Bent Enlightenment

People Without Borders

Yet more material for the fourth draft of 

the introduction to my book-in-progress.

Rectifying a Bent Enlightenment

By John Taylor; 2010 April 19, Jalal 10, 167 BE

After centuries of bloody conflict, persecution and wars motivated by faith and doctrine, Europe's Enlightenment project of the 18th Century rejected religion. For the first time in over a thousand years, human rights were discussed without reference to faith. Many Enlightenment thinkers rejected spirituality altogether and took seriously the idea that progress toward an ideal society could be accomplished with science alone. Some openly abandoned religion and many anti-theists openly proclaimed it to be incorrigibly reactionary, corrupt and likely to encourage fanaticism. At best it is a distraction, at worst, inherently harmful.

For centuries there was no effective ecumenical, much less interfaith movement to belie the early "libertines." What is more, the spectacular advance of scientific research seemed to justify their attitude, especially in physics and medicine. Since the close of the 20th Century, however, it has become clear that in spite of its spectacular benefit, scientific knowledge is no panacea. It has also contributed hundreds of new, potentially lethal threats to human survival. If it were not for science we would not live under the constant threat of, to name only two dangers, nuclear Armageddon and accelerating global warming.

Today most non-believing intellectuals regard the Enlightenment as an essentially atheistic phenomenon, as did I. Then I came across John Amos Comenius. As soon as I read it, it became clear that here is the first enlightenment thinker. Like Bacon before him, Comenius did not regard the goals of the Bible as at all incompatible with reformist science and politics. The idea of enlightenment is the major theme throughout Panorthosia. Comenius calls upon his fellow believers to subject their precious dogma to rational enquiry and to work together with the new science for the general good. At the same time, unlike the Enlightenment thinkers who followed, Comenius did not let politicians or scientists (philosophers) off the hook,

"Let our Philosophy be simplified, provided that it satisfies moderate minds and circumstances. Let our Religion be simplified, provided that it satisfies God, the source of simplicity, and men of upright conscience. Let our Political System be simplified, provided that it serves its purpose of peacefulness in human affairs." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 3, p. 152)

This project of simplification would permit anybody to enter the inner sanctum of the learned. Everybody would be at least three things, a philosopher, a politician and a theologian. Specialist knowledge would be public property. It would serve liberal ends for the first time in history. This simplification project would give great intellectual power to the people, and would tear down the ivory towers of professional privilege. Comenius calls this philosophical stance towards universalism "pansophy," or universal philosophy and compares its universal abilities to a skeleton key. A specialist has a key to get into one room of a castle, but a universalist thinker can get into any room and feel at home there. Including the room of religious faith.

The cause of human betterment would have been better served had there been no divorce between science and religion, for ultimately the purposes of both are the same, the betterment of humanity. Although they have slightly different purposes and methods, and they tend to deal in vastly different scales of time and space, as long as all sides, scientists, believers and politicians recognize their own bounds and keep within their limitations, all can enrich human experience and conduce to progress and enlightenment.

By the way, scientists were universally called natural philosophers, not scientists, until a hundred and fifty years after Comenius's death. I am auditing a course on the history of science, and I recently learned from the lecturer that this change in nomenclature was originally suggested as a joke, a bit of satire against the arrogance of certain members of the profession. Calling natural phenomena "Scientia," knowledge, implies that other, broader, non-material ways of knowing are not knowledge. They might even be forms of ignorance. This divorces the study of nature not only from religion but art, literature, history, philosophy, and on and on. The fact that the name "science" stuck does not mean that it makes any sense. In my opinion it remains a huge mistake and scientists should make a concession to humility and reality by going back to calling themselves natural philosophers.

The Enlightenment project, as it turned out, had grave flaws. Yes, human rights were openly proclaimed and, to some extent, put into practice. But the Enlightenment also ensconced a bitter rivalry, if not hatred, among the three pursuits that should be the intimate concern of each and all, science, religion and politics.

One of the most noticeable and lamentable effects of this divorce was on ordinary conversation. In polite company today it is considered a grave mistake to bring up religion or politics. To do so is to invite conflict. The result? Most conversations must remain frivolous. The public forum is ineffectual. Sports and celebrity gossip are the best that we have to talk about. Nuclear war and global warming grow with each passing day, and we fritter away our chances for reform in useless banter.

