I say with great sorrow that I believe it is likely, that it might take a cataclysmic event that kills hundreds of millions of people before the world will feel threatened enough to realize that a fundamental change is needed in the way humanity is allowing weaponry, global warming, and poverty to be dealt with. A real difference that creates international rules and agreements for the world to have the best chance to not only survive but also thrive.
Today, as I write this, with over 50 years of counseling experience, I know that this is rooted in psychology and human behavior. The intention is to plant seeds, not to act as a know-it-all with ready-made answers. I implore you to read this dominantly as the questions that need to be posed, with some ideas to be considered. It is easy to tear down new ideas with a different set of the same, but my hope is that the spirit and intention are what is read, not a rigid interpretation that is intended simply to be catalytic.
Why do we need a global understanding and world agreements?
The inability to make international agreements empowers corruption and dictatorships to operate without any kind of oversight at a time when the world is capable of destroying itself in multiple obvious ways. This is realistically leading us in the direction of virtually assured universal destruction. The alternative is to slowly and gradually trust in vital international agreements set by a World Body. A World Body that’s stronger than the considerable powers of separate countries, corporations, corruption, greed, and destruction.
Having a separate World Body might meet significant resistance, and it might be more favorable to simply have each country’s agreements in place throughout the world. This is because it might be more agreeable and natural to have more independence. The one exception would seem to be that it is hard to imagine safety being established without having an agreed-to place. This would be necessary when nuclear weapons are gradually transferred to a central location. However, the benefit is evident once greater trust is established through international cooperation.
I realize that this might be the time that skeptics like myself would likely turn away because of the seeming lack of feasibility of coming to an agreement to create a world body of the vast majority of nations. But I urge you to pause and see that this is well-thought-out and is meant to be a seed for the hopefully near future and not for the present. The world situation hasn’t become catastrophic enough yet. We do, however, need to have contingency plans ready for when it does.
Destruction without boundaries will result in the end of civilization as we know it simply because we are in the nuclear age. Everything is intensified and exaggerated, and everyone is by far more affected by everyone else than ever before. We are a small world where we’ll either agree to sane agreements or struggle to our deaths — which will inevitably occur as our continued entities of separation of powers continue fighting between and against themselves.
This interconnection might have been considered idealistic or a naive ‘new age’ view until the invasion of Ukraine. In addition, the world has recently seen just how interconnected we are. The Covid-19 pandemic showed us that everyone is connected, and no one is really safe or immune from it, even if they are in another country.
However, it is a pity that this awareness has been reduced as countries around the world downplay the dangers of the current pandemic morphing and the impact of future viruses and the need for a coordinated worldwide response. But, there are still a large number of people who realize that all it takes is one mutation, and the whole world is imperiled en masse again.
The increasing awareness of global warming has led to hundreds of millions of people thinking about how we can survive and perhaps create the conditions for enduring peace. Global warming, war, violence, pandemics, and epidemics are all indicators that we are all in this together. So, we need to ask questions that would create safety and improve the well-being of the planet and as much life as possible.
In this article, we’ll explore a potential expansion or transformation of the current United Nations into a World Body inclusive of all nations that can see the utter necessity for a united, neutral and trusted entity to oversee Survival, Safety and Peace. It’s an intuitive, rational revelation of the need for such a body and the potential positive impact it can have on our world. The beginning details of how this would be realistic with a gradual increasing trust will be covered throughout the articles in this series.
It’s clear that it would take the world being desperate enough to realize that there needs to be something akin to a massive human psychological lobotomy to create international agreements that prioritize world survival rather than focus on the individual expansion of ideology, wealth, power, or control. The focus would need to be on collective responsibility while not stifling individual incentives in any significant way with gradually increasing power and control.
It seems evident that nothing short of the powers finally realizing that they too will die will create the possible motivation to make this quantum shift. However, as I have shared, the world’s leaders may only consider the radical changes in how the world’s power structure needs to be shifted when there are even more direct threats to their own country’s survival.
This will not happen overnight; however, the powers that be and we as individuals most aware of this inevitability need to start at least informally planting seeds of contemplation and conversation. This is a forerunner to setting up meetings and creating a viable vision for the world to survive.
