This is information from the web site of the World Government of World
Citizens.
The address is:
http://www.together.org/orgs/wcw/index2.html
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WORLD CITIZENSHIP DEFINED
The world...universally outgoing, conceptually unbounded, the planet
dynamically, synergistically and organically one with itself and the
cosmos.
Citizenship...the restrictive rights and duties within a given social structure.
The two words together seem paradoxical. "You can educate either the
citizen or the man," wrote Thoreau. Yet in their union lies the potential
success of the human species; in their non-union lies the demise of a
fatally-flawed creature which could not overcome its self- imposed global
anarchy.
This is the perennial mystery of the conceptual "joining" the perceptual.
How and where does spirit indwell in the body?
World citizenship today implies the joining of the perennial wisdom of
humankind with up-to-the-minute geo-political and geo-technical reality.
"The term 'world citizen' can be better understood with a negative
definition than with a positive one. If a citizen of a state with political
frontiers is expected to pay allegiance to the
government of the state to which he or she belongs and is expected to take
arms against aliens who might invade the territory of the state, a world
citizen recognizes the entire world as one's state and in principle does
not recognize any member of one's own species as an alien to the world
community to which oneself belongs. Such a person recognizes the earth as
one's sustaining mother, the innate inviolable laws of nature as one's
protecting father, all sentient beings as one's homes. The world citizen's
allegiance is to the foundation of truth, the universality of knowledge and
the fundamental ground of all values."
- Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati, founder/head, East-West University
Before the industrial age and the electronic revolution, the identity and
functioning boundary of social units was largely determined by the
nation-state level and the mechanical barriers of geography. The workings
of government and the writings of history were from non-global
perspectives. Loyalty to the feudal prince, or later, to the sovereign king
was direct, one-dimensional and absolute. Society was aural, its extent
determined by the human voice. The development of the printing press and,
in 1844, electronic informational transfer, established lines of
communication from one relatively isolated social unit to another. A
person's thoughts now could be known instantly from a distance. One did not
have to know him or her personally. Indirect political
representation was born. Inevitably the notion that the governed should
have a voice in government became increasingly popular. Democracy, kindled
in the context of rising expectations, inflamed revolution after revolution
from east to west, north to south.
Yet here was born a tragic paradox: for the essence of democracy is
universal participatory decision-making, whereas the essence of national
sovereignty, a hangover from the feudalism and the absolute sovereignty of
kings, is exclusivity and the non-participation of citizens outside the
national boundary. Citizens "belonged" to the nation only while all humans
outside that nation were "foreigners," or worse, "aliens."
This tragic contradiction begins to be socially instilled almost at birth.
One is not born a human, or politically, a world citizen, but "French,"
"English," "American," "Russian," "Chinese," or "Iranian." One could add
that all labels at birth--"black," "white," "Arab," "Jew," "Catholic,"
etc.--are essentially false contrasted with the reality of the human
emerging from a human womb into the world of humans.
Personal qualities are simplistically attached to national (and other)
labels rendering violence and aggression easy to justify by their leaders.
We are "good," "noble," "best," etc. because we are "British," or
"American," or "Russian." Others are ipso facto "bad," "ignoble,"
"inferior." Unlike us, they are threats to be feared, even killed.
Those who identified directly with the world of humans were considered
starry-eyed idealists, utopians, sentimental humanitarians, impractical
moralists, or simply crackpots. The only empirical world "citizens" were
the pirates sailing freely on the open seas. They were the forerunners of
the multinational corporations, the world "citizens" of the industrial
world. The practical world, the world the 17th, 18th and 19th political
power, was channeled into a framework based on unreality, the fiction of
nationalism.
Then came the 20th century. Speed of transportation increased 100-fold in a
few decades. Electricity and electronics linked the global surface
eliminating time and distance implosively as barriers between humans
leaving only divisive ideas, language and politics, the surrogate of
religion. A new "vertical" dimension was
added, which, if translated, was the element of reciprocal support, or
universality and wholeness.
