Dear friends of humanity, supporters of HUM – Human Unity Movement,
The current situation of our activities and projects is pending on the response of the Madrid City Council to set a date and venue where to hold the Universal Congress we are proposing for autumn next year. Once we have this information, we can officially launch the call, as much the invitations to participants or speakers at the Congress as also the Congress worldwide publicity for which we will first invite as co-organizers some of the most relevant international communication companies in order to stablish as soon as possible a proper (unbiased) communication channel or system for the event. Our purpose is for Congress to result in a unanimous worldwide agreement on human unity with the Universal Constitution that starts Posthistory.
Meanwhile I would like to reflect once more on the theoretical aspects which encourage this call to human unity and for this I share the title above with that of a book by Hannah Arendt, whose basic statement is that “necessity gives the human being right to violence ”and it seems to me that this nonsense collects and summarizes one or, properly, the most widespread and significant representation of the world of these last centuries, shared by the right and left (Marxism) parties, habitual of all media, of textbooks, university chairs, etc., so it is very necessary to review it and expose its misery.
Any violence is, of course, all violence (as a weapon is all weapons), since it is impossible for someone to voluntarily accept violence and, therefore, that there is a right to exercise it, so that, consequently, he does not only will respond with violence if he can (or perhaps that is also his right); not only because of how difficult it is for a subject to accept to be harmed, as such a right assumes, but mainly because it is objectively and factually contradictory that there is a will which is not voluntary at the time – since it is imposed by another.
And the proof of the absurdity of that representation (although – I insist – it is universally assumed) is that this ‘right’ to violence is putting us on the verge of devastation of our own and all other people’s resources, and of human o even life extinction? Such a situation and result can only be understood as the product of absolute, uncontrolled violence (of the weapon against other weapons) and not as violence as a mean of something else.
It is therefore very important to reconsider and pour (new) light on human condition. Although food, water (clothing and housing….) are necessary conditions for the subsistence or life of plants and animals, including humans, contrary to what is usually assumed and pretended the (supposed) lack or shortage of these essential resources is not the cause of the violence that characterizes human relations but the deprivation of those resources by the weapon or arm – actually in its common appearance of armed unit or state (previously it could be called tribe, horde, clan, family or the name we want to put it). First, from the need or lack of resources does not follow violence; common sense understands such human needs and it is therefore capable of share them instead of using violence (which common sense also understands as necessarily absolute) agreeing a distribution of resources even in the most extreme case of acute shortage. Violence is absolutely undesirable and cannot be the object of ‘right’ except in fantasy, because, although the state declares itself legitimate violence, which everyone must confess, violence is the real illegitimacy itself. And it occurs only because it is beyond our control; even the most powerful one exercises violence against his desire.
Apart from the remarkable and punctual use of the weapon killing and destroying, its consubstantial, constant and permanent effect is to deprive (prevent, deny) and privatize (resources). Indeed, with regard to the coverage of material needs, the weapon is the necessary and sufficient condition of private property. It is necessary because without the mediation of the weapon private property is impossible; private property is not sustainable without the threat or violence that the weapon provides and projects and, therefore, private property is unthinkable without its presupposition, that is, as an existence, premise and precondition of the possibility of ownership and not vice versa. And sufficient because the weapon, since its aim is damaging, is necessarily private (the only object that it is so in its essence) and leads to everything else becoming private as its own resource; although property is attributed to individuals it does not really belong to them but to the armed unit or state that grants it and gives them a needed coverage or protection. This is the same in communist countries or in capitalist countries; states do not really put into play with their policies their subjects’ well-being but the dominance over the other armed units, as it corresponds to their nature.
