| Edward Graham Macfarlane
108 Forthill Road Broughty Ferry Dundee Scotland DD5 3DR tel & fax: +44 (0)1382 730971 Email: globdem@sol.co.uk |
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| Chapter 1
"A Polity without an Head ... would ... be ... Anarchy." H. More. The world of human society as we know it is no "Polity". On the contrary, it is a seething mass of part-world polities and aspiring part-world polities, which spawn terrorists bent on defying and pulling down the larger polities. These are only managing to maintain themselves by methods of response terrorisms, which often are irresolute and weak, instead of being far-seeing and wise. Actually the leaders of all the most fearsome part-world polities are the worst enemies of COSMOPOLIS - THE PERFECT NATION -and the chief purpose of this book is to expose their enmity and to condemn it as lack of vision and unwisdom. Let me choose three examples for your consideration and I place them in alphabetical order in case I am suspected of undue bias:
(2) The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (3) The United States of America They are all led by mendacious people of course and. I can say precisely why I am justified in calling them mendacious. The U.K., U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. are all members (so-called) of the United Nations Organisation. The "lie" is to be seen in the nature of the United Nations Organisation itself. So far from being a unifying body in the "Polity" sense of the word - which would give the human beings in all countries equal rights and privileges - the U.N.O. is actually constituted - by the express wishes of the part-world polity spokesmen who signed the original agreements - to allow each part-world polity to retain its desire to be a separate and politically sovereign polity, equipped with military forces. for polity defence or attack, as may be decided from time to time by the part-world polity spokespersons for each polity. The use of the word "United" in the expression "United Nations Organisation” is therefore inappropriate. A more fitting title would be "The Dis-United Nations Organisation” but the laxness of the use of language and the immorality of their conduct in inter-polity affairs does not seem to have caught the eyes and the minds of the people who vote these part-world polity upholders back into positions of power in each of the polity-regions concerned. And of course a very important aspect of this book - which is directed to the individual minds of the people in the world - is to ask for greater insistence on verbal accuracy and the exact use of words in all matters dealing with human social affairs. In all matters of creating new articles the process of the actual creation has to be preceded by the mental picture of perfection which we all know from experience will never be fully achieved. This is something I have learned from years of working in technical workshops in schools, where young people were being introduced to the practical problems of making articles designed to fulfil certain purposes, which originate in some mind where some frustration or need has inspired an idea for an object which can be made by a technician or craftsperson. A lady may go to a cabinet-maker and say to him. I would like you to make me a small sideboard suitable for my bedsitter, where I need all the space I can save from being cluttered up with furniture and it occurred to me that you might design a table which folds and slides into a space in the sideboard but still leaves me room to do my writing on top of the sideboard and space for getting my knees under it. That is the kind of technical problem requiring powers of visualisation and invention which many tradesmen could solve to suit themselves in many different ways. But it illustrates exactly the same kind of visualisation and invention powers required to design a better world, in which all human beings can live together in a spirit of co--operation instead of warring, and mutual help instead of squabbling. To achieve this is my purpose in this book. My word pictured the perfect polity is really my personal visualisation of the perfect nation. Cosmopolis, if it is widely read and agreed with by all the other inventive minds in the world around me, may result in something fairly close to it being attained even before the end of the present twentieth century has run out. It is important to realise that although absolute perfection is not attainable in practice the human mind actually works from ideal conceptions in every constructive aspect of human experience. I have taught woodwork to schoolboys during more than thirty years of my life and the repetitions of the same beginnings, year after year, class after class, generation after generation, finally knocked it into my head, even if I sometimes failed to knock it into every head which came before me in classrooms, that man is an ideal-seeking animal. Every new class which came before me received the same pieces of roughsawn timber and got the same lecture about the nature of flatness, which is an ideal which is impossible to attain in practice but which we must try to visualise, in order to have a standard, against which we can check what the plane we are using has done to the surface after it has been used on it. We start with a definition. "A flat surface is a surface against which a straight line will fit in every direction you care to try it."