The world became literally overnight, historically speaking, one community,
yet without overall management. The 17th, 18th, and 19th century sovereign
state system, imposed by largely reactionary leaders, with notable
exceptions, on the 20th century world of four major revolutions:
technological, electronic, nuclear and space, proved and is proving daily
to be totally inadequate to solve global human problems.
Indeed, the nation-centered way of "solving" problems is the major problem!
The nation-state, by insisting on its absolute sovereignty, has become
literally suicidal for the entire human species.
Today, with virtually no distance and no time between humans, each person
is the focus of a global input. Everything happening in the world affects,
sooner or later, each individual. With computers and satellites, the input
to the individual has become fully supranational. Yet this irrefutable fact
and its radical implications is popularly ignored.
A Middle East war raises the price of oil for everyone; an atomic bomb
exploding in the South Pacific can mean leukemia for a baby born in Dayton,
Ohio; dumping radio-active waste off the coast of Florida can mean
radio-active fish caught by fishermen off the coast of Iceland, Great
Britain, France or Spain; a shortwave
radio placed anywhere on the surface of the globe receives a babble of
voices--and ideas--from all corners of the world community.
Everything is happening at once and everything is happening to everybody.
This is the most revolutionary fact of any century.
Yet what of the individual's output? Here, the reciprocal truth is, if
possible, even less realized. If everything is happening directly to
everyone, then every individual should be outputting directly to
everything. This means simply that every individual should have the
capability of direct democratic effect on the world-at-large. The world's
individuals should constitute for themselves a global governing body to
represent each individual as an outputting co-trustee of the earth as a
whole.
The apt analogy is the human body itself. Each cell is linked to the whole
by a nervous system directly connected to the human "computer," the brain.
For this almost unbelievable coordinating mechanism to order the necessary
action required by a specific threatening situation, there is instant
feedback from hurt cells. The "government" operates on the basis of both
individual and common good; thus it is "global," not "national" or "local"
in character.
Government itself can be likened to the brain or the management mechanism
by which the entire organism and each individual cell or unit can be
fulfilled in terms of the triad of self, local community and the entire
human community. The evolution of the computer today promises instantaneous
input and output potential to each human and to all humanity, thus for the
first time in history permitting world government and global institutions
to take their rightful place in human institutions.
World citizenship, then, is the only dynamic and imperative political
identity capable of relinking the conceptual or moral value of the human
being with the social and economic organization of his/her now planetary
community. It expresses both the innate and inalienable sovereignty of each
human as well as the overall sovereignty of the human species to which
he/she belongs, also innately and inalienably. Thus it fulfills at once the
criteria for ethical as well as ethnical politics. Also, it connotes a plan
of ongoing political action at all levels of social activity, local to
global.
If indeed the nation-state has lost its legitimacy as a two-dimensional,
horizontal, we-and-they, zero (or negative) sum political entity in a
three-dimensional, positive-sum, "We-the-people-of-the-planet-earth" world,
then so also has personal commitment to exclusive national citizenship.
Just as no one sovereignty or group of sovereignties can directly prevent
any other from unleashing a third inter-national war, so also can no amount
of commitment to merely national leaders bring the world situation under
control.
But just as national citizenship had to be taught, learned and experienced
in former centuries, not without great turmoil to the social norms of the
period, so world citizenship must now be taught, learned and experienced in
these final days of the 20th century.
To think, feel and act globally is almost without precedent in our recorded
history. Only rare prophets have managed to do so, but without the aid of
modern science and technology. And so they were vilified and put to death.
But now, faced with Armageddon, we must all become as prophets, for, as
Buckminster Fuller put it, "Either war is obsolete, or (humans) are."
World citizenship is more than merely a political strategy. It
"verticalizes" the individual raising him or her above the "left" and
"right" of nationalistic politics, to meet and make functional the
perennial value systems which heretofore have been only the subject of
religious credence. This it complements and fulfills all religious
prophecies and integrates at the same time the synergistic worlds of
instantaneous communications, energy and ecology with political power
systems and institutions.
