In Part 6 Shanti writes, “The next step in the development of human societies… cannot be other than One World and a World Administration. “
Credit AP
The next step in the development of human societies in our compact world cannot be other than One World and a World Administration. This is not out of idealistic considerations, but because otherwise there will be no humanity at all! States are fossils, relics of the past, unfit to protect humanity against itself and against mutual hostility, unfit to protect the planet against humankind, against being overgrazed, robbed, poisoned, exhausted and destroyed. States do not have any answer to such (literally) global challenges, and the current so-called multipolar world does not have one either.
“As man advances in civilization and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races,” says Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man.
After all, since 1800, 1850, we live in a different world, where we have populated the earth abundantly and have started to rob the planet on a worldwide scale; a world where we – in particular the rich part of the spaceship crew – have destroyed the health of the Earth, the biodiversity of life and the state of the climate at a pace never seen before. We live together on a spaceship whose population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion.
There is no estimate for the exact day or month the world’s population surpassed one and two billion.
The year 1804 may have been the year of one billion, 1927 the year of two billion.
I, Shanti, born on a Saturday, 10 March 1945, has been counted as inhabitant number 2,406,135,953.
The days of three and four billion were not officially noted, but the United States Census Bureau placed them in July 1959 and April 1974.
July 11, 1987 was designated as the approximate day on which the world population reached five billion.
The Census Bureau estimated that the world population reached six billion on 21 April 1999.
The “Day of Seven billion” was estimated by the Census Bureau to be in March 2012, while the Population Division of the United Nations suggested 31 October 2011. The latter date was officially designated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as the approximate day on which the world’s population reached seven billion people.
The Day of Eight Billion, marked on 15 November 2022, was designated by the United Nations as the approximate day when the world population reached eight billion people.
In a sense, a return is necessary to the first step in the development of human societies, that of the family, but with a life-size difference: not the family of the blood ties, but the Human Family, and, instead of religion, a religiousness, a reverence for life, a kind of kinship towards all that is. We will have to make the whole world our family!
Because, unless the world ‘comes together as one’, there may be no hope for humanity. That’s what the song, ‘We are the world’, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, is all about:
There comes a time when the world must come together as one
and we are the world, we are the children,
we are the ones who make a brighter day.
There’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives,
it’s true we’ll make a better day.
Watch on YouTube – full lyrics: muzikalia.com
This transition may be an even greater challenge than the one from fossil to green. Our addiction to fossil may be even less intense than the one to God, the Fatherland and the King, Por Dios, la Patria y el Rey, an attachment for which we are even willing to give our lives!
This transition has two sides: that of a system change, One World and One Humanity, and that of a personal change: a goodbye to slavery, to offering our freedom to outside authorities, to priests and politicians, and a choice for freedom, a freedom which comes with responsibility.
That might be the main reason why we fear and tend to avoid this freedom, a fear so well phrased by Erich Fromm in his classic Escape from Freedom and in a poem by Rabindranath Tagore in his Gitanjali, song 28:
Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.
Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.
I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best
friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.
The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death;
I hate it, yet hug it in love.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy;
yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer
be granted.
Related articles on Osho News
- All articles in this series, Humans Are Still Young
- All articles in the series, At Home in the Universe
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