Replacing 'Divide and rule' with 'Unite and reign.'
The founding father of world government was John Amos Comenius. In his crowning masterpiece, the Panorthosia, Comenius drew up a comprehensive plan for a three-chambered world government. Today we tend to imagine a model world government as a primarily political institution modeled upon our absolute, all-encompassing nation-states. Instead, Comenius divided his world-governing institution into a religious parliament, which he called the Ecumenical Consistery, a "college of light" concerned with education and scientific advance, and finally a political institution called the Dicastery of Peace. Each of these is independently elected and, presumably, separately supported by its own taxes and other revenue. The political institution, the Dicastery of Peace, would not dominate the other two; rather it would restrict itself to the purest goal of politics: peace.
The genius of Comenius was to extend the roots of these three institutions right down to the most immediate, local level. Indeed, his division into three is based upon Aristotle's insights into individual epistemology, psychology and the human brain. The individual has three main interests or concerns: knowledge, peace and providence. Human nature longs first to know, to engage in learning and teaching; second, we all need to take care of our immediate, practical well-being, the bailiwick of politics and peace; and third, we need feel that our long-term prosperity is assured under the aspect of eternity, which means religion or spirituality.
Comenius therefore placed the roots of these three branches in the most basic political institution, the family or household. Every home should have its own school, its own parliament and its own place of worship. From here would grow the universal institution, his tripartite world government.
Comenius did not have a name for the society that would result from these new institutions. Since Immanuel Kant, some hundred and twenty years after Panorthosia was completed, wrote up a detailed draft for a constitution for a world government, I have been using his term for the wholly new social condition that would come out of a covenant of perpetual peace: a universal civic society, or UCS.
Without a UCS, we compete with one another destructively, it is everybody against everybody. Leadership exploits the weakness of others. With a UCS, the competition will be to see who can benefit the whole more effectively. This Comenius summed up in a slogan: Unite and Reign. He suggested that it take the place of the old way, divide and conquer. He wrote:
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"Then the devilish slogan 'Divide and rule' will vanish away and be replaced by the divine motto 'Unite and reign.' The monstrous Machiavellianism known as the theory of status will also vanish, when the only acceptable theory of status will be righteousness and peace on earth, as described in Psalm LXXXV, 10-13. Wars will also vanish, being the work of Satan and an offence against mankind, originating from the time of Nimrod with Babel in its confusion of languages.
"Therefore when our Babel is destroyed and our languages reunited there will be no more Nimrod to hunt after men in their fury. In future the hunting of kings will be like that of Solomon, a hunt for the glory of wisdom, that is to say, a competition with one another and with God in the wise administration of their subjects. And so the end will correspond to the beginning; as it was when human affairs began before the flood, so at the end of the world, there shall be peace and security."
(Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 26, para 11, p. 158-159)
3 comments:
I am fairly stunned, intellectually by finding out about JA Cominius. Though I have ventured into international economics readings, for the most part since moving to Japan I have been in the mode of "try to learn to think locally as the vast number of non-English reading/speaking Japanese do, and then to act locally with regards to fostering the rebirth renewal of communities."
So reading your blog is somewhat disconcerting, in a good way I suppose. I recently spend hours and hours pouring over a Japanese textbook, grammar analysis, vocabulary memorization, writing practice, etc. Then I jump up to a global perspective by coming here. There is an ever abiding temptation to spend hours here rather than "there". But that is not to be, I have decided.
I would like to contribute comments more in proportion to my appreciation, but that cannot be.
After thinking about these ideas. I am still wondering how the representation would work effectively to achieve something that overcomes traditional power blocks. For example There are about 1.3 billion Chinese and they are 91% Han Chinese. How would this numerical advantage of one ethnic group be fairly balanced through Comenius' world government? The Chinese in partnership with the Indian continent would always dominate the regional economic and political interests of the others.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Comenius suggested a continental division of the world government, and he proposed that they tackle problems according to Descartes method, that is, deal with the hardest problem first. Of course he had no idea how large China and India were, though he did see Africa and America entering into the world union.
In my own thinking about world government I am thinking of a continental division of the five physical continents and counting China and India as separate continents in view of their large numbers. That way the members of a world counsel would have representatives chosen and appointed from among the seven continental governments.
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