Foundations of the Call for a World Conference on Reconciliation, Peace and Disarmament — 30 May 2027.
Prologue — Truth and the Weapon
Dear friends,
The purpose of this text is to set out the foundations, reasons and consequences of our Call in an open, more systematic and detailed manner than is possible in the accompanying documents, which are necessarily shaped and limited by the particular function each of them serves.
The practical purpose of the Conference is to organize the disarmament that follows from reconciliation, born of the understanding that human beings are conditioned towards evil—that is, towards harming one another—by the existence of the weapon. And disarmament requires us to bring our shared understanding into dialogue, agreement and joint action.
This text remains open to all who wish to participate in the reflection. To this end, an opportunity will be provided to add comments raising questions, offering arguments and proposals, expressing criticism or opening new lines of analysis concerning disarmament and its consequences. Contributions considered relevant may be incorporated into the document.
With this Call, we appeal above all to your humanity and to Humanity as a whole—that is, to the logic and common sense we human beings share, upon which peace must be founded. That is why we openly submit our proposal to the human judgement we all possess.
The fundamental question is:
Can we understand human reality in such a way that we can cease organizing our relationships through violence and the threat of violence, and begin organizing them through our capacity to understand one another and make decisions together?
And here a question arises: if peace is beneficial to everyone and yet we have not succeeded in achieving it, could it be because we lack the intelligence or common sense to understand one another and therefore need to resort to force?
Certainly, we all have the capacity to recognize harm by putting ourselves in another’s place, to understand or discover through dialogue our needs as human beings and, consequently, to seek together what will enable us to live and develop. Yet this capacity is conditioned by a prior reality of a ‘state of war’, whose cause is the weapon, the object of our investigation. We can summarize this here through the understanding that the intention to cause harm and making that intention known are generally contradictory, insofar as the warning limits the capacity to cause harm.
In this relationship mediated by the weapon, harm to the other is not merely an accidental possibility, as happens in combat. The weapon is a capacity to cause harm that we deliberately conceive, develop and organize in order to protect ourselves against the other causing us harm and to prevent the other from prevailing over us. Thus, our permanent and opposing activity consists in developing our capacity to cause harm while preventing others from being able to cause harm to us.
But this relationship is not confined to armies or States. It is also present in our everyday lives, particularly in the relationship between what some possess and what others are deprived of. What one person possesses is excluded from the use of others, and that exclusion is ultimately guaranteed by the force of the State. In this way, what we accumulate for our security also depends upon a capacity to deprive others, affecting their security as well.
It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. This usually refers to the propaganda, deception or concealment characteristic of combat between peoples or nations. But what we are proposing here goes beyond war understood as actual destruction.
Even when we are not fighting, our activity remains conditioned by the need to protect ourselves through resources and capacities that may, at the same time, make others vulnerable. This is not only a matter of what States do: we, too, need to secure what we possess and protect ourselves against the possibility of losing it.
Under these conditions, revealing our needs, our capacities or our vulnerability may weaken us in relation to others. That is why we tend to conceal ourselves, to distrust others and to distort the reality we communicate to them.
This does not mean that every person is aware of causing harm to others or intends to do so. On the contrary, we normally regard our conduct as legitimate and understand ourselves to be acting as we need to and are entitled to act, seeking our own security, that of those close to us, or the protection of our interests.
But how we understand our own conduct is one thing, and the objective relationship in which it takes place is another. If, in order to retain what I possess, I need to prevent others from having access to it, and that exclusion is ultimately guaranteed by the capacity to cause them harm, then harm forms part of our relationship, even if none of us consciously intends to cause it.
Therefore, the question is not one of attributing wickedness to people, but of understanding the condition in which we all find ourselves. We may have the best intentions and yet participate in an organization that obliges us to develop our capacity to cause harm as far as possible, while seeking to prevent others from developing theirs, because our security depends upon that inequality. It is for this same reason that we cannot attribute wickedness to the soldier.
Thus, although throughout history we have accepted this condition as a tragedy of humanity, that should not prevent us from examining it, especially now that we can do so together.
If we make explicit our objective purpose of causing harm to the other—not necessarily as a conscious intention to injure them, but as a consequence of our relationship mediated by the weapon—the relationship itself begins to change. And this is not so much because of the shame of discovering that we seek and cause harm to others, but because we recognize the absurdity of a condition that harms us all.
This understanding, even before a public and common agreement on disarmament has been reached, has consequences that go far beyond ceasing to kill and destroy or changing our organization. It requires us to begin to stop harassing one another and to open ourselves to others, seeking their understanding of what is happening to us so that we can cooperate in disarmament. For this, truth becomes necessary. And it is already necessary for this very Call to Humanity, since both the proposal for disarmament and the manner in which we call upon one another to undertake it would be contradictory to the purpose of causing harm and to deception.
Our understanding therefore begins by recognizing why, until now, we have needed to conceal our intentions, our capacities and our vulnerability; why we distrust what others want and what they express; and why we seek to keep beyond their reach whatever they might use against us.
The weapon takes its name from the physical object conceived to cause harm. But its reality is not limited to that object: it also encompasses the human organization that produces, develops and sustains it as a capacity to cause harm. This organization is manifested in armed units and in the hierarchical system of inequality into which we are all incorporated, where our security depends upon our position in relation to others.
Understanding this condition enables us to leave behind History understood as an inevitable dialectic of confrontation. If the weapon helps us explain our historical reality, disarmament offers us a point of encounter and reconciliation: the possibility that what affects us may be known, considered and judged together.
Truth is not a doctrine that some human beings impose upon others; rather, reality reveals itself to us and becomes common to us. This is what we wish to contribute to through this document. And that is why we speak of reconciliation: it does not simply mean ceasing to fight, but beginning to encounter one another in a relationship in which the other no longer appears as a threat that we must subdue or protect ourselves against, but as someone we need in order to free ourselves from our subordination to the weapon.
We then encounter the other as we encounter ourselves, and understand that our interdependence is not an abstract idea, but a reality that we urgently need to face. We need one another in order to disarm ourselves—not to disarm the other and subject them to our will, but to cease serving the weapon ourselves.
Reconciliation begins with an elementary agreement: jointly recognizing that the purpose of causing harm to the other—evil in its proper sense—is something none of us desires and that, consequently, we wish to overcome. We maintain that the weapon is the organized form of this purpose of causing harm. Therefore, disarmament, which constitutes the practical aim of our Call, is not a matter separate from peace and reconciliation, but their condition and material manifestation.
This Open Document seeks to explain this understanding and submit it to human judgement. It does not seek to close the question, but to open it as widely as possible, because we understand that its resolution begins with the very act of reflection.
I. The Present Possibility of Universal Understanding
Humanity now has means of communication capable of bringing the same question to people in very different places at practically the same time. For the first time, we can address a common question to humanity as a whole and make it possible for those affected by it to become aware of it, understand it, discuss it and respond.
