~ Idea 500 ~ 22 November 1995
The United Nations has done a tremendous job in paving the way to our entry into a new century and millennium. It has done it with its vast statistical global services covering practically every aspect of humanity and of the Earth, with its several world conferences on fundamental global issues, its stock-takings in yearly reports on the state of the world in many sectors, its stock-takings during the 50th anniversaries of the UN and of several of its agencies, and the holding of world celebrations on global issues, values and achievements. (see Introduction to the Third One Hundred Ideas.)
In addition, the UN has received the invaluable help and pioneering work of a number of Independent World Commissions of Eminent Personalities, on important world issues requiring attention. Here is the list of these commissions:
The World Commission on North-South Relations headed by former Chancellor Willy Brandt of Germany,
The World Commission on Disarmament headed by Mr. Olof Palme, former Prime Minister of Sweden.
The World Commission on the Environment headed by Mrs. Gro Harlan Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway.
The World Commission on Global Governance, headed by Mr. Ingvàr Carlsson, former Prime Minister of Sweden.
The World Commission on Funding of the United Nations, headed by Ms. Hazel Henderson, US economist,
The World Commission on Population and the Quality of Life, headed by Mrs. Maria de Lourdes Pintalsigo, former Prime Minister of Portugal,
The World Commission on Art and Culture, headed by former UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuellar,.
The World Commission on Education in the 21st century, headed by Jacques Delors, former President of the European Economic Community,
The World Commission on the Oceans, headed by Mario Soares, the Prime Minister of Portugal*.
I recommend that in 1999 or 2000, the UN General Assembly should hold a special session or convene a World Conference on our entry into a new century and millennium, to review the conclusions and recommendations of all the above preparatory work, unprecedented in human history and design a core vision of what our Earth and humanity should aim at and look like in the future.
*For further subjects on which I recommend the establishment of new world commissions, see Index "World Commissions New Proposals". Former heads of states, former heads of UN agencies and philanthropists may wish to create such commissions.

~ Idea 501 ~ 23 November 1995
It would be good if all human beings would express, write down their basic beliefs, commitments and dreams for their own lives and for a better world. It could be done at several points of life: as a child, as a youth, as a couple, at parenthood, at grand-parenthood, at retirement, even at the moment of death.
We should also leave behind us a record of our wisdom, beliefs, joys and achievements, a testament to those who will follow. I did that when I left to my children the books Most of All They Taught Me Happiness and What War Taught Me About Peace, to the religions New Genesis, Shaping a Global Spirituality, to the world The Birth of a Global Civilization, to educators my World Core Curriculum, to women my novels Sima Mon Amour and First Lady of the World, and to the United Nations my Testament to the UN.
And I continue to do it every day, in these 2000 ideas for a better world and other writings, correspondence, journal and numerous speeches.

~ Idea 502 ~ 24 November 1995
During my half a century of world service I have seen these three basic phases in human history since the end of World War II:
1945 to the early 1970's: a comprehensive, unprecedented period of Humanism (avoid wars, prevent early childhood deaths, increase the well-being of all humans, defend universal human rights, put an end to colonialism and apartheid, increase literacy, longevity and good health, etc.)
1970's: while the agendas of the preceding period were still incomplete and were overtaken by the world population explosion, a new major world concern came to the fore: the Environment (UNESCO's World Biosphere Conference in 1968 and the UN World Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972), in other words: we humans on one side and the Earth and nature around us.
1980's: the new phenomena of the depletion of the ozonosphere and menacing climatic changes made the Earth priority No. 1 of our concerns and reduced humanity and economic development to second place.
This represents a fundamental change in the evolution of this planet. From now on the world will never be the same. This is why we should no longer speak of the need for World Government, but of Earth Government, the wise management, saving and preservation of our planetary home of which we are an integral part and whose further evolution now depends largely on us.
The UN Charter of 1945 does not use the words Earth, nature, natural resources and the environment. Why? Because at that time we considered the Earth to be unlimited in resources for a relatively small world population. The western countries also saw, and still see humanity as separate and superior to the natural world. This view has accomplished miracles for the human race. But humanity must now change its course, dominant objectives, values and institutions if we want to prevent disasters in the evolution of the Earth and of the human race.

