The Realities of One World

October 26, 1980
Port Charlotte

The Realities of One World

If I said all I wanted to say about the realities of one world, use all the sources I have reviewed, we’d be here all day. When starting to construct an outline for a 25-30 minute presentation, I had two pages covered with points I wanted to make. So I have pared my emphasis to three:

1)The United Nations
2)The importance of greater knowledge in the world and they who dwell therein
3)The critical matter of what we permit to register on our social, political, and ethical consciousness as we form, maintain, or change our attitudes.

1. It is 35 years and two days since the United Nations Charter came into effect, October 24, 1945. The dream of peace was taking form after the unutterable havoc, death, and misery of WWII. The charter members expressed a determination to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which has brought untold suffering to mankind and pledged themselves to live as good neighbors.

Woody Allen, the comedian whose humor can be serious and penetrating as well as funny, is quoted (by Sidney Harris), “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

The U.N. offered and still offers another choice.

Whether enthusiasts or skeptics of the U.N., most of you know as much or more about the U.N. than I do. Therefore, I will mention in outline form, some, but not all, of the accomplishments of the U.N.

Peacekeeping – in Cyprus, and several times in the Middle East.

UNICEF – Care for the well-being of children all over the world.

WHO – In a 10-year campaign has almost eradicated smallpox, eliminating the need for vaccination at an expected worldwide saving of 2 billion per (U.S. share of saving about 200 million annually)

World Meteorological Organization provides information on long-range climate changes – Health Watch has doubled the weather prediction data available. [CJW note: just a glimpse]

Pauline Frederick, dean of U.N. correspondents, in a radio report Friday evening, asked where else but the U.N. do friends and enemies gather in a peaceful forum so regularly, so peacefully? She cited a recent Roper poll that 3/4ths of Americans favor the U.N., and by 2 to 1 favor increased participation by the U.S. in the U.N.

Of course the U.N. has not lived up to the bright hopes of many. But as Pauline Frederick pointed out, it cannot do what the powerful nations will not let it do.

Peace has not prevailed in the world. Wars between the various nations since 1945 have cost 22 million lives even though the nuclear weapon has not been used since August 6, 1945, when the atom bomb our nation dropped on Hiroshima instantly killed 78,000.

Many believe that there is present need for reform of the U.N. Charter. [CJW note: Sec Couric – funding; Charter Review Comm] There will be decades of complexities to unravel for perceptions to coincide. It would be self-defeating to expect too much, too soon. There is no textbook of easy answers. But as H.L. Mencken once wrote, a simple answer to a complex question is neat, plausible, and wrong.

But the U.N. is the window on the world where all may look out and all may look in. There is nothing like unto it.

2. However, more important than structural reforms in the U.N. is a wider, deeper knowledge of what our world is.

In usual discussion, most persons refer to the Free World and the Communist World and the Third World (sometimes a 4th World). Such may describe present political and economic divisions. But this is one world. Was it Adlai Stevenson who first used the term “Spaceship Earth?” [CJW note: as in, we are all aboard Spaceship Earth] That’s what it is – 2/3rds water, not separate oceans but one great sea that laps the shores of all continents and islands n which live 4 billion persons.

Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank (and soon to retire) in an address at the University of Chicago in 1979 said, “Global defense procedures now exceed 400 billion dollars a year.” He analyzed what that vast sum meant:

36 million persons under arms in the world’s active and paramilitary forces and 25 million in the reserves.

30 million civilians in military-related occupations.

“Public expenditures on weapons research and development now approach $30 billion a year, and mobilize the talents of half a million scientists and engineers throughout the world.

“On an average around the world, one tax dollar in six is devoted to military expenditure, and that means that at the present levels of spending the average taxpayer can expect over his lifetime to give up to 3 to 4 years of his income to the arms race.”

McNamara also pointed out that the [CJW note: the most advanced technology is the machinery of death] 30 billion a year is a greater research effort than is devoted to any other activity on earth and it consumes more public research money than is spent on the problems of energy, health, education, and food, combined.

Those are the very areas [energy, health, education, food] where this world most needs to apply its brains and treasure.