But the technical possibility of communication is not enough. If the lack of simultaneous communication had been the only obstacle to achieving peace, we would already be living in peace, since avoiding mutual destruction is evidently in everyone’s interest. The United Nations has the means to connect peoples and convey information to all, but we cannot say that it has succeeded in freeing us from war, as it set out to do from its foundation.
Nevertheless, that same possibility of universal communication now allows us to raise a question that previously could not be submitted jointly to the judgement of all humanity: disarmament.
The problem is that we have focused our attention on war rather than on the weapon. War is one of the consequences of the weapon, which introduces into our relationships the purpose of causing harm.
When our security depends on being able to harm the other, and on preventing the other from harming us, we seek to develop a capacity superior to theirs. Whoever achieves that superiority can impose their will and subjugate the other; but they do not thereby become free of this relationship, because they must preserve and increase their power to avoid being subjugated in turn.
And the one who is subjugated serves the will of the one who subjugates them, whose purpose is to increase their capacity for destruction. Thus, both the one who dominates and the one who is dominated remain conditioned or subordinated by the weapon, and neither can free themselves from it separately.
War occurs when the superiority of one armed unit over another is disputed or not recognized. Both may then resort to combat to impose that superiority, seeking to destroy or disarm the adversary until one is left at the mercy of the other. When one side succeeds in imposing itself and the other can no longer oppose it, combat ceases. We have come to call that situation peace: a situation in which combat has ceased, but violence remains as the imposition of one will upon another through the capacity to cause harm. Yet we remain in the state of war that arises from the weapon.
The universal communication of our time has not enabled us to escape this circle because communication itself remains conditioned by the armed relationship. As long as our attention is limited to avoiding combat, without examining the capacity to cause harm that organizes our relationships, the cause that makes mutual destruction possible and necessary will remain intact. That is why it is not enough for us all to be able to communicate: we must also raise the right question.
At this point, we must note that, in the past, those who sought to adopt a humane position—let alone disarm separately—were exposed to the capacity to cause harm of those who retained their weapons. Disarmament could not be proposed as a common decision by all, even though the consequences of the weapon affect everyone.
Today, for the first time, we can propose it simultaneously to humanity as a whole, so that no one has to undertake separately a decision that requires the understanding and cooperation of others.
And the question we propose, already mentioned, is:
Can we cease basing our relationships on the imposition of some people’s wills upon others through violence, and build our security and cooperation through our capacity to understand one another and decide together?
We can immediately respond that, as the ancient cosmopolitans of both East and West already understood, deciding together is the form of peace that overcomes the state of war in which we find ourselves, since inclusive decision-making and the purpose of causing harm are obviously contradictory. Moreover, free and inclusive decision-making, by its very nature, aspires to the common good.
It is not, therefore, a question of establishing a world government or replacing existing political systems. Nor is it a question of everyone having to think alike, or of a majority imposing its will upon a minority. It is a question of our being able to understand one another, make decisions and freely reach agreements that are mutually and universally beneficial, without resorting to violence or its threat.
To do so, we need to examine what has conditioned our relationships until now.
II. The Weapon in Nature and Human Adaptation
The weapon does not initially appear as a human invention or a political institution. In nature, there are means of causing harm, destroying or killing: fangs, poisons, electric discharges, claws, horns and other resources used by living beings. Human beings emerged in a world in which other beings could harm them and in which they had to develop their own means of defending themselves, killing and obtaining food.
But for human beings, the weapon is not exhausted by the physical object. That object gives material form to a will to cause harm, which human beings conceive as an end and whose capacity they develop. That will or purpose is projected onto the other as a threat which the other understands and anticipates by relating the object or activity of the other person to their own body.
Here we must establish a fundamental distinction between the weapon and any object that may cause harm accidentally or, on occasion, through a use different from that for which it was conceived. The human weapon is an object conceived, designed or produced with the will and specific purpose of causing harm to someone and, moreover, of doing so as effectively as possible. This is the case with a sword, a spear or a bomb and their technical developments, whereas a knife intended for cutting meat is not, for that reason alone, a weapon, even if it were occasionally used to cause harm—as might happen with a stone or almost any other object.
We tend to think of the weapon as a means at our disposal, to be used when necessary. Thus, we may imagine that our ancestors made a spear for hunting and, once they had obtained their prey, put it away until the next occasion. Similarly, we usually regard weapons directed against other human beings as means available for an eventual war against them.
And in this way we deceive ourselves, for the situation among armed human beings is different. The weapon cannot simply remain waiting to be used, because its capacity determines who can impose their will upon the other. Each side needs to preserve and increase that capacity as much as possible in order to avoid becoming subject to the other. Thus, the weapon ceases to be an occasional resource and becomes a permanent requirement of our relationship.
The existence of the weapon introduces into our relationships the will to cause harm—that which we recognize as evil when it concerns our relationship with others. This will, organized and developed in armed units, establishes an objective condition: each person’s security in relation to others becomes directly linked to their vulnerability. The greater our capacity to cause them harm and prevent them from causing harm to us, the greater our security in the face of their will.
And here we return to the question we raised at the beginning: why we must first understand what is happening to us in order to live in peace, and what condition we must overcome to achieve it.
Only reflection on the weapon directly reveals this relationship to us. Political, economic or ideological explanations may describe its different manifestations, but when they replace the examination of the weapon, they conceal or distort the fundamental opposition between our wills.
Indeed, if each of us needs to be able to subject the other’s will in order to secure our own, and the other needs to do exactly the same, our purposes come into direct opposition. What we could decide together for mutual and common benefit becomes subordinated to a prior and opposing question: who can impose their will upon whom. And since both sides pursue directly opposed objectives, they cannot resolve that question through a common purpose or cause. Consequently, imposition then ceases to be one possibility among others and becomes the only option, the only way of deciding any question, to which everything else is subordinated.
Thus, human cooperation—which is, in any case, unavoidable—is also subordinated to this opposing relationship of forces. As a result, it finds its purpose in opposition to third parties, both in relations with other armed units and in giving purpose to the armed unit itself.
That is why aspiring to peace cannot consist merely in ceasing to use weapons to kill or destroy. As long as evil—the capacity to cause harm—remains the ultimate foundation of our decisions, understanding and cooperation will remain subordinated to the opposition established by the weapon. Peace not only requires disarmament in the sense of ceasing to organize our relationships through that capacity for imposition; disarmament is also the means to peace insofar as it generates a common interest and a criterion arising from that interest.
Evil, which initially appears as an individual capacity to cause harm and to project harm onto the other, becomes a necessity for universal action and organization. Thus, armed units or States—the recourse to the weapon—spread across the entire Earth, leaving no gaps, and that same logic carries human division and confrontation into everything Humanity reaches, as is already happening in outer space, where unavoidable projects for the occupation and use of the Moon in the service of particular weapons are beginning to take shape.
III. The Armed Unit
All human beings share the same capacity to reason and understand one another. We can put ourselves in another’s place and recognize reciprocity as the foundation of justice, expressed in the so-called silver rule — “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you” — and golden rule — “Treat others as you would wish to be treated” — which are present, in different formulations, in numerous cultures.