"Hands up all those who have seen a straight line." "Well you can all take these hands down because I am going to tell you something which I want you to remember for the rest of your lives" Then I would go into a short talk about how important the theoretical ideals of the geometers and mathematicians are, although they are all impossible to realise in practice. The whole superstructure of human technology, which has taken men to the moon and circles the globe with satellites, drives aircraft at 200Omph, speeds cars up to 60Omph and covers the globe with the same news signals in seconds, and so on, rests basically on ideal conceptions which only exist in human imagination. A straight line is defined as "the path traced out by a point which moves along the shortest path between two fixed points." But nobody has ever seen a point - have they? By definition a point has position but no magnitude - but if it has "no magnitude", we won't be able to see it. So how can we use it in practice. Well, I'll tell you this because it may help to remind you to keep your pencil sharp in the woodwork room. We sharpen a pencil point to as fine a point as possible and touch the wood with it and the "blob" which the pencil point makes on the wood is now a very small area and we can reckon that the "point” we wish to "fix in space" lies at the centre of the blob. Now the "point” - which is the irreducible minimum conception of the ideals used by mathematicians in their most massive constructions - is just the basic "impossibility" on which all the other possibilities around us have been made. From the moving point we get a "line" and using the "line" we can trace out an "area" and by shifting the "area" about we can get a "volume" and by giving a volume "weight" we can get a "mass" and from a moving "mass" we can get "momentum" and "velocity" and "acceleration" and "power" and all the other ideas used by engineers and technicians in their designs for all the man-made objects we see around us. And the point I wish to make here is that those who despise "ideals" do not know what they are saying. Because it is the insubstantial "ideals" of the thinkers in technology and statesmanship and sociology and all the sciences, which are the very basics of the man-made world we see around us, because men and women whose minds work on similar lines, not only make the artefacts of homes and clothes and foods and so on, they are also the only possible sources of social changes in human society. Human beings actually invent gods and devils - rather than the other way round - to suit themselves and their social purposes. Both men and women have created (invented) religions out of nothing, just as the mathematician invents geometries out of ideas and quite imaginary concepts, which may or may not correspond to the ultimate reality and which we can only speculate about. Strictly speaking human beings do not live by knowledge or truth. We all live by speculation and guesswork or, as somebody put it, "by make-believe". Now this applies to everybody in the world at this very moment. The people who swarm around the streets of cities, or fly across the seas from continent to continent, or work in the fields and forests of the world are all dependent on the same kind of reasoning from insubstantial ideals as the tradesmen technologists I have been writing about. Neither Marx nor Christ nor Pope nor pagan nor fascist nor family man can truly say that he knows what he is doing is "right" or “wrong". This is so because the ultimate nature of universal reality has been hidden from us an and of course this is what makes it necessary for everyman and everywoman to admit that they are "believers". And, by the way we must shun the error of the Christian Ayatollahs who try to stigmatise "pagans, atheists, agnostics and sceptics" as "unbelievers". The obvious trick there is to try to suggest that Christianity or Theism is "truth", when it must be made clear to everybody that, "nobody really knows the truth" and that therefore any personal view of truth is merely belief treated as if it is true. This is why it is wrong for Christians and others to assert that they accept an "objective morality". For any man or woman to assert that they apply an "objective morality" to the way they live and the decisions they make is just a roundabout way of suggesting that they alone "know the truth" whereas others are "in the dark". In my "perfect nation" every man and woman win freely and voluntarily admit that they "live by belief' rather than "by certainty or knowledge" and when they have been educated in this important principle we may be able to look forward to a practice of treating theists and atheists, socialists and capitalists, all equally, as citizens of a democratic society which win be another hallmark of the perfect nation. Christian nations - such as the U.K. has claimed to be in the past -have always regarded atheists, pagans and sceptics as being "unbelievers". This practice will not be allowed to be persisted in within a perfect nation, because it is only on a basis of this more just way of treating atheists, as well as theists, that we can hope to find acceptance, from theists and atheists alike, of the "perfect national principles of full and equal mutual recognition by theists and atheists that everybody, male or female, have the civic right to be regarded as "believers". In the past Christians could often be heard to proclaim that they are in favour of full freedom and equality for "all religions". However there is ' a very important difference between having "freedom of religion" and having "freedom of beliefs". The latter expression covers atheists and theists alike, whereas "freedom of religion" means what it says - i.e. freedom if you profess a religion but (perhaps) no freedom if you are an atheist who wants to ridicule religion. Actually the perfect state should allow the theist full freedom to ridicule atheism as well as allow the atheist full freedom to ridicule theism. The deep-set trouble is that we cannot appeal to any objective moral standard for a resolution of our