This would likely require a leader of one of the world’s top powerful countries to set up a pivotal first meeting with the other key powers who can make important decisions. In addition, this leader would need to propose a shift in how international agreements are orchestrated because of the predictable chronic endangerment and the virtual certainty of destruction between nuclear threats, global warming, and continued terrorism that we face worldwide.
If you’re questioning — what does this have to do with me? If you don’t think you, as an individual, make an impact — you do or at least can! From gaining information, developing ideas, and bringing them into conversations and thinking about them, you do or can have a profound effect. In fact, in our traditional Western world, we place a lot of emphasis on individual family units and loved ones. If we moderated that to include others and grow into our internal inclinations to help, support, and work towards bettering the world, this would be a pre-condition of our leaders representing that too — we can push for it eventually with votes and by making our voice heard.
Please read ahead so we can unpack some critical ideas and essential questions about how we might create a World Body that would represent, include, and work for a large percentage of the world and (hopefully) change the trajectory of its greatest threats.
The Creation of a World Body of Nations (WB)
The nascent idea is to create an expanded and more powerful version of the United Nations that would include the dominant number of nations in the world. In order to have the strongest nations of the world consider this unification, this would clearly require defining the power based on a credit system for each powerful and wealthy country (getting more votes) depending on certain factors. Power, influence, natural resources, manpower, technology, energy, military power, creative intelligence, and wealth could be some of the elements, amongst others, that would be established by the international community.
They would need to make a leap to extend their care and show their trustworthiness to the world with activities like energy sharing, creating ways to support standardizing living situations and moving toward equalizing it around the world, and a number of significant elements of cooperation that are necessities for international survival, peace, and well-being.
The Initiation of The World Body
The very likely beginning of this agreement would be most realistic if the most powerful nations could meet and come up with at least a beginning negotiation of a format for initial standards. However, the goal would be to meet with an educated sense of humility and an understanding of the threats to everyone’s survival.
The reason for a private meeting at first is that resistance would very likely be significant and could cause more death as the elements or entities on the earth could become more violent if they felt threatened. Therefore (even though it is not conceivable in the present), it would be a meeting between the Presidents of the United States, China, and Russia.
If and when the most powerful 3-5 countries in the world, appearing to be opposite in many ways, agreed that the world and their countries were likely to die and proposed a world body be formed, it is hard to imagine that the vast majority of the world wouldn’t follow to contribute.
Then, every country could find ways to make sure everyone has a vote that is differentiated in points based on how the countries agree to value what we have already discussed above. Again it is clear that none of the larger countries would participate if they didn’t realize the preferential voting power reflected their accurate power position in the world. It is vital that this be seen as a gradual increase in trust to prove the benefits of international trade, trust, technology sharing, innovation, energy, and so forth.
The inclusion of virtually every country is not meant to be literal but as inclusive as possible to get things started in a beginning understanding. It will likely begin with an informal meeting between several of the major powers without a formal announcement to eliminate pressure and rebellious actions on the nations or organizations that are likely to resist any form of international guidance and authority. It will not take a tremendous visionary to see the need for unity.
However, it will take courage and psychological insight to go in a direction that the power of humanity has never gone before.
Moving from resistance toward understanding
As previously mentioned, it is seemingly quite evident that the most powerful countries in the world will be resistant to change and will need to be given more voting power for this to be viable and fair. This is something that the WB of nations will have to decide exactly how this can work. It seems, from history, that countries with the most significant capacity to contribute to the world in different aspects will need to be more influential in the WB’s decision-making abilities. This influence would be reflected in their increased votes, allowing every country to have a level of power that would accurately reflect their position in the world.
This would be the rationale that would not make it a ‘sacrifice of intelligence, resources or real power,’ but needs to be lucid in how it shows that the only way to be safe as a world body is to gradually create a power that is in multiple primary ways united. At the same time, this power still will need to allow degrees of independence to be part of balancing and creating a safety net for everyone, more so than dominantly building separate powers that are in fear, distrust, competition, and superiority — each in the middle of a dangerous rationalization in the nuclear age. We can’t afford these rationalizations and still survive at the level they are happening.
Partial Surrender of Power to Greater Than Oneself
How do we get the majority of the most powerful nations in the world to buy into the necessity to gradually have an enforceable power greater than itself, making decisions that would affect their major policies?