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Rather than drawing false dichotomies and bringing the three essential kinds of knowledge into competition, we should heed the latter writings of that great pre-enlightenment genius, Comenius, who in his own life exemplified what he advocated for reform. He straddled all three of the great potential sources of human progress: politics, science and religion. John Amos Comenius was an experienced peace negotiator, a renowned educational reformer, a founding father of the Royal Society, and a leader in his religious community, the Moravian Brotherhood.

His long experience in these three fields inspired his posthumous masterpiece, the Panorthosia, or Universal Reform, a detailed proposal for a comprehensive reform program that works simultaneously on the personal, local and planetary levels. Panorthosia shows in great detail how we might unite science, religion and politics and thereby strike a happy balance for both individual and social progress.

Furthermore, his is by far the most persuasive proposal for a world government ever put forward. The Comenian model of world governance offers the best government conceivable. Properly implemented, it promises a world order far more reliable and efficient than any past ordering of the international system. By nature it stands against the "hard truth" that Barak Obama affirmed will remain unchanged in our lifetimes in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. It refutes all of the objections to a world government that have been brought up. We will discuss that in the next essay.

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Sageocracy

Sageocracy

Sageocracy; Why Not?

By John Taylor; 2010 April 17, Jalal 09, 167 BE

Sageocracy is the rule of the wise. While studying the principle of wisdom over the past weeks, the word has been popping into my head again and again. I input it into a couple of search engines, with few hits and nothing substantive. It is mentioned in the game Dungeons and Dragons. One book result refers to the trans-Atlantic correspondence of Benjamin Franklin with his friends as a "sageocracy." Wikipedia apparently had the word for a while, but it was banished, strangely enough, in favour of noocracy. An obscure writer in the Turkish Empire referred to its government as a sageocracy, which is even stranger.

I guess the reason that this word has been kicking around the terminological wheel well is that nothing like a regime of sages has ever been implemented ... But wait, that cannot be the case. Many native tribes and societies were ruled by counsels of elders; the Six Nations, who live quite close to me, were for some functions ruled by councils of old women. Surely that qualifies as a form of sageocracy.

I would like to argue today that we would do well to resurrect the term sageocracy, if only because it describes a big part of what Comenius seems to have had in mind for a world government.

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Puck may have been right when he cried contemptuously,

"Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

-Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene II

However, Puck's attitude is itself foolish, for so powerful is the placebo effect that to treat the world as if it is made up of fools itself assures that will be how it will stay. People are extremely sensitive to how they are treated. For example, studies found that if people of a certain eye or skin colour are treated differently from others, they become what the stereotype dictates. A recent study found that when test subjects read a text that denies free will before a test, they became much more likely to cheat. As a result, one science blogger wonders if this finding makes it unethical even to discuss in public the possibility that free will does not exist, since people are so sensitive to its influence,

"These laboratory findings demonstrating the antisocial consequences of viewing individual human beings as hapless pin balls trapped in a mechanical system ... are enough to give me pause in my scientific proselytizing." <http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=scientists-say-free-will-probably-d-2010-04-06&sc=WR_20100413>

So even if Puck was right, he was wrong to think such a thing, and would have been even more wrong to speak it to the faces of mortals. For calling mortals fools makes the pageant of life even more fond, and dooms us to life in a confederacy of dunces. Little wonder that Jesus taught that anyone who says, "Thou fool" is in danger of hellfire. (Matt 5:21-22)

A sageocracy has to assume the reverse. We all are wise. Okay, we may not all be sages, but surely we can all at least have a shot at wisdom, if only in our dotage. If we believe that anybody can be wise, maybe we will. Not right away, maybe, but in time we may approach it.  Even if Puck was right and in youth we do start out as errant fools, with age and gray hairs many, if not most, may have a shot at it, as the proverb implies,

"The glory of young men is their strength. The splendor of old men is their gray hair." (Prov 20:29, WEB)

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Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Preface to People Without Borders


