Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 25

REVAMPING THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PLANET

Beyond civilization we could develop a sociology-a cl.u.s.ter of a.s.sociations, inst.i.tutions, outlooks, purposes and practices designed to revamp the social life of the planet in much the same way and with the same general outlook with which we approach the political, economic, sociological and ideological problems arising from the presence, on the planet Earth, of some 3,700 million different human beings.

There are at least two approaches to the sociological aspects of our planet-wide, coordinated society. One way is that with which nature's cyclism has made us familiar--the "day" of manifestation (activity) and the "night" of rest (recuperation, restoration and renewal). This might be described as a natural, gradual evolutionary way.

The other way is based on creative intervention which shortcuts evolutionary gradualism in the same way that a great leap shortcuts many ordinary steps.

Perhaps the conception can be ill.u.s.trated in a most effective way by the alternative presented during the great revolution of 1750-1970. At the beginning of this epoch man walked the earth literally, except when he sailed on the water or used the horse or some other swift animal to travel by land. In the course of the great revolution mankind has learned to move his body at speeds which sometimes exceed the movement of sound, on the land, on the water, through the air and into s.p.a.ce. He has done this short-cutting by revolutionary changes in types of energy coming from outside his physical body. In another sphere--communication devices--man has stepped up the movement of his emotions and thoughts and his creative imagination beyond the speed of light.

This a.n.a.logy is not complete, nor is it wholly convincing. But the great revolution in science and technology, applied in the field of social science can quite conceivably provide humanity with the means of short-cutting the normal or "natural" processes in sociology as it has already short-cutted the normal or "natural" process in human transportation and communication.

As long as human beings accept the normal, traditional, "natural"

principles of a.s.sociation and group action, humanity will continue on the tread-mill of civilization with its long established cycles of beginning, expansion, exploitation, maturity, conflict, decline and extermination.

This aspect of planetary sociology may be ill.u.s.trated by the rise and decline of total members.h.i.+p in the human family. We know that Roman civilization pa.s.sed through a completed cycle of population expansion to an optimum, followed by a catastrophic population decline. Western civilization has been experiencing a population expansion or explosion that can be measured with a moderate degree of statistical accuracy.

Planetary human population doubled from 500 million in 1650 to 1000 million in 1850. Between 1850 and 1950 population more than doubled (from 1000 million to 2,500 million). In 1975 the human population of the earth is close to 3,700 million.

An essential aspect of world government will be a population program designed to adjust social structure and planning to the means of production and to make generally available to all humans and, where possible, all living things, the results of invention, discovery and experience with affluence, general security and wide variations of vocational and avocational choice. In practice such a program would include the planned utilization and conservation of nature and the conscious improvement of society by society.

Social planning at the planetary level could deal chiefly with large national or regional groupings, more or less divergent in viewpoint but conscious of the necessity for bringing local and regional groups together in order to secure common agreement and to take part in directed joint actions. Such efforts must aim at sufficient cohesion to provide for normal social function at all levels; sufficient permissiveness to allow for a measure of self-determination at all levels; sufficient authority to carry on production and distribution at all levels, and sufficient libertarianism to tolerate discussion and opposition at all levels, with a maximum degree of self sufficiency and self-determination at all levels.

Nowhere is the need for social planning more in evidence than in the sphere of human population. In the early years of the present twentieth century, the human population was doubling in about 50 years (from 1500 million in 1900 to 2500 million in 1950, from 1,900 million in 1925 to 3,800 million in 1975). Had this rate of growth continued for another hundred years the planet's fertile acres would have been fully occupied by jostling crowds with _standing-room only_ signs in the more desirable living s.p.a.ces. j.a.pan, the United States, several countries of West Europe and China have launched campaigns to reduce net population increase to one percent per year or less.

A culture level, to be effective in the present predicament of a human race (oscillating uneasily between the possibility of social advance and the probability of recession into another Dark Age of ignorance, superst.i.tion and social stagnation), must include certain essential elements. First and foremost, it must be planet-wide. Given planetary unification by communication, transportation, travel, migration, trade and commerce, and cultural interchange, one world has become a factual reality. World oneness is laced by contradictions, confrontations, conflicts; by traditional, customary, habitual, ideological, legal, and national barriers of greater or lesser rigidity. Despite these divisive forces, our need to function in terms of planetary oneness is so great that the term "citizens of the world" not only makes sense, but is accepted and even flaunted in the face of tough restrictions and hard nosed nationalism.

Segments of humanity that are ready and willing to sign up as world citizens already enjoy world consciousness, carrying world pa.s.sports; and are experimenting with various aspects of worldist thinking, contact, organization. They are ready and willing to take part in a mult.i.tude of planetary experiments in world-wide human a.s.sociation.

