Dear Humans, Leaders of the Earth Surface,
The science fiction movies of the last century have beamed our minds into the
space age, its 2007, the so called "future" has begun. We are more
and more convinced of the supremacy of the human species, thinking that we'll
have a technical solution to every problem, considering ourselves
supernatural and god-like. Recent technological developments seem to confirm
this: We move in space-ship-like cars and communicate even beyond the
possibilities imagined in Star Trek. We have even managed to leave earth, and
plan to colonize Mars and other planets.
We have forgotten that our life is deeply rooted in our mother planet, that we
are animals, not more or less.
We'll never be able to live outside the earth surface: it is here that we were
born and here that we will live, here that will live our children, here, on the
interface between the earth and the sky.
Life on other planets is very difficult: no atmosphere, no oceans, no forests,
no moon, no birds chanting in spring, no apple trees nor banana palms. Everything's
different...we will not be happy out there, we'll find nothing to eat, if we
don't freeze, burn, or suffocate. Even if we managed to survive, it would be
very difficult to live. We'll become depressed and go crazy, homesick and
endlessly regretting our beautiful and unique home, nest and mother: Earth.
That's why it is urgent to save and protect this planet, and to save it, first
of all we have to stop destroying it, and thus to stop destroying ourselves and
each other.
We have to recognize ourselves, the Earth Surface and everything on it, as a
whole, at last, and apply democratic, ecological and humanist principles to all
of it.
I call it POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION; it is the next necessary step in human
evolution.
It has to come, because, despite our evolutionary progress, our economic system
works like a predator, it wants to grow, to exploit, to eat, to rule, to
be faster and fitter than the other. It is almost free of limits, free of
preoccupation; it behaves like a hungry, primitive life form, like parasite
bacteria eating its host, ignoring future survival problems.
Why? It is natural, everything is natural, and there is nothing
"artificial" or "supernatural". You and I, cars, trees,
computers, dogs, nuclear power plants, war planes, are all natural, they are
living systems or parts of them, parts of the big living system that
scientists call the biosphere. And life wants to survive, to live, to grow, to
multiply. It is the ever ruling jungle law.
The problem is that human means and reach have evolved enormously in the last
centuries. We're still in the jungle, but we're sitting in a big
computer-aided, comfortable, climatized , hi-speed,
heavily armed bulldozer and have become able to
destroy all of the jungle instantly. Now we are slowly recognizing that there
isn't much left of the jungle. But instead of getting out and looking around we
are desperately trying to build a hydrogen powered engine for it.
Our political systems have evolved too, but unfortunately not as fast as our
technology. There have been lots revolutions and renewal: Humanist ideas have spreaded all over the planet, and most of the countries
are, at least in principle, democracies, which means that the people are
sovereign of their country. Also social ideas of wealth redistribution and more
equity have spreaded . In lots of places, the people
have really taken the power. The big problem is, that this social and
democratic revolutions have until now only been
applied to nations, to territorial political systems.
Efforts that have been made to create institutions that have an international
political authority are not really taken seriously: The UN General Assembly,
assembling representatives of every government, has still very little power of
decision. Institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, the
WTO are mainly steered by the interest of their most powerful members, the
"G8": USA , France , Germany ,
UK , Russia , Canada ,
Japan and Italy , and also
the EU as a whole. All of them lie on the Northern Hemisphere and above the
tropic of cancer, in the temperate climate zone. They are the biggest producers
of greenhouse gases, consume the most ressources ,
invented the most lethal weapons, own the most nuclear warheads, and all of
them have committed in their history very severe crimes, including
genocide, murder, warfare, enslavement, torture, theft, plundering and
ecosystem destruction.
But still, they think that they embody the good, the wise, the
"developed" and "civilized" that they have to
"civilize" and "develop" the rest of the world.
They also embody the capitalist system and represent 65 percent of the unleashed global economic actors.
Like the magician's apprentice, we invented an economic machine, an industrial
" perpetuum mobile", in scientific
terms: a system with a positive (amplifying) retroaction, growing
exponentially. The more we consume, the more we produce, and then, we have to
consume even more.
Territorial political systems, like nations and super-nations, are no longer
able to control it. Maybe they are even built to defend it.
We have lost control.