Note: this was inspired by an obit of Tsutomu Yamaguchi in the Economist Magazine, January 16, 2010, p. 85; the poem is printed there. More information on this poor fellow who, along with several dozen other poor souls, witnessed both nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from below, can be seen at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07yamaguchi.html



By John Taylor; 2010 April 16, Jalal 08, 167 BE




If there exists a GOD who protects

nuclear-free eternal peace

the blue earth won't perish


-Tsutomu Yamaguchi, double nuclear bomb survivor





This book I dedicate to the God of this tanka poem, the God concerned with the survival of all humanity and the whole earth. I am not going to talk at all about my God or your God or any individual's God. I am going to restrict myself to what we all can see, to the God of all, the Deity that every human can believe in, even many atheists. This Deity we all must perceive and recognize if we are ever to make a "nuclear-free eternal peace."




Many ideas in this book, People Without Borders, were influenced by Immanuel Kant's drafts for a world history and a world constitution. Others were inspired by more recent visionaries, such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Buckminster Fuller. However, more than anything, this is my response to history's first serious proposal for a world government, "Panorthosia, or Universal Reform," the last book by the prolific 17th Century Czech educator, reformer, diplomat and religious leader, John Amos Comenius.



Like Yamaguchi, the author of the above poem, Comenius was driven by great affliction to reach out for a world where war is forever banished from the earth. He was a victim of religious persecution, exiled by war and made twice a widower by the Black Death. His master peace plan was completed on his deathbed. The only copy languished in an obscure library for centuries and was only fully translated into English in two volumes in the early 1990's. It is the most insightful and appealing plan for a world government ever devised.



Undoubtedly, sooner or later war, disease, climate instability, ethnic conflict or some other crisis or combination of crises will force us to renounce war and warlike thinking forever. National governments will give up their precious dogma of absolute sovereignty once and for all. The wealthy will let go of their vast fortunes, ideologies and privilege and help form a democratic union of the entire human race. Leaders of science, religion and politics will cease their struggles for hearts and minds and join together so that "the blue earth won't perish."



As soon as this happens the questions of the hour will be: "What kind of union should this be?" "What should this new leadership lead us all to do?" No universal government has ever existed before. Should a world government look like a national government, except that it rules over a billion citizens? Or is there something else that we should use as a model? If so, what model might be appropriate for such a planetary government?



The model that Comenius suggested was a counsel of sages, elected, chosen and ratified by all levels of government and representing the continents of the world. These would in turn organize a group of experts tasked with devising a world language. They would also set up a permanent world government based on three semi-independent institutions, one each for science and education, the College of Light, for politics, the Dicastery of Peace, and one representing all the united religions of the world, the Consistory of Holiness.




"These will serve as three universal antidotes to the plagues which have afflicted us in the past... For the college of light will purify the light of understanding ... The holy consistory with intent to maintain the zeal for piety will salt ... against elements of moral corruption (such as impiety and hypocrisy). Lastly, the dicastery of peace will keep the whole political world in order, so that no power either succumbs in face of danger to its possessions or degenerates into tyranny by destroying the possessions of others." (Panorthosia, Chapter 25, p. 142)



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Politics, What is it good for?

What is Politics For?

By John Taylor; 2010 April 15, Jalal 07, 167 BE

Peace is the Subject and Object of All Politics

We are discussing a proposal for world government and world peace made in 1670 by John Amos Comenius in his Panorthosia (Chapter 25, pp. 140-143) Here he writes that,

"The world has never yet seen jurisprudence and politics in their rightful state, that is, in the fulness of peace. Therefore we must now try to establish this."

Comenius believed that the "fullness of peace" is the purpose of politics. If a politician is not totally dedicated to laying the groundwork of peace, he betrays the entire reason for being of his calling. Comenius would have been shocked to see how democracy was implemented during the century after his death.

The new American model, though closer to democracy than anywhere outside Switzerland and certain tribes in Africa and America, was born in conflict and entirely based on struggle among partisans for victory among themselves. This allowed all sides to have a say, and had undeniable advantages over the paradigm of royal and aristocratic privilege prevalent in Europe. In spite of its conflict, contradiction and wasteful excess, the new party system suited the wealthy and powerful colonists, who soon learned to manipulate the system to their own ends. The American Revolutionary War ensconced this model, and for centuries the wealth and bounty of a nation straddling an entire continent allowed the virtues of the new democracy to outweigh its drawbacks.

