Planetary Maturity and Our Global Social Contract: Part Two- The Social Contract

The Lockean model also fetishizes the unlimited accumulation of 'private property' as a natural right that is intrinsic to human freedom. The irrationality and inhumanity of this ideology is manifest all around us in the world today. The Earth Constitution by no means abolishes private property and considers this a right. But it converts the global economic system to a debt-free system that puts the reasonable common good of all the people of Earth at the heart of the global social contract.  The global community, integrated together under the rule of democratically legislated law, will no longer be enslaved to multi-national banking cartels, and no longer condemned to perdition under IMF or World Bank austerity programs that harm the 99% in order to secure the wealth and power of the 1%.

As the present system of neo-Lockean, and neo-Hobbsian nation-states continues to endanger human civilization itself with the possibility of nuclear war, as well as engulfing the world in the perpetual violence of the wars on terrorism and numerous local wars, while at the same time ignoring an ever-spreading global poverty and rapidly escalating climate collapse, we ask what practical options are available to humanity if we wish to establish a viable and decent future for the world's two billion children?  The only truly practical and reasonable answer is ratification of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

The Constitution was written through a process of four constituent assemblies between 1968 in Interlaken, Switzerland, and 1991 in Troia, Portugal, each attended by a large international constituency of world citizens, international lawyers, and integral thinkers. It is a document that embodies, in dozens of ways, a critical social understanding of our flawed, Hobbesian world-system, a deep compassion for the equality, freedom, and dignity of all human beings, and the insight concerning how to establish a nonviolent world-system free of both structural and military forms of violence, a world based, as Mahatma Gandhi expressed it, on truth rather than lies.[6]

The best way to proceed to establish a global social contract that both stems from and promotes planetary maturity is to work for the ratification of the Earth Constitution under the criteria specified in Article 17. It is the only real, viable option available to humanity since all other initiatives, for example, environmental activism, human rights work, disarmament work, etc., form only partial initiatives that will ultimately require the global protection of democratically legislated world law. Not only this, but all partial initiatives tend to leave the global economic and sovereign nation-state system in place, thereby ultimately engaging in positive work that is ultimately defeated by the system itself.  Our global social contract, on the other hand, goes right to the heart of our multifaceted and interconnected problems. It places human relationships on the principle of unity-in-diversity and frames these relationships within enforceable, democratically legislated laws.

The Earth Constitution is found in many places on the internet and is available from publishers in printed form. It has been translated into some 23 languages and is the best known and most widely admired of the various 'constitutions' that have been proposed for the Earth. We are not talking about some vague, idealistic 'Earth Charter' or unrealizable 'Millennium Development Goals'. We are talking about a real constitution that provides the procedures and protocols for equitable world laws, enforceable over all individuals.  The Constitution does not abolish the U.N. but integrates the many valuable U.N. agencies into a democratic framework that gives the Earth Federation government the real authority to end war, protect human rights, and protect our global environment. 

As Part One pointed out, integral theorist Ken Wilber has constructed a typology of the systems by which human beings have organized their civilizations on this planet, from ancient times to the a future of integration and planetary coherence.[7] If we really want an 'integral theory of everything' as Wilber proposes, we need to add near the top of his 'systems' typology the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.  This may not be the highest system that human beings will attain in their development toward ever-higher levels of consciousness and organization, but it is exactly the global social contract that is needed for the 21^st century. 

This is the century that will determine whether we survive to further develop our unimaginably vast human potential. It will not happen unless we establish a real paradigm-shift away from the fragmented systems that now threaten our future on this planet and establish a holistic peace-system, sustainability-system, and justice-system that makes possible that transformed future. The key document for this vital transition of civilization from fragmentation to unity-in-diversity is in our hands, only thirty pages long, ready to go. We need to act from our developing planetary maturity, for the sake of our children and the future, and establish a global social contract through ratification of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

(Glen T. Martin is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Program in Peace Studies at Radford University. He is author of nine books and dozens of articles concerning human liberation, democracy, and the philosophy of law. He was also a 2013 recipient of the GUSI International Peace Prize.)

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