by Garry Davis

"Crimes against humanity" are defined in Principle II of the Nuremberg Decisions and have been used to indict, try, condemn and punish alleged war criminals. The Nuremberg Principles, through a U.N. General Assembly resolution in 1950, became part of international law recognized by all member-states of the United Nations.

If we humans can commit crimes against humanity, the corollary is that we are all in a binding legal contract with that same humanity. Admittedly, this is a one-sided arrangement since humanity cannot commit a "crime" against us as individuals.

Webster's Dictionary describes "humanity" as "1. all humans collectively; the human race; humankind." But these definitions do not answer the question, Does humanity have the legal "right" to live? Obviously, if humanity dies, so do all humans. If humanity is threatened, so are all humans. So if the right to live is a legal human right, it must automatically extend to humanity itself. And if so, who or what is going to protect that right? Nation-states? Transnational corporations? God? Or world government?

The answer is self-evident. We humans have been assigned the task. And the individual political expression of the Contract with Humanity is world citizenship: "world" because humanity occupies it; "citizen" because the word connotes a legal status and structure. But how do we, as humans, relate to humanity itself? Or, in more prosaic terms, how do we make a binding "contract" with humanity that can assure its survival?

Do we enter a binding "contract" at birth? "All human beings are born in dignity and rights...", records the first article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "When in the course of human events...", begins the Declaration of Independence.

A contract, again turning to Webster, is "an agreement between two or more parties for the doing or not doing of something special." Some contracts are implicit, some verbal, some written and some constitutional. National citizens are legally bound by a constitutional contract. Supreme Courts are sanctioned to continually define and redefine the nature and validity of such civic contracts.

But what of each human being's "contract" with his/her humanity? Does it exist by the very nature of the dynamic relationship? Or, like the fictional national contract, is it an illusion bearing no relationship to the real world?

In Philadelphia recently, we were treated to the spectacle of four U.S. presidents, one former Army chief of staff, myriad of lesser officials, plus a horde of media, exhorting "voluntarism" on the part of the U.S. civilian population. At the same time, the Clinton administration's export policy of arms to whomever has money to buy them continues apace. These "contracts," internal and external, are obviously diametrically opposed. This is the nature of all national contracts. Messrs. Clinton, Blair, Chirac, Netanyahu, Havel, Rafsanjani, Kohl, Hashimoto, Aznar, Mandela, Fujimori, Brundtland, Qaddafi, Hussein, et al, are all bound by their respective national contracts, each of them in barbarous opposition to a contract with humanity, which, by definition, must be one of world peace.

Emery Reves wrote the following in 1945: "The Atlantic Charter, the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the old league covenants, alliances, non-aggression pacts, the ideal of collective security, are all conceptions based on the 18th century principles of absolute national sovereignty and national self-determination. If we remain on that road, if we do not have the vision and courage to undertake the first step toward a constitution to regulate the already existing interdependence of the people, then the next war between the surviving, non-integrated sovereign nation-states can be taken for granted."

Aiding and abetting our old/new "contract with humanity" is an appropriate and revolutionary media: cyberspace. It presents an instantly available medium without frontiers Ñ ubiquitous and democratic, implicitly relating its user to humanity by the mere act of logging on to the Internet.

Once engaged in using cyberspace as a communication medium, one becomes automatically a "Netizen," that is, subject to the "laws" of general and individual participation, which defines all social and civic contracts. "Unity in diversity," "One from many," "All for one and one for all," "The commonwealth" are some of the phrases that apply here. In psychological or religious terms, the universal dictum, "Do unto others as you would they do unto you," denotes the dynamic connection between the one and the many. "Others" here connotes the sum total of fellow humans, i.e., humanity.

But here is the crux of the matter at hand. Because of the universality of cyberspace, by the mere fact that you "enter" it Ñ you are engaged with the totality or Internet "community" as a whole, i.e., humanity. Whatever content you search and imbibe, the principal and revolutionary reality is that you have "contracted" with anyone and everyone sharing an exponentially expanding medium.

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