Outline of CHAPTER 8..... The United Nations and World Democracy One or Many? Creating a Multicultural World Democracy World Law Creating the New World System On the Importance of "Syntropy" and "Spirit"

The United Nations and World Democracy Arjuna said: If it pleases you to grant me my wish...then I wish that divine weapon, the dreadful Pasupata weapon, my lord...gruesome, of terrible power, which at the horrible end of the Eon will destroy the entire world... The Blessed Lord said: I shall give you the great Pasupata weapon, which is my favorite, equally capable...of maintaining, releasing, and destroying...However...you must never let it loose at any man in wanton violence, for...it might burn down the entire world. There is no one in all three worlds...who is invulnerable to it, and it can be launched with a thought, a glance, a word... The Mahabharata Tr. by J.A.B van Buitenen One or Many? If we accept the idea that conscious purpose becomes a causal factor in the evolution of complex social systems, then we can make the argument that democracy has--or ought to have--consciously selected purposes, and that one of its purposes ought to be the continuous evolution of every human society toward a higher stage of adaptive intelligence for the whole human system. In the theory of democracy that was constructed in chapter three, our next higher stage would be the dialectical or whole system democracy. Advancing toward this stage will probably continue to be the principle political task facing humanity for at least the first quarter of the 21st century. If agreed upon, this purpose--in order to be fulfilled--must lead to the resolution in political economy of a philosophical problem called the problem of the One and the Many. Between the One and the Many (between the whole and its parts, the universal and the particular, the center and the periphery, or unity and diversity) there is a constant ebb and flow of cognitive focus, energy, power, capital, affect, information, control, and intelligence that can only be successfully modulated by a democratic self-governing of the whole system. The very idea of a relationship between "the One and the Many" probably arises in human minds following the inevitable observance of natural systems coming together into an obvious unity and coming apart to produce variety--analogues, in a sense, of birth and death. The political errors associated with overcognizing either "the One" (oversimplifying) or "the Many" (submission to overwhelming diversity), leading to either totalitarian conformity or anarchic conflict, are not trivial. There are numerous sources of the conceptual distinction, or separation, of the One and the Many. Dimensions of space, time, language, and identity, for example, may separate the One from the Many--or unite them. Language can separate or unite us. One "world language," such as Esperanto, functioning as an easy to learn second language for everyone, could unite us across the Many, wide gaps in global communication. We could, as we often do, define one sacred location on Earth or one chosen people as manifesting the One to which the people of every other place, or every people, must give privilege. It is largely a matter of how we mentally, socially, and culturally construct the Universe and our role within it. The dimension of time may be used to divide or unite the One and the Many in a form of thought that we could characterize as "story logic." The story of humanity, as described in chapter 2, for example, could be told with one beginning and many ends, many starts and one destiny, or one origin, many intermediates, and one future, etc. The parts and overall movement of the story are joined or separated by various elementary forms of logic into a beginning, a middle continuance (often growth, plateau, then decline), and an end or closure that provides a sense of completeness. These three phases of every story are, of course, mental constructions--probably unconscious analogues taken from the lives of organisms or from those of other living systems. We can connect the One and the Many by starting from a focus on our present level of disunity, consciously providing ourselves with purpose, and holding to the image of a higher level of unity while maintaining certain kinds of diversity. In this conception of the problem, democracy is a distributive solution which holographically protects the Many in One and finds One in the Many--while advancing democracy to higher levels of human adaptiveness. To fulfill this historic assignment, however, democracy cannot be a half-hearted or a half-corrupted system of government: the principles of democratic government must be fully implemented on a global basis. If democracy is not functioning well, then capital and military power will accumulate in one sector while either apathy or revolutionary passion will grow in another sector of the world system. So-called "democracies" thereby become systems that are divided against themselves. Their quality of life indices are diminished, and their evolutionary development is stunted. Thus the immediate objective of democratic government is to regulate the distribution of wealth, power, and information so as to maintain optimal mixtures of freedom and equality, "frequality" if you will, in service to a purposeful evolution of human society. In former times this function, incomplete as it was, fell to tradition and unwritten law--for example, in the Kwakiutl tribes of the northwest Pacific coast region where potlatch ceremonies resulted in a periodic, massive redistribution of wealth. Pride and prestige went to those who could give away the most. Today such a redistribution must be globally accomplished by international agreements, tax codes, labor laws, environmental safeguards, and trade practices that neither destroy incentive to work nor provide new incentives to exploit others. Creating a Multicultural World Democracy As we shall see in the next chapter, the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century were the principle manifestations of a developing global crisis. The international AIDS epidemic, like the seventeenth century plague, is also symptomatic of this crisis: the growth-without-democracy disorder. The five hundred year long genocidal killing of Native Americans, the Holocaust in Europe; the killing among the Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Roman