The Path to World Government, Part IV

STEP 4. ENTER THE ECOPOLOGISTS

 The creation of a constitution would be a decisive step forward, but given our species’ ability to go astray on the slightest provocation, another element will be needed to keep the movement for a world government on track.  Whereas I cannot predict what obstacles will arise, it’s a safe bet that arise they will and you must be prepared for them.  Entrenched segments of society wedded to the status quo are bound to raise vigorous objections and internal strains within the movement itself could easily develop.  In short you will need all the help you can get.

A major help in combating these difficulties would be the availability of a truly impartial, well-informed, totally honest body of opinion to provide guidance and refute unfounded, biased charges.  Unfortunately, there is no such source today that meets these standards.  Hence the proposal for the establishment of a new scientific field-let us call it ecopology-that could offer advice based on the proven techniques and integrity demanded in the physical sciences.

To protect their impartiality, ecopologists would be expected to remain entirely independent-that is to say, they would have to shun affiliation with public and private enterprises, political parties and think tanks, non-profits and political causes.  Aside from periodic conferences, the ecopologists need never meet.  They would not be expected to agree and their collaboration would be sporadic.  They would be free to entertain whatever personal views they liked, but their public expression of them would be limited to papers submitted to scientific journals and subjected to peer review.  Obviously, the better supported their views by empirical, real world evidence the more prestigious they would be regarded and the more likely to be published.  All in all, they would act as sort of a secular clergy, as protective of their own intellectual virginity as the priesthood is supposedly as protective of theirs, and, like their cousin clergymen, they would endeavor to provide a conscience in an otherwise sinful world.

Ecopology would no more ensure the world government leadership from making mistakes than other branches of science can avouch for the output of its practitioners.  On the other hand, the field, like other scientific endeavors, would tend to be self-correcting.  The number of mistakes would be fewer, their severity less, and their effective lives shorter.

The only employment available to ecopologists would be that of professorships at universities with departments devoted to the field.  In effect, this limitation would require ecopologists to obtain a doctorate that included a thorough grounding in statistics and mastery of their chosen specialty such as economics, political science, social science, and so on.  Hopefully, their training would also include a study of those all too frequent periods in history when human judgment is overwhelmed by irrational emotional forces.  Awareness of such outbreaks in their contemporary environment  would be a requisite trait.

All public statements and published work would have to be in same language used throughout the world government movement-that is to say, English.

 STEP 5. COMPUTER MODELING

 No matter how much care is lavished on the new constitution, it is bound to be imperfect.  Criticism by outsiders will likely reveal some of the discrepancies, but others will appear only when the document is put to the test.  What looks good on paper does not always work in practice.

To anticipate as many problems as possible before introducing the constitution into the real world, it might be possible to run virtual tests on a model society that has adopted it.  I’m sure this would not be an easy task, but hopefully enough of you will be willing to put aside your games and undertake it.  I would be much surprised if such testing did not reveal weaknesses requiring modifications to the document and that a number of such iterations would be necessary to iron out all the perceived difficulties.  It would certainly be helpful if a dubious population could be shown that, at least from a computer’s standpoint, the new world constitution was safe and efficacious.

 STEP 6. BETA TESTING THE CONSTITUTION

Back in 1789 the Constitution would not have been ratified had it not been for a determined effort on the part of a number of its original signers and backing by much of the press.  As it was, the lone holdout, Rhode Island, did not come on board until a year later.

It’s a safe bet that gaining acceptance of your proposed constitution will not be any easier.  Determined opposition can be expected from every government office holder on earth who, reasonably enough, would fear for his job.  Besides those directly affected, there will be other cohorts whose enmity can be counted on: welfare recipients, favored businesses and nonprofits, governmental hangers-on, and those who would feel threatened simply on account of the magnitude of the contemplated changes.

On the other hand, you would enjoy a major advantage over the Founding Fathers ratification efforts; rather than seeking unanimous approval of the nations on earth, your initial objective would be to acquire acceptance from just a handful.  Given the abject misery rampant around the world, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a few countries in which a majority would be willing to try any system that promised to deliver them from their present circumstances despite being forewarned of the dislocations that lay ahead.