But the weapon introduces a relationship contrary to that reciprocity. Its purpose is to cause harm to the other in order to subject their will, while preventing them from doing the same to us. And hierarchy organizes precisely this inequality: the superior can impose their will upon the subordinate through their capacity to cause them harm, while the subordinate must obey and cannot impose their own will upon the superior in return. At the summit of the organization stands an authority that concentrates power, historically represented by figures such as the king or their counterparts in different cultures.
No individual can, alone, sustain a relationship of force against a superior, organized armed capacity. Therefore, once the first hierarchical organizations have been established, those who remain outside them are driven to join one in order to avoid being subjected by another, possibly in an even more disadvantageous position. Thus, armed organization spreads and becomes generalized inexorably. It is therefore a logical consequence of the relationship established by the weapon, and something we can recognize or observe in human history.
All armed units or States are organized according to this one and the same form of hierarchical relationship, although they differ in their political forms, cultures and ideologies. Yet it is precisely these outward differences that are subsequently presented as the fundamental causes of their confrontations, concealing the similarity of their organization and the opposition established between them by the weapon.
Each armed unit inevitably and relentlessly tends to incorporate into its organization the human and material resources it is able to subjugate, arranging them hierarchically in its service. It will call this subordination order.
But, contrary to what we usually think or might suppose, hierarchy does not arise from the need to defend oneself against other armed units: it responds to the very purpose of the weapon, which consists in inflicting harm upon the other without allowing the other to do the same. That is why the establishment of a single world State, whatever its ideology or form of government, would not in itself resolve the contradiction. For as long as its unity depended on armed imposition, the opposition between wills, likewise mediated by the weapon, would remain within it, and war would simply take the form of civil war.
From this fundamental condition, we can also understand the complexity and instability of historical relations between armed units. They tend to increase their capacity to cause harm, extend their domination and form alliances to assemble a superior force, in a dynamic that is essentially physical and tends to polarize forces into two large opposing blocs, within which some units predominate over others. But that subordination, in turn, generates resistance and new internal oppositions. Thus, the pursuit of superiority continually reproduces the relations of subjugation that each unit seeks to avoid for itself.
IV. The Weapon as the Means of Our Relationships
The most direct way in which human beings become incorporated into the weapon and organize themselves as an armed unit is through the army, together with the resources and civil organization that sustain it: the State.
Both reproduce the same logic of the weapon, whereby the superior can impose their will upon the subordinate through the capacity to cause harm, while the subordinate is subjected to that will. In the army, this subordination is secured directly through force; in the civil organization of the State, it is also manifested through the unequal distribution of resources and private property, that is, through the capacity to exclude others from the use of something.
It is worth examining this aspect in some detail and seeking clarity here and now about this key element in our understanding of ordinary reality as conditioned by the weapon. The first step is to expose a false but widespread assumption about reality.
Private property is not the origin of armed organization, as is frequently assumed, particularly in the West, as though organized armed force were the result of the need to protect a group of property owners.
Certainly, where there is no force capable of imposing exclusion, private property cannot be sustained either, since it consists precisely in depriving others through coercion. Private property therefore needs the protection afforded by the State, and this protection, as we have mentioned, is usually presented as one of the principal justifications for its existence.
But this explanation alone reverses the real relationship. The weapon is not organized to protect previously established property. On the contrary, since private property presupposes the armed unit, the armed unit must come first. The weapon needs continually to increase its capacity to cause harm and, to that end, to subject to its service as many human and material resources as it can incorporate. The appropriation and control of those resources are therefore consequences of the weapon or, more precisely, of their incorporation into the armed organization. Private property is one of the ways in which the armed unit organizes their use and distribution, just as hierarchy, or the subjection of some people’s wills to those of others, is the form through which that incorporation and organization take place.
This alone explains why hierarchy and subordination do not appear only where private property exists. We find them in societies with very different forms of possession and distribution of resources, including those in which communal property predominates. What always remains is the relationship of power founded upon the capacity to cause harm within a hierarchy, while forms of property may vary.
The weapon does not appear as a secondary instrument intended to protect pre-existing forms of social organization, but as a reality that participates in their constitution, including the organization of property.
Private property is the form of distribution of resources subjected to the power of the armed unit, that is, to its power of deprivation or exclusive use. The weapon recognizes exclusive ownership by certain persons and establishes the conditions of its exercise, but always within an organization subordinated to its own needs for development. The logic is simple: the more resources it has at its disposal, and the more valuable they are, the greater its capacity to cause harm; and the greater that capacity, the more resources it can bring under its domination.
This is true of any political system. It may be very beneficial to people, and that is how we assess it, but its primary condition, independently of our wishes or judgements, is that it be sufficiently suited to the maintenance and development of the weapon, at least enough to preserve its independence. The same applies to every other aspect of its domestic policy, including economic policy.
This understanding of property as determined by its service to a weapon also allows us to understand why the State recognizes and protects the property of people who are not its nationals. If its function consisted simply in defending the possessions of certain national property owners, the protection of foreign owners would be contradictory. But what matters to the armed unit is not the nationality of the owner, but that the resources remain subject to its authority and contribute to its power. The same occurs with the incorporation of other human resources of different national, ethnic, religious or other origins.
The State therefore seeks to ensure that the resources under its domination attain the greatest possible value and seeks to attract capital capable of increasing it. And what does that value ultimately represent for the armed unit? Its capacity to command human and material resources that can be transformed into means of causing harm, thereby increasing its power.
Under these conditions, we seek to accumulate as many resources as we can, not only to use them for our enjoyment and convenience, but also, and above all, to protect ourselves against dependence and deprivation. What we call goods thus acquire a contradictory character: besides serving our needs, they constitute a capacity that we can wield in relation to others and that others can wield in relation to us. For in seeking our security through the exclusive possession of resources, we also contribute to depriving others of them.
This contradiction is manifested even in our capacity to “share”, which, strictly speaking, amounts only to transferring ownership. Only if we possess resources can we help, give, exchange or sell; whereas, if we lack them, we depend on others being willing to transfer them to us, even to satisfy our most elementary needs. How can we freely share what we consider it necessary to possess in order to protect ourselves against others?
Indeed, beyond whatever use we may make of resources, we accumulate them because possessing them constitutes our security against the possibility of being deprived of them, above all for our defence, but even for their use. In a sense, these resources, which we call “goods”, are also “evils”, and this characteristic continually drives us to accumulate rather than relinquish them. For their transfer from one person’s hands to another’s does not overcome the relationship of deprivation established by their exclusive possession, which places us in contradiction with others.
We thus come to identify our freedom with the power we exercise over the resources we possess. But this freedom, like that of the hegemon in the relationship between armed units, is relative to others: the more we possess, the more we need to preserve and develop our capacity in relation to those whom we deprive. Thus, the pursuit of security does not free us from that relationship, but subjects us to a permanent demand for accumulation, while our property continues to depend on the armed unit that protects it and to whose maintenance we contribute.
