Cosmopolis Earth, Volume 2

Another draft

November-16-12

 

The World Belt; A Global Vascular System

By John Taylor; 2012 Nov 16, 169 BE

 

For centuries farsighted writers, scientists and engineers, most notable among them Jules Verne and Buckminster Fuller, have put forward ideas to improve our infrastructure. The most difficult of these megaprojects remain undone, including domed cities, moving sidewalks, pneumatic tube transit and modular housing. Others, long dismissed as utopian pipe dreams, are already completed, such as train tunnels below the Alps and under the English channel, not to mention satellites and GPS location. Wikipedia's article on megaprojects lists hundreds of other schemes, all formerly impracticable, that present technology allows and which are in various stages of planning, including some already under construction.

One megaproject is so daunting that nothing like it has ever been attempted. This is the World Belt, a long corridor of superconducting power lines crossing and joining the continents. This energy grid would both deliver electricity and store it. The peculiar properties of superconduction permit power lines to act as a huge storage battery. This is the ideal enabler for green energy, wind, wave and solar, all of which are intermittent. These high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines are actually more efficient transmitting electricity over long distances than our present grid, using alternating current, is over much shorter distances.

 

 

This world belt would permanently shift the balance of electrical power towards green energy. As Buckminster Fuller tirelessly pointed out in his public talks (two of which I had the honour of attending), one side of our planet is always bathed in sunlight while the other languishes in darkness. A global grid connecting these shifting dark and light halves of Earth would pay for itself very quickly. It would transmit energy from where it is free, bountiful and unneeded to where it is in demand, from bright to dark areas, from warm to cold regions, and from low population desert areas to those with a high population.

Once the global grid makes the entire energy resources of the planet available anywhere at a very low price, it will be economical to undertake a similar and parallel megaproject to reorient the all-important area of transport, transit, travel and tourism. A rapid transportation line running near or alongside the World Belt's power lines could derive power directly from this energy grid.

Together, these two, power and transport, would constitute the vascular system first of continental union, then of a global democratic super-state. This technical development allows us to move ourselves and our stuff from one place to another with a speed and efficiency approaching electronic communications, which is virtually instantaneous. It will permit our built world to enter into the third dimension; as Fuller pointed out, until now we have built only two dimensionally, scratching the surface of earth. Our internal processes can be seen from above, like bacteria, amoebas and other unicellular creatures. Once we have these veins and arteries, however, we can build in every direction, erecting floating cities on the ocean, flying domes in the air, and boring underground, into mountains and underground.

Ambitious projects like this require undreamed of integration and interdependence, however, not only physical but mental and spiritual as well. We are unlikely to move forward in this direction without the advances in politics, religion and education that John Amos Comenius laid out for us back in the middle of the Seventeenth Century. We discussed his analyses and proposals at length in the first volume of this series, Beyond Borders. Once we remove our habits and mental blocks, we will learn to balance our lives in an integrated way. Then, we can erect the machineries of world democracy, of which megaprojects such as the world belt are only an outer expression.

Research Report on the second volume of my book

The Trans-Earth Skyway System

 

The first volume of Cosmopolis Earth was about John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) and his plan to build a stable democratic republic beyond national borders by raising up confederations based on the continents. Comenius proposed a particular division of labour among leaders designed to prevent the concentration of power that causes tyranny. He proposed a schedule for this unification that would do it gradually, over several generations, through a series of successive ten year cycles.

 

I am now working on the second volume of Cosmopolis Earth. In it, I will speculate about implementation of these decade-long cycles that Comenius proposed, concentrating especially on the infrastructure that is needed to carry out global integration in as soon as two or three hundred years. As with the first volume, Beyond Borders, I will share early drafts here, on the Badi' blog and mailing list, over coming weeks and months.

 

Preliminary Research Report for the Second Volume of Cosmopolis Earth

 

 

 

Researching the second volume of Cosmopolis Earth, I started with the keyword, "world belt," which I have been using for several years to describe the sort of infrastructure that I expect to come about as democracy goes global. Unfortunately, "world belt" turned up nothing on Google. Did I forget the real name, or is it a false memory? Or did the proposal for this project, run by engineers who were inspired by Buckminster Fully, I thought, just die? However, I did find something fairly close, called the "Trans-Earth Skyway System," though. The site describes this as a,

 

"projected global network of elevated, electric transportation corridors, containing three major subsystems, 1. The Electric Superhighway 2. Sustainable Energy Grid 3. Trans-Earth Aqueduct." (http://www.summitbridge.com/index.html)

 

The site includes a map of the world showing how this "skyway system" would join and encircle the coasts of each continent. Passengers would ride in hypersonic trains through transparent tubes held high in the air, looking down at the scenery through glass observation windows. Because these tubes are evacuated, travel could take place at hypersonic speeds, tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. This is very different from the idea of Buckminster Fuller, who envisioned these tubes running mostly underground, which would allow for completely integrated, containerized intermodal transit. That is, passengers would ride in an independent seat capsule or cabin, and be switched invisibly from one mode to another, say, from an automobile, to a truck to a train to an airplane.