Catholics, and Bosnian Muslims; between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims; between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in India; Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka; Irish Catholics and Protestants; and the current areas of mass starvation in Africa and Asia are all among the most serious manifestations of the long accelerating disorder which, I will argue, ties together all of these tragedies. These and many other problems are primarily due to centuries of uncontrolled population and industrial growth combined with the merging of institutions and human populations that have not been sufficiently prepared by democratic education to live peacefully with other peoples in an increasingly crowded, multicultural space. The only reasonable solution to these problems is a global education in the principles of human rights and democratic decision-making together with an implementation of the legal institutions necessary to preserve those rights and democratic processes. The difficulties that we face in creating a democratic and multicultural world order are numerous and interrelated. In 1989, the International Political Science Association established Study Group 32: Democratization in Comparative Perspective. A member of that group and editor of the book they produced entitled Strategies of Democratization, Professor Tatu Vanhanen has estimated that "64-70% of the variation in the degree of democratization is explained by systematic structural factors" while "conscious strategies would account for a mere 30 to 40% of the variation at most." [Vanhanen, 1992] He goes on to argue, however, that "the strategies of political actors certainly matter, particularly so in transitional circumstances when social conditions do not clearly determine the nature of a country's political system." Vanhanen then described: "...three major avenues to affect democratization by conscious political efforts: (a) by transforming social structures affecting the distribution of economic and intellectual power resources; (b) by establishing political institutions that make it possible to share power democratically among competing groups; and (c) by devising effective political action strategies to overcome various obstacles to democratization." I would argue that since conscious strategies can begin at any level, and can bring about change in "systematic structural factors" that are conducive to democratization, we must ultimately regard conscious political strategy as being responsible for 99% of the variation in democratization. Assuming that we are all conscious, we cannot avoid responsibility for a lack of progress in democratization. To consciously implement a global multicultural democracy, existing democracies and new democratic movements will have to develop a global action plan for coping with problems in the following categories: (1) Authoritarian and Special Interests. The first and principle cause of confusion, inefficiency, and disorder in human societies, "democracies" included, is the control of government and mass media by authoritarian or special interests. Among these special interests I include "gender interests." As evidenced in the early history of Athenian democracy, and as Vanhanen more recently demonstrated so clearly, real power must be distributed beyond some threshold if democracy is to emerge and function as it should. At present the development of democracy is principally hindered by forces that filter the flow of news. These controlling interests distort information and divert attention to worldviews and public policies that serve special interests while they divert the flow of money into the pockets of those same special interests. That money comes primarily out of the pockets of the poor and lower middle classes, causing considerable personal stress, and major social problems, to accumulate. To continue their self-enrichment, the special interests must either use force or practice deception, or both, against those they exploit. Large, complex social systems that are filled with many people make deception easier. Eventually, however, the deception is always noticed, and though legal proof is often difficult, people know they've been swindled. The "peaceful order," which is maintained by force, is then sooner or later resisted by force, by crime, or by apathy. The whole process is costly to humanity and slows the democratization that is desperately needed. The "sacred," unwritten covenant in every human community, which states that we humans do care about each other, is broken when inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power are accompanied by severe poverty, homelessness, malnutrition or starvation, pollution, unequal access to health care, unequal treatment in courts of law, unequal access to information or knowledge, unequal life expectancies, and unequal infant or general mortality rates. These, and a variety of secondary social ills, then cause a rising level of social disorder to which the privately owned mass media and the corporate owned politicians then adds mystifying attributions and pseudo-explanations. This leads further to cynicism, alienation, anger, and/or apathy among the exploited. The whole process is successful insofar as it makes it very difficult to gather political support and organize a sincere program for change. Over time it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve popular support for any positive action--even when, as with the ozone crisis described above, the problem threatens the lives of millions of people and could be easily and decisively solved. (2) Overpopulation. Population growth, as Malthus predicted, has finally become the principle dynamic that underlies all our social systems. Sadly, under present conditions a few particular interests benefit from population growth while the poorest people and our ecosystems suffer greatly. As each population expands governments and natural environments are increasingly overloaded, and entropic disorder increases in every sphere of life. Shortsighted religious hierarchies, profit-seeking corporate leaders, and power hungry nationalistic politicians, absolutistically hold on to anachronistic attitudes and strive to expand their populations and markets in competition with others, and further the rapid movement toward population overshoot--primarily by hampering progress