This contradiction is also manifested in the relative character of our wealth and social position. If another person increases their resources while ours remain unchanged, we have lost nothing of what we possessed, but we have lost power in relation to that person. In a relationship in which our security depends on our capacity relative to others, one person’s enrichment thus creates a new demand for accumulation for the rest. The same happens in hierarchical organization: the advancement of some alters the relative position of others and their possibilities of attaining a higher position.
But this competition does not take place independently of the armed unit. It is the State that establishes and guarantees the conditions of property, exchange and subordination within which we seek to increase our resources and our position. And since its own capacity for imposition depends on the human and material resources it can mobilize, those conditions are subordinated to the need to preserve and develop that capacity.
Thus, the more we seek our security through the accumulation of resources and power over others, the more we contribute to developing the armed relationship from which we seek to protect ourselves.
V. The Weapon and the Law
The law, too, does not escape the relationship established by the weapon. The legal system of an armed unit is subordinated to the capacity for imposition that sustains it and, therefore, cannot call its own foundation into question without undermining the power of the unit itself.
But this subordination actually presents a particular contradiction: the legal system not only demands our obedience, but also presents itself as an expression of our free and voluntary agreement. Thus, a relationship founded on the capacity to subject us appears at the same time as a manifestation of our freedom, even though the imposition of one will upon another and the latter’s free self-determination are contradictory.
This contradiction finds a characteristic expression in the idea of the social contract, through which the subordination of some to the authority of others is presented as the result of a free and voluntary agreement. The periodic election of those who exercise power thus appears as confirmation of our consent to the established order, although it does not eliminate the capacity for imposition upon which that order rests.
Freedom cannot be definitively established by consent that is presumed or expressed at a particular moment: it requires the permanent possibility of participating freely in decisions that affect our existence.
The same need for justification is manifested in our interpretation of history. Each established order tends to present its own institutions and values as the culmination of human progress, since the ideology accompanying it helps to justify the power of which it forms a part. In this way, even our assessment of the past remains conditioned by the need to legitimize the present.
VI. The Possibility of Understanding One Another
Human beings can recognize evil in the harm we do not wish to suffer and understand that we should not cause such harm to others either.
This principle of reciprocity appears in many forms across different cultures and periods. Its expression may vary, but its meaning is simple: do not do to others what you would not want for yourself or, better still, treat others as you would wish to be treated. It is founded on our capacity to put ourselves in another’s place and recognize in them a human condition like our own.
This does not require us to have the same desires, opinions or customs. Precisely because we are different, we need to understand how our decisions affect those with whom we relate. Even when a relationship begins in prejudice or ignorance, communicating and considering our needs together can transform our understanding and our purposes. By understanding others, what we ourselves can understand and do also changes.
Here we encounter what we call human common sense.
We do not mean a majority opinion or a previously established doctrine, but our capacity to judge together on the basis of what we share as human beings: the need to live, develop, relate to one another, cooperate for our well-being and avoid harm.
This common sense also enables us to recognize the purpose of the weapon. The weapon is intended to provide the capacity to cause harm in order to impose a will. We can understand this purpose because we know the evil we can suffer when it is used to subject us to the will of its bearer and, through reciprocity, we understand how we can use it to threaten and thereby impose ourselves upon others.
But the purpose of causing harm does not subordinate only those who suffer imposition. Those who exercise it and obtain power are also subordinated to the need to strive to preserve and develop that power in relation to others. Not even the most powerful can cease developing their capacity to cause harm without exposing themselves to the loss of their position; indeed, this necessity is even more pressing for them than for others. Thus, all human beings, whatever our position within the armed relationship, ultimately become means serving the destructive purpose of the weapon.
Recognizing this common condition enables us to understand that our liberation cannot be particular either. No one can fully free themselves from the armed relationship while it continues to organize our relations. And no one can unilaterally abandon their service to the weapon while others retain the capacity to impose their will upon them. That is why our liberation must be universal, and disarmament must be understood, agreed upon and carried out jointly.
But freeing ourselves from the purpose of causing harm also means freeing from that purpose the resources, knowledge and human activities that sustain it today.
As long as things are incorporated into the armed relationship, their usefulness for our lives remains ultimately subordinated to the capacity to cause harm to which they can contribute or into which they can be transformed.
By freeing them from that subordination, we can consider things according to their own purpose: what they are for, what needs they satisfy and how they can best fulfil their function. A tool, a dwelling, food or knowledge can be understood through the service they provide, regardless of who possesses them. We can jointly examine their usefulness, possible improvements and the most suitable conditions for making use of them.
In this sense, freeing things from the purpose of causing harm also frees us. Their purpose provides us with common criteria for relating to one another, because we can understand and discuss their suitability without needing to resort to our capacity for imposition, and because that purpose provides us with a second point of reference or criterion: humanity or universality.
It is not enough for something to be useful to someone if its use harms or subjects others. As long as we organize our activities solely for the benefit of some at the expense of others, we will preserve the contradiction that fuels the will to cause harm. Therefore, in seeking to free ourselves from the purpose of the weapon, we also consider the suitability of our means and activities for humanity as a whole.
This does not mean that all things must be used by everyone, or that we have identical needs. It means that we can judge their purpose by considering the needs of all those who participate in or are affected by our relationships, without turning some human beings into means subordinated to the ends of others, for the human being is, as Kant says, an end in itself.
Purpose and universality thus offer us common criteria for understanding one another. We can deliberate about what things are for, how they can serve better, when, where and by whom they should be used, and how to organize our activities so that they contribute to human well-being and development. Differences do not disappear, but we can address them through reasons that we all have the possibility of understanding, rather than resolving them by force.
Look around us. Tools, knowledge, food, dwellings and the countless activities we undertake can serve our lives, our well-being and our possibilities for development. The weapon, by contrast, introduces a purpose that contradicts that common service — the purpose of destruction — and with it the capacity to harm one another in order to impose a will.
Ultimately, by disarming ourselves together, we do not merely cease using that capacity as the means of our relationships; we also free the potential of our resources and activities to direct them towards ends that we can recognize as beneficial to humanity.
We do not need to begin by all thinking alike, but by recognizing one another as human beings so that we can escape the vicious circle in which we are all now trapped, put ourselves in others’ places and jointly seek what we can consider beneficial to everyone. Understanding our common condition and the purpose of our activities enables us to discover possibilities for cooperation that the armed relationship conceals or subordinates.
This also allows us to understand why peace and truth are related.
As long as the threat of harm determines our relationships, we have reasons to conceal our intentions, resources and vulnerabilities, and to present our interests in opposition to those of others. Knowledge of another person can then become a means of imposing ourselves upon them.
By contrast, when we seek to overcome that threat together, knowing our true needs, intentions and capacities ceases to be merely a danger against which we must protect ourselves and becomes a condition of our cooperation. For disarmament in particular, truth is necessary so that we can agree upon it as a common action and continually verify that we are carrying out that agreement.
And on matters we can know together, we can also deliberate and reach increasingly conscious and precise agreements.
VII. Disarmament as Liberation
If the weapon is the cause of our discord, disarming ourselves does not simply mean destroying weapons, but ceasing to be subjected to their mediation in order to guarantee our security against others. That is why disarmament cannot be unilateral.