 

I suppose that the suspended, high-rise transparent tubes of the Trans Earth Skyway System (TESS), if technically feasible, would be ideal. Why not enjoy the scenery as you travel the continents? There would certainly would be less disruption if the TESS tubes flew overhead. The anonymous author of this site suggests that the land under the tubes be devoted to natural parks,

 "Construction of the entire system will simultaneously establish a worldwide ecological economy, and literally unite the world beyond war."

I do not necessarily subscribe to this "build it and they will unite" approach, but if humankind ever did build an integrated transit, power and housing scheme, it would surely already be well on the way to unification on the global level. The TESS plan arose from another proposal, the Summit Bridge.

This is a proposed bridge across the Bering Sea, joining Alaska to Russia. We would start by building an artificial island at the midpoint of the Bering Sea, with two bridges joining it to the continents of Asia and America on either side.

 

"Welcome all peoples, this is the reunion of mankind, the global movement to end all war and terror on Earth, by construction of Summit Bridge and the Trans-Earth Skyway System." (<http://www.summitbridge.com/declaration_if.php>)

 

The site tells an interesting story about how this idea came about. It seems that in the depths of the Cold War, a certain US Air Force pilot flew his fighter plane along this flight path to the USSR. He did it as a peace protest, running the dire risk being shot down, which in turn would have started a nuclear confrontation. The site displays a map of the island and the bridge joining it to Alaska and Russia.

 

The construction of this Summit Bridge would mark the first time in 11,000 years that the Americas would be connected to the vast super-continent of Asia. It would be an historic event, which would then lead to the TESS, a rapid train connection of every continent with every other. While expensive to construct, it would just require that we redirect a portion of the massive funds now wasted on armament, weapons research and the military.

 

Instead of eliminating defense budgets, that is, the money could be redirected into the Summit Bridge, and then universalized to the TESS megaproject. This would contribute more to real defense and security than anything that mere military expenditures can promise, since it would make every continent part of the same homeland. Undoubtedly, since defense budgets have expanded tremendously, to the tune of trillions of dollars per year, there should be more than enough funds available not only to finance the TESS, but also to build it entirely out of crystal, gold and diamond.

 

Next time, I will discuss the other features of the TESS proposal, some of which were entirely new to me.

Alpheus Paradigm

Cleaning out the Grime

 

I am still working on the seventh draft of my book about the peace plan of John Amos Comenius entitled: "Persons Beyond Borders; Essays about John Amos Comenius and Universal Reform." My plan is, when this revision is finished, to hire an editor to go through it and then publish the book myself through the on-demand publisher Lulu. This firm, founded by the Red Hat Linux billionaire, who is from my hometown of Ancaster, Ontario, permits your self-published book to be sold through Amazon and other bookstores' electronic book services. After a year or so, during which I will write volume two and three of this series, I hope to have a better idea of how saleable the book series is, at which point I may approach professional publishers.

 

Here is a relatively new addition to the book, a draft of an essay about a model of Comenius often used for getting rid of corruption.

 

 

 

The Alpheus Paradigm

 

Brute force solves some kinds of problems but not corruption. Like death itself, corruption will always be with us, an irremovable shadow of life itself. Cells even in the healthiest bodies are programmed continually to die in their billions each day and be recycled in a process known as apoptosis. The only way to keep ahead of corruption is to apply wisdom and prudence. In order to illustrate this, throughout Panorthosia, John Amos Comenius refers back to the fifth labour of Hercules. For him this a perfect demonstration the cleverness required to cheat corruption.

 

"The history of mankind contains many examples of the success of wisdom and prudence where physical strength has failed. The labours of the ancient hero, Hercules, have become proverbial, and his cleansing of the Augean stables is specially appropriate to my theme." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 23, p. 77)

 

The mess that Hercules was tasked with removing in this labour is a familiar story but bears repeating. Generations of neglect at the world's largest stable had seen mountains of manure accumulate. Taking a pick and shovel to it would take too long, even for Hercules, proverbially the strongest man. There seemed no non-destructive way to plow it away, since the manure was intermingled among many fences and buildings. Fire, explosives or other quick extraction methods might destroy the stables along with the ordure. Comenius describes how this Greek hero, later a demigod, solved the problem.

 

"According to the legend, Augeas, king of Elis, had stables holding three thousand oxen, which had never before been cleaned out. But when the task was given to Hercules, he channelled the waters of the river Alpheus into the stables and so had little or no difficulty in washing out the muck of thirty years." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 23, p. 77)

 

This clever problem solving technique for Comenius is a perfect demonstration of the crucial difference between ordinary change and universal reform, between normal human measures and those of the spirit. Indeed, at one point he refers to a "divine Hercules" -- not that he imagined that this brutish Greek hero was a saint, only that his sagacious master stroke on this occasion resembles the methodology taught by God.