on the vital issue of birth control. They thereby abdicate their past role of defending human values, for when there are larger numbers of people each person is treated as a person of less value, and the quality of the human spirit diminishes. From overpopulation alone, so many social ills derive it is impossible to describe them in a short text. I can only suggest that readers seek out some of the many good works on this subject. Much of this book is based on the assumption that population growth rates must be significantly curtailed by the end of this century, within five to eight years, or our children's children will almost certainly suffer serious, perhaps devastating consequences. Efforts to limit population growth, unless they are imposed by draconian and cruel forces, will have to be accomplished by widespread education and availability of birth control methods. This is best accomplished by methods that are truly democratic. (3) Ecosystemic Limits. Increasing populations, and increasing energy use, inevitably produce increasing entropy, or disorder, in the environment. No population of any kind can manifest unlimited growth, or unlimited increase in consumption, without destroying the environmental foundations of its own existence. In addition to population control, societies will have to reduce unnecessary consumption--especially of energy resources, scarce natural resources, and all nonrenewable resources. Conservation of natural resources and restoration of natural ecosystems on a global basis are as a high a priority as limiting population growth. Since every human being is involved widespread education by democratic methods is essential to keeping the environment healthy. Environmental discipline will probably have to be incorporated into the daily routines of household life just as environmental protection will have to be built into democratic constitutions and laws. Because of their importance to humanity, these laws and daily routines, together with environmental consciousness, may in the future take on a religious character. They may well become a central part, along with human love, of the sacred rules and rituals of a future spirituality shared by all humans. (4) Media Madness. Disorder in the collection and distribution of information results from society's turning over control of the mass media to a variety of self-serving "special interests." It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the flow of information organizes, or disorganizes, the brains of the human recipients of that information. Media organizations, producing information with the purpose of serving themselves, tend to induce disorganization in the public audience. Democratic control of the media is one of the most critical tasks in the struggle to create a healthy future for human beings. This does not mean that there should be no privately owned media--only that most of the media should be owned and operated in full accordance with democratically decided public needs and interests. (5) Nationalistic, Racial, and Cultural Conflict. From both a moral and a scientific point of view all humans and all peoples are assumed here to be equal and endowed with the same human rights in relation to each other. Formerly separate, and often still segregated, human populations who are not psychologically ready for a mutually respectful adaptation to one another as equals, however, will fall into conflict. This conflict is debilitating to each of the populations involved. Stopping these conflicts is absolutely prerequisite for multicultural democracies to flourish, and healthy multicultural democracies are essential to the future survival of civilization. Only arms dealers, privately-owned media, a few individuals, and unscrupulous politicians profit from these cultural and racial conflicts, but that fact plus the logic of closed, paranoid systems seems to be enough to keep peoples in violent conflict for decades or even centuries. Where arms can't be eliminated they must be reduced with a balance maintained sufficient only to guarantee the security among all affected parties. Unless people are thoroughly and persistently educated to respect the people of other races, genders, and cultures, a minority of interests can and will commit acts of violence which will then be quickly amplified by politicians and the profit-making mass media into larger scale conflicts. Authoritarian systems thrive on such conflicts. Since each of us is a part of this global problem, only democratic methods that achieve high rates of participation and intercultural communication will be successful in achieving a full peace in our neighborhoods and in our global backyard. A truly democratic United Nations, or better yet a carefully developed democratic world government with a democratically controlled, global peacekeeping force will ultimately be necessary for human survival. The faster we progress on this global political construction the better. (6) Productivity Rates. Industrial and post-industrial economies continue to increase productivity while several spheres of human life, including the performing arts and the delivery of health care, still require about the same amount of human time and effort as two hundred years ago. Because of increasing productivity, the differing rates of growth in different sectors of the world economy, and different material standards of living, jobs continue to increase more slowly than population growth and the worldwide job flux is growing more severe. In order to cope with the gaps and dislocations that result, societies have developed the "welfare state" and its attendant bureaucracies. With poorly regulated corporate and national economic competition, production becomes more capital intensive whenever possible. As labor costs are reduced by corporations the costs of unemployment to the whole of society increase. The taxpayers then rebel against the burden of supporting the old-style welfare state with its rising costs for unemployment insurance, law enforcement, retirement, and health care. As a result of poor planning and the apparent slowness in responding to this challenge, important human services and the arts then become less universally available. These problems are relatively new on the social scene but will become progressively more severe unless democracies elicit broad, citizen participation and focus the full powers of