If one party abandons its capacity to cause harm while another retains it, the fundamental relationship does not disappear. Whoever disarms is left exposed to the will of whoever retains the capacity to impose it upon them. Their surrender does not put an end to the armed relationship, but incorporates them into it in a subordinate position: their forces and resources can come to serve the power of the victor or dominator and, with it, their capacity to subject others.
But victory does not mean liberation either. Whoever attains a superior position must preserve it against others and, to that end, maintain and develop their capacity to cause harm. The greater their power, the greater the resources and efforts that may be necessary to sustain it. The most powerful may enjoy advantages over others, but they are not free from the relationship that requires them to defend and increase those advantages.
Thus, neither surrender nor victory resolves our contradiction. The defeated remain subordinated to the victor’s weapon, and the victor remains subordinated to the need to preserve and develop their own. Both continue to serve, from different positions, the same purpose of causing harm. That is why we can say with certainty that the weapon is the supreme product of human activity in every age and place, and that all other things have been and remain subordinated to it.
We can verify this by reflecting on our own situation. Can we abandon our capacity for defence while others retain the possibility of imposing their will upon us? No, because we would be at their mercy. And would we cease to need it if we attained sufficient superiority to subject them? Neither, because we would have to preserve that superiority against those who might challenge it and impose themselves upon us.
What, then, would have to change for none of us to need to maintain our capacity to cause harm against others? That we could all recognize this same contradiction and jointly agree to overcome it.
The disarmament we propose must therefore be agreed upon, universal, progressive and voluntary.
Agreed upon, because it arises from the understanding that the purpose of causing harm which we maintain against others ultimately subjects us all. And no one can resolve separately a contradiction that exists precisely in our mutual relationship.
Universal, because our liberation cannot be particular either. As long as an armed unit remains, the relationship of subordination that we seek to overcome will persist.
Progressive, because transforming relationships historically built around force requires a process in which we can jointly establish, fulfil and verify the commitments undertaken.
Voluntary, because it would make no sense to seek to end imposition through a new imposition. Reconciliation begins when we freely recognize our common condition and decide to act in accordance with that understanding.
The World Conference on Reconciliation, Peace and Disarmament aims to provide the space in which this universal agreement can begin to take shape. Its inclusive and public character must allow commitments to be known, discussed and verified by everyone, so that trust does not depend on a hidden promise or on the superiority of any of the parties.
But the subject of this reconciliation is not only the State or whoever represents it. It is every human being, regardless of the country to which they belong or the position they occupy within the armed relationship.
Each of us can recognize what the weapon is, understand its purpose of causing harm and judge the contradiction it introduces into our relationships. And each of us can make that understanding public, reject the continued use of harm and threat as the foundation of our coexistence, and contribute to making disarmament a shared decision.
That is why the terms of this Call must be universally known and the Conference must be conducted openly and publicly. It is not a matter of asking people to endorse a particular political position, but of offering everyone the possibility of examining a common reality and participating in its transformation.
The very criterion that brings us together is sufficient to begin generating its own order, through simple consistency with its purpose. If we seek to free ourselves from imposition, our decisions and our way of relating to one another cannot be founded upon it. If we recognize that our liberation must be universal, neither can we exclude any human being from its consideration. And if we need to understand one another in order to act jointly, we must make our intentions public, listen to those of others and seek agreements that everyone can freely recognize.
Thus, reconciliation need not wait for disarmament to begin transforming our relationships. The purpose we share already provides us with a criterion for judging our own actions and organizing our cooperation, while we agree upon the conditions that will make it possible to free ourselves materially from the weapon.
Finally, we can examine just how personally this proposal concerns us. Even making it public may prove difficult. We belong to communities and States whose security we feel duty-bound to defend; we know the threats posed by those who oppose them, and we know that unilaterally abandoning our protection could harm both ourselves and those who depend on it.
But this same reflection enables us to understand the situation of others, including those we regard as our adversaries. They too are conditioned by the need to defend their own people and by the threat we represent to them. And those who currently hold a superior position cannot cease attending to that relationship without exposing themselves to the loss of their superiority.
Recognizing this does not require us to desert, abandon our responsibilities or surrender our security to the will of others. It enables us, precisely, to understand why liberation must be joint.
We can begin to reconcile before we have disarmed, by making this understanding public and encouraging one another to participate in an agreement that makes disarmament possible for everyone. We do not need to wait for the threat to disappear in order to recognize together the need to overcome it.
VIII. Peace as a New Human Relationship
Once we cease using the weapon as a means between us, a much greater task emerges: learning to make decisions in a different way, in a properly human way.
It is not enough to eliminate a means; we must transform the relationship that this means produced. That is why peace does not simply consist in weapons remaining inactive, but in disarmament and in grounding our relationships in understanding, mutual assistance and agreement.
This transformation affects, first of all, the human and material resources that we currently devote to our capacity to cause harm. By disarming ourselves together, those resources cease to serve the opposing security needs of armed units confronting one another and become directed towards the well-being and development of humanity.
And since their liberation can only be achieved through universal agreement, their new use must also be considered from the standpoint of humanity as a whole. This means attending first to those whose needs are greatest, without discrimination on the basis of the country or armed unit to which they currently belong. The resources freed through disarmament thus contribute to providing dignified living conditions, developing infrastructure and making possible increasingly broad and integrated human cooperation.
Within the armed relationship, resources are not merely goods that satisfy needs: their exclusive possession also represents a capacity to deprive others of them. Therefore, when we relinquish resources, we do not relinquish goods alone; we also transfer a capacity to exercise power over others. In this sense, what we call sharing is conditioned or nullified by the relationship of exclusive ownership: resources pass from the control of some to that of others, without ceasing to serve the opposition established by their possession.
This contradiction also affects, for example, aid to countries with greater needs. The transfer of resources is conditioned by strategic alliances and subjected to controls, because States must attend to their defence and because the resources received tend to be directed towards that more urgent need, or may remain under the control of their authorities without reaching the people who need them. If security or defence ceases to constitute that opposing necessity or urgency, we will be able to agree upon and carry out the transfer of resources with much greater freedom, attending directly to their human purpose.
But disarmament also transforms the organization of our relationships.
Hierarchy founded on the capacity to cause harm loses its reason for existing when we no longer need to subject one another in order to guarantee our security. We then recognize our equality as human beings, endowed with the same capacity for understanding and a common sense that enables us to deliberate and act together.
This does not mean that differences in knowledge, abilities or responsibilities disappear. If we are constructing a building, whoever has the necessary training to direct its construction must be able to coordinate the work of others. The same applies to any human activity: certain tasks require experience, competence and direction.
But that responsibility is justified by the purpose of the activity and by the capacity to contribute to it, not by the permanent superiority of some people over others. It is a function relative to the work we undertake and the needs we seek to satisfy, not a permanent position of domination founded on the capacity for imposition.
Our relationship with things and with property is likewise transformed.