It is clear that this is one of the most difficult challenges as the most powerful countries will have enormous resistance to giving up control. Therefore, it may take not only a gradual formation of an agreement but also implementation of the number of issues themselves. Clearly, this will take the experience of a realistic humility that humankind has shown that as long as we stay dominantly separate as countries, we will have more and more nuclear threats, a greater disparity between the rich and the poor, and therefore increasing terrorism.
This doesn’t mean that we will give up individual countries or cultures, but that each will be more aware of the necessity for cooperative interdependence. It is equally clear that unless there is international agreement to virtually eliminate carbon, our planet is at best endangered. Like we said at the start of this article, a nuclear explosion that kills millions might be one of the ways toward this awareness and subsequent motivation to make this World Body a necessity. Obviously, we do hope that it is possible for peace to come before this kind of disaster or disasters have to occur.
The central motivation for writing this paper is to lessen the chances of even more death to consider humankind learning from its experience of war and realizing what this means in the nuclear age.
The need to go beyond your family, community, and country
Throughout human history and up to the present day, those in political power and leadership have largely lacked a highly attuned psychological understanding necessary to guide us toward peace, unity and equitable justice. Instead, we have pursued the divisiveness of placing excessive importance on our own self-interests. This is true on an individual level by prioritizing taking care of ourselves and our loved ones with only very minor interest in using our resources to do the same for our country and our planet. It is also on display in the behaviors of leaders and policymakers on international and national levels, each who almost invariably exaggerate their own value and integrity while minimizing others.
Families are idealized as more important than caring for our world and are considered the dominant end unto themselves. This impacts how each of us relates to the world. The focus on self and other family members is considered a dream of contentment and responsibility. That isn’t to say that family isn’t a central part of life and one of our most sacred parts of devotion, responsibility, and love. It just ignores our connection to the earth on which we live as well as those that are in poverty, and a collective purpose for those that are more fortunate to have a key inspiration and fulfillment to give everyone possible an opportunity to live a hard-working, reachable inspired life for themselves and their families.
The cost of not placing others outside our families, communities, and countries, especially in wealthy countries, has resulted in perpetual class divisions that have been the underbelly of alienation, unhealthy competition, false superiority, and ultimately given rise to terrorism, global warming, and war.
We each need to look at how much our lives reveal the lack of significant giving, trust, and generosity beyond our limited loved ones. When we magnify the billions of people that live this way in their ordinary life (prioritizing loved ones so dominantly), we can see that this is a major factor in why our countries’ leaders follow this paradigm by putting themselves and their countries ahead of the greater world’s well-being. Today the consequences of world endangerment, cruel death, and nature reflecting the abuse of the planet through fires, droughts, and hurricanes are dramatically manifesting themselves in the likelihood of death for our children and future generations unless we individually and collectively make the biggest pivot in the history of humanity.
The Immense Benefits to Members of the WB
These agreements would offer unparalleled cooperation of trade benefits, energy solutions, technological exchanges, and resources. All practices that benefit the conditions of planetary benefits, carbon reduction methods, and commitments, uniting with the Paris Peace Accord, the International Court, WHO, IMF, and a new world organization — one that sets standards that will equate the economics to consider each local economy establishing the value of a dollar to create a real balance that moves us toward equal opportunity for minimum hourly wage standards.
Of course, some of these international bodies will be subject to the WB’s approval set up by experts throughout the world to gain trust and establish equity while carefully considering the real conditions and opportunities as well as the “cost of living” in each part of the globe.
Clarifying the Irreplaceable Benefits of Joining the WB
There will need to be a way to come to an agreement to incentivize virtually all nations except those that remain rogue (which will then be isolated with no trade or cooperation and receive international monitoring) to join the world body.
It will be up to the nations to build either exclusive or reduced trade relationships with non-members, cooperation of shared resources, technology, and energy that will make it virtually unviable not to join unless there is a complete lack of rationality. The vision of a cooperating world is a reflection back to the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller where he showed that it would take only (and he predicted at that time that no one would listen for 50 years) three years for the world to be living at the same standard of living as the upper-middle class of the United States if the cooperation of the world were to be optimized.
