Comenius's Decade
Comenius and Homo Universalis
This is a re-re-re-write of an early chapter
in People Without Borders
Comenius's Decade
International opinion polls show again and
again that most humans are world federalists. That is, a large majority of the
human race as a whole believe wholeheartedly that world problems can only be
solved by a government representing the entire human race. Given the chance,
most people in most nations would welcome an electoral system where each human
being has a vote in a popularly elected United Nations. A global polling
institution reports that,
"There is strong international support
for various approaches for making the UN more democratically representative.
Large majorities around the world favor direct elections of their country's UN
representative to the General Assembly, a new UN parliament with directly
elected representatives, and giving non-governmental actors a formal role in the
United Nations."
<http://www.cfr.org/publication/20019/world_opinion_on_international_institutions.html?breadcrumb=%2Fthinktank%2Fiigg%2Fpop%2Fpub_list>
This broad support, they go on to say,
"appears to be derived from a perceived need for collective action to deal
with global problems and from a belief in the efficiencies of collective
action." The pollsters express this sentiment of the world's populace
rather weakly. This is not something that modern intellectuals like to talk
about. But the implications are clear. We must take policy beyond barriers of
national boundaries; borders and nationalities exist only in the imagination.
Half-hearted negotiations between states can never solve the environmental
problems facing us all. International agreements among many disparate groups
will never constitute good governance, even if they were being honoured, which
they tend not to be.
The question that we should all be asking,
then, is not whether there should be a world government but rather what kind of
union should it be? Should there be a world senate as well as a world
parliament and a world court? Would a strengthened, democratic United Nations
suffice, or is it better to start again?
These are not new questions.
It is not well known that many of them were
asked and answered brilliantly some three hundred and forty years ago by the
Eighteenth Century reformer John Amos Comenius in his posthumous masterpiece,
Universal Reform, or Panorthosia.
Aside from his accomplishments as a school
principal, pedogogical theorist and language teacher, Comenius late in life
became a peace negotiator during the war between Holland and England. He
finished his masterpeace, Panorthosia, a comprehensive plan for world peace
through both world and local government, on his deathbed. The only extant copy
languished in an obscure library for centuries and was only fully translated
into English in two volumes in the 1990's. As soon as I read it I was persuaded
that here is the most insightful and appealing plan for a world government that
I have ever come across. It should be studied carefully by anyone with
aspirations to world citizenship. People Without Borders is largely my response
to the possibilities opened up by the ideas in Universal Reform.
Unlike the all-embracing, monolithic states
that make up the United Nations today, Comenius envisioned institutions
designed from the ground up as inherently localized and decentralized. Long
before Lord Acton said that, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely," Comenius understood that it is a very bad idea to invest
power in individual leaders. This, he pointed out, is in accordance an
admonition in the Sermon on the Mount to "call no man master."
Corruption is an inevitable result of disobeying divine commands, not only to
call nobody master but also to "seek and ye shall find," never to
delegate one's own obligation to search and serve to anyone else.
The closing chapters of Panorthosia recommend
that the human race come together in an intercontinental constitutional
conference. Organizers there would hand out to each delegate a condensed
version of Panorthosia, as supplemental reading. The representatives there are
elected or appointed from each continent; they in turn choose members of
standing world institutions that will meet permanently in a world capital -- he
suggested London. The global senate and parliaments are then regularly
re-elected at this conference, which he suggested take place every ten years.
Members of these international institutions, one for each continent and one for
the whole world, are initially ratified by all levels of national governments,
but once a world election is held this can stop, since their moral authority
will rest in the hands of the people of Earth.
This meeting to be held every decade is no
ordinary conference with narrow, limited ends. It tasks experts and educators
with choosing or devising international standards of all kinds, including a
world language and common weights and measures. Today, of course, we would also
include climate change and wildlife conservation among its areas of regulation.
Educators at the conference would also devise a world curriculum, which would
encourage diversity while removing the artificial barriers of class and
culture. An economic section would also seek to eliminate the gap between rich
and poor.