~ Idea 503 to 505 ~ 25 to 27 November 1995
Once it is conscious of the imperative need for proper Earth government, humanity will have to respond to the following complaints by the Earth:
Idea 503 "Why did I have to take all of a sudden a population increase from
25 November 1995 2.5 billion people in 1952 to 5.6 billion today*, more than a doubling in less than fifty years?"
We could answer as an excuse: It happened out of sheer ignorance. After the war the rich countries and the United Nations wanted to prevent the early death of innumerable children in the poor countries. They died young because of epidemics, bad health conditions, malnutrition and hunger. But having no population statistics for the world and for most of these countries, we did not tell the parents that they would no longer need to give birth to an average of six children per family to have at least two of them left to till the land and to take care of their old age. Until 1952 we did not even know what the world population was! When the UN organized for the first time in human history decent world statistics and world censuses, we discovered that women did not have more children, but that children no longer died early (the mortality rate per year fell from 34 per thousand to 14 per thousand). When this was discovered it was too late, the children were born and a young population is highly reproductive. The UN warned nations and humanity by means of world population conferences and every other possible means that a population explosion was upon us. But religions and other factors opposed it. Nevertheless, these efforts saved you from 2.2 billion more humans on your surface by the year 2000. Instead of 8.3 billion human beings in that year we will be only 6.1 billion.
Idea 504 The Earth:
26 November 1995 "Yes, but I hear that at the present rate you will be 8.5 billion** in the year 2050 and stabilize only at 11 billion around the year 3000. You still increase by 86 million*** more people every year. You will end up by destroying me."
Our answer:
"We continue to do our utmost. Each year the figure of population growth decreases by a few more millions."
Idea 505 The Earth:
27 November 1995 I have another major complaint, namely while there is a population explosion in the poor countries you have also triggered off a wild overconsumption explosion in the already high-consuming rich countries. In the latter, an individual consumes 30 times more of my resources than in the poor countries. From my point of view, namely the damages you do to my body, your world population statistics are wrong: while the developing countries count 4.4 billion people, the rich countries' 1.2 billion should be multiplied by 30, i.e. they represent 36 billion people."
* 1998: 5.9 billion
** 1998: 9.3 billion and stabilizing at 10.7 billion in the year 2200.
*** 1998: 80 million

~ Idea 506 to 519 ~ 28 November to
11 December 1995
The Earth would have other complaints, she could ask for example:
WHY EACH MINUTE
Idea 506
28 November 1995 do you destroy 21 hectares (52 acres) of my tropical forests (38 million acres a year) after having destroyed most of the forests in your "rich" countries?
Idea 507
29 November 1995 do you consume 35.725 barrels of oil to run around in cars and circle around me in airplanes?
Idea 508
30 November 1995 do you let 50 tons of fertile soil be wasted or blown off my cropland?
Idea 509
1 December 1995 do you add 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide to my atmosphere, to the air you breathe?
WHY EACH HOUR
Idea 510
2 December 1995 do you let 685 hectares of productive dryland become desert?
Idea 511
3 December 1995 do you spend 120 million dollars on military expenditures, a trillion a year?
Idea 512
4 December 1995 are 55 people poisoned and 5 killed by pesticides?
Idea 513
5 December 1995 are 60 new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States alone, over 5,000,000 cases each year with 20,000 cases leading to death, because of the thinning of my ozonosphere which protected you from the ultra-violet rays of the sun?
WHY EACH DAY
Idea 514
6 December 1995 do 25,000 people die of water shortage and contamination?
Idea 515
7 December 1995 are 10 tons of nuclear waste generated in 420 nuclear plants?
Idea 516
8 December 1995 do 250,000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere, killing lakes and devastating remaining forests?
Idea 517
9 December 1995 are 60 tons of plastic packages and 372 tons of fishing nets dumped into the seas by commercial fishermen, killing fishes, sea birds and sea mammals?
Idea 518
10 December 1995 does every five hours a species become extinct on my surface?
WHY DURING A HUMAN LIFETIME
Idea 519
11 December 1995 do you dump so much garbage and waste on me: while the average is 150 times of the weight of a person in a poor country over a lifetime, why does the average American leave behind a mountain of waste 4,000 times his own weight?
And the Earth could go on. She could say:
"I regret to have no figures on what you dump into the seas and oceans which cover 71 percent of my body and contain the largest number and longest living of my species. The tonnage of poisons, chemicals, colors, decayed materials and radioactive elements which flow into my world ocean through my arteries, the rivers, must be staggering. Soon will come the day when fishes and seafood will no longer be edible."
I heard her also murmur:
"I almost wish that you humans would put coloring materials in the exhausts of your cars and airplanes to see what you add to the air which goes into your lungs and which I made so pure for you. Thank God, it begins to show in the form of smog over your cities."