As long as our security depends on the exclusive possession of resources, relinquishing them can mean increasing the power of others over us. What we give does not necessarily come to serve the community, but may become part of another owner’s capacity to deprive us of those same resources. That is why, even when we can understand the advantages of “sharing” — or, more precisely, relinquishing resources — to bring greater balance to our surroundings, the armed relationship does not even allow us to do that and conditions us to preserve and accumulate as much as we can, without any limit.
However, by freeing ourselves from that contradiction, things cease to be subordinated to their possession as a means of power and come to be considered according to their purpose. Their use, the needs they satisfy and the suitability of how they are made available provide us with common criteria for understanding how best to make use of them. The shared management — now genuinely shared — of resources ceases to represent a threat to our security and becomes a way of pursuing our common well-being.
This also affects forms of property, whose transformation must be voluntary and may require a prolonged process. It would make no sense to free ourselves from armed imposition only to establish, through another imposition, how we must dispose of things.
We must also understand that our living conditions are not merely the result of our present decisions. We have been born and raised in different circumstances, and our bodies, customs and expectations have been shaped by them. Someone who has always enjoyed certain resources and comforts may experience their loss as deprivation, even while recognizing the desirability of a fairer distribution.
But those conditions need not be perpetuated from one generation to the next. A person may want their children to live well without necessarily wanting them to enjoy the same relative advantages that they themselves have had over others. And, at the same time, they may wish to preserve for them a family home, certain objects or living conditions with which they have personal ties. These are different questions that we must understand and consider according to their purpose and use, without confusing them with the accumulation of resources as a means of power.
The passing of generations acquires fundamental importance here. Children are not born accustomed to the privileges or differences in position they find already established: they learn to regard them as normal or necessary through their education and coexistence with others. A human community that ceases to organize itself around armed opposition also transforms the conditions in which it educates its new members and, with them, their needs, expectations and ways of relating to one another.
That is why we do not need to determine in advance all the consequences of this transformation. The very development of our relationships, over the course of lives and generations, will gradually modify what we consider suitable, necessary or just. What matters is that we can judge these matters together according to their purpose and their service to human beings, rather than remaining conditioned by the need to preserve our superiority over others.
Hierarchy and property are two manifestations of this transformation that we have highlighted because we have already examined them in previous chapters. But the same criterion extends to our other activities and relationships. By ceasing to subordinate them to the purpose of causing harm, we judge them according to the service they provide to human life and their suitability for humanity as a whole.
This transformation of the conditions of our relationships also transforms our purposes. When we cease to regard others as adversaries against whom we must protect ourselves, their needs cease necessarily to oppose our own. Coexistence, mutual understanding and cooperation lead us to recognize and consider those needs together.
Reciprocity thus ceases to be merely a moral principle that we must strive to observe in the face of our opposing interests. It becomes the natural tendency of a relationship in which our well-being no longer depends on harming or subordinating others. Treating others as we wish to be treated then follows the very logic of our coexistence and cooperation.
This already happens, to some extent, in our closest communities. When someone steals from, assaults or harms another person, we recognize that their conduct affects not only the victim but also our common coexistence. We all condemn it because we understand the harm it causes and because we all need our relationships not to be founded upon it.
But the armed relationship has led us to divide that same humanity into our own people and others, so that what we condemn within our community comes to be justified when directed against those we regard as enemies. And they are enemies, within this relationship, precisely because their weapon is not integrated into ours and their capacity to cause harm stands opposed to our own.
Universal disarmament overcomes that contradiction. By ceasing to organize ourselves as opposing units, the need to distinguish between those we must protect and those against whom we must protect ourselves disappears. The consideration we recognize as necessary within our own community then extends to all human beings, because we all form part of the same relationship of coexistence and cooperation.
Human unity, which is the form of peace, is not achieved by subjecting everyone to the same power, but by sharing the purpose of freeing ourselves from the weapon. It is this purpose, understood and carried out together through universal disarmament, that reconciles us, makes others part of us and constitutes us as a human community.
IX. The Consequences We Must Investigate
If universal disarmament frees humanity from the need to organize itself around the capacity to cause harm, we must also ask what consequences this will have for the other aspects of our lives and organization.
We do not intend to answer all these questions definitively here, but to open them up to our common investigation.
1. Security
What does it mean to be safe when we cease to possess an organized capacity to harm one another?
The weapon, as a means of imposition between human units, has no utility independent of that relationship. Either it is not used, in which case it is simply a waste, or its use consists in causing harm and destruction. Large armies, submarines, aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons show particularly clearly that their existence and development respond to confrontation with other armed capacities.
Their purpose is to maintain or achieve superiority over other weapons. They are therefore not means that directly serve the needs of our lives, but means to whose maintenance and development we subordinate our activities and resources. In this relationship, it is the human being who serves the weapon.
The problem of security within our coexistence is different. As long as assaults, thefts and other harmful behaviours exist, we will need means to prevent them, protect ourselves and address their consequences. This is the function we currently attribute, among other institutions, to the police.
But the need for these means also changes with our relationships. As we cease to organize ourselves as opposing units and develop coexistence founded on understanding and mutual care, reciprocal influence progressively modifies our behaviour. To the extent that assaults and harmful acts diminish, so too will the need to resort to means of coercion to prevent them.
This evolution must not be confused with the disarmament of autonomous armed units. The disappearance of the relationship that sets them against one another requires a common human decision, whereas the transformation of behaviour and of the institutions intended to protect our coexistence develops as our own relationships change.
The implementation of disarmament also requires a progressive transition, guided by common human judgement and by public and inclusive decisions. We must agree on how to transform military structures and activities linked to the production of armaments, making use of their knowledge, capabilities and resources for human purposes.
In this process, the living conditions of military personnel, of those who hold responsibilities within these structures and of all others whose activities depend on them must be guaranteed. Their participation in our common liberation must not harm their well-being or freedom, but should also contribute to improving them. These human and material resources are, moreover, particularly well equipped to help and integrate communities facing the greatest shortages and most urgent needs.
The shared purpose of freeing ourselves from the weapon already provides us with the criterion for beginning this transformation. We do not need to wait for weapons to disappear materially in order to recognize that our security cannot continue to depend on our capacity to subject one another.
The Call for the World Conference on Reconciliation, Peace and Disarmament of 30 May 2027 is precisely an invitation to take that decision together and to begin establishing the conditions for its universal, progressive and voluntary implementation.
2. Economy and Law
To what extent does exclusive ownership depend on the capacity to exclude others and protect that exclusion through force? Here we must distinguish between the use and management of resources to satisfy human needs and their exclusive appropriation as an instrument of power over others.
This question requires specific investigation, which we do not claim to have completed. There are many matters we must examine, such as the desirability of a universal currency, forms of property and inheritance, incentive systems and the other conditions of our economic organization.
These questions must be studied and debated publicly, with the participation of those who possess the knowledge needed to understand their consequences, but without removing them from the judgement of others. The purpose of their regulation must always be the well-being and development of humanity as a whole.
We must also ask what transformations the law would undergo if its ultimate guarantee ceased to depend on armed force and were founded on public and inclusive agreements.