I should note here that the comprehensive
approach of Panorthosia has already had an influence on the evolution of the
United Nations. This was recognized when passages from Panorthosia were
translated into English for the first time in the commemorative volume
published at the formation of UNESCO in the 1950's. After almost three
centuries, his advice that Panorthosia be used as conference material at a
world convention was finally taken.
The distinctive feature of Comenius's
proposal is in my opinion a stroke of genius every bit as revolutionary for the
realm of human governance as anything that Copernicus, Darwin or Einstein did
for their specialties. Rather than a single world body, the global constitution
should institute a three chambered parliament, in accordance with the
"call no man master" principle. The three parliaments address each of
the three main concerns of human life, enlightenment, ethics and peace.
One chamber he called the "college of
light;" its members are charged with the reform of science and education.
The second parliament, the "holy consistory," acts as a parliament of
religions. Its job is to remove the plagues of fundamentalism and interfaith
conflict. A third parliament, a "dicastery of peace," addresses the
basic purpose of politics, laying the groundwork for peace on earth.
"These will serve as three universal
antidotes to the plagues which have afflicted us in the past... For the college
of light will purify the light of understanding ... The holy consistory with
intent to maintain the zeal for piety will salt ... against elements of moral
corruption (such as impiety and hypocrisy). Lastly, the dicastery of peace will
keep the whole political world in order, so that no power either succumbs in
face of danger to its possessions or degenerates into tyranny by destroying the
possessions of others." (Panorthosia, Chapter 25, p. 142)
This in a Comenian democracy all three houses
are independent and equal, yet cooperative one with the others. As the
"call no man master" principle demands, each body is independently
elected and funded. Constitutional stipulations protect the balance among them
and legal protections keep one from lording it over the others.
We are used to living under a monolithic
state where politicians jealously guard their own bailiwick, and where power is
all but absolute. To us, that is what government means. It is all but
impossible to picture anything different. The absolutist state with centrally
empowered leaders makes certain that politics will dominate and, if it chooses,
subjugate science, economics, education, the arts, and every other important
expression of human nature. The state either sets one religion over all others,
or ignores ethics and matters of faith completely.
A Comenian government would be the reverse of
this. Every voter is enfranchised not with one vote but at least three. Instead
of a monolithic state government, all levels of government, from family to
neighbourhood right on up, use the three chambered model. Each is affiliated
with the others in a sort of franchise system dividing power among three
semi-independent institutions.
Why three?
We all are called upon in our lives to
balance three basic expressions of humanity. Each of us has a relationship with
nature and the physical world. Each of us is enlightened by a philosophy of
life, science and education. Therefore, each of us is a member of the College
of Light.
Second, we have have a relationship to God,
and seek our own place in eternity and infinity. That is, we all in some way
participate in expressions of religion or art. As such, we are members of the
Consistory of Holiness.
Third, each of us relates our fellow man.
Every human being has the object of establishing peace, reciprocity and
political harmony in the world. This qualifies us as card carrying members of
the Dicastery of Peace.
Our triple human responsibility should be
expressed in our service to all institutions we come into contact with,
especially the family, neigbourhood and the workplace. As a result, the narrow
democratic principle of "one man one vote" becomes instead, "one
person, three votes." Every government at every level of society, from the
global right down to the family and the individual, somehow expresses each of
these three pursuits.
As mentioned, John Amos Comenius, was no
dreamer of an imagined tripartite perfection. He embodied all three qualities
that he sought to introduce into governance. He was an experienced peace
negotiator, a renowned educational reformer, one of the founding fathers of the
Royal Society, and a leader in his religious community, the Moravian
Brotherhood.
Just as Comenius himself in his long career
somehow straddled all three of the great potential sources of human progress,
politics, science and religion, the government he designed calls upon us, upon
each world citizen, to attempt a similar challenge. Panorthosia goes into great
detail about how each of us should seek to unite science, religion and politics
in our life. Only by taking on the ambitious goal of becoming a Renaissance
Man, only by having amateurs work alongside specialists, will governance strike
a happy balance between the needs of both individual and society.
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