The great revolution of 1750-1970 has made two notable contributions to the inst.i.tutions of western civilization. In the field of politics it has contributed the nation state. In the field of economics it has contributed industrialization with its twin sociological consequence, mechanization and urbanization.

Machines and cities are the Siamese twins of the modern age. They are also the twin forces that helped to push the nation state into its strategic position of sovereign independence.

Nationalism today is a unifying force inside the frontiers of the 140 nations that presently litter and clutter the earth. Beyond each frontier, however, nationalism has become one of the most divisive sources of misunderstanding, controversy, disruption and conflict presently cursing mankind. In the exercise of their sovereignty the oligarchs who make policy and direct procedure in each sovereign state put national interests first. On a planet which currently hosts 140 sovereign states this policy of putting the interests of the part before the interests of the whole results in controversy, conflict, and may result in collective self-destruction.

It is rea.s.suring and encouraging to compare the rise of nationalism and Europeanism during the past thousand years with the rise of planetism and worldism from 1450 to 1970. The development of nationalism and Europeanism is still incomplete, but the drive in that direction has thus far survived the fragmenting forces of self-determination and political independence which have played so vital a role in human society since the beginning of the present century. Europeanization is still a dream rather than a reality. The forces of regionalism, nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life. But the ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized, accepted and put into practice. The development of worldism seems to be following a parallel course.

Consequently, wisdom, foresight, and the acceptance of change as a major factor in all social relations.h.i.+ps seem to justify our a.s.sumption that sooner or later man's survival on the planet will depend on a degree of worldist thinking, a.s.sociation and inst.i.tutionalism that will guarantee the preservation of order and decency at the planetary level.

Since conformity implies and involves a will to diversity, measures to establish and maintain order and peace would include the widest possible lat.i.tude and the utmost effort to encourage the greatest possible diversity at regional, national and local levels. Thus diversity would become a virtue in much the same sense that conformity became a virtue in bourgeois Europe toward the end of the last century and in North America during the Joseph MacCarthy period. Through the past dozen years American youth has reversed the trend, adopting a permissiveness under which the sky is the limit in language, clothing, s.e.xual conduct and professional choice and behavior.

Non-conformity is all very well as protest against super-conformity, but it fails utterly to meet the basic need of the 1970's for a ma.s.s movement away from the inst.i.tutions and practices of civilization, plus a disciplined and purposive ma.s.s determination to a.s.sume att.i.tudes, adopt practices and establish inst.i.tutions leading beyond civilization to a world culture pattern which insists upon conformity up to a point necessary for survival and social advance, and beyond that point, a diversity--including recognized and organized opposition at the planetary center. At the same time there must be a degree of regional and local diversity that will provide for the utmost independence, self-confidence, self-expression and regional and local self-determination compatible with the basic principle: to each in accordance with need.

Beyond civilization, matters of general concern will take precedence at the same time that matters of regional and local concerns will be dealt with regionally and locally. In such a society individuals and communities at all levels will be schooled and experienced in self-discipline and prepared to follow conduct patterns that emphasize the principle: live and help others to live to the fullest and the utmost.

Beyond civilization lies the recognition and practice of the principle that the welfare of the whole takes precedence over the demands of any of its parts. At the same time, each part or segment of the social whole has specific rights that the directors of the whole are bound to recognize, respect, defend and implement.

Such results can be achieved under a social pattern aimed at respect for life--all life; the preservation and improvement of the conditions under which the good life can be lived by all members of each community as well as by the human family as a whole. If human society is to be preserved and progressively improved it must encourage individuals and cherish inst.i.tutions whose responsibility and duty it is to stimulate self-criticism to a point that will make survival and social improvement the first charge on community life--from the locality, through the region to the whole human family.

Should self-discipline and self-criticism falter, militant minorities must urge and initiate those revolutionary changes which are necessary for the health and well-being of any ailing human community. This is one of the contradictions that faces every human enterprise, including the human race itself.

Cyclic renewal or regeneration is one aspect of life on our Island Universe. The principle operates in the life cell, and from the cell on up and out, to the more extended and extensive aspects of life and being. The course is well marked and increasingly understood.

Alternatively, humanity can put its creative imagination to work; plan, organize, prepare and by a carefully designed, revolutionary technique take a great leap onto another culture level, establis.h.i.+ng other norms beyond those currently accepted by civilized peoples.

"Beyond civilization" lifestyles are being planfully introduced in order to save humankind from impending disaster. In that sense, they are emergency measures. Developmentally, they are being designed as a planned replacement of the life style current in the matured centers of western civilization.

Under such conditions the habit patterns of civilizations could be deliberately abandoned or superceded by life styles more appropriate to the inst.i.tutions and practices of human beings prepared to live and able to live and develop in a community which is establis.h.i.+ng itself on a level beyond civilization.

Let no reader retort: Old things are best; old ways are most secure; beware of the errors of human judgment, the lures and wiles of human imaginings, the reckless enthusiasm of inexperience; the machinations and subversions of the counter-revolution.

