HUMAN UNITY MOVEMENT

Human unity in an inclusive system of decision-making as the (only) way to human peace, harmony and concord is a very recurrent understanding of intelligent people in history, both in the East and in the West without any communication between them. However, as ideologies and religions, figurations that must be believed and confessed by the subjects of a state, logically controlled and promoted, if not designed by it, we can hardly have news of this proposal of humanity that undermines the sovereignty, the absolute power of the state. Universal love was the proposal of Moism, the most relevant school while there was freedom of thought in China during the time of ‘the hundred schools’ (V to III century BC), before the state imposed Confucianism as the official doctrine. And Mencius himself, who lived at that time and is the most relevant Confucianist after Confucius, attests to this preponderance of Moism. However, we preserve Mòzǐ’s work thanks to the fact that it was preserved among the Taoist writings – and yet today scholars overlook the essentially cosmopolitan character of his doctrine and present it as a state policy, often as a case of ancient utilitarianism. In the West, human unity was promoted by cosmopolitans. First the Cynics, the followers of Socrates, and above all by their successors, the Stoics, the most relevant school of thought from III B.C. to III A.D. from Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. However, The Republic, the fundamental work of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, has been ‘lost’. Fortunately we have reference to it by many other ancient authors, for example Plutarch, who says that it is summarized in a single and simple idea “that humans should not have separate systems of justice but live together in the same community”. The same as Mòzǐ repeatedly exposes: in community common sense rejects (mutual) harm, while evil or harm to those outside the community, to those who are excluded from our decisions, is indispensable. And that same concept of unity is found scattered in many passages in the works of the numerous Stoic thinkers such as Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc. Today, however, when speaking of cosmopolitanism, the only recognized expression of it – you can search online or ask philosophers or historians – is that of Kant and his modern followers, an absurd ‘cosmopolitanism’ based on the exclusionary decision-making of states and their sovereignty or absolute independence. (Anyway, we know that Kant was repressed by the Prussian state and otherwise he would surely not have been able to publish his Perpetual Peace where he exposes frequent contradictions with the above, for example, that relations between states are absolute evil) However, Kant’s Perpetual Peace concludes that the publicity, openness or transparency of the maxims in decision making is the appropriate means to prevent and avoid that purpose of harm and redirect that decision making towards the common good. PERSONAL My name is Manuel Herranz, Ph.D. For much of my life I have worked as an international and executive consultant and only since 2017 as a professor of Humanities and Philosophy. Very impressed by the possible annihilation of Humanity during the Cold War when I was a philosophy student in the eighties, I have been researching as an autodidact the possibility of peace and human concord and already then I tried to organize a world peace and disarmament festival with all the universities of the world. I moved to Berlin in 1986 where I continued my research and activities for peace and my studies of philosophy and also started there studies of international relations, together with Russian, Chinese and Arabic languages. Three years later I left Berlin and moved to the East to study the major cultures of the world. I know that we humans are all equal and if we make inclusive decisions we will not threaten or harm each other and only seek every human benefit according to common sense, which is to treat others as you would like to be treated. But I also understood that a humane proposal was unacceptable in an incommunicado world as it would weaken the state and the coalition that allowed this publicity within it. So, first, I had a hard time discovering that this was a fairly recurrent thought since ancient times, both in China and in the West, with no communication between them. And my first reference to this thought was Mòzǐ, of which I have made the first complete translation into Spanish. And, even if I studied philosophy, it was only well after studying Mòzǐ that I came to know properly about Western cosmopolitanism and to read for myself, for example, The Apology (of Socrates), which I highly recommend you to read. And then, when I tried to share relevant historical and scientific discoveries, such as the meaning of Don Quixote, I found that civil and academic institutions, as well as the media had no interest in considering anything, limiting themselves only to the political guidelines of the moment, even if they held obvious arguments and falsehoods, since the question was that they were in accordance with their ideology.