 

"The story as told by Homer, whether it be fact or fiction, is certainly clever, and I shall try to show how we may copy it in our plan of campaign for reform. (1) All schools, all churches, all political systems, and all human affairs at present closely resemble the stables of Augeas, a mass of sordidness which no human effort could remove. (2) Only the river Alpheus has the virtue to cleanse all this (3) Our task is simply to accept the Alpheus which God has given to us and channel it into all our Augean stables." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 24 & 25, p. 77)

 

For Comenius, the name of this river, one of two redirected by Hercules, offers a hint as to how divine principle operates. It is no coincidence that the name, "Alpheus," resembles the first letter of the Greek alphabet, Alpha. The river Alph runs up the side of Mount Olympus, and is best known to English speakers as the sacred river in Coleridge's poem, Kubla Khan.

 

 

 

 

Letters make up words, and words in themselves are a divine force. As John the Evangelist put it, "In the beginning was the Word." By redirecting this "alpha" river towards the stables, Hercules, and metaphorically all mankind, were unleashing the stupendous force of information. Once we learn to direct the power of language, the written word and other information technology in the right direction, a torrent will wash away all corrupt knowledge.

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as we inaugurate the College of Light, falsehood will be quickly and automatically erased, human worship will be purified by the Consistory, and the Dicastery will do the same with our "system(s) of government".

 

"There is mystery in the very name Alpheus. The Greeks have Alpha for the first letter of their alphabet, and so they apply it to anything that is first of its kind, in the sense in which the Latins use the terms `head' and 'fountain' for any original source. The key to our problem, therefore, is to understand the fountains and heads of our teaching, our religion, and our politics from which flow all our knowledge, worship, and system of government." (Panorthosia, Ch. 3, para 31-32, p. 78)

 

I find it ironic that this challenge given to Hercules seems to be quite literally the same thing that confronts humankind today. Hercules had to clean out ox manure, we must scrub the atmosphere of accumulated carbon. More ironic, much of this CO2, studies indicate, comes from the belching of cows. There is not much to choose between being clogged up by ox or cow excreta.

 

The entire cycle of nature, scientists now recognize, is being corrupted by a massive, unchecked outflow of pollution, including soot and toxic chemicals as well as greenhouse gases. Like the stables of Augeas, waste is accumulating in air, land and sea, and has been doing so over many centuries. Like that negligent king, we are being bankrupted while our planet's natural coping mechanisms have been overloaded and are beginning to break down. Even if industry were to stop dumping waste, we still would be charged with the Herculean labour of cleaning it all up in order that, at the very least, Earth's climate will remain livable.

 

 

 

Is there another Alpheus river that engineers could redirect somehow to wash greenhouse gasses out into space? Probably not. This story corresponds with our present quandary perhaps closer than Comenius may have expected. However, his point that it is a parable for wisdom still applies. We may not have a physical Alpheus, but metaphorically, if we return to first principles and raise simplicity and temperance to be universal values, the problem solving would surely become as clever and effective as Hercules.

Leadership Tolerance

An Interlude on Tolerance

Tolerance, not force, is the most effective way to lead

 

 

 

 

Comments on a Passage in Panorthosia

 

 

Although world government is the obvious solution to environmental concerns, many reject the idea out of hand. Why? Essentially because of issues of trust. What could we do if a world government becomes a global tyranny? Or if it declines into a faceless, impenetrable bureaucracy? Even in the Seventeenth Century Comenius recognized the force of this objection, and addressed it by emphasizing that the keynote to power has to be tolerance. No matter how perfect the system may be technically, if it is run by bigots, warmongers or unfeeling functionaries, it will be tyrannical or violent or heartless. In an early passage in Panorthosia, Comenius wrote,

 

 

"Something should also be said about the tolerance which ought to be extended by those in positions of power both towards one another and to their subjects." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 8, para 27, p. 120)

 

 

Comenius upholds tolerance as a positive virtue. Today, it is politically correct to make a nod at the need for tolerance, but we look at the problem mostly in a negative way. We condemn blatant intolerance, especially when it is violent. But we despair of ever rooting out jingoism, bigotry, prejudice and fundamentalism and stamping them out in all their manifestations. We point fingers all around, but accusations only distract from the self-critical stance that would improve the situation overall. Like creatures trapped in a sealed bottle, the more we flail about, the quicker we use up the oxygen that keeps us alive.

 

 

Instead, let us concentrate our minds on tolerant attitudes. Let us teach tolerance in schools, and accept only tolerant discourse in the media. Let us expect tolerant speech from leaders of thought, especially in faith groups. And, needless to say, let us choose tolerant leaders when we vote. We should expect more of such assessment in a tolerant society rather than less, for the same reasons we would expect that the designers of a high tolerance machine would make more minute measurements, rather than fewer, as they build it.

