Beyond War and Diplomacy: A Giant Step for Mankind

Abstract

War is the mass murder of human beings and the mass destruction of cities in the public interest. It is as old as recorded human history. This leads people to suppose that war is a natural human phenomenon, part of our evolutionary genetic inheritance. But wars are the work of states, which do not have an evolutionary genetic inheritance. Wars are simply a form of collective human evil. Traditional diplomacy, as the manipulation of relations between states, connives in that evil. States are systems of ideas which include more or less sophisticated justifications of war. The human mind has evolved in three cognitive stages over the course of human history. Those stages are diachronic, co-existing through time. The third cognitive state of the human mind allows us now to make a world without war. But the sordid justifications of war persist and, in the 21st century, are being strengthened by the emerging of new forms of old atavisms. They can only be overcome by a revival of the ancient idea of the essential unity of humanity.