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A Guru's View of World Government (Cont.)

(With world government being such a controversial subject these days, given the United Nations' abject failure to address humanity's problems, World Citizen News continues the serial reprinting of Guru Nataraja's 1956 Memorandum on World Government, which treats the subject holistically or, as he wrote, "geo-dialectically." Viewed within the context of the guru's wisdom-though he passed away in 1973 and despite his gender-exclusionary language-readers can enjoy a fresh and timely perspective on an engrossing subject.)

3. How to practice world politics from inside

When once elected to a local or national body on a World Government ticket, the man or woman concerned takes a course of action in keeping with the principles of humanity and world morality or value comprised between the two poles of bread and freedom. Taking his stand on the norms and standards of geo-dialectics the World Citizen generally takes a middle-of-the-road position in respect of leftist or rightist parties, and generally supports the president when Absolute Justice, Morality or the Ideal are not violated by his position. When resolutions are moved or voting is explained he gets a chance of placing before those who are politically minded a new approach based on global human interests. He can bring token cut-motions on armament budgets when disproportionate, and the people's sense of justice can be appealed to. If he should be ousted from the Council the people will follow him into the street if his cause is just and in the name of the interests of the common man and humanity at once. Here, for the present, the possibilities of such action from inside must be left to the imagination. When permanent support to the world approach is certain, 'mundialization' within such units is not impossible. Symbolic acts in keeping with the code of honour or morals proper to the World Citizen could be resorted to, resembling Tolstoyan or Gandhian methods as revised in the light of a stricter geo-dialectical science.

4. The practice of world politics from above

Men, and more especially women, who occupy positions of influence or who have resources at their command, can study the plans of World Government and bring their weight to bear on the side of supporting human rights and preserving the best in the heritage of mankind, whether in art, culture, or wisdom. Dante, Shakespeare, and Kalidasa belong to humanity first, and the claims of particular nations for them are only incidental. There is also the one perennial contemplative tradition based on a science of the Absolute which is the common property of humanity. In preserving these and in protecting the common wisdom heritage of mankind the best interests of the common man will be secured also.

Poor men, who have to make a living wherever it is at present available to them, are kept from freely reaching out to their God-given opportunities by artificial man-made rules. These rules must be broken down. Travel becomes more and more difficult and rules are piled upon rules by nations big and small for no valid or justifiable reason except to retaliate in the name of national pride or exclusiveness. Parochialism, tribalism, casteism, and nationalism have much in common with fanaticism or blind orthodoxy. A world philosophy and religion critically and scientifically ordered will help to relieve the existing asphyxiating conditions wherein miserable men and women have to live in the prison of criss-cross rules which is the present world. All modern people are keenly aware of this stifling atmosphere. The well-to-do, the influential, or at least their wives, must take interest in the poor, not to disrupt anything or anybody, but to bring just that kind of legitimate pressure which will ease the trouble of the common man. There can be a World Order of Ladies or Knights who could function as supervisors, permission authorities, world guards or witnesses of natural integrity, peacemakers or arbitrating advisers in the numerous walks of life in all matters ranging between the gaining of bread and the gaining of personal or spiritual freedom. Premarital, post-marital, and familial arbitration or advice, helping juveniles and children from possible maladjustments, the re-education of delinquents, psychological guidance, a pedagogy which respects the personality of the child, co-operative centers for the reclamation and relaxation of persons caught in the stress of life or in conditions of tension, and occupational guidance or treatment-these are only a few of the fields in which the World Citizen could help the lot of humanity from wherever he or she might be living. A complete philosophy and a way of life shaped on unitive and absolutist lines is of course presupposed here. It will be the task of the World Institute of Human Affairs to elaborate, formulate, and make this available in the different languages of the world.

5. The practice of world politics from below

Individual men and women are caught in the barbed wire frontiers, both ideological and actual, of rules and interdictions against freedom to pursue happiness freely and peacefully on the surface of the God-or-Nature-given earth. There has been no way hitherto for the articulation of their grievance. Not content with enforcing the rules of his own country, police belonging to stranger countries have begun to help the other country in enforcing wrong rules in the name of internationalism. There is thus a double barrage of many absurd rules which themselves are multiplied beyond reason or necessity. The clever ones get away with every restriction somehow, but the lot of ordinary man becomes difficult. One has to linger only for a few minutes at passport or permit offices to be convinced of the large volume of suffering to which men and women are subjected. To refer even to a few typical cases would be outside the scope of this Memorandum and would mar the sobriety of style which we wish to preserve here as far as possible. In one of his works Ruskin got a paragraph from a daily newspaper printed in red ink, because the subject was shocking to all decent human sentiment. The untold sufferings of the common man because of red-tape and regulations would have to be printed in some other ink if it is to find a place in a Memorandum such as this is intended to be.

What the common man could do is to register with the World Government as a World Citizen and try to bring a vertical conceived pressure to bear on the situation. He has to rely on numbers here to cope with the machinery of governments which have a great deal of inertia in them. All shoulders have to be applied to the wheel to set affairs going normally. The trumpet blasts for absolute fairness from outside the walls of Jericho have to resound in consonance with the trumpet blasts from above, or inside.

...To be continued


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