 

Furthermore, Comenius understood that there is an opposition between tolerant power and power based upon force. In the same passage, he continues,

 

 

"The situation calls for lenient, not violent action, on both sides, since it is clear that a noble spirit has been granted to the whole of human nature, preferring to be guided rather than dragged along or compelled. Anyone choosing to use compulsion only embitters, poisons and alienates men, and either makes them hypocrites or prepares the way for a fresh and perhaps greater breakaway."

 

 

A lack of lenity in wielding power explains why revolutions, in spite of noble and inspiring ideals, tend to nullify the good they aim to establish. By forcing change, they provoke resentment, reaction and violence. As Comenius says, any proposal for change has to appeal to our complete human nature, or the entire atmosphere will be poisoned. Tolerance and openness invite consent; they bolster the will and purify our common ground.

 

 

Nobody wants to be compelled to obey; to be jammed into somebody else's idea of what is right. This was portrayed in classical thought by the proverbial bed of Procrustes, an early serial killer who, the myth says, chopped off the legs of guests too tall to fit into his iron bed; when they were too short to fit, he stretched them on the rack. Tolerance describes the virtue of a good host, who seeks a larger or smaller to accommodate the needs of every guest. Without tolerance, there is no happy guest-host relationship, nor can leaders and followers get along without dissent.

 

Politically, tolerance is summed up in the supreme law of service, "Salus populi suprema lex." (Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.) Ethically, tolerance is the desire of a friend to seek good for one's friend, even against his or her own interest. In a word, love. For Comenius, love among friends has to be the prime motivation in power relations -- not compulsion or fear. Otherwise relationships are illusory and fleeting.

 

"Fear is a poor guarantee of lasting friendship. As Terence says in one of his comedies - `He who does his duty under the lash of punishment has no dread except in the thought of detection: if he thinks he will not be found out, back he goes to his natural bent. When you link a son to you by kindness, there is sincerity in all his acts, he sets himself to make a return, and will be the same behind your back as to your face'. Therefore anyone who thinks that men should be treated with violence and not kindness has no idea of how to govern human nature."

 

Love unites all with all, permanently. Fear? It can only unite against a single, immediate, naked threat. It is, in the words of the Tablet of Ahmad, uniting to assist one another, rather than true unity. As soon as the threat disappears, the fearful go right back to where they were in the beginning. This eradicates the only real ground between us, trust. There must be trust among friends. There must be trust for love to last. Otherwise, fear, like a fire, destroys the garden of goodwill between leader and follower. Baha'u'llah holds trust, and lack of fear, to be the basis of faith in God when He declares, "If thy faith be fearful, seize thou My Tablet, and preserve it in the bosom of trust." (Baha'u'llah, Epistle, 103) In the image of the Qur'an, if you place your hand in your bosom and it comes out white, then your truth is pure, your trust justified by divine confirmation.

 

 

 

 

As Comenius implies, arbitrary power is incompetent power. We all know how important tolerance and trust are, but we do not act upon this knowledge. Comenius continues,

 

"We can put our trust in those who have been won over willingly, but never in those who have been compelled by force or attracted under false pretences, which is the way to multiply our disagreements instead of removing them. For as Claudian observes 'Peaceful exercise of power succeeds where violence fails'."

 

Claudian hits the nail on the head here. There is a huge difference between compulsion and the peaceful use of power. This is what the people in the Middle East have learned as they peacefully demonstrate the power of the people. This can overturn tyrants who, until recently, had learned to suppress the slightest hint of opposition. They should be putting Claudian's statement on their placards:

 

 

"Peaceful exercise of power succeeds where violence fails."

 

The only reason that violence and oppression dominate is that most do not really believe that this is true. We vaguely agree, but in practice we accept that force always wins out. Tyrants rise to the top because in practice, compulsion works. The same is true in the family. Spouses use force because they believe that they really can dominate their spouses. Similarly, parents use violence to oppress their innocent children. Torturers inflict pain to extract information out of the mouths of prisoners.

 

In the media, torturers openly defend their cruelty to victims by referring to precedent. "Torture has been used from day one for good reason; it works, plain and simple. Otherwise, it would not have been used." On a certain level, this is true. For victors, there are undeniably benefits from the use of force and violence. Force and fear of force does bring compliance, but it is temporary. In the same way, slavery was ubiquitous for thousands of years. A people with a stronger army can conquer an entire people and force them to work as slaves.