The drafting, application and revision of rules could then be founded on the public disclosure of decisions and of the purposes that justify them. Each agreement would make it possible to know what is intended, why it is considered more suitable than other alternatives and what means have been established to carry it out.
The public record of these decisions would subsequently make it possible to verify whether their purposes are achieved, whether new circumstances alter their suitability or whether new means or more urgent needs arise that call for their revision. The law would thus develop through shared knowledge and assessment of our decisions and their consequences, in accordance with the criteria of purpose and universality.
In this task, artificial intelligence could help us organize and connect information, examine alternatives, verify results and facilitate participation and public judgement. Its function would be to serve human understanding and decisions, not to replace them.
3. The State
Which functions would remain the responsibility of States, and which could progressively be undertaken by broader or more local forms of human organization?
The State, as a sovereign unit that maintains and defends its territorial authority through force, is closely linked to the armed relationship. Its borders and composition are, in many cases, the result of wars, conquests and historical agreements that have brought together or separated human communities with different languages, cultures and traditions.
But we must distinguish this armed sovereignty from the human functions performed by States. The organization of services, infrastructure, knowledge and common activities responds to real needs that do not disappear with disarmament. What we must investigate is how to meet them in the most suitable way, without remaining subordinated to territorial divisions established and maintained through the capacity for imposition.
This question also affects communities that seek greater autonomy or independence. As long as human organization is founded on armed sovereignty, such aspirations tend to take the form of separating from one State unit and establishing another. But by overcoming that relationship together, the autonomy of a community no longer necessarily requires a new sovereignty in opposition to others.
Likewise, the State of which that community forms part no longer needs to preserve its authority as a power opposed to those who wish to determine their own direction autonomously. But both participate in a broader transformation: the integration of our relationships into a universal human community.
The criterion for examining these questions cannot be merely the preservation of existing borders, nor their modification through a decision imposed on others. We must consider the purpose of each activity, the needs of the people affected and the most suitable level at which to organize it, through public and inclusive agreements.
Thus, some functions may be better performed in cities, towns or nearby communities; others will require regional or universal coordination. Administrative divisions may be adapted to these purposes without having to become new units of power opposed to others. And, in general, the principle of subsidiarity should prevail: matters should be addressed at a broader level when they cannot be resolved at a more limited one.
Communication and shared access to information, facilitated by new technologies and automated translation, will also make it possible to simplify many functions of administrative intermediation and encourage people’s direct participation in matters that concern them.
None of this requires the disappearance of our cultural differences. The languages, traditions and ways of life particular to each community constitute a human richness that we can preserve and develop without turning them into grounds for exclusion.
The transformation of the State therefore does not consist in replacing some sovereignties with others or imposing a uniform organization on all humanity. It consists in investigating how our institutions can cease to serve the preservation of opposing territorial powers and instead become organized according to the human purposes they must fulfil, for the benefit of all.
4. Resources and Purpose
Resources satisfy our needs and serve our aspirations. But their use must also take into account our belonging to nature and the conditions that make life possible.
Caring for the planet, its ecosystems, fauna and flora does not consist merely in preserving them as resources at our disposal, but in developing a relationship of coexistence and reciprocal adaptation with the nature of which we are part. We can thus aspire to greater symbiosis between our activities and other living beings, also taking into account their needs and living conditions, to make our world an increasingly habitable, beautiful and suitable place for all.
Likewise, the exploration of and expansion into outer space constitute a human aspiration whose development we must consider alongside our other needs and possibilities.
The priority assigned to each purpose will depend on circumstances, knowledge, available resources and the needs we must address. Its suitability must be continually examined through research, foresight, public deliberation and common human judgement, always taking the well-being and development of humanity as our criterion.
5. Intelligence and Decision-Making
Artificial intelligence provides us with new capabilities to understand our needs, gather and analyse information, compare alternatives and foresee the consequences of our decisions.
But knowledge does not replace judgement. The capacity to calculate the most effective means of achieving a purpose does not, by itself, determine what purpose we should pursue.
That is why decisions about what we wish to accomplish as human beings must remain in human hands or, more precisely, in the hands of humanity, through the knowledge, deliberation and common judgement of all those affected.
This question is particularly urgent because artificial intelligence is currently being developed within our relationships of armed confrontation. Its capabilities accelerate decision-making processes, anticipate the movements of adversaries and increase the effectiveness of our means of causing harm. Thus, an intelligence that could serve our understanding and cooperation can also accelerate our mutual destruction, to the point of endangering human survival itself.
Freeing these capabilities from their subordination to the purpose of the weapon is therefore part of our reconciliation. Artificial intelligence can help us understand increasingly complex problems, publicly examine their possible solutions and verify the results of our decisions, but always in the service of purposes that we can recognize and agree upon together.
All these questions form part of the Open Document because they still require investigation and deliberation. We do not intend to resolve them here or establish in advance how our future lives must be organized. They constitute a permanent task for humanity, which will have to review its knowledge, needs and decisions as our circumstances change.
Disarmament is not the end of our investigation, but the beginning of a human investigation freed from the need to serve armed confrontation. By ceasing to subject ourselves to that purpose, we will be able to examine our activities and resources together according to what they are for and their suitability for humanity.
This is the fundamental consequence we wish to highlight: reconciliation does not determine our future in advance, but frees us to understand it, deliberate upon it and build it together.
X. The Practical Operation of Peace
The consequences of disarmament mentioned in the previous chapter must be investigated. We can anticipate only some of them tentatively, because our future reality will incorporate circumstances and knowledge that we cannot yet foresee.
But there is something we can establish even now. We have understood that the purpose of universal disarmament is to free ourselves from the armed relationship and constitute ourselves as a human community. And since that unity is the form of peace, peace begins to be within our reach from the moment we recognize and share that purpose.
This is not speculation about the future, but a consequence of our own understanding.
If we recognize that it is contradictory to seek peace while maintaining the capacity to harm one another as the foundation of our relationships or, more clearly, while seeking to harm others, we must also recognize that it would be contradictory to pursue reconciliation while continuing to relate to one another through hostility, contempt or the will to undermine and harm others.
We need to understand one another and act together in order to free ourselves from the weapon. Therefore, the very purpose of our reconciliation already provides us with a criterion for our behaviour: to recognize others as necessary participants in our liberation, listen to them, consider their reasons and seek agreements that we can freely accept.
The very criterion that brings us together thus begins to generate its own order, through simple consistency with its purpose.
We do not need to wait for material disarmament to begin relating to one another in this way. Nor do we need to unilaterally abandon our capacity for defence, since we have demonstrated that our liberation from the weapon can only be achieved through universal, progressive and agreed disarmament.
But reconciliation begins with the Call itself, because it offers us a common purpose and a present point of encounter.
Those who recognize and support this Call find in it a shared reason to overcome their hostilities, establish communication and begin to cooperate, even when they still have differences or belong to opposing communities. Their agreement on the purpose of reconciliation does not automatically resolve all their disagreements, but it transforms the way in which they can address them.