Corporations can operate almost freely on the Earth surface, because they are
not engaged to a territory, and thus they don't need to subject themselves to
the democratically achieved laws of a territory. If laws or economic frameworks
are not in the interest of a corporation, it can easily change its territory. It
can even play across the borders, to gain profit: Produce in China , sell in Europe .
In this way, corporations do not only undermine de democratic sovereignty of
the people by setting themselves out of their reach, they can even extort the
elected governments, to write the laws in their favour, the governments wanting
them to act on their territory. In consequence, elected politicians lose their
power of decision; they are no more than string puppets. The real world leaders
are trans-national corporations, whose leaders are not at all democratically
elected.
THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH ARE NOT SOVEREIGN OF THE PLANET, AND EVERY INHABITANT
IS NOT AN EARTH CITIZEN.
Democracy, the basic principle, written down in almost every constitution, has
been caught, bound and silenced in the sticky spider web of globalized predator capitalism.
But we're able to recognize this, aren't we? That's what makes us human, in a
positive sense: we have a conscience, we can see things coming, we have a historical memory, and are able to reflect about
ourselves and our environment. That's what makes us different from predators
and parasite bacteria. We are also able to communicate, to share, to discuss,
to network. We are able to invent. We are able to question, to change, to
evolve. There are actually no reasons why it shouldn't be possible to unite as
a planet, politically. It is a matter of survival, of
determination, and also of political will: The "northern"
or "occidental", or simpler the "rich",
community has to finally recognize its exploiting position in the
global system, the fatal crisis that our enslaving, killing and polluting way
of life implies to the rest of the world. We are the crisis, the third
big crisis of the biosphere since life emerged, one billion years ago. The
collapse has already begun. We are at the end of a geologic era.
Evidentially, we can't simply transpose the actual governing system to a world
government, we have to think further, learn from all of our horrible past
experiences.
It is about governance, not government, which implies centralization of power. The
Earth Surface is not a territory, because it has no borders. It has no centre,
because it is a sphere, thus there is no capital and there is no leader. It
belongs to all (and none) of us, every individual of every species born on it
has the right to live there happily.
We, humans, as we happen to have become the ruling species on this planet, have
the responsibility for it, we have to
preserve the other species. It has taken millions of years for an
animal like the sea turtle to have evolved , we
are younger than it and have to love and respect it, like we respect our
grandmother.
If it is possible to write an encyclopaedia, altogether, in every language, why
shouldn't it be possible to write down some basic rules, altogether? Global
networking of people is the key to this, because it is really democratic, and
based on wisdom, knowledge, and common sense, not on power, money or
ideology: If an idea is good, it spreads, will be discussed and may be
accepted, if it is bad, it won't even spread or be denied by the global
community. The global level could be connected directly to the regional and
local level, where interconnected, small-scale base-democratic communities can
function, as they still do in lots of places. Culture, identity and
self-determination could flower everywhere and we would not need nations
anymore because we would be responsible of ourselves.
I am deeply convinced that a global community can solve global problems. When
we recognize ourselves, we evolve.
What can I do now, as a small cell of the huge organism that is humanity, or in
a larger view all of the biosphere; every living
thing; the big family of life. In European languages there is no precise word
for what I mean. In mooré , an African language there
is the word BUUD which has the exact meaning.
So what can I do?
I can choose to, and I can choose not to. I can observe, listen, learn, think,
seek, speak . I can try to liberate myself from mental slavery;
I can try to help to liberate others, like Bob said. Together, we can stand up,
speak up. We can create. We can show, expose, confront. But we have to be careful.
I still don't really know what to do. As a human, I feel responsible, but I
can't carry all of the weight alone. That's probably why I write this.
Maybe you read it. Maybe you know. All of our generation carries this weight, and
it is it's getting more and more perceptible. Something is disturbing the youth
of 2007.
Even if it seems hopeless, we don't have the option to lose hope:
WE LIVE. Even if we die, others will LIVE. The earth has probably left
"five billion years" until our space and time is going to collapse,
until the sun is going out. That is a lot of time, far more as we can imagine. But
what a beautiful thought: there is no apocalypse, there will still be humans,
banana palms and sea turtles in thousands of years...
Evolution or extinction, we'll have to choose now.
Nicolas