their decision-making intelligence on the related issues of economic productivity, the actual quantities of goods and services needed or wanted by society, and the individual's right to a meaningful job. The inhuman displacement of working people caused by corporations that move to cheaper environments can only be slowed by democratically achieving global standards for wage rates and social support services, for basic human rights and values, and ultimately by creating some minimally shared understanding of the meaning and purposes of human life. (7) Distribution of Wealth Poor people need no figures to convince them that the vast and growing disparities of wealth are a human problem of grave significance. Nor do most independent thinking political scientists and economists. Economies with extreme differences in wealth distribution are weak and ultimately self-destructive. Huge inequalities of wealth not only threaten the democratic distribution of power but make violent conflicts more likely and thus endanger world peace. In the presence of weapons of mass destruction this involves a significant threat to the ability of the human species to survive. Without destroying a healthy level of market exchange and material incentives to work, something must be done to achieve a global redistribution of wealth. This will have to be democratically planned and democratically accomplished. Much of the remainder of this book is devoted to creating a theory and advocating a practice for resolving this and the other problems described above. What follows, of course, is only a very "small step for mankind" if, indeed, it is useful at all. It is an attempt to contribute, however, to the conscious global effort that will be needed in the years ahead and should be regarded as no more than that. World Law Large complex systems with many parts, such as the European Union and other increasingly large supranational systems that are currently under development, must be based on carefully derived laws of relationship, and these laws must be democratically determined by the whole system and its parts. The laws must be internalized by each of the parts, and lawful relationships among the parts must be enforced--but not overdone. There must also be freedom within the system. Diverse identities will thereby be maintained, and inevitably there will be a little chaos in the system. Throughout human history attempts have been made, consciously or unconsciously, to solve the political manifestations of this problem of the One and the Many. One body of law which applies to the many diverse peoples and circumstances of life is seen in all such endeavors as necessary but not sufficient for their success. The theme of universal laws is always present, implicitly or explicitly, in utopian writings. Theoretical models, too, from Kant's universal civic society in perpetual peace through the World Federalists to those of the more recent World Order Models Project have been at the forefront of nonutopian efforts to sketch out a future that would, through just laws, be made free of the endless conflict between authoritarian systems. Among many examples of a broad set of laws encompassing several social systems in the sphere of actual historical experience, there were the Amphictyonic Leagues of ancient Greek city-states, the Iroquois Confederation with its Great Law of Peace, the League of Nations, and the United Nations. In the Great Law of Peace it is stated that "thinking shall replace killing," and in all the great dreams of world peace thinking becomes discourse which becomes law or tradition which replaces killing with nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. Ultimately, however, the problem of violence in the presence of an absolute weapon that can destroy the world and which can never be disposed of--as identified in the ancient Sanskrit poem called the Mahabharata--can only be solved when our world crosses the threshold to a fully implemented global democracy that guarantees both security and democratic participation to every people. During the early part of the 20th century we initiated the League of Nations--the first modern step toward a transformation of the anarchic nation-state system into a law-based system of international relationships and global decision-making. In the League decision-making power was given in proportion not to the principle of one person, one vote, but to the military and economic power of the nation-state constituents. Concepts and organizational elements of the League were then transformed by mid-century into the United Nations which was a stronger and more effective system of international self-governance--but by no means yet a democratic world system. In the 21st century it is likely that we will first strengthen the United Nations and then transform it into a truly democratic world government--or we will begin to replace it with a newly constructed democratic world system. Hopefully, that will not take another century to accomplish--for more lives will be at stake in the next one hundred years than were lost in the entire previous millennium. It is clear that, despite vociferous laggards associated with those who profit from the status quo, both human thought and human social evolution are drawn increasingly to the idea of "world peace through world law" as the solution to many human problems. If we accept this idea, as I do, the question is then: What lawful structure of global self-government would be both practical and effective, and how shall we make the transition from our current world system? Creating the New World System In perhaps the most sophisticated approach to the problem of a transition to world government, the World Order Models Project with its study groups meeting in eight different countries, has through books by a number of authors outlined several possible new world orders and several types of transition from the present world. They have successfully avoided "the fallacy of premature specificity" which I may be committing in this volume. We need their examples of thoughtful proposals and their profound and penetrating analyses, but I think we also need to go further than analyses and general recommendations to actually create a bold, new political movement that could hasten a transition to the new world system. Despite the unparalleled opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War, the