Conviction 6 - Culture/Identity

>> Definition of a strongly composed international community of planetary citizens and human culture

The What

A human culture composed of a general loyalty to supranational political institutions and a foundation of an international citizenship. This international culture is based on a concern for the collective human condition and the growing necessity to protect civilian lives from wars waged all over the world through the establishment of sectors where no military conflict is acceptable. This international humanistic culture takes form in a devotion to protecting innocents and the sanctity of life. Such a mentality must be planted and take root in transnational political discourse to give rise to a normative international regime of civilian protection.

Human culture is essentially the popular propagation and promotion of solidarity between citizens to counteract the power of those actors who would incur civilian death and social suffering in the name of military conflict. The prevention of this must come in the form of a comprehensive culture and lifestyle orientated toward defending innocent life not personally but conceptually. Such a culture will be protected and served through the formation of a truly open international community led by the international humanitarian classes - i.e. NGO officials, global citizens, and others that have affirmed a loyalty to humanity as a collective. The primary aim of human culture, in its construction, is to make such a choice feasible socially and later politically. No politician can maintain a working and consistent loyalty to people outside their country. There is no sphere to allow for that kind of altruism. It must be established socially in the form of convictions 2 and 5 and politically in the form of conviction 1.

Humanitarian mentalities have existed throughout history but nobody has endeavored to construct a humanitarian ethos for mass-consumption and the effective collective action of humanitarians toward establishing this. Synthesis proposes that this mass-ethos comes in the form of something that all humans can relate to and find it in themselves to value and die for: life. In this, there is a vision of humans rising up as one declaring certain sectors of civilian inhabitation barred to all forms of military action both domestic and foreign, the holistic and universal prospect of nuclear disarmament, and the basic affirmation of security protected by an identity and an ethos that should be well-defined and collectively upheld.

Finally, there should be the formation of a citizenship that maintains an allegiance to the principles outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Articles of Affirmation, and several other international covenants that those who identify with a planetary citizenship base their allegiances and political attitudes.

 

The Why

The failures of all global institutions has been the cumulative consequence of a failure to introduce principles of human rights and internationalism into domestic societies and make them function at a grassroots level as well as at the superstructure. A popular culture and identity upholding human rights has the capacity to change this. This is in contrast to the United Nations that has resonated an elitist mentality by only allowing the most qualified to be associated with the organization in proactively advocating its agendas. Thus, a strong anti-UN mentality has grown up around its refusal to engage society and the organization's evident facelessness. Even though pro-UN movements exist, these are sidelined by the UN leadership not wanting to recognize the potential in engaging civil society and people's movements to circumvent national interest. The entire international community therefore possesses no expansive mobility because international ideals have been confused with national interest because the United Nations has only engaged governments while leaving civil society fragmented, powerless, and unable to act against sovereign power structures  in order to defend humanistic virtues. In this sense the United Nations have sold out an opportunity to engage the prime advocators of human rights in favor of governments, entities that in an anarchic international system can't practically afford to pay human rights any more than lip-service. Continue >