 

 

 

 

But again, as Comenius points out, as soon as the threat dissipates, so does the power of compulsion. The real ground of enduring power, friendship, dissipates and crumbles before our feet. And, most important of all, the breach of faith poisons us because it cuts off friendship with God, Who created us all as equals. His faith keeps us alive spiritually, in the same way that oxygen keeps our bodies going. A tyrant, torturer or slave owner may temporarily benefit from oppression, like a drowning mouse frantically flailing about as it drowns. But faith and trust are capable of building an entire world, one where the threat of violence is a thing forgotten.

Come the Postliminium

 

Preparing for a Postliminium

 

This is a draft of a chapter in my book-in-progress, Cosmopolis Earth

 

 

Section Title: Cosmopolitan Leadership

 

By John Taylor; 2011 Apr 08, Baha 18, 168 BE

 

Preparing for a Postliminium

 

A New Trivium

 

Comenius envisaged the introduction of two new professions, the tribune and the magistrate, as well as the RTC-ROC, or the right to advisors and a reciprocal obligation to comply with their advice, as coming at a later stage in what he calls the Postliminium. This unfamiliar term originally referred to the administrative changeover when a knight errant returned from soldiering and took over the management of his farms and estates from their trustees. Postliminium is also a legal term, dealing with the rules for restoring land to its original owners after the re-conquest of a territory.

 

 

For a Christian leader, "postliminium" would also have a religious resonance. At the end of the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:25) the boss in his postliminium takes his trustees into account for how they invested a sum of money (talents) in his absence. In an earlier work, Comenius wrote,

 

"Remember the reward that He promises to His good and faithful servants who employ the talents entrusted to them in such a way that they gain others, and the threats that He utters against the slothful who bury their talents in the earth." (Great Didactic)

 

Christians, then, expect a divine Postliminium where God takes human management into account. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Comenius made no sharp dichotomy between postliminium as the end time promised in the Bible and the political and scientific unification of the planet that will take place after a world government has been formed.

 

In Panorthosia, then, Postliminium describes a sea change in all human affairs, religious, political and educational, that must begin as soon as war is permanently outlawed by a grand conference of humankind.

 

Comenius expected a long period of soul searching leading up to the postliminium. He does not say how long the preparation would take, only that everybody, especially leaders of thought, would be busy unifying language, philosophy, faith and practical policy. He devotes well over half of Panorthosia -- not to mention the several books preparing for Panorthosia, called collectively the Consultatio -- describing the transformations in thought, morals and habits that would ready the world for the Postliminium.

 

 

Come the Postliminium

 

Comenius may have expected it to take a decade, perhaps longer, for thinkers from all continents to prepare the world of thought by converging in their own ideas and rectifying and standardizing the climate of opinion in the peoples of the world. Early in Panorthosia, he suggests that three earlier works in the Consultatio series would be helpful in preparing for universal reform, since they show how to diagnose the wrongs and distractions in human affairs that will need to be eradicated first.

 

"The evils that have arisen in our lives even up to the present day have perhaps been clearly exposed in my Universal Wisdom, Universal Education, and Universal Language, inasmuch as we forgot how to attend to the essentials of Education, Politics, and Religion, and instead filled all these with the non-essential, the irrelevant and the trivial." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 5, para 23, p. 96)

 

Comenius had, in these earlier works, put forward what he regarded as a modernization of the old trivium that had dominated the elementary curriculum throughout the Middle Ages.

 

The trivium taught what were thought to be three fundamental elements of thought, grammar, logic and rhetoric. Grammar forms thought, logic puts it together and rhetoric communicates it. These elementary disciplines prepared for the quadrivium, which was taught in the universities, the four disciplines being: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Unfortunately, since it was taught in Latin only to sons of the gentry, this educational program failed to unite the locality or the whole of Europe, much less the whole world. They were much too general, theoretical and, well, trivial, to be useful in comprehensive reform.

 

 

Instead, a curriculum is needed that will balance social responsibility with our three inner powers, mind, soul and spirit. Comenius's trivium was designed to serve the natural philosophy (science and education) that had just come into existence, as well as to renew politics and revivify religion. It sought to do this by placing each of these three, science, faith and practical politics, at the center of children's studies from the earliest age. This would unite outer with inner realities and pave the way for universal reform and the Postliminium.

 

Towards a Global Constitution

 

We have already discussed two applications of this trivium that could hurry the coming of the Postliminium -- the simplification project and the use of wisdom as a global ideology -- which he termed pansophism. Both are part of a broader project to enlighten all humans, a massive educational initiative that would not end with the arrival of a world government but in fact would accelerate, since funds formerly wasted on war would be released into more productive investment.

 

 

 

Comenius here addresses our lack of what a recent textbook on the subject calls a "widespread sense of shared values and aspirations," since the "precondition for world government is world community." Thus the bulk of Panorthosia, and the books leading up to it, attempts to solve a problem that is still regarded by specialists in international relations as the chief obstacle to a world government. In a recent world federalist assessment of this expert consensus, James A. Yunker expresses a hope that our lack of a sense of "world community" among civilizations and cultures can be overcome by what Comenius would call a Postliminium.

