Dear Garry,
I'm finally getting around to reading "My Country Is the World," only a few decades late, and am having trouble putting it down. I'm alternately delighted, amused, argumentative and deeply moved.
Also, I've been avidly reading your newsletter and am hard put to argue with most of the articles.
But why argue? Though we've chosen different paths, our goals are the same. You see a 98-yard run, and I've been working to achieve an occasional first down toward the same goal. Perhaps by holding hands with others, also trodding different paths, we can together achieve what none of us can achieve alone. That's been my life-long lesson as a musician and conductor. The conductor needs an orchestra, and musicians accomplish more working together than alone or in sections.
An example: In two of the major orchestras with which I've been connected over the years, the first flute and first oboe disliked each other and never spoke to each other. All four of these musicians were fine artists. Sitting next to each other (as flute and oboe players do) for well over 25 years (in both cases), one might think that they would be at war, or at least be trying to sabotage one another. How? Play out of tune? Play "off ensemble?" Play the wrong note?
These tactics would sabotage only themselves. So there was nothing to do but play beautiful music together.
Is there a message here? Can people with differences make beautiful music with each other out of enlightened self-interest?
The reason I've been in the trenches most of my lifetime (including 20 years of McCarthy period blacklisting) is that there are a few other elements to be considered-poverty, injustice, race, wars. Insatiable greed and cruelty are the legacy of money and power. National leaders are willing or impotent lackeys of big-money interests. These interests don't care about nation-states or boundaries, or human rights or justice or plain decency. It seems that they don't even care about their own children. Their vision is the next financial power play, the quarterly bottom line.
How to mobilize the powerless masses against these tremendously powerful forces? Convincing a few people here and there is insufficient as we race toward destruction of our species. In my judgment, the only answer is to orchestrate a coalition of single-issues groups into a united people's power.
The people of the world are impotent alone. Together, they are invincible.
Joseph Eger
(Following is an edited version of Davis' reply to Eger.)
Dear Joseph,
Many thanks for your good letter. Glad you enjoyed the book.
The illustration of the flutists and oboists playing beautiful music together for 20-plus years spoke volumes. While obviously their personalities clashed, the individual "sovereign" talent, respect for the composer's manuscript before them, fidelity to the listeners and, above all, love for the total sound of which they were a part transcended any petty personal feelings.
While reading your example, I could not but think of the ethnic and cultural clashes taking place throughout the world community. If humanity were considered an orchestra playing sublime music together, such cultural differences would be revealed for the transient ripples on human history's surface that they truly are.
I agree that economic forces play an enormous role in perpetuating the status quo of rich vs. poor. All the more reason for a people-oriented world government outlawing war and the anachronistic, wasteful, suicidal, 18th century nation-state system.
But just as each flutist, oboist, violinist, tuba player, etc., in your orchestra is exercising her/her musical "sovereignty," each one of us acting out world citizenship is truly a microcosm of the majestic macrocosm, thus relating us individually and collectively to the Universe itself.
Yours warmly in one world,
Garry Davis
Dear Sirs,
I have just finished reading, with great interest, Garry Davis' book Passport to Freedom. I find myself in general agreement with Davis' position against nationalism feeling the latter archaic in the light of the "Kombolcha Village" vision of the future.
While I have some concerns about the future of the World Government (e.g., if world government is successful, will we be replacing rascals with rascals?), I feel that it is the present nationalistic state of the world [that is the problem] and would like to stand up and be counted among the world citizens.
Please send me information about the documentation services provided by the WSA, along with applications for the identification card and passport.
I know that no organization is funded by good intentions alone, so please send along some information on how I can help in other ways.
Thanks and God Bless.
Yours sincerely,
Girma Ahmed
(Publisher's comment: We too are concerned with "replacing rascals with rascals." That is why we endorse and promote the World Syntegrity Project, a grass-roots strategy for evolving a scientific world constitution as a system to meet the continuing needs and desires of the human race. Also in the global works is a screening method called the Integration Index by which the general public can evaluate the moral, intellectual, emotional balance of any candidate for world office. We will be writing about this in following issues).
Dear Sir/Madam,
I'm writing in regard of an application form for your WSA passport.
I'm a Palestinian who has no passport, and I've been trying to get one for the past 20 years.
Please send me an application form.
Kind regards,
Name Withheld