Thus, the human condition is the weapon, present in nature prior to the appearance of our specie and to which we, like other species, adapt according to our abilities and means. We can say that weapon -both, in its form of an object or artifact and in its organizational form, the army- is the top human production at all times and in all places. It just does not seem that way to us in the present, because, despite their supreme and decisive condition at all times equally, weapons are absent from the media and the public sphere, they are a secret reserved for intelligence, although Its development, here and now, concentrates the best human and material resources and is the destination of the most advanced technologies and so will it be perceived in the future, as we can see when looking at the past, since all technological development has at first a main military use (ships, vehicles, airplanes, internet, etc.) and the design and decisions on everything that concerns the state is strategic, its provision is the most appropriate or advantageous for war, we have already mentioned its policies, but, for example, so is it with the foundation of cities, frequently transport routes, fortifications or castles with the slums around them, etc.
The weapon’s proper form is the armed unit, the state, that is, the interrelation of all weapons under a single command without whose consent they cannot be used. The armed unit is constituted in the form of a pyramid, the one appropriate to its being a chain of command from a single head and whose relationship with its subordinates is of imposition. The natural tendency of that pyramid is to submit every human or natural resource by its base integrating it into the lowest part of the hierarchy. This violent and pyramidal structure can only be counteracted or resisted from another equally pyramidal structure and between the two the relations are of imposition and deterrence.
In the territory of each state, every weapon is incorporated or is illegal (except in some countries where weapons are provided to individuals so that they end up with individuals particularly undesirable for the state, but never to rival it) and every illegal weapon must be destroyed, in correspondence to the monopoly of state violence. Likewise, the other armed units (the other states) are also outside the system of legality that emanates from each state in particular and are, therefore, enemies and must be equally incorporated or ultimately destroyed, except that they are allies in time to submit and destroy a third party.
Whoever has greater destructive capacity regulates relationships and whoever has less destructive capacity assumes them. And if he refuses to obey, he who has the greatest destructive capacity can destroy the disobedient’s weapons or deprive him of his subsistence resources and put him at his mercy (such is the process now in Iran, Venezuela …). War is absolute, because I insist: Insumission is not an option but an unavoidable tendency, our wish to develop our strength, seek freedom, just as it is not an option for the most powerful or lethal to always be undermining others development or directly destroying it to preserve its supremacy. The idealistic illusion of each hegemony is that peace is achieved with the application of its legal system universally of which it is the guarantor and shall be provided with superior means of destruction. This is something unreal, since that perception remains in not looking at the weapon condition, as we do in the present analysis.
Violence is absolute and, in the absence of another ‘criterion’ than force, its inexorable tendency is equality or balance of opposites, so that states have to organize themselves in coalitions, it is very difficult for a single armed unit to be able to overcome all others. For that reason, the ideological figurations are particularly important, since being them idealistic (not perceiving the weapon) or irrational (lacking common sense) they are adapted to partiality, since if we perceive the weapon as it is; equal to each other, both ours and that of the enemy, as well as its analogous effect on us and on our enemies is manifested to us, it turns out that it also makes us all as we really are: equal and indiscriminate. For that reason, such a perception of the weapon could not be revealed in the past because it would have been a unilateral use of common sense (humanity) that would have resulted in self-harm or harm on our side and for the benefit of the enemy, so that the state, with a kind of justice, could not allow it. That is why the polis or state condemns Socrates for “not believing in the polis gods and (therefore) corrupting the youth” while Socrates, indeed, simply stated that he had no other wisdom, knowledge or understanding than a human one and he did not know, nor he intended as his fellow citizens to know about such things as gods or their designs (which actually would led them to make war). Therefore, his many followers became cosmopolitan, advocates of human unity (except those financed by the state as Plato and Aristotle) because they understood that common sense was only applicable in a universal context, a condition that, anyway, did not occur in his time. And the same happened in the Chinese culture with Mozi. But today it is, finally, possible to use common sense, universally expose and manifest reality, the determination of the weapon, and so liberate us all together. For that reason we convene a Universal Congress on Human Unity because together we will only project, build and do everything for our development, well-being and happiness and we will discard and eliminate projections, production and activities for damaging since, in unity, entrepreneurship for harming will be something as absurd, contradictory and foolish as one looking for harming himself.