political leaders of our nations have been more reticent than progressive scholars. Either lacking clear vision of a new paradigm for world order or bound by narrow economic interests and self-perpetuating political forces, our fearless leaders have hung back--perhaps waiting to see which political winds would fill their sails. A more kindly interpretation would be that no one is quite sure what will be politically possible in the absence of the capitalist-communist superpower conflict as an organizing principle and in the presence of resurgent national and ethnic interests. Nevertheless, literally thousands if not millions of people have wondered why national leaders did not quickly put forth a new vision and propose moving decisively to take advantage of the end of the superpower arms race and to create a new world system. Unlike the periods immediately following each of the two world wars, this more recent opportunity to move humanity into a new era of global security and world peace was for five years largely ignored. Perhaps the shocking upsurge in nationalism made our leaders cautious. Perhaps there is something lacking in our cultures, our educational systems, or in the relatively primitive levels of democracy that we have attained. It seems clear, however, that the conclusion of the Cold War provided a striking opportunity--comparable to those which existed briefly after each of the two world wars--to renew the process of creating a democratic world system. To proceed along that line, however, requires a courageous new way of thinking that would avoid the errors of both the League of Nations and the United Nations and would be joined with practical plans for initiating action before the end of the 20th century. Both the League and the United Nations were formed on the basis of a principle that was formulated in the 17th century by Hugo Grotius, a Dutch jurist often regarded as the father of modern principles of international law. In 1625 he published De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), which utilized concepts of both "natural law" and "the rule of reason" to arrive at the principles of state sovereignty and of equality among sovereign states. However, the principle of an associative organization of equal but sovereign nation-states has been a useful but extremely limited fiction. The real principle of organization, even in the League and the U.N., has been the rule of power in an anarchic system of relations among unequal power structures which pretend to a certain civility only when it serves the self-interests of those who have the power. The U.N. must be transformed into, or replaced by, a lawful and democratically enforceable world order based not on national sovereignty but on human sovereignty. By "human sovereignty" I mean the principle that the human species must be politically united on the basis of universal interests, values, and laws which are both sovereign over special interests and organized as a democratic world system that protects individual, ethnic, and cultural diversity while promoting the development of each individual and each group. With these concepts in mind, we can now outline one strategy for achieving human sovereignty in a global democratic system based on world law. There are, of course, many possible strategies. This one is proposed only after noting that there has been no serious attempt to implement many such proposals already made. It seems likely to me, however, that the popularity of the theme of democratic world government will have increased dramatically by the middle of the 21st century, and that many more people will begin then to look around for ideas that will work. As we prepare for that time we must recognize that transforming the global political structure will, in any case, be at least a thirty year project. Actually, of course, it will take longer than that just to complete the first stage, and any transformation toward an ideal global self-governance should be regarded as continuous rather than discrete. Every existing human organization can, and probably should, be further democratized before we transfer power to democratically elected representatives of the whole human species. Each individual can begin now to urge every organization with which he or she has contact to take action toward a more democratic process of decision-making. If, however, we are to be fully conscious actors rather than simply reactors or career protestors who legitimate the status quo by our ineffective opposition, or if we wish to be more than merely witnesses who occasionally write critical analysis and comment, we must consciously create a new organization for social action. This will have to be a new type of organization that will be self-sustaining over a long period of time, provide for many of the needs of its members, and form the center thrust of a larger, popular movement toward world democracy. Such an organization ought to offer more than ideals as incentives to sustain its membership. This organization must offer (1) a vision of the new world, (2) available membership to anyone who shares that vision and its supporting values, (3) a truly democratic, intra-organizational decision-making process with the global vision as one of it's purposes, (4) multiple levels of incentives and rewards to its members, and (5) a believable strategy for achieving its purposes by means which are fully consistent with its ends. It is important to argue that exploitive relations must be banned, but we must go further. We must actually work with all who wish to join us in organizing to create a viable new world political model that will prove it is capable of replacing exploitive relations. Further, this organization must--like its vision of global democracy--aim to be both global in reach and human in scale. In brief, whether supported by some national leaders or not, most of the work of reconstructing the human world must be done at the grassroots, or community, level of human society--where we live and directly experience the effects of decisions made at all other levels. Even though many of us live in large cities, we all find ourselves in a smaller section of the city with interests common to others living in that section. Thus while remaining either in the country or in huge metropolises we can viably organize on the basis of more localized interests even while also remaining