Election Campaigns as Battles

Today we routinely use military language to describe the activity leading up to an election. We think nothing of calling it a "campaign" that is fought or contested.

Does an election necessarily have to be a zero sum game? Surely the main advantage of an election is the "wisdom of the crowd," the uncanny ability of large numbers of people to average out their errors and hit upon the best person for the job at a certain juncture of history. If an election is "won" or "lost" after opposing parties have waged an elaborate, expensive war-like "campaign" against one another, then what is gained, what is lost? Are not we the people the spoils? And what about the goal of politics, peace? Is that served by a contested election? Is that anything close to what Comenius called the "rightful state" of politics and jurisprudence?

When the struggle is over, nobody imagines that the people have won out. Or even that they have made a rational decision. Nor that the people ever get away scot-free from this simulated war. It is for good reason that we use language of pillage and rape to describe elections, as if the people were a vanquished land overrun by a victorious army.

Polyarchy as GTMH Democracy

Elections are expensive, and the expenses are increasing. Inevitably both the losers and the winning party are in debt afterwards. It is expected that the incumbent leaders will steer policy the way of their friends, and dole out grants and appointments as favours to all who aided their election campaign. This we call openly, if euphemistically, "patronage."

I call it "gun-to-my-head (GTMH) democracy." The people in effect are holding an auction of their own interests, holding a gun to their own head and inviting the highest bidder to come forward and pull the trigger.

As a matter of fact, GTMH is only nominally a democratic process. The American model of contested representative democracy has not been referred to as such by specialists since the 1950's; instead of calling it "democracy" the term now being used is "polyarchy," meaning the rule of many as opposed to rule by all, the "demos" or people. Strictly speaking, democracy is rule of the people, by the people and for the people. This means that they must be involved as possible in governance, every step of the way. Polyarchy is very different; it is rule by specialists for special interests, and its main preoccupation is stifling the will of the people. Although they undeniably have more say than in other systems, GTMH democracy always sees to it that the interests of the people must stand at the end of a very long breadline.

The proposal of Comenius avoids the vices of polyarchy and, in what it stipulates, comes closer to the highest ideals of democracy than anything I have encountered. For one thing, the American paradigm of democracy, insofar as it aims at peace, does so in a consciously narrow and reductionist way. It specifically excludes religion from participating in governance, relegating it to a periphery as if it were permanently doomed to be nothing but a self-interested, warring faction. Although a product of an age that called itself enlightened, it all but ignores science, philosophy and education. As mentioned, we think of elections as military campaigns, not as lessons or sacraments, as we might if science and religion were allowed full rights to participate in the public forum.

Comenius, instead, set an opposite purpose for democratic governance: reintegration. The goal of each of these three major expressions of the human condition, science, religion and politics, is to integrate with one another for the good of all, and for the greater truth of what each stands for in the human spirit.

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"... the whole aim of the council is the reintegration of world affairs or mankind with

I. GOD, by means of a universal return to Him,

II. THEMSELVES, by abolishing all kinds of dissension and warfare.

III. the NATURAL WORLD, or everything in God's creation,

"The first of these will be achieved through one true religion, the second through one true political system, and the third by one true philosophy, common to all men.

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When such a reintegration happens, when I cast a vote in an election I will be expressing my whole being, not just the part of me that is a citizen, or the part of me that is a believer, or the part of me that is a learner and teacher. My vote will be a whole vote, and any struggle that takes place will be in my own heart and mind as I seek out the true, common reality perceived by all women and men.

Next time I will discuss this proposal and its implications further.

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My short daily walk with God

A Giant Step With the Short Oblig

By John Taylor; 2010 April 14, Jalal 06, 167 BE

My ten-year-old son Thomas came up with the following two aphorisms this morning as he was preparing to go to school.

 

"An apple a day keeps the teacher at bay."

"In the early stages you cannot tell the difference between a sneeze and a yawn."