Whether he will or no, man has already advanced far along the path that leads beyond the culture level of civilization into a culture pattern which includes new means of a.s.sociation and new social inst.i.tutions. The most obvious examples of the universal pattern which the human race has been developing during the present epoch are to be found in the "one world" consequences of the planet-wide revolution in science and technology.

Planetary fragmentation which accompanied the dissolution of Roman civilization divided and sub-divided mankind into unnumbered self-contained segments: families, tribes, cla.s.ses, villages, cities, kingdoms, princ.i.p.alities, nations, empires. They were separated from one another by geographic, ethnic, ideological and political barriers which were intensified by tradition, custom, migration, and the compet.i.tive struggles among the elite for pelf and power. Ignorance and superst.i.tion played a major role in the decentralizing process. Conflicts at various levels led to further social segmentation and isolation of autonomous social groups.

In the backwardness of those Dark Ages--curiosity, fellow feeling, ma.s.s migration, the spirit of adventure, trade, travel and the need for common action to master nature and repel enemies--broke down barriers and created fields of mutual interest and general well-being, reversing the trend toward fragmentation and replacing it by a trend toward universality which reached its high point during the closing years of the nineteenth century. The slogan of this movement was "United we stand, divided we fall. The bell which tolls for one, tolls for all.

When one benefits all benefit. Peace, progress and prosperity promote general welfare."

Two general wars in 1914-18 and 1939-45, brought pre-meditated, deliberated suffering, hards.h.i.+ps and death to mult.i.tudes. Each war led to a clamor for peace and order that resulted in a World Court, The League of Nations and the United Nations. The efforts at planet-wide united action for peace and disarmament were paralleled and supplemented by the growth of specialized public services for communication, travel, scientific interchange, arms limitation. They were further augmented by a spectacular expansion of trade, travel, capital investment and scientific research and interchange.

Events since war's end in 1945 have marked out the steps which the human race might take in the immediate future to deal with the new problems arising out of the world revolution of 1750-1970 and to stabilize human life on the planet.

Step 1. Revise the United Nations Charter to make all citizens of member nations also citizens of the United Nations and therefore under its direct jurisdiction.

Step 2. Delegate to the United Nations authority to levy taxes or otherwise provide its own income.

Step 3. Call a planet-wide convention of delegates from all nations, authorized to draft a world federal const.i.tution and submit it for ratification by all member states.

Step 4. When approved by two thirds of the states represented at the const.i.tutional convention the const.i.tution so adopted would became the basis for world law and the administration of world affairs.

Step 5. Inaugurate a world government that would be responsible for maintaining and promoting peace, order, stability, justice, equality of opportunity and general welfare at the international level.

Heretofore, the nearest approach to a universal state has been an empire like that of Egypt or Rome built by conquest and maintained by military authority exercised by the imperial nucleus over its a.s.sociated and subordinated territories. The universal state described above would be an a.s.sociation of sovereign states, each delegating a sufficient measure of its sovereignty to enable the World Federation to act as a responsible planet-wide government.

The probable consequences of these five forward steps have been summarized by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos (_Only One World_ N.Y. Nostrom 1972 pages 28-29). "In every case the needed steps take us away from division, from single shot interventions, separatist tendencies and driving ambitions and greeds. We have to grasp and foster more fully the truly integrative aspects of science. We have to revise our economic management of incomes, of environments, of cities. We have to place what is useable in nationalism within the framework of a political world order that is morally and socially responsible as well as physically one."

Up to this point in social history, critical situations have usually been dealt with on the battlefield. Might measured right. The victors carried the day, won the right to exploit their defeated rivals and weaker neighbors. The result was planet-wide political chaos, and an economic free-for-all, in which political power and economic superiority bestowed upon their possessors the right to plunder and exploit geographic areas limited only by existing means of communication and transportation. At no known point in social history were conquerors and exploiters able to unify the earth politically and exploit its total economic resources.

A planned, stabilized future for humanity will be a.s.sured when the earth is governed much as cities, states, nations and empires have been governed in the past and the present, but with one essential difference.

At no known past time have all human beings been represented in a government authorized to make and enforce world law. In the absence of law, chaos and armed conflicts have determined the course of human affairs. Under a recognized world federal government, world law will bring, for the first time, the practical possibility of a law and order determined by and for the human population and charged with the responsibility for establis.h.i.+ng and maintaining planetary public policy.

World law will be only one aspect of the new situation that will result from the establishment of a planned, stabilized future for humanity.

Other aspects of the new society will include:

1. Shaping the future of nature on and in the planet, with all of its potential riches.

2. Perhaps also taking a hand in determining the future of other celestial bodies making up our solar system.

3. Shaping human society, the man-made and man-remade human heritage that plays so vital a role in determining the course of human life--individual and social.