deeply involved in decision-making at larger levels. Human scale will thus be defined here, as in chapter 7, to include communities of approximately five hundred individuals with each individual belonging to a group of 7 \xb1 2 persons as described in chapters 4 and 7. Initially, there would be only one or a very few groups or communities of individuals and families that wished to organize themselves toward these ends and on the basis of these partially untried methods. Those who do will want to share the results of their efforts and to learn from one another. Consequently, networks will develop, grow, and require network self-governance. Step by step, a truly participative new world democracy can grow from the bottom up. Since even a few such communities dispersed over a large and diverse cultural space would spontaneously form very different sets of values and goals, the development of this organization of small communities would be greatly facilitated if from the beginning it were based on a minimal set of shared values and goals and on a democratic decision-making model that is common to all the communities and to the future world system which they seek to create. This would be not only equitable across cultures and societies but would also enormously simplify and reduce the confusion and cost of democratic transformations around the world. The cost of maintaining and advancing democratic self-government, providing educational materials and teachers to promote democracy, and communicating accurate and full information to the public via the various mass media is not insignificant and may be exceeded only by the cost to human society of nondemocratic government; hence the value of a commonly held model. The universal model of a democratic constitution [Foreman,1994], with strict rules defining electoral procedures and a new system for mass media, would provide a decision-making structure, a common economic foundation, and a minimal set of shared human values that would allow considerable cultural diversity to remain without eroding the commonality that will be necessary for global peace and cooperation toward mutually agreed upon ends. Each community could be developed by such strategies as described in chapter nine. Each community could begin almost immediately to exert some political pressure for an evolution toward higher stages of democracy in surrounding societies and nations. The multi-leveled strategy of advocating a transformation of each local government, each nation, and the United Nations toward the universal model of democracy could be coupled with the ongoing development of a parallel democracy, partially autonomous and partially integrated into the ambient social and legal structures, which would consist of an increasingly large, transnational network of syntropic communities. Democracy on a world scale requires for its success democracy at several levels, including democratic self-government on a very small scale--which in turn requires a guarantee of security by a peaceful and democratic decision-making body at the world level. The sovereign nation-state must therefore eventually be transformed into an intermediate level of democratic decision-making that exists between the world level and the local level. Final military authority must rest with the democratically elected world body. No more military than a carefully balanced and monitored level of civilian defense organization should be allowed at national and local levels. [Sharp, 1985] The two principle challenges in any world reorganization plan are: (1) what to do with the nuclear genie which, having been released from captivity, cannot be put back in the bottle, and (2) what to do with the currently self-sustaining military-industrial complex in each nation. No law or international agreement to abolish weapons of mass destruction can fully guarantee protection of the world's peoples from an outlaw group that might recreate nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction and then hold millions of people hostage to the group's demands. Ultimately, the only solution to this problem is a solution based on deterrence by a democratically controlled global power structure. A sufficiently deterrent nuclear and conventional force must be distributed in balanced pattern among a few elements of the democratically controlled world peacekeeping force. Rather than strive for complete disarmament and demilitarization in the 21st century, therefore, it seems more realistic to me that once democratic world government is in control of a world peacekeeping structure that can guarantee peace and security to all peoples, we should then transfer existing nuclear and other massively destructive weapons to the democratically controlled, global command structure. We should then reduce these weapon groups to five or seven carefully located, balanced, and defended bases under the new democratically controlled, unified, world peacekeeping force. There should then be an annual rotation of staff to prevent fixed-loyalty groups from developing in a particular locality. These five to seven bases would then further reduce the stock of nuclear and other mass weaponry to levels that would be sufficient to maintain a deterrence against any group or nation that threatened to create and use a new stockpile of mass weaponry for the purpose of advancing control by its own narrow or special interests. With these five or seven bases, together with regionally placed conventional forces, all ultimately in the hands of the whole human electorate, the security of every country and people would be guaranteed. No nation would need to create or maintain an expensive standing army or arms cache in order to provide for a defense against aggression. Any people or country which violated world law by committing aggression could be resolutely stopped by force, if necessary, and economic sanctions against aggressors could be enforced. The second major task involving the military-industrial complex is that of breaking the mutually supportive and anti-democratic connections among military organizations, large profit-seeking corporations, and elected politicians. The two basic methods of accomplishing this both have to do with public control replacing control by special interests: (1) democratic reform that effectively removes private money from the electoral, legislative, and regulatory