Terracide

Three Arguments for a Terracratic Order

By John Taylor; 2007 Nov 28, 06 Qawl, 164 BE

My father asked me to purchase and install a large screen television for him, as well as to arrange the installation of cable television, in preparation for HDTV, which has captured his imagination (personally, I think it is a crock, entirely unnecessary). In spite of my inner reservations about the plug-in drug, it is his whole life since he retired from golf so I had no choice but comply. Thus began what it soon became evident will be a much bigger and longer job than expected. He still has not made room for this huge monstrosity in the rat's nest he calls an apartment, and it sits in the garage, obstructing my daily exercise machine, a half-folded table tennis table. Missing my exercise routine, combined with terrible weather, has meant an on and off death struggle with the migraine devil.

On top of all that, the revision of the last Badi Blog essay on the Day of the Covenant, combined with the Herculean task of learning two new computers, both operating system and software (I bought an Imac and installed "Mint," a distro flavor of Ubuntu Linux, on an older machine) took up even more time and energy over the past few days. It became evident that I was not going to be able to write anything specifically to commemorate the Ascension of the Master, which of course is today.

But as I worked an alternative sprang to mind. Why not write on the arguments for a world government? That is an appropriate way to remember Abdu'l-Baha. And so it came to pass, until, you guessed it, listing the arguments for a world government proved to be far more work than expected.

So, undeterred, here is my overall plan. I want to set up a website called Earth Order using the domain name, "earthorder.org," which I started renting last spring but have not had the chance to make into a website yet. I want to use this forum to feature the final version of my essays (yes, the Badi list is just first drafts) that propose improvements to world order. One of the first things I will put there is an argument for world government. So, without further preliminaries, is draft one of "Arguments for World Government."

Earth Order: Arguments for World Government

"What profit is there in my destruction, if I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise you? Shall it declare your truth? (Ps 30:9, WEB)

Argument One: Only a world government can aspire to the highest perfection.

This is how Dante put the argument many centuries ago, but now matters are so pressing it can be boiled down to a more urgent appeal: only a world government allows us to aspire to continued survival.

This is a structural argument that has been repeatedly rejected because until recently the structure of our planet Terra was all but unknown. In fact, as the extremely important recent announcement by a body of marine scientists points out, we still are inexcusably ignorant of the oceans. But one thing most of us do, or at least should, know that most of our planet is covered in water and over 90 percent of the oxygen we breathe is produced by phytoplankton in its oceans. This constitutes an irrefragable structural argument for a world government with a mandate over all natural resources, and especially the oceans.

Not having a world government, these vast areas of our planet are now nothing but free-for-all zones for dumping, pollution and irresponsible exploitation. The marine scientist report that they have discovered that all oceans have degraded far worse than imagined, and that we may have crossed a tipping point to total collapse of life in the oceans, and for that matter everywhere else.

Argument Two: "No lesser form of organization than a world government can address global warming."

Asking our present institutions to deal with the environment is like having your house burgled by a neighbor and then knocking on his door asking for information to track down your missing goods. Putting hope in assistance from nationalists is vain self-delusion that fails to recognize the obvious solution. Nations are not saviors, they are the perpetrators. We are like the oppressed surfs of Imperial Russia, pathetically hanging to naive faith that the Czar would give them relief if only the bad people surrounding and deluding him were removed and somehow learned their plight. History has let the secret out: the Czar was an oppressor like any other. Same thing now with global warming: it is pointless going to our neighbor and knocking on his door again and again. He is the thief and he is not going to help. Anything less than world government is not only incapable of saving the planet, it is unwilling to do so because it is guilty, hopelessly implicated in terracide, the murder of an entire planet. This brings us to the next argument.

Argument Three: By any standard, conditions are such that no lesser government than terracracy can put a legitimate claim on justice or democracy.

Only a world government, backed by a mandate from the entire human race, would be powerful enough not to be bullied or corrupted by international corporations, or by the military-industrial complex. In other words, both peace and order can only exist under a world order.

What is more, only a world government can aspire to democracy for the same reason: monied interests can and do corrupt elections on a regular basis. And even if fair national elections were possible, which they are not but if they were, that would only reinforce an inherently unfair system where a tiny, wealthy minority of the human race dominates and muffles the voices of the huge majority. Democracy that does not give all humans an equal say is an excuse for further violence and oppression.

Anything short of universal government is not just susceptible to corruption, as long as it is unaccountable to the representatives of the whole of humanity it will continue to be an inherently corrupting force in itself. Anything short of world government will act in a tyrannical manner over lesser levels of government.

I will leave for next time what is for me the most emotionally satisfying argument, the technical argument for world government.