This premise operated under the principles of the world, deciding that it needed to share core technology, natural resources, agricultural breakthroughs, global warming innovations, military alliances, and every other imaginable cooperation to benefit everyone. It also would allow for defense spending to be gradually reduced and instead utilized to create safety for the greater world.
The Conditions for the Countries Not in the WB
The countries that choose not to join the world body would have to understand that the power and vast, unprecedented opportunities of the WB would isolate them in virtually every way possible. If any violations or threats of nuclear or mass destruction were to be discovered in any of the non-member nations or territories, the WB would act with clear boundaries to enforce safety for the world.
In a sense, there would finally be a place where universal guidelines and rules would be established for the safety of humankind. Furthermore, because this would be collaborative with members selected from the WB, a growing trust that has never existed with humankind could be created. Although this might seem utterly dream-like at first glance, we must remember that all of our lives are on the line for the first time in utterly obvious ways. We are at a turning point for humanity to either put its trust in the total people of the world (or the vast majority) rather than having conflicting nuclear powers endlessly capable of destroying each other and a world that is killing itself through poisonous gases and global warming.
How can we make the World Body for Peace a Reality?
Most powerful countries choose not to act today because they don’t think or feel their survival is in jeopardy. The top military powers, i.e., The United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea, France, The United Kingdom, Pakistan, and Brazil, would need to unite to forge an understanding of peace and focus their powers to neutralize global life threats.
It would also be inevitable to include the ten most wealthy countries, i.e., the United States, China, Japan, the UK, Germany, India, France, Canada, Australia, and Italy.
Again, this is not meant to be an idealistic presentation suggesting that the world is ready for action at this time. As I stressed throughout this paper, unfortunately, but realistically it will almost for sure take several more severe traumatic events, including but not limited to nuclear events, unparalleled drought, massive food shortage, floods, fires, and continuous threats and desperate actions before any action to protect the planet and its people are undertaken on a global scale.
Why are we writing to reach YOU?
This is being written specifically to reach as many people as possible to see the sensibility of the world not being divided against itself even though it seems like a dream. It is tough to see us surviving unless we have this mass of universal agreements and cooperation in the world that has become so small, dangerous, and in such a degree of entropy and death.
The ultimate purpose is to reach the three-five people in power to consider the necessity at the right time to create such a central way that the world can be a cooperative body, and pivot away from being primarily self/country-centered and self/country-preoccupied.
There are also a significant number of leaders and relatively unknown individuals, foundations, and groups that are devoted to the survival of the world and an attempt to support the well-being of those that are least fortunate and the health of the planet itself. Those that are dedicated to this sense of purpose, meaning, and compassion find like-minded projects and individuals and are looking for ways to expand their work cooperatively. This includes trillions of dollars in impact investing, foundation projects, and innovative creations for energy solutions. There is a spirit of cooperation and unity that has never been at the scale because of the obvious global challenges that are undeniable from their vantage point.
It isn’t hard to see the dark ages where our emotional and philosophical differences could only lead to death. However, we sincerely hope this sensibility will reach billions of people, whether through talks, podcasts, psychological and spiritual pragmatic teachings, social media, or papers, including the one you’ve just read.
Each of us can play a vital role by contributing our own version of the necessity for world unity because of the obviousness of self-destruction when we stay in isolation with corruption, genocide, rape, torture, and murder vs a world that makes sense to the sane part of all of us. Sorrowfully it has taken the very threat of death to potentially wake us up, and hopefully, it won’t take billions, and we can learn from our history.
We strongly urge you to stay with us as we address in depth the human psychology that needs to be changed individually and through our leaders. We will also explore in depth how the obvious hurdles that are in the way to form the WB can be tackled.
At the same time, we will also look closely at the multiple ways that the WB would create safety with many areas of influence in areas like military, nuclear, cyber sensibility and monitoring for peace, international energy sharing, and gradually reducing defense spending among many others.
Please do check out the rest of the series, especially the article on our individual impact and responsibility, to ensure you gain a greater picture of what’s needed for all of us to contribute toward increasing the chances for the continued and healthy survival of our species:
- International Agreements for World Survival — The Creation of a World Body for Peace and Survival
- The Role of Individual Responsibility and Its Impact On Our World
- The World Body and its influence on War, Military, and Nuclear Threats
- A Greater Sensibility for Our Environment, Individual Wealth, and Technology with The World Body