 

"Once a limited world government has been established, it might then evolve, by gradual stages, toward a more authoritative and effective government authority. In other words, the existence of a formal world government, even though relatively weak at first, would tend to support a growing sense of supernational patriotism (i.e. "world community"), and strengthening world community would enable a stronger and more effective world government, which in turn would further strengthen the spirit of world community, and so on. A snowballing effect might take place, leading eventually to a very strong sense of world community, and a commensurately authoritative and effective world government." (James A. Yunker, The Idea of World Government, Routledge, New York, 2011, pp. 80-81)

 

Once the program of universal reform is well underway, Comenius proposes, our next step will be to agree upon a global constitution. The entire lead-up to the Postliminium should be a period of reflection, consultation and preoccupation with what the content of this global constitution should be. He does not say so openly, but Comenius evidently intended that the final book he was writing, Panorthosia, should be a draft of this constitution, if not the actual text itself. Immanuel Kant had the same ambition over a century later when, also at the end of his career, he wrote his famous "sketch" for a permanent peace.

 

 

During the past twenty years, there have been efforts by many groups in "civil society" to draft a broad based constitution in the form of the Earth Charter.

Whatever the contents of the world constitution may be, perhaps the most striking feature of Comenius's suggested process for implementing and safeguarding its provisions is another new profession, which he called "senators of the world." In coming chapters of Cosmopolis Earth we will look at how these agents of a global constitution would operate.

Senate of the World

 

Prospective Chapter from Cosmopolis Earth

The Senate of the World

Thoughts about Panorthosia, Chapter Fifteen

Chapter 15 of Panorthosia:

 

"Concerning the necessity of correctly establishing all our constitutions once they are correctly set up, by means of three supreme Courts or Tribunals as guardians of the age of happiness; and the form which these ought to take."

 

In Panorthosia, especially in the 15th Chapter, Comenius wrestles with a paradox within the very idea of leadership in a united world.

 

Clearly, as global order spreads, knowledge will spread until it is, in the words of prophesy, "like waters upon the sea." As everybody becomes educated and enlightened, there will be less need for leaders in the traditional sense. Each and all will be leaders and followers unto themselves.

 

 

Some think that this implies anarchy, rule by no government at all. Indeed, Comenius takes this prospect very seriously, since it is central to Christian teaching. He cites Matt 13:8-10,

 

"But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man father upon the earth, for only one is your father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called master, for one is your master, even Christ." (cited Ch. 15, para 9, p. 218)

 

For Comenius, though, this forbids not government itself but any "one sole form of rule, worship or wisdom amongst men. For he forbids the use on earth of the title master, father or leader in reference to the position of scholars, churchmen and politicians." (para 9) The three institutions, the college, the consistory and the dicastery, then, are meant to fill in the "leadership gap" opened up by this dictum.

 

 

By removing absolute, personal power, the compulsion of one person over another, we do not end power completely. Indeed, the rule of law is only supreme when personal compulsion is subjugated. The implication is not anarchy, rule of nobody, but rather rule of spirit, the divine power of love. It is true that spirit is invisible, but, like the wind, it is nonetheless a real force, as anyone who encounters a tornado or hurricane can attest. Rule by God, although unseen and incomprehensible, is quite the reverse of rule by nobody.

 

 

Comenius concludes, therefore, that we should learn from the principle of "no Rabbi, no father, no master" by ceasing lazily to delegate power to others. This is both unnecessary and a cause of corruption. Instead we can "unite in brotherhood" under the rule of one God. I would add that this same egalitarian teaching is also to be found in Plato (especially in "The Laws") and the Qur’an (); thus Christians, Muslims and secular non-religious believers, comprising over half the human race, accept this egalitarian inclination already.

 

The paradox of which I spoke at first is not that real power is invisible, or that power is most effective as a consensus arising from unity in brotherhood. Rather the paradox is that notwithstanding all this, there is still a crucial role for leaders -- as long as they stay leaders of thought and do not degrade into leaders of men who transgress their limits.

 

"It is absurd for kings to be ruled, or for leaders to be led by other men. The real sun does not need oil poured into it. The real fountain does not need water poured into it." (Panorthosia, Ch. 24, para 1, p. 111)

 

Leaders of thought are essential because ideas remain as mere words until they are backed up by action. The best constitution soon falls apart without vigilant care from guardians who stand watch over it. Comenius cites the example of the Israelites, who having conquered the Promised Land, turned to farming, forgot soldiering and in time were ousted by the resurgent peoples they had conquered before.

 

Leaders, even in an egalitarian order, need to have everyone's attention in order to show the way and lead by example; they require real influence in order to uphold some ideas over others. This is now often called the "tragedy of the commons," but it was well known in the Middle Ages, being summed up in the axiom of logic that "Everybody's business is nobody's business." (Ch. 15, para 3, p. 216)

 

 

As the parable of the lamp under a bushel teaches, leaders have to shine into the darkest places if they are to have their intended effect, which is enlightenment.