Myself, I have been able to come up with nothing these past days, so let me offer this spontaneous commentary on the Short Obligatory prayer. (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, CLXXXI, p. 313) I have been swimming around in the gap between the first and the second sentence of this prayer all my Baha'i life.

"I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee."

So, let me see, we have been created to know an Unknowable Essence, to do something that is by definition utterly impossible. Our reason for being is permanently beyond our grasp. How about worship then. But if I cannot know Him how is it that I am expected to love Him? Another utter impossibility. You can only love what you are intimate contact with.

Okay, true, the teaching is that we can know and love God virtually. You can know and worship by means of His Proxy, the Manifestation. Even so, it is a pretty tall order.

This first sentence is like the first half of a step forward. As you are walking, you realize that you are almost falling, until the other foot hits the ground. Here comes the other foot.

"I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth."

So let me get this straight. My destination is an unattainable one and I have no power to get there with. Nor do I have any spending money to burn on the way. I am chasing an impossible dream, with no means, no energy, no hope.

But all I need is enough impetus to drive me forward to the next step. What little I can know, what little I can worship only needs to be powerful enough to carry me forward to the next step. So I slap my foot down.

"There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting."

`No other God but God.' Hmm. Nothing else in this universe is going to help me fulfil this daunting purpose. At least I know that, discouraging as standing here is, I am facing in the only direction with any hope of getting me there.

`Help in Peril' My shortcoming must be there for a reason, to bring out this attribute of my Creator. If He manages to make me succeed, it will be for His greater glory. My purpose is to highlight His power, wealth and helpfulness.

`The Self-subsisting' Another virtue I can now appreciate better now than before I set out on this unending quest. God has enough to subsist for Himself, and He has plenty left over for my substance as well. Maybe I am not as far off from my Object as I thought.

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Between a Rock and a Hard Truth

Comenian World Governance

More from the fourth draft of the introduction to People without Borders

The Cosmopolitan Condition

 

By John Taylor; 2010 April 12, Jalal 04, 167 BE

 

Leaders of science, faith and politics are utterly unwilling to face up to what matters for human survival, much less join in a union to save the planet. For example, in his acceptance speech for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. President Barak Obama said,

"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflicts in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."

I know that the American president was only articulating what is normally left unsaid in international relations. Still, it gives a chill to hear this "hard" truth stated so baldly, especially in this venue. The Nobel laureate and most powerful man in the world drew a line in the sand, over which none may cross. National states will cling to their sovereignty indefinitely, permanently determined to block out the prospect of a permanent world peace backed up by a government devoted to the interests of the entire human race, and the planet that sustains us.

Unthinkable as it may seem to "hard" thinkers, this line must be crossed as soon as possible. Every headline urges one conclusion: until we form a single union of the human race, every plan on the international level will remain an inadequate half-measure.

This book is dedicated to the proposition that there is the only way forward. A world government, properly designed, could immediately end poverty, violence, war and the pollution and degradation of earth, air and ocean once and for all.

The more we think about the benefits of such a union, the easier it will be to give up old loyalties and erase the borders that divide us. We can start by taking thought and discussion beyond present boundaries. Once we all realize that borders and nationalities exist only in the human imagination, we will be able to go beyond half-hearted negotiations between states, beyond mere international agreements and start to explore ways and means to unify the whole human race.

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World government has been put off centuries beyond its due date. In his last book, Panorthosia or Universal Reform, John Amos Comenius drew up the first detailed plan and proposal for an enduring world peace based on a democratic world government. Here he demonstrated -- in 1670! -- that human oneness is the ultimate goal not only of Abrahamic religion and scripture, but of philosophy as well, going as far back as Pythagoras.