That is why the Call is not merely an invitation to gather at the World Conference on Reconciliation, Peace and Disarmament on 30 May 2027. It is also the beginning of a human relationship that we can put into practice now and develop together up to the Conference and beyond.
We have therefore reached the point towards which we have been working. Peace cannot be founded on a new imposition, but on our freedom to understand one another, reach agreements and act together.
Can we really do this? Can we begin to relate to one another through concord rather than hostility?
Yes, because we can recognize that none of us can free ourselves separately from the armed relationship and that we all need the cooperation of others to overcome our common subordination to it.
This understanding does not mean that our prejudices, fears or resentments, deeply rooted in our history and personal experiences, suddenly disappear. Nor does it require each of us to make an extraordinary effort alone to rid ourselves of them.
What matters is that our relationship begins to change through our mutual influence. When we recognize one another as participants in a common purpose, our communication, decisions and behaviour reciprocally influence those of others. Trust, consideration and cooperation thus find the conditions in which to develop, while hostility ceases to be necessary to defend our position against others.
In our capacity to understand one another, share purposes and act together, we find a human unity that is not merely an abstract idea. It manifests itself in our relationships and is realized through them.
We can call universal love the disposition that arises from this understanding and coexistence: not wishing or causing others the harm we do not want to suffer and, more than that, treating them as we would wish to be treated.
We do not need to understand this love as an identical feeling towards every person, nor as the disappearance of our differences. It is expressed in the recognition that the well-being of others need not be opposed to our own, and in the reciprocal consideration that our coexistence leads us to develop.
This orientation does not separate us from nature either. Our lives unfold through relationships of interdependence, adaptation and cooperation with other human beings and other living beings. Understanding that we belong to this common reality broadens our responsibility and our capacity to foster a form of coexistence more beneficial to all.
Thus, peace does not begin when we have resolved all our differences or when we have materially completed disarmament. It begins when we jointly recognize the purpose of freeing ourselves from the weapon and bring our relationships and decisions into harmony with it.
Universal disarmament will be the material realization of that liberation. But reconciliation, which makes it possible, begins among us now.
XI. A Conversation with Human History
The aspiration to human coexistence based on reciprocity, the equality of all human beings, justice, goodwill, and consideration for others as for oneself appears in different traditions. It is particularly associated with the cosmopolitan tradition, that is, with those who advocated human unity or coexistence: a way of thinking centred on humanity that has been not only relegated but also concealed by the prevailing, all-encompassing framework of thought of the so-called nation-states.
In the Chinese tradition, we find the doctrine of Mòzǐ, known as the policy of Universal Love, whose dissemination even attained a predominant position during the fourth and third centuries before the Common Era. Mòzǐ understands that simple human coexistence, instead of our separation and exclusion into states or armed units, naturally generates universal love as a consequence of inclusive decision-making and the logical influence we exert upon one another. In other words, free exchange among all human beings has the consequence that we treat one another as we ourselves wish to be treated.
In the Greco-Roman tradition, we also find different forms of cosmopolitanism or human unity as a solution to our condition of violence and war. This tradition traces its origins to Socrates, condemned to death by his polis or state for defending the logic of human common sense against the necessary representations produced by the state — the “gods of the city” — to distinguish itself from others, as a consequence of the state of war in which armed units exist.
After Socrates came the Cyrenaics, the Cynics and, later, the Epicureans and the Stoics, major schools of the Hellenistic and Roman world that took humanity, rather than politics or the state, as their point of departure. More specifically, the Cynics and the Stoics placed the concept of cosmopolitanism or human unity at the centre of their doctrines, finding in it rationality and meaning for life.
Yet both Western cosmopolitanism and Mohism arose in a world largely unknown and lacking communication, which not only made their proposals unviable but also worked against the interests of any state that admitted them within its borders, since doing so weakened that state in its struggle against others.
These reflections from antiquity, set aside in our own time by the education promoted by states, are of particular interest to us because today that vision can indeed attain universal reach, even though we still live within a political organization that regards the sovereign state as the principal and determining framework of our collective decisions.
I also wish to include here a particular reading of Cervantes, whose work has been of decisive importance in the origins of this investigation.
In Don Quixote, weapons do not appear only when they cause physical harm. Their presence changes the relationships and conduct of those who encounter them. The weapon therefore acts before it is materially used: its capacity to cause harm already intervenes in our decisions and behaviour.
We cannot reproduce the scenes Cervantes creates in his work, but he also expresses with extraordinary precision the reality they reveal when he places in the mouths of his characters words such as “to speak of arms is the same as to speak of war,” from Don Quixote’s so-called Discourse on Arms and Letters. This expression condenses into a few words a question that human history continually places before us and whose foundations, nevertheless, we rarely examine.
Another expression of singular force is “heaven yields to force,” which also appears in the novel. With it, our reflection reaches a level prior to political and legal justifications. It invites us to reflect upon and look directly at the force that intervenes in our relationships, mediated by the mere existence and power of the weapon, rather than accepting as our starting point the institutions and arguments that have already been constructed under its influence.
Indeed, these words do not constitute a demonstration of our thesis. Cervantes helps us to see a reality, but it is for each of us to examine it through our own reasoning. What matters is not the writer’s authority, but what his words subsequently enable us to recognize.
Judgement concerning our present situation, and the decision to transform it, belong to us, to humanity.
But at this point I can tell you sincerely that, throughout my own self-directed investigation, I have found precisely what I expected: something different from what I had been taught, and that difference consistently pointed towards this Call for human unity.
XII. The Open Document
The Call proposes a concrete action: to open the way towards a World Conference on Reconciliation, Peace and Disarmament on 30 May 2027.
This Open Document seeks to explain why we are making this proposal and what consequences we believe it may have.
But precisely because those consequences may extend to the way we understand our relationships, our institutions and our common life, we believe that this document must not remain confined to our own understanding.
We wish to submit it to human judgement.
This means inviting those who read it to ask questions, identify contradictions, contribute knowledge, raise objections, share experiences, correct errors and develop consequences that we ourselves have not yet perceived.
We are not seeking only the support of those who already share our proposal.
We also need the participation of those who do not share it, provided they are willing to discuss it with a genuine desire to understand.
This document may therefore change: some of its statements may be corrected or abandoned; others may be developed through new evidence, research and contributions.
And questions may arise that we have not yet known how to formulate.
That is precisely what it means for this to be an Open Document.
The Call asks humanity to consider the possibility of disarmament.
This Document asks humanity to help us understand what it truly means to undertake it.
Our starting point is simple:
The weapon has compelled us to organize our relationships around the possibility of causing harm to one another.
Our question is equally simple: Can we free ourselves together from that necessity and, starting now, cooperate voluntarily and freely for the common good?
And our hope is that, if we can do so, we will discover that many of the differences which today seem irreconcilable do not belong to our humanity itself, but rather to the conditions under which we have needed and learned to relate to one another.
Disarmament would then mean not only giving up weapons, but also the possibility of understanding how to relate to one another without them. And perhaps, for the first time, of coming to know one another without needing to protect ourselves from one another.