 

"... the most effective remedy available is the appointment of regular guardians as soon as our sacred constitution is established, who shall have permanent responsibility for certifying that schools enlighten men's minds, churches inspire their hearts, and parliaments maintain national peace and for preventing errors from creeping in or developing." Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 15, para 7, p. 217

 

This new sort of leader operates on his or her own, autonomously and creatively, moved only by the Holy Spirit. He or she seeks out areas where his or her expertise is most needed, studies the situation and shares the discoveries openly with other such leaders. A non-monolithic leader, then, does not work as part of a visible bureaucracy or hierarchy.

 

In fact, the reader of chapter fifteen of Panorthosia, which describes in general terms the amorphous but still organized structure of the three Comenian institutions, is struck by the similarity between them and England's Royal Society. The most eminent scientists are appointed to this body but work apart, reporting their findings in regular conferences. The Royal Society is the model for scientific organizations in most nations around the world. Then one remembers that the Royal Society was originally inspired by Comenius's writings. Only in politics and religion are there no equivalent bodies that appoint the most prominent experts and bring them together to report on the results of their free enquiry.

 

There are, however, important differences. The criteria for choosing members of these "royal societies" are much broader. For example, someone chosen for the College of Light would not only be a brilliant scientist or educator, he or she also has to have the virtues taught in the other two institutions. A scholar,

 

"who is at the same time pious and capable will be a better director of Scholars than one who is simply a Scholar, and similarly a capable politician who is at the same time wise and pious will be a better director than one who is simply a politician without wisdom and piety." (Panorthosia, Ch. 15, para 19, pp. 220-221)

 

 

Another important distinction is that Comenius's free guardians are organized not only nationally but on a global scale. Members of national colleges elect a "president" from among themselves, who serves in the same way on a continental basis, in Asia, Europe, Africa, and so forth. Eventually these presidents come together to "constitute the senate of the world." (Panorthosia, para 15, p. 222); here they share findings in a conference held every ten or twenty-five years.

Recapitulation Redux

Recapitulating the Planning Decade

By John Taylor; 2011 Jan 16, Sharaf 17, 167 BE

In order to become cosmopolitans, we must all agree that teaching is not just for professional educators, that politics is not only for elected politicians, and that charity and good works are not only for clergy and committed believers. Somehow we need to prepare and involve everyone on the planet in such universal human concerns. While it is easy to agree that this is a good goal in principle, the unspoken but unavoidable question of our age is how to put it into action.

We are considering a world embracing plan to do this. It lasts one decade, then regularly starts over from the beginning, repeating like the days of the week or the months of the year in a calendar. The first year of the decade, the year of enlightenment, is exclusively devoted to the individual, who sets an agenda of recreation, reflection and contemplation for herself. After that, nine social principles follow, three of which are handled by each of the three cosmopolitan institutions in turn.

The decade is not only repetitive but also recapitulating, since it is designed to inform a planetary curriculum. Thus the opening month of the school year, September, focuses on year two's principle, unity in diversity, October on science and research, and so forth. Here is the complete list of the months that recapitulate the decade:

==========

June to August: Enlightenment (Individual)

September: Human Oneness, Unity in diversity

October: Nature, Science and Research

November: Universalizing Education

December: Equality, especially of gender

January: Extirpation of Prejudice, Reductionism and Fanaticism

February: Ethics Plus Politics Equals Peace

March: Love, Compassion, Hope, Freedom

April: Reciprocity, Charity and Economic Equity

May: Religious Cooperation

==========

In this way the principle years of the decade fit into the school year, giving educators a ready-made framework around which to build their lesson plans and integrate them with what will be of major concerns when childhood ends.

What about the first year of the Comenian decade, the year of enlightenment? This is the most important year, the only one devoted solely to personal development. But Kant called this the "year of release from tutelage," so it would be contradictory for teachers to try to interfere with what should be an entirely self-directed process. If so, why not devote the entire three months of summer vacation to the content of the year of enlightenment? As they relax, students can concentrate fully on their own quest for enlightenment, for liberating themselves from slavery to externals? Then, when September comes around, each student will be intellectually, pragmatically and spiritually prepared to throw themselves into the application of principle in the social realm.

Principle and Service Projects

The plan revolves around service projects based on these nine principles, years and months. It would be against the spirit of Homo Universalis to specialize in only one of the nine; each project, therefore, is guided by a relevant branch of governance, either the College of Light (philosophy, science and education), the Dicastery of Peace (ethics, freedom and equality) or the Consistory of Holiness (charity, compassion and inter-faith activity).