~ Idea 520 to 521 ~ 12 to 13 December 1995
As a former UN official I would comment:
Dear Earth. you are not the only one to complain. Humanity has its own miseries which remain major challenges to proper human and Earth government. After all, humans are your children, the flesh of your flesh, we are living Earth, our body is 70 percent water and 30 percent earth. Thus, we cannot consider that there is proper Earth government and justice
Idea 520
12 December 1995 when no decent physical lives have been assured to all 5.6 billion inhabitants of the planet: one billion still suffer from hunger; the average income of the 560 million people of the poorest countries is 300 dollars a year; in the better-off poor countries it is 900 dollars a year; while in the rich countries it is 21,600 dollars a year:
Idea 521
13 December 1995 when no good mental lives have been provided to all the world's people: there are still 900 million adult illiterates, 130 million children without schooling and 100 million children abandon school prematurely.

~ Idea 522 to 524 ~ 14 to 16 December 1995
Idea 522
14 December 1995 God or the cosmic forces would intervene at that point and exclaim: "You forget us, the past and the future, the universe and eternity: how could you consider this planet to be properly governed
Idea 523
15 December 1995 when you let die valuable ways of life and beliefs such as the simple and frugal lives of hundreds of millions of rural people, small family businesses, small village communities, the spirituality of hundreds of millions of people, local art and cultures, the ways of life in harmony with nature of 300 million indigenous people around this globe?
Idea 524
16 December 1995 when no or little attention is given to the long term future of this planet. There is not a single Ministry of the Future in any government. The Iroquois are wiser than you: they do not take any decision without considering its potential effects on the seventh generation, which means in five hundred years."

~ Idea 525 ~ 17 December 1995
When I was reading the above, coming from Costa Rica and flying over the United States, seeing from the air its sooner or later uninhabitable cities, its Earth devouring highways, superhighways and freeways with millions of cars running in all directions to work more, build more, invent more, produce more, sell more, advertise more, make more profit, and consume more, when I saw the blankets of yellow-brown polluted atmospheres, I thought for myself that the time would soon come when Americans will leave their country in order to live and survive in clean air and more Earth-conscious countries like Costa Rica and other undestroyed countries. Alas, these countries are now themselves imperiled by the imported ideals of producing more, selling more, consuming more, making more profits and are losing their sound habits as a result of advertisement.
I was very sad. What I saw below me was not progress, it was destruction, an all-out war against the Earth, an evolutionary aberration of the human species, a headway towards abyss. This was World War III, a more devastating war than any other in human history.
Note: See the important book World War III, Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium by Michael Tobias, Bear and Co. Publishers, Santa Fe NM 87504-2860.

~ Idea 526 ~ 18 December 1995
But at the word evolution my eternal optimism took over again. I remembered that in a manuscript I had with me, The Art of Living, Volume I Our Lives in the Magnificent Scene of Creation, I had a hopeful answer to the above predicaments. Here it is:
"Humanity will now enter a fascinating new period of evolution: Superimposed on Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest through competition, to Mendell's law of heredity, to the genetic codification of our experiences through DNA and RNA, we are now blessed with the birth of a global, planetary consciousness which makes us recognize our false avenues, wrong values and errors. A new philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology, values system, ethics, morality, spirituality, education, politics will be born at the end of this century. We are still in the kindergarten of that period, but we are in it. Henceforth, less and less will we wait until we burn our fingers before we react, as we did with the population explosion and the environment.
A few years ago, I suggested to Erika Erdmann, the Librarian and research aide to Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry, and to Professor Leonide, a reputed French anthropologist, to create a world association of long-term evolutionary scientists. My hunch was that these scientists were becoming more optimistic as a result of the birth of global, planetary consciousness which makes us aware of our mistakes and problems and helps us solve them. It proved correct as their survey revealed. The theory of "chaos" according to which the universe and human life make no sense is being abandoned. The new theory is that on any planet having life in the cosmos one species sooner or later evolves to a point of gaining a total knowledge of the planet it lives on. It will then be in its power either to continue evolution or to bring it to an end. The first course will require that former, obsolete values will be replaced by new ones which take evolution into account. These new values are a major new evolutionary imperative. They need urgent scientific study.
In my view, humanity has reached that stage on Planet Earth: we must revise our basic values, current beliefs and objectives and acquire a new evolutionary wisdom which respects the laws of nature and of the cosmos. If nature has produced the incredible, sophisticated variety of innumerable living species around us, each one a true miracle, it is simply not possible that the human species is not a miracle too, perhaps the most advanced of all.
The future of the Earth will be bright and life will not become extinct if we decide so on the eve of a new century and millennium. We can enter a thrilling, transcendent new global, cosmic phase of evolution, if the human species understands its momentous, incredibly important evolutionary role."