processes, and (2) globalized, public ownership of arms manufacturing and democratically controlled arms trade. The globalization of arms manufacturing facilities would have to include some compensation to the present owners for those facilities taken under control by the public--and the conversion of many other arms facilities to the production of other products. Given this briefest of outlines, and assuming that a truly democratic world government can actually be created, how shall we proceed from here? To begin with, various individuals and peoples may want to examine the proposed model and then determine for themselves whether it will mean security and well-being for each of them. This means that the universal model of democracy must be distributed, and an organization must be formed with the purpose of carrying the new model to as many people as possible for their consideration. If, in addition, some help in implementing the model can be offered, so much the better. These tasks may not be as daunting as they first appear. Modern channels of communication now circle the globe. A new model for world democracy has been created. The human energy available for devotion to such purposes is perhaps greater than at any previous time in human history. The examples of the League, the U.N., of the World Order Models Project, the World Federalists, and other transnational organizations--together with the new supranational trade and political organizations such as the European Union--all serve as partial models and learning trials. We need only a new form of organization that draws on previous experience but utilizes new ways of building and sustaining purposeful organization. On the Importance of "Syntropy" and "Spirit" I cannot close this chapter without a word or two on the intangible aspects of human organization. All pragmatic attempts to resolve the problems of corrupted modern democracy; of bureaucratic authoritarianism; of poverty, of homelessness, of territorial and ethnic war, or of the nuclear dilemma by merely economic, political, or military restructuring are weak in relation to the mental and historio-cultural processes that are capable of reintroducing political division, mutual exclusivity, and violent hostility into the human process. Thus the emphasis on a thorough education in democracy, on identification with the species as "self," and especially on a minimum set of universally shared values, beliefs, and goals is of fundamental significance to all attempts at resolving the nuclear dilemma and creating global democracy. One highly important aspect of this education, I submit, is the development of ways of thinking and action that are syntropicly constructive, universalizing, and more powerfully effective than the cognitive processes usually acquired in traditional education. Recall here the words of Einstein: "Past thinking and methods did not succeed in preventing world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars." "Syntropy," defined as the conscious integration of all parts of a whole system, including paradoxically related elements, and all levels of organization into movement toward a specifiable goal pattern, is a way of structuring thought and action to become more inclusive, more constructive, and more purposeful. It is based on the idea that, carefully organized, a more inclusive and consciously purposeful approach recruits more energy and resources, and results in more durable progress--with more creative leaps--toward desired ends. This in turn produces a more satisfactory emotional life and healthier interpersonal relationships. A syntropic movement toward worldwide peace and democracy, then, would include all elements that we as a species can bring into telic relationship with a specifiable, future world system. A few of the infinite number of elements that are parts of the syntropic democracy movement are individuals, families, ecosystems, the human ideals of social justice and economic well-being, antinuclear movements, integrative international institutions, the world religions, organizational democracies, holotropically organized syntropic communities; the many nonprofit, peace and democracy organizations; any specifiable vision of world peace and democracy, "love," "unity," the "human spirit," and of particular importance today: identification of self with one's ethnic or racial group, and simultaneously, with the whole of humanity. The heterogeneity of elements in this brief list suggests a syntropic systems perspective that includes both objective and subjective components. The importance of the subjective elements in our responses to the problems of modern human society is such that it may be useful to attempt to clarify them with objectively shared definitions. "Spirit," for example, may be defined as an information pattern that is transmitted from one matter-energy structure to another--exciting its substrate wherever it goes. Bad spirits and good spirits, then, are respectively those spirits that excite patterns in organized matter toward undesirable ends and those that enhance the pursuit of desired ends. When a person dies that person's spirit is freed--to take on the many variations that are assumed in the minds and bodies of those who knew and hated or loved that person. If that person was fortunate enough to have been loved deeply and broadly, then that person's spirit may imprint large human organizations for a long while. One principle function of funeral ceremonies, elegies, and "festschriften" is to preserve and extend the influence of an individual's spirit. Similarly, anything that extends all that is good in the human spirit is desirable to the syntropic world peace and democracy movement. "Love" can be defined as a type of human spirit, and as with all spirit we can characterize love thermodynamically. We can define it as an informational pattern that has the effect of attracting and holding complex systems of organized (low entropy) matter-energy together, creatively facilitating new levels of organization that are "farther from equilibrium," exciting and enhancing them at many levels. At the level of a personality in love we recognize--self-reflexively--a special pleasure and beauty in the creative morphogenesis taking place. This process generally includes an expansion of identity to include as "self" a larger portion of the universe. Need I add that "love" is sometimes