Well-Meaning People Enable Human Extinction:
How to Achieve a Flourishing Future
Glen T. Martin / Earth Constitution Institute/ World Constitution and Parliament Association
(August 5, 20224) — We are nearing the end of the line. The threat of nuclear war looms its ugly head before a helplessly on-looking humanity. An immense genocide is conducted in the Middle East, famine kills thousands in Darfur, and government troops in Bangladesh kill hundreds of protesters while the world, and the United Nations, look on helplessly and impotently.
Wildfires, floods, droughts, and superstorms ravage the planet at the same time that the nations spend their wealth on ever more weapons and war that will mean the death of humanity.
One Percent of Humanity Controls Half the World’s Wealth
Fewer than 1% of the world’s population own more than 50% of its wealth. They run the world. They own or control the mass media. They own or control the giant corporations that are destroying the environment and producing ever more weapons of mass destruction. They decide the fate of the world at the World Economic Forum, or G-7 meetings, or World Bank Board Decisions, or through their influence at the Kremlin or US State Department.
Everyone knows that “democracy” is a misnomer under these conditions. The World Population Review for 2024 asserts that there are only 24 “full democracies” in the world and there are an additional 50 “flawed democracies,” while the rest of the 193 nations have some form of “authoritarianism.” However, the definition of democracy that they use cannot be correct, for within each of these countries it is the billionaires who have endless lobbyists, who own the mass media, and who call the shots behind the scenes.
In addition, these 74 full or flawed democracies are part of a world-system composed of mostly militarized “sovereign” nation-states whose actions of conflict, wars, terrorism, intrigue, invasion, or assassination hopelessly complicate life for everyone on the planet and demand of these democracies endless monetary investments, militarized secrecy, and complex involvements in response to this chaotic and corrupt international system.
You cannot have democracy within nations when they are part of such a chaotic, unstable, and dangerous world system. Some of these so-called democratic counties have nuclear weapons. Is it possible to be a democracy (said to believe in human rights and dignity) while simultaneously being willing to wipe out masses of human beings in thermonuclear holocaust? This would appear problematic at the very least.
The world has millions of highly intelligent, well-meaning people who are attempting to address this horrific human situation and to create a better future for coming generations. There are crusaders for human rights such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. There are crusaders for ecological protection and restoration, some of which, such as Extinction Rebellion, deeply understand what is at stake. There are women’s movements who see the ascendency of the feminist principle as a key to a transformative future. There are movements to foster consciousness elevation, to end war, to protect us against the threats of artificial intelligence, etc.
There are also movements to restore and promote democracy within nations. In India, the Congress Party struggles with the Hindu nationalist BJP. In the United States the Democratic Party struggles with the neo-fascist Republican Party. In Venezuela, the democratic socialist party of Chavez under President Maduro struggles with authoritarian contenders who claim, like former President Trump of the US, that any elections they lose must be, by definition, “stolen.” Hundreds of millions of dollars are pumped into these struggles by the contending sides.
Meanwhile, at the global level, nuclear war looms ever closer on the horizon and climate collapse proceeds more rapidly than even the scientists expected.
All of these millions of highly intelligent, well-meaning people are failing and will fail. Some of them are extremely well funded. The reason they will fail is because the planetary rulers, the 1% who own 50% of the world’s wealth, along with its corporations, its mass-media outlets, its financial system, and even many of its nation-states, are themselves experts at the culture and propaganda wars.
In her book on the environmental struggle called This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein describes the ways in which the big oil companies used their immense wealth to derail and undercut the environmental movement. In his book on this same struggle called Falter: Is the Human Game Beginning to Play Itself Out?, Bill McKibben describes the super-rich with their cult of greed and egoism in which they deny and destroy any movements perceived not to be in their interests.
What these millions of highly intelligent, well-meaning people fail to understand is that our pathological world-system itself structurally defeats any advance in human civilization, consciousness, or democratic fulfillment. There can be no stopping the threat of nuclear war, no reversal of ongoing climate collapse, nor advance in democracy or human rights, and no end to the chaos of human affairs under the current broken world system. The current system is very happy to deal with the culture wars that all these constituencies engage in because none of these movements seriously challenge the system itself.
There may be a powerful movement that sees the feminine principle as a key to a seriously better future world. No problem, the current world system ensures that it will not succeed. Millions of young people are in the streets protesting the genocide openly going on in the Middle East. No problem, the current world system ensures that the genocide will proceed without serious hindrances. Millions of people march against nuclear weapons or on behalf of protecting the climate. No problem, those destroying the climate, with their immense profits, have plenty of resources to prevent their success.
The hundreds of world citizens and international legal experts who developed the Constitution for the Federation of Earth in the last decades of the 20th century understood these principles. They understood that the present world-system of militarized sovereign nation-states interfaced with globalized capitalism predicated on the unlimited accumulation of private wealth for the few had to be replaced by a democratic world system founded on the sovereignty and dignity of the people of Earth.
The Earth Constitution establishes a world-system in which the people of Earth can take action premised on the common good of the whole rather than the private interests of the few.
The Earth Constitution embraces all of the values that the millions of well-meaning people struggle for today. It also provides the means for their values to be actualized. It provides the democratic means for protecting and restoring the environment. It provides the means for embracing the absolutely necessary feminist principle into the governance of the Earth. It provides the means for protecting universal human rights, for ending war and eliminating weapons of mass destruction. It provides the means for protecting authentic democracy within nations and for establishing democracy, diversity, and human rights globally.
Under the present world system, none of these values can be actualized in any significant way. The very structure of the system privileges power, violence, and elite self-interests. The Earth Constitution premises the world system on human dignity and the common good of the whole. Only on this basis can the world move rapidly toward solving its most fundamental problems. The values that millions of well-meaning people espouse are built into the Constitution along with the democratic means to actualize those values.
We must not waste our precious time and resources on never-ending culture wars. This will surely only spell doom for all of us. If we value ending war and eliminating nuclear weapons, if we value human rights, environmental protection, or authentic democracy, then we must ratify the Earth Constitutionwhich alone makes these truly possible. Here is one goal that we can pursue that addresses all these values simultaneously. It is the only credible way to address them because they are all interlinked within our human situation as a whole.
The Constitution affirms that human beings collectively are sovereign, and that national sovereignty is delegated by our collective humanity to the many territories within our human family. The Constitution realizes that many human problems are global problems and must be treated as an integrated whole. No nation-state or group of states can effectively address what is truly global. Only this can seriously protect the environment, end war and disarm the nations, prepare the way for the next level in the ascent of human consciousness, or ensure that human rights are respected everywhere on Earth.
It is time to overcome our compulsion to engage in endless and fruitless culture and propaganda wars. Noble as these may seem to some they waste our precious time and resources on ultimately fruitless pursuits. We must address the world-system as a whole, passionately yet nonviolently. There is a clear path laid out by the Earth Constitution to ratification and implementation of a democratically united world. Let us all commit to following that path. Let us use our time, energy and resources as effectively and wisely as possible to make it happen.
Our next event in the World Democracy Campaign directed toward promoting the Earth Constitution is our Nagasaki Day Expert Panel Discussion about nuclear weapons in relation to the Constitution. You can join us on Friday, August 9th at 9 AM US EST: https://zoom.us/j/2270743911
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