Ways to a peaceful civilization

Humanity needs to sort out the current confusion of:

• most activities being based on winner-takes-all,
• promoting all sorts of rights and ideals,
• promoting all sorts of consumption for the sake of economic growth,
• celebrating the birth of any number of children, and
• establish basic principles of human existence.

This cannot be accomplished by nuclear weapons or border control. Reason, logical thinking and science, attributes that distinguish man from other animals, can guide this process.

Some examples of the principles are that humanity cannot:

• increase her population beyond equilibrium level,
• destroy the biosphere,
• disturb the functional cycles in the systems of the Earth,
• drill, dig, frack and damage the crust,
• release to the air the carbon stored in the earth for millions of years,
• consume and discard to the environment industrial products that are not or cannot be reprocessed to forms harmless to nature,
• insist on ideals incompatible with the rules of nature, nor
• allow some people to own disproportionate share of the wealth of the planet.

Framework for Peace

  1. The Earth is finite in space, resources and capacity of its systems;
  2. Man is adapted to the current equilibrium in the systems of the Earth; we are the environment;
  3. A healthy biosphere is essential for equilibrium in the habitats for man;
  4. The biosphere is maintained by photosynthesis in plants;
  5. There is a limit to the size of the biosphere;
  6. An increase of human population means a reduction of those of other species;
  7. Perturbations in the biosphere as well as in other systems could break the equilibrium;
  8. In a closed system the effective fertility rate of each species must be that of replacement;
  9. There cannot be human rights that lead to the destruction of the community;
10. The concept of community needs to include all humanity and the biosphere;
11. Ultimately man will have to live with renewable resources; sooner is better;
12. The principles of economy need to be modified; replace neoclassical economics with biophysical economics;
13. Equity requires a limit to personal wealth;
14. The meaning of life must be found in something other than procreation or consumption;
15. All ideals cannot be realized;
16. Some new rationality needs to be added to the rules of community;
17. Evolutionary success of Homo sapiens will be greater in a small permanent community;
18. The Earth can support indefinitely an abundant lifestyle in a limited global civilization;
19. Many wars were due to mismatches between available resources and human demands on them;
20. Human population must be reduced. Voluntary Refugee Movement.

Yuji Ishiguro, Fatal Errors of Humanity.