~ Idea 527 to 547 ~ 19 December 1995
to 8 January 1996
To the preceding I added a list of 21 basic segments of human life on this planet to be reconsidered and rethought from scratch as we enter the 21st century:
Idea 527 a new political system for planet Earth
Idea 528 a new economics
Idea 529 a new education
Idea 530 a new media and communications
Idea 531 a new democracy
Idea 532 a new global leadership
Idea 533 a spiritual Renaissance and inter-religious cooperation
Idea 534 a non-violent human society
Idea 535 a well preserved planet
Idea 536 a decent well being for all humans
Idea 537 a stabilization of the world population
Idea 538 right human settlements on the planet
Idea 539 the disarmament, demilitarization, denuclearization and global
security of the planet
Idea 540 a new science and technology
Idea 541 a new anthropology, sociology and new ways of life
Idea 542 a new human biology
Idea 543 a new philosophy, cosmology and long-term view of evolution
Idea 544 a new world ethics and justice
Idea 545 a new world psychology
Idea 546 a new science and art of planetary management
Idea 547 a new art and culture

~ Idea 548 ~ 9 January 1996
In response to these challenges, in addition to the work of the UN and its world conferences, a multitude of initiatives of people's movements (the non-governmental organizations in the world represent 250 million people) and thinkers are springing up all around the world, to mention but a few of them:
The independent world commissions, the peoples' assemblies parallel to the UN Conferences, the yearly State of the World Forum in San Francisco, the United Religions Initiative, think-tanks like the Club of Rome on the Limits of Growth, the Club of Budapest on Planetary Consciousness and the Club of Tokyo to save the Earth and Humanity. These are all manifestations of the birth of a global brain and consciousness to the human species, probably the most important aspect of the phenomenon of globalization.
All of the above points to the urgency and absolute need for a proper Earth government.
This should become the priority item on the agenda of world affairs on the eve of the 21st century and millennium. The poor countries who have been waiting for world justice should be the first to request it after 50 years of promises from the rich countries.
There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We therefore absolutely and urgently need new ways. The less we lose time, the less species and nature will disappear.
Faced with this momentous challenge we must remember these words by Henry Thoreau: "For every thousand people hacking at the branches of evil, only one attacks the roots. Attacking the roots is unpopular." Well, we must conceive a people's awakening, insurgence or revolution which will make attacking the roots popular.

~ Idea 549 ~ 10 January 1995
Oliver Holmes, the US author, wrote:
"A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension."
Please dear reader, all heads of states, all businessmen, all inhabitants of this Earth stretch your minds to the primacy of our Mother Earth and of a better world for a humanity to be limited in numbers.

~ Idea 550 ~ 11 January 1995
One of the mishaps in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries was that humanity embarked upon economics (oikos, nomos, in Greek, the organizing, management of the home) before ecology (oikos, logos, the knowledge, the science of our home, the Earth). The proper balance between the two has yet to be found. It is the whole agenda of our future. The concept of "sustainable development" is a first step in the right direction. But there is more to it: we, as humans must cooperate with the Earth, our Mother, and make it an even better, more beautiful home and success. We can plant flowers where there are not any now.

~ Idea 551 ~ 12 January 1995
Often the invisible shapes the visible. Thus when a child inflates a balloon, the invisible air will shape the balloon.
It is the same with the invisible energies of humans: the invisible forces of our brain, (nowadays a global brain) can decide to make this Earth a paradise and as a result we will shape it into a paradise.

~ Idea 552 ~ 13 January 1995
Perhaps, out of my passion for life and for this miraculous Earth, a new theory of evolution can be shaped, namely that with our recently acquired tremendous human knowledge of the universe and of our planet we will henceforth be more than the mere preservers and savers of the Earth, but will be her instruments, her most advanced evolutionary agents, her children endowed with the evolutionary task to make it an even more astonishing planet and cosmic evolutionary success, perhaps the most advanced, ultimate masterpiece of the universe and God. Since each species born from nature is a miracle, we are certainly a miracle too.

