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WORLD PEACE MOVEMENT

Principles, Purposes, and Methods

Principles

1. The earth is one world, and its human beings must learn to live in peace with each other or perish.

2. The human race is one and interdependent; the good of each depends on the good of all and our love for each other.

3. The way of love and peace is nonviolent and does not hurt anyone.

4. The uniting power of love, peace, and friendship is stronger than the divisive strife of hatred, war, and enmity.

5. The conversion of a hostile and militaristic world into a peaceful global society is primarily an educational process of changing consciousness from fear, suspicion, and mistrust to love, confidence, and trust in the human capacity to solve problems, cooperate, and establish justice.

6. Every human being has the equal right to life, liberty, security, and justice.

7. Respect for individual freedom and dignity requires the protection of all human rights by means of a universal system of justice.

8. Justice in human affairs evolves through democratic means and due process of law.

9. The use of force is justified only when a legal authority, designated by consent of the people, is required to restrain and bring to justice a violator of the law.

10. A law enforcement official has legal authority only within the territory of the people who designate that official. No nation has the sovereign right to use any force outside its national borders.

11. War, the use of force outside one's territory, the threat to use such force, and the sale or transfer of military weapons outside one's territory should be prohibited by international law.

12. International wars and internal oppression of human rights are allowed to occur because there is no enforceable world law.

13. Enforceable world law and justice may be established by instituting a democratically elected federal world government to protect human rights and solve international disputes through a compulsory system of jurisprudence.

14. In a federal world government each nation would maintain sovereignty over its own internal affairs, except that the federal world government would have legal authority to protect human rights and settle international disputes.

15. Education, communication, democratic process, and nonviolent protest of wrongs are the purest and most effective means of social reform. Peace and justice are attained only by peaceful and just means.

16. Biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons are so horrendously deadly to people and damaging to the environment for such long periods of time that only deluded minds seriously contemplate their use.

17. Belief in deterrence of war by massive armaments and nuclear weapons is based on fear, suspicion, mistrust, and insecurity; this weapons policy perpetuates more fear, suspicion, mistrust, and insecurity in the world.

18. Those people who have moral courage and faith in the justice of their economic and political philosophies and in the nonviolent social change of democratic processes will support enforceable world law instead of massive national armaments.

19. Huge expenditures on massive armaments of destruction are a colossal waste of human and material resources, causing poverty, inflation, and a lowering of the quality of life. Such resources could otherwise be used for improvement of the environment, food production and distribution, education, health, and other beneficial purposes.

Purposes

1. To awaken the inner peace that dwells in the hearts of all beings.

2. To create the consciousness of world peace and to foster friendship and harmony among all people.

3. To promote and protect the human rights of all people, regardless of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, as delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations.

4. To assure international justice and universal human rights by developing ways to preserve them, such as a federal world government, democratically elected by all the people of the earth, with a world court of justice having compulsory jurisdiction to decide all cases of international disputes and violations of world law and human rights, and with a world peacekeeping force of individuals from all countries who would be dedicated to the whole of humanity and who would enforce world law and the decisions of the world court of justice by the most peaceful means possible.

5. To achieve disarmament and the total elimination of all biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in the entire world.

6. To purify and maintain a clean and ecologically balanced environment for our health and prosperity and for future generations.

7. To alleviate poverty and hunger, and to improve the health, Education, and living conditions of all people on earth.

8. To encourage all schools from the primary grades to the university to offer peace education from a global perspective.

Methods

1. To live peacefully and lovingly as examples to all.

2. To educate ourselves and others by every means to increase awareness of the oneness of life, the interdependence of all beings, the ecological unity of the environment, the way of love and nonviolence, and the urgent need for transnational attitudes, programs, and institutions for the sake of mutual survival.

3. To communicate by every means the truth and the facts which reveal and nourish world peace.

4. To pray and meditate and expand the consciousness of peace.

5. To respect and nurture human rights with tolerance and understanding.

6. To refrain from contributing to the preparations and activities of war and from hostile and aggressive attitudes.

7. To protest nonviolently against oppression, militarism, nuclear weapons, pollution, and violations of human rights.

8. To work for the total elimination of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in every country.

9. To promote and practice world citizenship, and to work to organize a World constitutional convention to plan the democratic institution of a federal world government.

10. To use all human wisdom, science, and technology in developing and purifying the environment, eradicating hunger and sickness in all countries, and making global education available to all people.

11. To communicate closely with all peace organizations and dedicated peace workers to facilitate the forming of a united worldwide network to bring about the establishment of world peace.

Copyright © 2020 by Sanderson Beck


This has been published in the book PEACE OR BUST. For ordering information, please click here.

THE FUTURE AND HOW: A Philosopher's Vision

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