Gizza Gov'

This post will probably date well, even if you are a world peace optimist.

Over at Neutrality Studies, Pascal Lottaz replayed a commentary by a retired UK Ambassador, Craig Murray here . The usual good stuff was said from a peace activist perspective, but tainted with all the usual pessimism and doom. I always find Pascal to be a good counterbalance to the nihilists, but he tends to say things straight-up, so is not wildly optimistic nor idealistic either. You could say Lottaz is a bit of a soul mate. (Goodness knows I need a few.)

Inspirations for world governance principles

Today I want to put down in writing for posterity here on this tiny corner of the Internet, a few thoughts about world government. While these are my own opinions, they did not spring from the vacuum. I can credit Shoghi Effendi and the Baháʼí ’s for most of the inspiration. They are tragically little known, but if you want some serious spiritual political economy then you’d be doing yourself a favour reading some of Shoghi Effendi’s writings. They are probably a bit heavy going for materialists, since the entire basis of Baháʼí philosophy is to show spiritual virtues through action, not just in words. And the basis for most Baháʼí thought is the harmonic duality between our physical life and our spiritual life. In short, everything exists for a spiritual purpose, and the physical world is a testing ground, a place for spiritual growth.

What is spiritual purpose though? The simple but not too simple answer is that the purpose is for the soul to grow in spiritual capacity, and all that means is to become more honest, more kind, more compassionate, more just, more loving, more forgiving, more trustworthy, more humble in the face of one’s fallibility, and all the rest. More knowledgeable is good too, but more wise is even better.

You could also call this the meaning of life. It is not a bad definition. If purpose is meaning, and meaning is purpose, I think it is a good definition.

And yes, social construction is a thing: how you go about the meaning and purpose of life will depend upon your context, your culture, your family, your learning. The Baháʼí concept celebrates such sociology, while acknowledging there are still spiritual universals that are platonic in some sense. Trustworthiness is a foundation for a civil society in any civilization. Even non-sentient to the extent “trust” can be so defined.

((I can define “trust” in a non-sentient system: it means obeying the laws of physics. All of non-sentient nature we know is trustworthy with respect to quantum mechanics, but not with respect to classical mechanics — context!))

Those who do not believe in the platonic type of reality of spiritual verities, or who think these concepts are merely socially constructed, are going to find it hard to get through even a few pages of Shoghi Effendi, but I think the vast majority of people on Earth would find his work illuminating.

Having noted all that, I would say the writings of Shoghi Effendi are not really meant for public consumption. They presume a familiarity with the Baháʼí Faith, and if you lack that understanding then I think you’d be missing too much. As something of a bridge, I hope to build a little bit of a scaffold from popular progressive and liberal-social democracy ideals to these principles of world government articulated by Shoghi Effendi.

If you don’t like the look of the bridge feel free not to cross it.

A Brief Comment agreeing with Lottaz

In an old school nice twitter style i posted a comment below Pascal’s video clip, I tried to best summarize in as few words as possible, the bare minimum basis for a world government.

This is such an important issue. An international governing body has to be legitimized by the mass of ordinary people, and not become just another layer of the wealthy elites control. In this context, beware of the right-wingers and libertarians who scream about “the globalists” and incite fear of a world government. They are the types who love an authoritarian control (namely themselves) over their own land and resources, but cry like babies when a large section of society desires a democracy. The point to having a world government is precisely as Pascal describes, it would have a clear limited demarcated purpose in enforcing agreed upon an evolving fit-for-purpose set of international laws, and would not (should not) in any reasonable sense erode individual nation sovereignty. In other words, it can never be, should never be allowed to be, a neoliberal/neocon institution, since that would entirely defeat the purpose and give just cause to the right-wingers and libertarians who fear a world government.

This leaves a lot unsaid. Short of a long essay, what can I add to round off the commentary?