~ Idea 553 ~ 14 January 1995
The preceding will require not only a global, planetary and cosmic consciousness and education, but also an evolutionary consciousness and education (see Our Place in Time of the tables of the World Core Curriculum for education and the Framework for World Media Coverage in volume I of the first 500 ideas).

~ Idea 554 ~ 15 January 1995
We need a peaceful revolution by all the peoples of this planet, a true quantum jump into a new civilization, peaceful, global, just, demilitarized, deprofitized, well preserved, continuing to evolve planet.

~ Idea 555 ~ 16 January 1995
Perhaps this is the message, the dream which Jesus and all other great emissaries of the universe, brought us from outer-space. Now, at long last, science and religion, all the religions, all nations, all human entities and institutions, all humans can cooperate in this prodigious task.

~ Idea 556 ~ 17 January 1995
We had in recent years world conferences on the Earth's population, on the biosphere, on the environment, on climate, on the ozonosphere, on outer-space, on the seas and oceans, on the deserts, on water, on new forms of energy, on food and many other global subjects as reported in these 2000 ideas. There are still some missing, especially on the atmosphere, (the air we breathe), and the total global condition of the Earth, i.e. a synthesis or holistic view of all the above.
But most important of all would be a world conference on proper Earth government, on the contribution of humanity to the further evolution of planet Earth, to make it the ultimate success of the cosmic forces of the universe.