One of the best contributions to a necessary knowledge of the world today and the people living in it is the NORTH-SOUTH, a report of the Independent Commission on International Issues. Willy Brandt, former President of West Germany, headed a team of scholars and experts in compiling a report devastating in its findings and challenging to every one who has a concern not only for the poor, hungry, and sick persons on the planet but also for the very continuation of human life.

The premise of the book is that if the planet is divided into two parts, North and South, the Northern Hemisphere contains the affluent industrial nations and the Southern, the poor and deprived. Acknowledging there are exceptions (two industrialized countries, Australian and New Zealand are south of the equator, Brazil is booming and the oil-rich countries are “south”, broadly speaking), the north countries are rich and developed, the south countries are poor and developing.

We assert as a principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association that we believe in the supreme worth and dignity of every human being. if we believe that, then information such as contained in this report should jangle our awareness. [CJW note: can only highlight]

Consider poverty: Estimates of the number of destitute people range from 700 million to 800 million. For them there is no work, or when it is, the pay is very low. Their flimsy homes have neither piped water nor sanitation. Health services are seldom available. There is little or no education for the children. No social security. Hunger is never far away. Disease is widespread.

Lack of safe water is a major cause of poor health. 20 to 25 million children below the age of five die each year and 1/3rd of those deaths are from diarrhea caught from bad water. The WHO estimates that $3 per child would be sufficient to immunize every newborn child in the developing world against the 6 most common childhood diseases.

Consider overpopulation (p. 105): “Over one million people are added to the population every five days, and it will increase in the 1908s and 1990s close to 2 billion, which is more than the total number of people in the world during the first decade of this century.”

Education for family planning and birth control (p. 107) must continue and expand. There is a basis for hope. China during the 1970s reduced its rate of growth from 2.3 to 1% and aims at zero growth by 2000. Other countries – Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, the first countries to adopt systematic family planning, have reduced their birth rates by close to 1/3rd in 20 years. There are other examples.

In addition, “Many countries have shown that economic and social development itself helps to limit population growth....” (p. 106)

If a few of the billions now sunk in the world’s war machines could be invested in the poor, developing countries, these could be a few of the consequences:

p. 14: The military expenditure of one half-day would suffice to finance the whole malaria program of the WHO.

A modern tank costs about one million dollars; that amount could improve storage facilities for 100,000 tons of rice from rot & rats, and thus save 4000 tons or more annually; one person can live on just over one pound of rice per day.

½ of 1% of one year’s world military expenditure would pay for all the farm equipment needed to increase food production and approach self-sufficiency in food-deficit low-income countries by 1990.

The justification for advocating such transfer of dollars, rubles, francs, pounds, is not alone based on the worth and dignity of all persons. There is a secondary reason – self-interest. It is very difficult to think of a problem that is not global. We are interdependent.

The North depends on the South for resources: coffee, cocoa, tea, bananas, jute, tropical hardwood. The U.S. gets increasing amounts of raw materials from this poor, developing South – 50% of its tin, rubber, and manganese, substantial amounts of tungsten and cobalt, not to mention oil.

One out of every 8 jobs in the U.S. now depends on exports; one out of every 20 jobs in the U.S. depends on exports to the “South.” [CJW note: one out of three acres of crop is for export]

In T.S. Eliot’s MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL, Thomas says, “I know that history at all times draws the strangest consequences from the remotest cause.”

3. I said at the beginning that it is a critical matter what we permit to be registered on our consciousness. The English Actor Robert Morley, commenting on a play that folded, said, “there was trouble casting an audience.” I guess we do not often enough permit ourselves to attend the play of the world’s drama. [CJW note: There is trouble casting an audience. If the drama were in our living rooms, we would be involved deeply. The whole planet is the living room.]

The world is more than self and family and friends. We belong to a human community and that includes the whole planet. “Everything that has anything to do with anybody else has something to do with me.” [CJW note: NS ... p. 29]

In choruses from the Rock, T.S. Eliot has lines,

“What life have you if you have not
life together?
There is no live that is not in
community....
And now you live dispersed
on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who
is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
...
Much to cast down, much to build,
much to restore;
Let the work not delay, time and
the arm not waste;
Let the clay be dug from the pit,
let the saw cut the stone,
Let the fire not be quenched
in the forge.”