The "Promise Land" of the Hebrews, the "Peace on earth," and"Thy will be
done on earth..." of the Christians, the benevolent social order of the
Moslems, the world fraternal order of the Sikhs, the "Middle Way" of the
Buddhists, the "universal world order" of the Bah'a'is, all are contained
in and can grow out of the multidimensional, human, spiritual/political
dispensation of universal world citizenship.
There is no other pathway to the future...and to the stars.
Copyright (c) 1995 World Service Authority. All rights reserved.
This page is produced and maintained by Ross A. Carlson at gdavis@together.net
This page last updated May 15, 1995
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HOW TO REGISTER AS A WORLD CITIZEN
You will have to print this form to register, since it requires a
signature. To have a printed form mailed to you, write to the World Service
Authority in Washington, D.C., or in Tokyo, Japan. (See address below)
All registered world citizens will receive the World Citizen Card,
laminated and in 7 languages: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian,
Chinese and Esperanto. The possession of this card is evidence of a global
political status allied with each and every other declared and registered
World Citizen.
CREDO OF A WORLD CITIZEN
A World Citizen is a human being who lives intellectually, morally and
physically in the present. A World Citizen accepts the dynamic fact that
the planetary human community is interdependent and whole, that humankind
is essentially one. A World Citizen is a peaceful and peacemaking
individual, both in daily life and contacts with others. As a global
person, a World Citizen relates directly to humankind and to all fellow
humans spontaneously, generously and openly. Mutual trust is basic to
his/her lifestyle. Politically, a World
Citizen accepts a sanctioning institution of representative government,
expressing the general and individual sovereign will in order to establish
and maintain a system of just and equitable world law with appropriate
legislative, judiciary and enforcement bodies. A World Citizen brings about
better understanding and protection of different cultures, ethnic groups
and language communities by promoting the use of a neutral international
language, such as Esperanto. A World Citizen makes this world a better
place to live in harmoniously by studying and respecting the viewpoints of
fellow citizens from anywhere in the world.
AFFIRMATION
I, the undersigned, do hereby, willingly and consciously, declare myself to
be a Citizen of the World. As a World Citizen, I affirm my planetary civic
commitment to WORLD GOVERNMENT, founded on three universal principles of
One Absolute Value, One World, and One Humanity which constitute the basis
of World Law. As a World Citizen I acknowledge the WORLD GOVERNMENT as
having the right and duty to
represent me in all that concerns the General Good of humankind and the
Good of All. As a Citizen of World Government, I affirm my awareness of my
inherent responsibilities and rights as a legitimate member of the total
world community of all men, women, and children, and will endeavor to
fulfill and practice these
whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. As a Citizen of
World Government, I recognize and reaffirm citizenship loyalties and
responsibilities within the communal state, and/or national groupings
consistent with the principles of unity above which constitute now my
planetary civic commitment.
X________________________________________________________
Signature of World Citizen and Date
Fill out below and sign Affirmation above and return with fee to:
World Service Authority * Suite 1106 * 1012 14th Street, NW * Washington,
D.C. 20005 * Tel: (202) 638-2662 * Fax: (202) 638-0638
World Service Authority * 8th World District * 4-14-5 Numabukuro *
Nakano-Ku * Tokyo 165, Japan * Tel: (81) (33) 319-5170 * Fax: (81) (33)
319-5127
APPLICATION FOR A WORLD CITIZEN REGISTRATION
Please type or print all information
FIRST NAME(S):______________________________________
FAMILY NAME:________________________________________
SEX: M F
BIRTHDATE: DAY_____ MONTH_____ YEAR___
BIRTHPLACE:_________________________________________
TELEPHONE:__________________________________________
OCCUPATION:_________________________________________
CURRENT MAILING ADDRESS:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Registration fee: US$20
Annual minimum financial commitment to WORLD GOVERNMENT (Optional): US$12
Postage: US$2
TOTAL: US$34
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/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch ------------------/ \
/ * \ World Transformation/New Civilization/Whole Systems / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@newciv.org / * * \
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