~ Idea 557 to 564 ~ 18 to 27 January 1996
How would I see the agenda, the task of such a world conference? The task is so gigantic, so mind-boggling, that perhaps humanity would have to conceive several preliminary world conferences before holding a final one on proper Earth government in the next century. Here are my proposals, in addition to not giving up:
Idea 557
18 January 1996 Since business was first to globalize itself world-wide, far beyond governments and religions, and since corporations are now for all practical purposes ruling the world, we should give them the opportunity, even request them to hold
a World Conference on Proper Earth Government through the Free Market System
The world business community should be asked to answer how they would take care of the above complaints of the Earth, of humanity, of the past and of the future, how they would provide for a well preserved planet and the well-being of all humanity, the five basic harmonies and the long-term evolution of the planet.
Such a conference would bring together the heads of the major world corporations, banks and stock exchanges, the World Bank, the IMF, the GATT, the new World Trade Organization, the International Chamber of Commerce and similar organizations
Idea 558
19 January 1996 Since the United Nations is the only world-wide, universal organization at present available, since it had fifty years of valuable experience, since it paved the way to proper Earth government and had many significant successes, instead of putting it on the defensive, ceaseless criticism and reduction, humanity should honestly ask itself if the best way is not to consider a second generation United Nations upgraded by a true quantum jump into a proper Earth preserving and well-being and justice ensuring organization for our planet.
I would therefore propose
a World Conference on proper Earth government through a second generation United Nations for the 21st century
Such a conference would have at its disposal a host of proposals and ideas for the strengthening of the UN made by various UN bodies and outside organizations, including my own in these 2000 ideas
Idea 559
20 January 1996 The star-performance, often called "miracle" of the American States in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 200 years ago which put an end to a similar political chaos in North America between numerous independent states at the time could be repeated in
a New Philadelphia World Convention for the Creation of the United States of the World
It would review the state of world democracy and would have to add to the system of balance of power the new dominant power of business.
"Philadelphia II" is a project of US Senator Mike Gravel who proposes a convention for the writing of a charter for a Global Constitution.
Idea 560
21 January 1996 a World Conference of all world federalist and world government associations and movements to propose a federal constitution for the Earth.
Idea 561
22 January 1996 The world has recently witnessed another political miracle, similar to the American miracle in Philadelphia: the birth of the European Union of 16 European countries which have finally put an end to their antagonisms and wars, decided to unite and cooperate and have abolished the borders between them. Every European can now settle anywhere in the Union, can elect a European Parliament at the same time as he elects his National Parliament and can have his government condemned by a supra-national European Court of Human Rights when his basic rights are violated. Also the European Union has its own European budget and tax system and is not dependent on national contributions as is the United Nations. In 1990 the European Economic Community had already a budget of 7.4 billion dollars, ten times the UN budget. This example is so hopeful, so powerful that I recommend to the European Countries to convene
a World Conference for the creation of a World Union on the pattern of the European Union.
Idea 562
23 January 1996 About ten years ago or more, I suggested to President Bush that in view of the creation of the European Union, the American countries from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego should create an all American community and future union. He listened to me but instead of creating that community in a common joint effort of all American countries, the US negotiated separate trade agreements first with Canada, then with Mexico and now the Latin American countries created their own Mercosur (the Southern Latin American market) and the future of an American community and future union is in doubt.
The continental approach to a world community and union remains an important avenue. One could conceive five continental unions: the European Union, an American, an African, an Asian, and an Australian Union. A World Union could be constructed as a super-structure and common political system of the five continents. I therefore propose
a World Conference of the planet's five continents on a Proper Earth Government through continental unions and a World Union.
Idea 563
24 January 1996 A very novel approach to the organization of humanity and its proper relations with the Earth is to follow the biological models offered by the formation and admirable functioning of numerous communities of cells, bacteria and living species observable in nature and now well studied. This is a tremendously advanced science which opens up the most interesting and promising vistas. A bio-political science can and should now be rapidly developed on its basis. It would offer a very needed political revolution of the Earth political system and science. It would include the bio-regional approaches already existing in certain areas such as the Arctic Forum and the big river basins and mountain chains cooperative agreements mentioned in these 2000 ideas. The prophetess of this new field is the Greek-American evolution biologist, Elizabet Sathouris who launched in the early 1980's the Gaia hypothesis in her book, Gaia: the Human Journey to Cosmos.
I therefore recommend the holding of
a World Conference on Earth and Human Government through new bio-political modes patterned on examples from nature.
Idea 564
25 January 1996 Last, but not least, humanity has reached a point when we must consider our human presence, past, present and future on this particular planet in the universe. We have now a tremendous information on the universe in which we live. In addition to our total consciousness of our Earth and its global evolution we are now also acquiring and developing a cosmic consciousness of the universe. This is the greatest of all our advances in human history. But the mysteries of infinity and eternity still escape us and will remain outside human and scientific grasp. This has the result of bringing together the spirituality or basic "faiths" of all religions and science. God, the gods or the Great Spirit or Spirits and their emissaries, prophets and human incarnations like Jesus gave humanity at its early stages a cosmic, universal, all-encompassing faith or feeling for the mysteries of the cosmos, for the norms of love and for the miracle of life and norms of behavior between all humans and with other species and nature. These messages or "revelations" should not be neglected. They contain some of the profoundest answers to human behavior, fulfillment, and survival. Great was our astonishment in the environmental crisis to discover the wisdom and rules of behavior towards nature dictated by the Great Spirit to the indigenous people of this planet. The world's 5000 religions are filled with incredible wisdom regarding human morality, belief in life, environmental adaptation, survival and future evolution. This is strongly coming to the fore at this time as manifested in the following:
1. the dream and plan of my compatriot Robert Schuman from Alsace-Lorraine to see the European Union, which started with a coal and steel community followed by an economic community, followed by a political union, culminate in an all spiritual European Union including the Eastern European countries especially "Holy Mother Russia".
2. the creation in 85 countries, including as a third party in the United States, of the Natural Law Party based on the premise that the laws of nature should guide humans in their political behavior and organization. There is only one step to recognize that natural laws are in reality cosmic laws.
3.the San Francisco Initiative to create a United Religions Organization similar to the United Nations also born in that city, where all religions of the world would cooperate, define what they have in common, provide their wisdom on human behavior and morality, and right relations with nature, and the creation of God. In the process they will hopefully reduce and progressively give up their fundamentalism in favor of a global spirituality the same way as nations in the United Nations have reduced the national fundamentalism called sovereignty. May God help us that
a World Conference be convened on proper Earth government through what the world's religions have in common in terms of universal, global spirituality and world-wide human experience.
Idea 565
26 January 1996 I apologize for the above proposals of preliminary world conferences to the great author and prophet of world government, Emery Reves, who wrote in his famous book, The Anatomy of Peace, in 1945, that
"There is no 'first step' toward world government. World government is the first step." I regret that his classical book is out of print. Now that the cold war is over, it should be republished by a major publisher as a renewed world best-seller available in many languages.*
Another great classic of world government, the book Planethood by Ken Keyes and Ben Ferencz (see Introduction to my second hundred ideas) is being republished by the World Federalist Movement.
* 1997: It is now available from the World Federalist Movement.