differences of opinion on moral questions of “goodness" or "badness" or "rightness” or "wrongness". Since we are all "in the dark" together, and only fools or charlatans will attempt to suggest otherwise, the result of our having people with differing beliefs indicates that we get relative moralities rather than one correct morality and a large number of errant moralities. Equality of freedom of speech for. an citizens is obviously a necessary feature of a perfect nation and this requirement involves us in disestablishing all national churches or political parties, as in the USSR or Poland. Churchmen will oppose this rule of course. They may even argue that church establishment is not important any more. Although it ensures that the established church is given special time on the media or space in newspapers or places on education and other civic bodies where their presence does not depend on democratic elections or other processes where persons with different views are given an opportunity to be heard. For example when Christians are making laws concerning what happens in day-schools it should come as no surprise that they expect all the children to be taught to believe that God and the Devil and angels are an real entities and have personalities and presence which can be reached by ordinary people by saying prayers or singing hymns or doing penances or making confession of sins to priests etc. From the secularists' viewpoint this amounts to biased indoctrina-tion and this is why a perfect democratic nation will not permit church or political party privileges. The ideal democratic state will make rules which ban special privileges for any sectarian movement in beliefs or politics and thus the control of certain dayschools by sects like the Protestants or Anglicans or Presbyterians or Catholics or Humanists or Atheists must be precluded. The perfect nation will be strictly neutral to all aspects of beliefs and political doctrines and, in a sense it can be supported equally by people from all sections of society, simply because it is known to be trying to be neutral and fair to all viewpoints and will therefore take notice of complaints from any citizen about the general "wrongness" of bias or prejudice; particularly in the areas where beliefs and theories are being dealt with which affect the interests of all the national citizens. I know of no part-world polity which is perfect in this requirement of strict neutrality among beliefs and doctrines and since there can be no question of any two part-world nations merging to form a greater nation it is very important to clarify the changes required to make even two part-world polities prepared for a merger of democratic sovereignty. Consider for instance the case of the United Kingdom. Again the nomenclature is deceptive and doubtful to an extent which almost destroys the chances of the U.K. staying an integrated entity or particular polity. The statesmen, who made the treaties which led to the emergence of the U.K., allowed traditional divisions in the more ancient kingdoms of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to continue unchecked and uncondemned. We are now reaping the troubles caused by this neglect in the form of dissident fractionising nationalisms in Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. This was a very unwise thing to do and the unwisdom of it has still to be brought home to the minds of all the U.K. citizens, with sufficient cogency and force, to impel them to correct the mistakes completely and fully as soon as possible. The mistake made by the founding fathers of the U.K. was to say to themselves, "We are here founding a new British polity which will turn all the citizens in the formerly Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish areas into new and equal citizens of a new fully integrated indivisible British polity." If the latter alternative view of the merger had been pursued we would not now be getting the troubles due to the effete polities of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales being resurrected by divisive political movements like the Irish Nationalists, the Scottish National Party, the English Nationalists or the Welsh Nationalists. A firmly "British" concept of the new supra-Scottish, supra-Welsh, supra-English and supra-Irish obsolete polities could have been erased from the minds of all concerned by a thorough school-grounding of the new citizens in their proper new "British nationhood." To make the unwisdom of the British transformation of four nations into a single polity even more confusing the, so-called, statesmen for the U.K. foolishly decided to proclaim that the U.K. would be a "Christian State" as evidenced by a state established Church along with the notion that the Monarch must belong to the Protestant faith and that all children in schools would be trained to be Protestant Christian believers. Now this ignored the deep divisions among Christians. The main division was, and still is, between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but there are schisms in both these movements which regularly erupt and disturb the peace of the U.K. To correct the two bases for confusion and internal divisions - namely (1) Part-U.K. patriotisms. (2) Discordant faiths: we must recognise that U.K. reformation must be on both these issues. To mend the situation we need unitary state ideas which will tend to make every citizen in the U.K. area an agreeing element in a common form of patriotism as well as a common form of treatment of discordant faiths. Here we must keep in mind that we have a world to pacify as well as 'the parts, such as the U.K., that we now have to live in. We Cosmopolists are human beings who wish a world peace and a world civilization as well. Thus we must plan a reforming ideology which will unify the U.K., Europe and eventually the whole world to be put into effect from NOW. Applying this to the case of the U.K. I propose the following:-
(2) A rejection of the "Christian" state in favour of the "Agnostic" state. (3) Retention of democratic process to settle discordant opinions.
