THE WILL FOR HUMAN UNITY CONTRADICTS THE WILL TO HARM
As you might already know, we are working so that universities study and adopt the Protocol of Human Unity. Today I would like to present its foundations.
Human unity does not depend solely on the university, even if we are now presenting this proposal to them. It depends on those who understand it, for they are its true teachers. And I hope that is your case.
Before entering the text, I would like to recall an ancient anecdote. It is said that a man found a ring that made him invisible and, knowing he could not be punished, began to commit crimes. Many conclude from this story that we would all act the same way if we did not fear punishment.
However, that conclusion is hasty. If we all acted that way, human life itself would become unviable; the very possibility of coexistence and cooperation would be destroyed.
Cooperation does not arise only from fear. It is a rational requirement of our own nature. What makes human cooperation difficult is not that the human being is evil by nature, but that we are organized into opposing, violent, and unjust units. That separation pushes us toward harm even when we do not desire it.
The Protocol of Human Unity begins from this observation and proposes something simple and radical: to replace the logic of the weapon with the logic of unity.
HUMAN UNITY: OVERCOMING THE LOGIC OF THE WEAPON
I. Evil as the will to harm
Evil is not a metaphysical mystery. It is something concrete: ill will, that is, the will to harm.
And since the will is voluntary, harm is not inevitable. Peace depends on our decision. It consists of nothing other than the agreed cessation of harm. If harm is a matter of will, peace is also a matter of will. Therefore, peace is possible and necessary.
It is possible today because we are all in communication and can reach agreement. Our task is to propose it.
II. The incorporation of the human being into the weapon
We are all born defenseless. No baby is born an enemy of another. Society is what shapes us, classifies us, uniforms us, incorporates us.
Human beings are essentially equal. What varies are uniforms, ranks, positions within hierarchy. Even Carnival reminds us of this.
Inequality is the consequence of our incorporation into the weapon — a weapon that, among human beings, becomes an army and a state, organized in hierarchical and pyramidal form, as a chain of command.
III. The two justices
Since antiquity, thinkers have distinguished between two forms of justice. Not only cosmopolitans speaking of natural law, but also authors as distant as Aristotle or Confucius refer to this distinction.
On the one hand, distributive justice, proper to the State, which gives or takes in an unequal or unjust manner according to criteria of power and structure.
On the other hand, natural justice or equity/equality: that which arises from our natural understanding, whose basis is our capacity to place ourselves in the position of the other.
Human unity gently leads toward the application of this second justice.
IV. The weapon as the cause of inequality
Without the weapon, without violence, the systematic deprivation of resources would be impossible — a deprivation exercised relentlessly even when those deprived need those resources simply in order not to die.
But it is not only that. More fundamentally, the weapon is the cause of inequality, of rights, and of private property among human beings.
The weapon, as a means or instrument of harm, has use only against another and does not admit reciprocal or reversed use. It subdues or it destroys.
Thus, multiple weapons become one — an army — and it subordinates all the resources it can, distributing them according to hierarchy.
V. The system of conditioning
Hierarchy conditions everyone into service of the weapon: those below through precariousness, making them easily conditioned;
and those above because the weapon sustains their privileges, as well as those who benefit from them. Since the weapon is their means, they also serve it.
Each weapon, as an armed unit, tends to exploit or absorb all human and material resources into its service, incorporating them at the lowest level of the pyramid.
The only way to confront it is by organizing in the same manner.
(As Rousseau observed, once a hierarchical society was constituted, other human groups found themselves compelled to organize in the same way in order to resist it — otherwise they would be absorbed or enslaved, that is, incorporated at the base of the pyramid. In vast regions of Africa, the territory was so extensive, with large open spaces, that populations could move away from emerging centers of control. In Europe and Asia, by contrast, organized states came to occupy the available space more quickly, leaving little possibility of remaining outside one structure or another.
Yet the origin of the weapon is not a wicked human will. The weapon already existed in nature, and human beings simply had to adapt to it. Animals possess weapons — fangs, claws — and organize hierarchically to attack or defend themselves; early humans could use sticks, and they too adopted hierarchical organization).
VI. Politics as service to the weapon
Politics is the management of violence and does not question it; it revolves around one question:
Who must be conditioned by the threat of force or deprivation?
But this is a way of serving the weapon, because the other side will react to force with force, as far as its means allow. Thus tension grows, and it is always the weapon that develops.
VII. The proposal: human unity — replacing partiality with universality
As early as the fourth century BCE, Mozi proposed replacing partiality with universality. The same idea appeared among Western cosmopolitans.
If we propose human unity, the logic changes radically.
United, armies lose their reason for being, because no army makes sense without other armies against which to defend or compete. There might exist, temporarily, a police function of humanity to protect persons and property, but not opposing military structures that exist only in relation to one another.
Unity leads to disarmament.
And disarmament leads to the redirection of resources toward useful rather than destructive ends. Politics would no longer aim to condition, but to deliberate about what is most useful.
VIII. The decisive step: the universal cessation of evil
The difficulty is not conceptual but practical: how do we move from partiality to universality, from mutual threat to coexistence?
Mozi’s answer was correct: to consider all human beings as part of our community.
But it is not enough to consider ourselves a community; we must take an objective measure regarding what separates us. That measure is the agreed and universal cessation of the purpose of harm or conditioning — that is, the cessation of service to the weapon. This is a decision and an objective action, subject to human supervision and control, each in their place.
The will to harm and the will for human unity are contradictory.
This cessation can only be carried out by universal agreement. Until it becomes universal, good will — useful will — consists in proposing it until it is universally understood.
To propose human unity is not to force anyone. It is to appeal to common sense and free will. Unity cannot be imposed, because to impose it would already be a contradiction.
IX. Power, right, and cooperation
All power or right involves two parts: the one who exercises it and the one who recognizes, grants, or yields it.
In a united humanity, right does not emanate from an armed structure that imposes and demands, but from mutual recognition among equals.
The need to accumulate disappears with the end of armed competition. What is then sought is usefulness or the common good, since the real present function of accumulation is security, not utility.
This is not about expropriating or imposing anything, which would be violence and would provoke reaction. It is about freely agreeing on what is most useful for all. And since this is universal, it concerns everyone without exception.
No one loses: all gain, including those who today possess more, because the security once sought in accumulation would be guaranteed by the human community as a whole.
With the passing of generations, human logic — and education oriented toward equality — will lead accumulation to cease being perceived as a necessity and to become merely a burden.
X. Unity is not sacrifice, but common benefit
Human unity is no one’s sacrifice.
It is not the defeat of some in favor of others. It is the overcoming of the framework that turns everyone into pieces of a perpetual confrontation.
It is beneficial to all: to those who accumulate today, to those who lack, to nationals and foreigners alike.
For it eliminates the structural cause of organized harm that absorbs our minds and resources: weapons, which, if unused, are waste, and if used, destroy. And yet humanity as a whole is enslaved to them.
XI. Transparency and truth
Those who propose human unity have nothing to hide.
The logic of the weapon requires secrecy, strategy, calculation, threat — if possible, the invisible ring.
The logic of unity seeks transparency and openness. That is its proof.
There is nothing to hide from the poor or the rich, from nationals or foreigners, because the proposal does not consist in replacing one domination with another, but in deactivating the structure that produces it — not anyone’s will, but everyone’s tragedy.