Prerequisites Exist

One principle is that world leaders and the “body politic” in general might sometimes be successful in pushing through policy before the groundwork has been laid. Thus hard prerequisites for political implementation rarely exist. But there are a lot of soft prerequisites.

One of these occurs in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. I will only mention here the policy choice between a One State solution and a Two State solution. My father was something of an expert on Middle East politics towards the end of his life, having moved in top level circles in Israel as a diplomat for an NGO (the Baháʼí World Community). He changed his view over time to a One State solution, citing the immense problems of settler colonialism and Zionism, which cannot just be swept away by authoritarian dictate. He preferred to see democracy. A homeland for the Jewish people in perpetuity for sure, but shared with all other people of the land.

We are not so unaccustomed to this in New Zealand. We are proud to be multicultural, but we are also fiercely bicultural. The Māori people will always have a special place in New Zealand politics. This is in part a realization of irreversible changes in world civilization. Cultures will not be lost anymore, you cannot destroy a significant culture these days no matter how hard you try, there are too many archivists with a whole lot of digital memory resource (to put it crudely!).

However, what I prefer to say in current times is that for Palestine–Israel there is no $n$-state solution for any $n$ until the people of the land are prepared to live together in peace and harmony.

If the people of the Middle East are prepared to live together in peace and harmony then there is an $n$-state solution for any $n>0$. The decision on which $n$ is suitable then becomes a democratic choice, after sufficient debate and deliberation. If the Israelis are prepared to clear real estate they have settled in, say, the post-1967 map, then perhaps an $n=2$ state is possible in harmony. If not, then an $n=1$ state would be the choice, imposed by the Israelis precisely because they are unwilling to abandon the real estate. But then the entire world had better impose upon Israel a true democracy for the people living in the land. That means equitably sharing the existing housing, land, water and all such basic resources for life.

Here is another prerequisite: how can you possible think of the entire world imposing democracy upon an Israel–Palestine One State? You cannot! The United Nations has not earned that legitimacy, and will not be trusted while the Security Council veto power is in place. The entire UN has to first become a true international democracy of nations. One nation, one vote.

For that same reason — since per capita this would look like a skewed democracy, which it would be — the powers of the UN have to be strictly limited. The UN can never be allowed to infringe on the domestic sovereignty of any one nation. This is the price the UN must pay for one country, one vote. The UN will never be able to resolve all conflict.

However, the UN can always be granted wide ranging diplomatic power. The UN diplomats would be protected, and violations of such protection would have to have severe repercussions, such as the right of all the other nations to rise up against any nation violating the UN charter. This should not be controversial.

In violating the (hypothetical future) UN charter a nation is choosing, deliberately, knowingly, to cede their sovereignty in the manner prescribed by the charter. (Since it is not yet written, I cannot say exactly to what degree, but I would imagine the ordinary citizens of the nation would in no way be oppressed by the UN.)

Who is holding up peace in the Middle East? — The United Nations is, and many others, but the immaturity of the UN (not the existence of the UN) is, in my estimation, the biggest obstacle. All M.E. peace efforts in the past have been, as Lottaz put it, basically “anarchy” (not of the good kind). He means disorganized and lacking cohesion as well as infested and corrupted by powerful vested interests in militarism and unipolar hegemony and the like… so yeah, basically anarchy of the right-wing anarcho-capitalism variety — who has the most power has all the say.

We all need to realize this is an unstable state in international politics. It cannot continue. But we do not know what the characteristic time scales are, international politics is not a science (in case polsci nerds and material deterministic marxist were wondering). Because the state of international geopolitics is unstable there is always a chance for a disruption of huge importance, for good or for bad. Ordinary citizens of the world are however not powerless to tilt and bias changes for the good.

How? The critical thing is no one citizen of the world can do very much, but together we can do amazing things. Sound too “commie” for you? Grow up you child. There is more than one variety of collective action. The last one I heard about was from my daughter teaching at her school: the kids in her classroom banded together to force their teacher (my daughter)