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Now, as the previous false representation of the world, even if unanimously accepted in our time, we have expressed citing Hannah Arentd justified violence and concealed the weapon and was an expression / confession of the legitimacy of the modern system of sovereign states, armed units or legitimate violence, that representation also projects us a possible human unity distorted from its meaning, necessarily violent and regulated by a super-state – a legitimate violence – necessary to protect and guarantee the property and security of the people and, therefore, a unit easily exposed to ‘civil’ wars that will take us to the fight for the control of that legitimate violence, the peak of the pyramid, or the dissolution of it in its way back to the current situation of a number of armed units in conflict for a certain predominance.
That is why it is extremely important to understand the falsity of that (economic) representation of reality and use common sense and with it understand the effects of human unity. Being the first and foremost effect of unity freeing us from the weapon, since the practice of unity is nothing else, nor can it be that the elimination of borders and armies, without remaining a single one as they are meaningless without each other. As well as inclusive and joint decision-making, cooperation for development and for our well-being, the increase of our capabilities and any possible realization of happiness of each and every one of us instead of dedicating ourselves to limit ourselves and prevent each other by weapon virtue. Disarmament is the sweet process of humanity adapting to itself.
Joining us will free us from the current confusion in which good and evil are intermingled, for evil, of course towards the enemy, is even more useful, better or even more beneficial than any real good for our side. Together, the difference between the good – what is useful, what promotes our well-being and our happiness – and the bad – the weapon, what is for harming will be as clear as we distinguish white from black or sweet from bitter and there will be no place for evil to take shape.
Human unity ends the genocide or homicide of human groups; not because a superior force, that of the human unity or community, is imposed on minority parties, groups willing to annihilate each other as it is happening in History where violence is absolute, because it was not that these groups had a tendency to mutually annihilate or that humans have an innate disposition to violence, homicide. It is necessary to understand that, while the violence was absolute, irremediable, the violent methods, their training, preparation, disposition and articulation particularly in case of alarm were not only pertinent but of the maximum necessity for life and genocide a constant event and with it, any analogy would do for group building and group operations required by violence. But to unite is to end up with violence; This ceases to be a human resource and, therefore, these groups (Catholics, Chinese, Muslims, Russians, Whites, Hispanics …) no longer constitute a latent and possible articulation for participation in the ever-present virtual violence, genocide or possible bloody struggle; the absolute war that dominates the world is given by the existence of the weapon, as Cervantes says “it is the same weapons than war.” Human unity ends genocide because it generates disarmament and disarmament puts an end to violence. That is why human unity is a qualitative change; “civil war” cannot happen because unity roots out violence and prevents its germ that is partiality –this is, independent and, therefore, opposite decision making.
The main contribution of human unity is to define and declare all violence illegitimate to be substituted with use of common sense, which allows us and leads us to do everything voluntarily, with the approval of each and every one of us. We cannot foresee in detail some aspects of this new world of post-history, as well as the character of its institutions if they were necessary, and other details that we must open to our common and cooperative judgment. What we can foresee is that the first step is to achieve the unanimous human will for unity, which results in a mandate for current politicians, whose legitimacy was only given before by the state from which they obtain the power of their representativeness, while now the origin of its legitimacy will be humanity as the ultimate source of all rights.
Likewise, it goes without saying that with rational (and not political), inclusive and joint criteria, we must face the new challenges of pollution, the use of renewable energy, climate change, deforestation, animal treatment and environmental treatment in general terms – which we all share now. These are tasks that, more than urgently, cry out for human unity, because only in this way can we cope with them since its threatening character resides, above all, in the inability we show ourselves of dealing with them separately and the need it presents for generating a joint and coordinated response which is prevented by the weapon (or partiality).
I invite you and encourage you to participate in the preparation of the Universal Congress on Human Unity that will mark our passage to post History.
Thank you!