experienced as a "force," either inside or outside oneself, that can cause a person to "fall," i.e., to feel out of control? There are, of course, many other qualities and components of love that humans recognize, endure, or enjoy. One of these components is peace--a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium achieved by moving previously separate or conflicting systems into a more comprehensive and creative organizational process. Now, if you will, reflect on these interpretations of spirit, love, and peace in relation to the possible world history constructed earlier in this book and to the definition of syntropy presented above. "Good spirits" enhance the pursuit of desired ends. "Love" facilitates a creative movement to higher levels of organization. That "possible history" with its constructive extrapolations into the future was offered as a syntropic systems perspective on ethnic wars, the nuclear arms race, and on the possible transition from an anarchic world system of nation-states to a democratic world system at peace with itself. "Peaceful, syntropic democracy" is a higher level of organization, and certainly a desired, world system. In that version I emphasized objectively observable processes such as population pressures, modes of production, and weapons races. In closing I would like to offer the same history of the human race--subjectively and romantically reconstructed--as a love story: A long time ago the spirit of human love existed as a dreamlike singularity--an entelechial form of spiritual unity. This unity was fragmented when the first humans separated and then came out of Africa and dispersed themselves throughout the rest of the world. Pieces of the human spirit grew in isolation, became different, forgot, and when contacts were made again they were suspicious--often not recognizing one another as human. Each piece called itself "the people" or "the race," and others were "barbarians." Wars occurred when separate peoples made conflicting claims of dominion over the Earth and its markets. Communities, tribes, city-states, empires, kingdoms, republics, and civilizations based on common histories, shared beliefs, and values evolved until the nation-states developed and assumed such powers of destruction as to threaten even the existence of a human spirit. Realizing the danger, these modern fragments of the human spirit took time to ponder. While leaders reflected on their predicament global communications and transportation enabled more and more people to know their enemies, to see themselves in the enemy, and the enemy in themselves. They began to see that the old ways of living within competitive, warlike nation-states continued to prevent love and mutual understanding from overcoming the suspicion and hatred that had been educated into their minds by the actions of extremists, by poorly written history books, and by special interests controlling the mass media. So they began to organize themselves in new ways based on their determination to build a new world. They sought to reunite the fragments of the human spirit in a modern form of unity that allows people to enjoy their differences. Gradually their voices rose, and their message spread around the world. The leaders were shaken. "The people want peace," one of them said, "and governments better get out of the way." But the people weren't yet satisfied. They continued to build new organizations at every level. Their syntropic communities became more and more like small models of their increasingly shared vision of a new world order--based on universal values, and like love, inclusive of more and more that is good. Finally, after long negotiations, an agreement to establish a democratic world government was announced. Via satellite transmission, the news arrived everywhere on Earth simultaneously. Excited people in every village and city poured out into the streets. The music and the celebration went on for days. A world peacekeeping team was formed of people from all lands who had been trained in nonviolent conflict prevention and resolution. Already long prepared by the syntropic world democracy network activists, they went into action immediately. Their efforts were backed by a ready force of armed peacekeepers under control by democratically elected world representatives. The residual fear and hatred between nations began to dissipate, and disarmament began as soon as protection from aggression was guaranteed by the new world peace system. Borders became easier to cross. Following the ending of world hunger and poverty, vacation travel to "exotic" lands and cultures became possible for everyone. New adventures under the sea and in space expanded the human vista and the sense of human destiny. Our human race, reunited, then began to expand the human spirit in ways never before dreamed. Amor vincet omnia, et nos cedamus amori. Love conquers all. Let us yield to love. But let that love be intelligently and democratically informed on every level of human consciousness. This essay began with the recognition of dangerous trends that confront all humans. It proceeded to a description of values and to criteria deemed important for a solution. Reforms were suggested. Then an emerging new world order was described and a method of community organizing, consistent with the new world order, was outlined. A model constitution that embodies the values of the new world was suggested. Using those models, a world history with a desirable future was constructed. But the ends we desire, and the concomitant new beginnings, won't be achieved simply by creating images or understandings in our minds. The future world crises, like the nuclear and environmental dilemmas, will be completely unprecedented. To survive and prosper, we will have to transform the full force of human thought, feeling, and action into new socioeconomic, cultural, and political structures that more effectively utilize everything that each of us can do. Within such organizations our daily actions would begin to produce, simultaneously, the means of our livelihood and the structures of world democracy. This done, then surely our children's children will be able to look back upon us with a special love--recognizing that our generation, at this time of great decision, had the passion and the intelligence to ensure the future of life on Earth and, perhaps, in other regions of the Universe...