When Karl Marx wrote his books and the Communist Manifesto he distorted many minds away from all contact with the kind of thinking which has given rise to "Cosmopolis" in my mind. The main "twisting" ingredient was his doctrine of economic class struggle, by which he denied the common humanity of all the men and women in the world and misled millions of people into accepting his doctrine, that mankind in every nation is divided into two opposed classes - the "boss class" or "owner class" on the one hand and the "workers" or "proletarians" or "servants" on the other. This doctrine has some semblance of rationality on first sight but it has had disastrous consequences in destroying all attempts to have a free-democratic society in Russia for almost eighty years. During which time the Russian people have been curtained off from the rest of humanity and deprived of many civic rights.
For example I doubt if Mrs Thatcher with her British Christian Imperialist outlook has ever seriously contemplated the possibility that we should all be preparing ourselves and other human beings all over the globe for a future global polity. But if this book is ever published and translated into Russian, or such other languages as make it possible for USSR citizens to understand it, I hope they will appreciate that we plan to include Russians, along with those at present under the divisive influences of the UK and USA leaders, in a common democratic global polity, in accordance with the ideas and principles of the perfect Cosmopolis. There are over two hundred and forty imperfect polities on Earth at the moment and there are citizens in each of them who will have to make the basic political decisions to prepare each one, according to its present ideology, to make ready for inclusion in Cosmopolis. As I deal with other aspects and possibilities open to myself as a Cosmopolist temporarily trapped in the imperfect U.K. polity, I have no doubt that parallels to the problems facing other would-be Cosmopolists, now in other imperfect polities like Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Greece, Holland, Israel, Jugo-Slavia, and so on, will arise. Right down the alphabetical possibilities of imperfect polities now plaguing the tortured human species into resisting the common-sense and intelligence of promoting advances in part-world polities towards the one perfect and ultimately attainable Cosmopolis. It is understandable that many individuals in many existing imperfect polities will hesitate to commit themselves to such a giant of a political project as the internal reorientation of a majority of minds in every state from the existing divisive and self-seeking polity ideology to a type of polity which will make it possible to harmonise the goal--seeking of the citizens in various states. This harmonising will result in Cosmopolis coming into being automatically, once the minds have accepted the basic idea of the perfect supra-part-world polity state being a more democratic and neutral or unbiased than any we see around the world at the moment. What we have to do is to inspire individual persons with a first priority desire to work towards an ideal global democracy, but to do this in such a way that they do not destroy the existing political unity of the part-world polity they are now living in. But do not think that I imagine that some of the suggestions I make will be taken up as I may wish. Believe me I am a tolerant democrat and wish each man and woman in the world to make up his or her mind on every aspect of a world polity. If the vote goes against something I want to see happening at any stage that will not be the end or spoliation of the project for me. I cannot pretend to be an oracle about anything in particular - especially when I say I believe that nobody in the world has the right to set himself or herself up as a political oracle. I will be delighted if I can merely set the minds of a number of thinking people in the world on the common purpose of creating a global democratic society, which will effectively banish the present mess of selfish polities, by proposing a form of common government to replace a large number of competing entities - which I described as "a seething mass of part-world polities" in my opening remarks. I know I am by no means the only man in the world who sees the menace of parochial patriotisms or sectarian creeds causing us to forget or overlook our kinship with and responsibilities towards all the persons in the rest of the world, who perhaps cannot be blamed for adopting narrow parochial forms of social loyalty because of the primitive form of society they live in or the vicious rigidity of their present state rulers. Perhaps the first thing to be grasped by the minds of as many individual persons as possible is a clear understanding of why a world containing hundreds of separate polities is so prone to the international wars, arms races, hatreds, and immoralities like spying, lying, cheating, and deceptions. Yet the explanation is simple enough if the furious suspicions of say American patriots can be calmed until the matter has been explained. It may mollify Americans somewhat if I say that we Cosmopolists in Britain often think that Mr Kinnock is "off his pram" to pursue policies such as "pulling Britain out of Europe". Let me quote the kind of thinking which has led to such firm adoption of part-world patriotism among American citizens, so that I can point out what is wrong with the wording of the American creed from the Cosmopolis viewpoint. It reads as follows:
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| Edward Graham Macfarlane
108 Forthill Road Broughty Ferry Dundee Scotland DD5 3DR tel & fax: +44 (0)1382 730971 Email: globdem@sol.co.uk |
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| my writing |
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