A XXI Century Issue

About five centuries ago, the human race - for the first time in a million-year history - began an increasingly disciplined study of itself and the whole world. In theresulting“evolutionary instant”, we have already discovered enough about laws of physics to fundamentally change our conditions and capacities. We may possess the power to transform our entire planet - and ourselves - for good or ill.  

Either way, this accelerating process is forcing many attitudes and adjustments on all newly-powered individuals, societies - indeed on the whole species. More specifically, this unavoidable challenge causes us all to make major decisions about whether and how to change the ways our species has “always” acted. We must examine how societies have viewed, and related to, their own and other societies, and treated the natural world around them. Why? Each person now being a member of a surviving group(state?), fighting/competing/cooperating with others individuals or groups for dominance/benefits/survival, and also able to threaten any function or survival of the environment, has“suddenly”become one of a species with potential planetary-scale creation or destruction. At minimum, this demands that all traditional human perceptions, relations and institutions be carefully questioned - not just because they may be false or dangerous, but because their optimum value is new. Difficult issues force individuals/societies to test old views.

These are the sort of basic questions being forced on human society by totally novel circumstances, and which, even if neither acknowledged nor recognized, lie behind millions of large and small debates taking place all over the world today. They reflect legitimate differences of perception created by the rapid speed and great depth of change now transforming every society on earth. This does not imply conceding all global issues to a world government or even to the UN. We neither need nor could agree to give one world authority such pervasive, let alone binding, powers. Our aim - and our limited capacity - must be to select carefully - in rapidly changing circumstances - the optimum levels or institutions to deal with at least the most pressing issues, and then to assign them the essential powers to do the job. On the other hand, our past allocation of duties and powers mainly to sovereign states no longer fits our changed or changing circumstances. These optimum levels now include many more geographic and functional interests than our species has been used to consulting, or even recognizing.