Let us imagine then that a few islands, an experimental colony or two, and a country in Central Asia agreed to make your new constitution, in its entirety, their law of the land thereby abrogating any of their existing laws and customs in conflict with it.  Over the next five years, say, these new recruits to the cause of world government would be expected to submit to continuous observation by peace-corps-like volunteers encamped in their territory.  Attention would thus be called to any infraction of their covenants and whatever weaknesses in the system that appear.

Needless to add, these endeavors would require a good-sized war chest.  I leave it all in your competent hands to raise it.

 STEP 7. ACQUIRING SERIOUS REAL ESTATE

Assuming the first five-year trials convincingly demonstrated the superiority of your new constitution, it should not be too difficult to convince a number of smaller nations to likewise submit to its legal system in a second five-year plan.  Then, it is to be hoped, one country after another will become envious of the progress being made by its “constitutionalized” neighbors and elect to clamber on board.  A continuation over the years of this kind of organic growth should lead to a significant portion of the earth’s habitable territory having found shelter under the document’s umbrella.  .

 STEP 8. KNITTING TOGETHER THE PIECES

Recall that this essay began with a recital of world-wide problems that can only be satisfactorily resolved by concerted international action. This imperative is bound to exert a powerful incentive for the nations of the world to self-organize.  As of now, that incentive is restrained by nationalism, but, with that barrier weakened, the tide of history will propel world government forward as the compelling need for unity becomes ever more apparent.  Below is a plausible scenario as to how it might unfold.

Once a threshold number of nations have dedicated themselves to the new constitution,  it will be in their best interest to enter into mutually beneficial arrangements such as trade agreements, investment in each others’ commercial ventures, mutual defense pacts, adoption of common currencies, and engagement in cultural and scientific exchanges.  Three recent developments will hasten this trend: the Internet, the international financial system, and the cosmopolitan mindset of educated young people.

Given their allegiance to a common legal system and their ability to communicate in a common tongue, it would be only natural for some nations to take the next step-i.e., to unite politically in some form of confederacy.  And presuming it proves successful, outlier nations will attempt to satisfy whatever entrance requirements the confederacy imposes in order that they, too, can participate in the prosperity within.

And somewhere down the line, the logic of a more formal political arrangement will assert itself and the much heralded world government will emerge.

 POSTSCRIPT

I can imagine that the prospect of working your way through the multiple steps I’ve outlined could prove disheartening, but you have reasons to take hope.  To begin with, you will be on the side of history.  From its earliest beginnings, mankind has found it beneficial to form ever larger aggregations: from family clans to tribes to villages to towns to cities to regional metropolises to provinces and to nations.  It is only a matter of time until the same motives that drove these consolidations will again take hold and compel mankind’s final unification.

Secondly, you probably picture the steps I’ve outlined grinding forward at an agonizingly slow pace.  But that need not necessarily be the case.  Political movements behave in some ways like the earth’s tectonic plates.  As time goes on, their pressure builds unobserved until suddenly giving way to massive upheavals.  In much the same way, throughout history long periods of stasis have unexpectedly surrendered to dramatic change.  Every century in modern history has, in fact, furnished examples: renaissance Italy in the fifteenth, Spanish supremacy on the high seas in the sixteenth, Dutch cultural attainments in the seventeenth, England’s industrialization in the eighteenth, American economic expansion in the nineteenth, and China’s catapulting into world prominence in the twentieth are but a few of the highlights-all occurring over a manner of decades and all, it can be safely surmised, thought to be not even remotely possible by contemporary “expert ” observers prior to the occurrence of events themselves.

So there you have it, my young friends.  Domestic science fiction?  Perhaps.  But reality isn’t so appealing either.  So think about it.  It wouldn’t be easy, but you have it in your power to conquer the world.  Seize the twenty-first century and make it yours.

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