~ Idea 566 ~ 27 January 1996
It is better to have unconventional, audacious, revolutionary ideas than to wait for dismal, painful, actual revolutions.
Since the above ideas will be considered revolutionary I can only repeat Schopenhauer's statement:
"Novel ideas are first ridiculed, then they are violently opposed, finally they are accepted as common sense."
Einstein said something similar: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
May the above ideas be considered as urgent common sense.

~ Idea 567 ~ 28 January 1996
The Earth has always been our main teacher. This is why humanity wants an ideal Earth. We must never cease to try and we will succeed. It is our most sacred task in the next century to give our children the best teachers, namely nature, the creation of God, Goddess Gaia, our beautiful Mother Earth. Blessed be the recently created World Party of Natural Law.

~ Idea 568 ~ 29 January 1996
I once heard someone say that when a human work of art is being destroyed we call it vandalism but when the Earth is being destroyed we call it development. It is a statement worth pondering.

~ Idea 569 ~ 30 January 1996
People should have ideas on any subject in the world. Everyone can at least have ideas on ways of living a happy, grateful life. But peace, the future of humanity and the saving of our beautiful Earth should be the top subjects.

~ Idea 570 ~ 31 January 1996
There will come a day when governments will appeal to the people over the media to consume less in order not to destroy our Earth. Together with population control, this will be one of the major government responsibilities. We have already a UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. We need also a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Human Population and a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Unnecessary Consumption.

~ Idea 571 ~ 1 February 1996
I wish that one or several great philanthropists, would create World Commissions of Eminent Persons on some global problems which still need pressing attention. Here is an up to date list of those recommended earlier in these 2000 ideas:
a World Commission on a New World Economic System
a World Commission on the Media and Advertisement
a World Commission on Democracy
a World Commission on a Spiritual Renaissance
a World Commission on a new course for Humanity and the Earth
a World Commission on the Total Denuclearization of the Planet
a World Commission on the Demilitarization of the Planet
a World Commission on Ethics
a World Commission on World Priorities and Resources
a World Commission on Consumption
a World Commission on the Use and Conservation of Natural Resources
a World Commission on Corruption
a World Commission on Visions of the Earth and of Humanity in the 21st century and 3rd Millennium
a World Commission on the Nation State and National Government Reform
a World Commission on the Inefficiency of the Present World Political System due to staggering costly duplications between 185 nation states
a World Commission on a World Budget and Taxation System
a World Commission on Global Philanthropy and World Prizes
Philanthropists and other world personalities or foundations and institutes might also take up subjects on which I have recommended the holding of further world conferences by the United Nations.*

~ Idea 572 ~ 2 February 1996
Readers should not be afraid by the 2000 ideas I come up with. In the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Potentials which I suggested a few years ago to be published by the International Union of World Associations in Brussels, 11,400 world problems are listed. This requires at least 11,400 ideas for their solution of which many can be found in that encyclopedia.

~ Idea 573 ~ 3 February 1996
All University students on the planet should be required to take basic courses in planetary, cosmic and evolutionary consciousness, in ecology or Earth Science and on the United Nations. No student should be allowed into business schools or Faculties of Economics in any university on Earth without having first taken a basic course in ecology.

~ Idea 574 ~ 4 February 1996
Our real capital is not Wall Street. Our real capital is the Earth. Economists and business people must therefore become the optimum, skillful managers of our oikos, the Earth, our home, and of the human species and all other species and living plants inhabiting it. This is their only salvation as a profession. But it presupposes that they must first study ecology and acquire the knowledge of our home and its natural, evolutionary laws before becoming its producers, managers, changers and superintendents under governmental supervision.

~ Idea 575 ~ 5 February 1996
I have already pointed out that it was historically a pity that economics (Greek oikos, nomos, the management of the home) was born before ecology (oikos, logos, the science, the knowledge of the home). Hence the difficulties in which the Earth, our home finds itself today as a result of human misinformed actions.
It is an even greater pity that the word ecumenics (oikos, mene, the inhabited home, the Earth and humanity) has been monopolized by religions instead of replacing the obsolete word politics (Greek polis), the management of a city. This is why I propose that the word politics be replaced by planetics, the art of managing our planet.
*1998: especially now that as a result of US pressure the UN can no longer convene any world conferences considered "useless and expensive" by the US government.