The projects are targeted at those locations determined by polls, studies and statistical analysis to be most in need of reform. In medicine, this approach of attacking the most severe cases first is called triage, but it is also a spiritual principle, the motive of the good father who forgives the prodigal son, the idea that there is "more joy in heaven" when what is lost is found again, as in the twin parables of the lost coin and of the lost sheep.

Every effort should be made by the press to publicize and dramatize not only outward activities and elections but also the entire problem solving process, which is an integral whole. Every school, trade and profession should send its brightest experts and most promising apprentices to participate. The wealthy should vie with one another to sponsor a team or project. Since elections are held simultaneously with this experimental activity it should be impossible to enter into high office without proving one's mettle here. By linking the plan to wealth, prestige and power the plan will gain all the more fascination. In this way, sports events like the World Cup or the Superbowl will pale in comparison with the spectacle of reality, the glory of watching humanity's brightest talent illuminate earth's darkest regions.

What happens in these service projects? An army of volunteers, led by elected delegates from the needy region itself and from around the world, come together to try out various approaches at improvement. Those who are stimulated by the project may decide to stay on permanently, but as a rule everyone is encouraged to participate at least one point in the decade in some capacity as part of a balanced life. Some may seek variety by serving on at least one service project of each of the three main categories, philosophy, politics and religion. Others may choose to specialize in one of these. There is room for both.

Some types of service projects are open to all comers while other, more specialized tasks are run by selected representatives, experts and consultants. Both types of teams brainstorm first and then move into the worst slums and other notorious problem areas. All volunteers are encouraged to bolster those teams who prove most effective in filling their chosen goals.

When statistics show that the worst ills in this place are well on the way to being cured, the next iteration of the plan moves the entire apparatus to the next worst problem area in that jurisdiction. Decisions about what to do this time around are made by those teams, as well as individual thinkers, leaders and executives who showed themselves the most effective, who were elected by those in the best position to know -- peers working along with them. This talent pool makes up the three institutions, the college, the dicastery and the consistory, and these in turn decide upon what projects undertake during the three year cycle of the next decade. They also decide upon ways and means of exporting what was learned there to other, less severely stricken communities.

A Charter for Cosmopolitan Goal Setting

Broad-based, grassroots activity similar to this has already been set in motion successfully with the Earth Charter. This remarkable document was written, criticized and rewritten again and again by many diverse NGO's and other members of civil society over the two decades following the first Earth Summit. This charter is intended to be the constitution of a proposed fourth pillar of the United Nations devoted to human rights and social policy. The Charter begins with this declaration:

"We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations." (preamble, Earth Charter, http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/)

The three overarching responsibilities mentioned here are, unknowingly but not coincidentally, the special concerns of each of the three institutions suggested by Comenius over three centuries ago.

Firstly, the College of Light promotes the sort of knowledge that we all need to maintain a healthy relationship with nature and the human world, what the Charter calls the "greater community of life." As a scientific and educational institution, the College animates the plan's third year, that of unity in diversity, the fourth year, of nature and research, and finally year five, that of promoting the values of learning. After that is over, the college has seven years to prepare experiments, methods, themes and campaigns for the next three year triad.

The political institution, the dicastery of peace, deals with our primal responsibility to uphold rule of law and the Charter's "culture of peace." The dicastery oversees equality during the fifth year, that is, equality of men and women, equality of race, of economic means, of opportunity, equality before the law, and so forth. Year six seeks to remove prejudice, including racism, sexism, parochialism and cultural and linguistic bias from the public agenda. In year seven the dicastery turns to linking ethics with realism in order to fulfill the ultimate goal of politics, a permanent, universal peace.

The third triad of principles is under the aegis of the parliament of religions, which Comenius called the consistory of holiness. This body specializes in helping Homo Universalis with her responsibility to "future generations," in the words of the Charter. Faith helps us see the world under the aspect of eternity; it trains us to deal seriously with the otherwise mute and ignored needs of future generations. To say the same thing in the terminology of faith, the consistory is a tool for working together, no matter what our particular opinions and affiliations, to fulfill our universal, eternal duty to God.

The consistory attempts during the last three years of the decade to make all faiths consistent with those principles that are common to all. In year eight they concentrate on the true fundamentals and ultimate goals of faith, love, compassion, hope and freedom. The ninth year deals with the Golden Rule, which is found at the heart of every major religion and even the minor religions. Economics is placed here, since the core issues of economy cannot be written in a ledger and, as John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. Equity, reciprocity and charity all are derived from the soul looking over its fate in a longer perspective than our physical life span.

Religious cooperation is the theme of the decade's final year. The poor living in slums desperately need hope, the inspiration that faith gives, in order to wish to work to better their lot. Witnessing believers of all faiths from around the world coming together in their midst to serve their community will surely inspire such faith in those living in the world's hotspots. Sooner or later this example will tend to remove the strife, corruption, ignorance and bad attitudes that cause poverty in the first place.