"It is not enough that Man should merely be set beside God by bringing him to his everlasting blessedness; we must have him likened unto God even here on earth. Pythagoras was quite correct in defining philosophy as likeness unto God, but he went too far in giving philosophy the whole credit for a result which it cannot wholly achieve by itself alone. Politics and religion must come to its assistance, playing their part in such a way that philosophy likens Man unto God through the light of his mind, religion through the purity of his heart, and politics through control of his actions. This will come to pass if Man has knowledge of good and evil, and wishes only the good and not the evil, and controls himself in his choice of the good and rejection of the evil with all possible zeal." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 40, pp. 168-169)

Furthermore, Comenius held, every educator has a moral duty to prepare students for this event. There is an underlying unity behind all branches of human knowledge that is not being recognized, what Comenius called a "parallelism of Philosophy, Politics, and Religion..." (Panorthosia, Ch. 13, para 12, p. 204) Properly prepared by their teachers, leaders of science, religion and politics could harmonize their expertise and work together for the good of all. Until they take on this perspective, their thought will be flawed, inconsistent and ultimately contradictory. The good they do will be negated by regressive conflict. Comenius wrote,

"Any reforms in philosophy, religion and politics must fall short of perfection, unless they bring peace and lasting happiness to the minds, consciences and societies of mankind." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 1, para 4, pp. 48-49)

It is impossible to overestimate how momentous this event will be. The formation of a world government based on the Comenian model would surely mark the first time that the human race has a heart as well as a brain. It will be the inauguration of the first truly universal institution, the consummation of history, childhood's end, philosophically, religiously and politically.

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In his latter works, Immanuel Kant arrived at the same conclusion as Comenius, though his journey had crossed over territory that was less religious and more scientific and philosophical. However, he agreed that all of nature urges the human race to one, inescapable conclusion.

"Although this government at present exists only as a rough outline, nevertheless in all the members there is rising a feeling which each has for the preservation of the whole. This gives hope finally that after many reformative revolutions, a universal cosmopolitan condition, which Nature has as her ultimate purpose, will come into being as the womb wherein all the original capacities of the human race can develop." (Cosmopolitan History, Eighth Thesis, in Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Writings, Ernst Behler, Ed., Continuum, New York, 1986, p. 260)

People without Borders is my attempt to imagine what will come out of the "womb" of this "universal cosmopolitan condition."

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Theatres of Wisdom

More material for the introduction to People without Borders

Three Theatres of Wisdom

 

By John Taylor; 2010 April 10, Jalal 02, 166 BE

 

Like all modern philosophy, Comenius's ideas can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Last time we looked over Plato's definition of wisdom as a state of harmony between the parts and the whole. Comenius was also influenced by Aristotle's belief that happiness and wisdom are functions of one another. As Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer Adler points out, Aristotle considered wisdom to be one of the five intellectual virtues. In the Politics, Aristotle says,

"Each one has just so much happiness as he has of virtue and wisdom, and of virtuous and wise action. ... the courage, justice, and wisdom of a state have the same form and nature as the qualities which give the individual who possesses them the name of just, wise or temperate." (quoted in Wisdom, Mortimer Adler, the Great Ideas, p. 940)

Comenius divides these three virtues, wisdom, temperance and justice, among the three "estates" of humanity. "The heart of Philosophy will be wisdom, of Religion, simplicity, and of Politics, vigilance." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 13, para 12, p. 205) These three major branches human endeavour, philosophy (including science and education), politics and religion, are three pillars world governance. A wise harmony among these three estates is sustained and maintained by what Comenius calls the "theatres of wisdom,"

"Since human nature has been blinded by its corruption ... it should be safeguarded from downfall by wise guidance, and all its senses kept open to everything ... all men should be wisely guided from the earliest age and constantly thereafter through the theatres of wisdom, and should all have endless opportunities of exercising their senses, their reason, and their faith." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 11, pp. 146-147)

Imagine theatres enlisting literary and performance artists, the entertainment industry to produce dramas, passion plays and interactive games, displays and exercises designed to bolster wisdom through all our senses, reason, tradition and faith. Although this activity would no doubt be edifying for individuals, it will be planned and run by the wisest, who understand that here is the crux of social change. From it arise all progress in education, politics and religion.

As we shall see, this book, People without Borders, takes this idea of wisdom-as-harmony to the next logical step. A new theatre of the wise will model our understanding of law. The rule of law, in turn will make decision-making transparent, standards open, and software based on this will organize the lives of world citizens. This technology and education will negotiate the interactions of individuals with their households and other groups. People without Borders predicts that wisdom will even model the architecture of a cosmopolitan condition.

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