelming evidence, including many Biblical references, that the so-called space age came to our planet aeons ago. I refer you to Erich von Daniken's books, among others, for confirmation of this exciting subject. There is no substantial reason to believe we humans, living on this tiny planet of a minor sun in a solar system on the very edge of a galaxy counting over four billion stars, most far brighter and larger than our own sun, in a universe composed of billions of galaxies, have been programmed ages ago by super intelligences not only to arrive at our present stage of moral and mental development but to achieve a quantum leap in consciousness enabling us to metamorphose from what we call the tribal or national status to the global and human.

In conclusion, we Earthians face perhaps THE major challenge all primitive species face as a universal test of their intelligence: the recognition and organization of our unity as a species. For without this, we cannot justify either our present existence or our future in the cosmic scheme and will prove it by destroying ourselves and our environment. The reward for achieving world peace is incalculable. The very stars await that very event.

In eastern terms, the karma or each individual and the karma of human-kind itself must now be recognized as dynamically joined and the key to survival. The balance between you and me as individuals and humanity, expressed as world citizenship and world government, is the definition of world peace.

Friends, fellow humans, residents of planet earth, as part of this cosmic revolution, you are enjoined by humanity itself to recognize your innate and inalienable world citizenship, thus to become world peacemakers in these prophetic latter days which, in the words of Tom Paine, "try men's souls."

Thank you.

 


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