~ Idea 576 ~ 6 February 1996
I have pointed out before that as a major phenomenon of our recent history, business was the first to globalize itself world-wide, that governments did it reluctantly on a small scale and became the instruments or servants of big business, and that the religions, due to their fundamentalism did not cooperate and globalize themselves in a world alliance (see Idea 472).
But very recently a new phenomenon has appeared: the birth of a global human consciousness. Humans are becoming aware of the errors we are making, of the wrongness around us. This will surpass all other globalizations and become number one. It will be the new democracy, the next step of evolution expressed in the individual wills of the only true living cosmic units: individual human, live beings.

~ Idea 577 ~ 7 February 1996
We should never forget that we are creatures, children born from the Earth and from the cosmos. We are 70 percent water and 30 percent earth. We come from the Earth and we return to the Earth as the Christians are reminded on Ash Wednesday each year.
The Canticle by St. Francis of Assisi says it beautifully:
CANTICLE OF CREATION
Be Praised Good Lord for Brother Sun
who brings us each new day.
Be Praised for Sister Moon
white beauty bright and fair,
with wandering stars she moves through night.
Be Praised my Lord for Brother Wind,
for air and clouds and the skies in every season.
Be Praised for Sister Water:
humble, helpful, precious, pure;
She cleanses us in rivers and renews us in rain.
Be Praised my Lord for Brother Fire:
He purifies and enlightens us.
Be Praised my Lord for Mother Earth:
abundant source, all life sustaining;
She feeds us bread and fruit and gives us flowers.
Be Praised my Lord for the gift of life;
for changing dusk and dawn;
for touch and scent and song.
Be Praised Good Lord for Sister Death
who welcomes us in loving embrace.
Be Praised my Lord for all your creation
serving you joyfully.
Year 1225 A.D.

~ Idea 578 ~ 8 February 1996
I just cannot understand that airlines show so many violent movies when they are afraid of terrorism and highjackings. Violence breeds violence. All airlines in the world should agree and pledge that they will not show violent films. The Director General of ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization of the UN) should obtain such a pledge. It should be part of a world plan and strategy against violence resulting from the world conference I propose in Idea 5.

~ Idea 579 ~ 9 February 1996
The Secretary General of the UN, all heads of UN agencies and all heads of states should have idea-men and idea-women because only ideas can bring about a better world. Some of my ideas could give birth to many more and better ones.

~ Idea 580 ~ 10 February 1996
Each head of state, head of institution and corporation should have indigenous advisors to advise them on the effect of their decisions and doings on the 7th generation. Also, the indigenous people in all countries which have a World Party of Natural Law should join that party, present candidates or vote for the candidates of that party.

~ Idea 581 ~ 11 February 1996
I recommend that as an outcome of the International Decade for Indigenous People, a World or United Nations specialized agency of indigenous people be created to give a voice to the 300 million indigenous people of this planet and to benefit from their wisdom and their understanding of the laws of nature.

~ Idea 582 ~ 12 February 1996
Indigenous people should request the return of stolen objects of art or heritage under the UN resolution on the return of stolen objects of art which I got adopted by the General Assembly years ago (see Idea 119).

~ Idea 583 ~ 13 February 1996
The UN should publish a yearly report on all people in the world who have donated land to municipal, state, national, continental and world parks to see their nature preserved for all times. Their names should be placed on a world list of Ecological Honors. A world prize should be given each year to the largest donor.

~ Idea 584 ~ 14 February 1996
I received from an old friend and pioneer of simple and frugal living, Vicki Robin, President of the Road Map Foundation in Seattle, a flyer proclaiming 29 November 1996 a Planetary Buy Nothing Day, a 24 hour moratorium on consumer spending, addressed especially to the people of the rich countries. I approve this idea enthusiastically and hope that it will be repeated every year.

~ Idea 585 ~ 15 February 1996
Expanding on the above idea there could also be an international fasting day. It would do good to our health. Money saved from this sacrifice could be sent to UNICEF to help feed hungry children and the homeless.

~ Idea 586 ~ 16 February 1996
Always see a human person first of all as a human being and not primarily as a national being.
Thus when I once accused the United States for exporting bad living and consumption habits to poor countries, Barbara Gaughen said to me:
"But you are marrying an American woman."
I answered: "No, I am marrying a wonderful, lovable woman."
And she smiled.

~ Idea 587 ~ 17 February 1996
I later quoted to Barbara Gaughen this statement of Socrates:
"I am not an Athenian, I am not a Greek, I am a world citizen."

~ Idea 588 ~ 18 February 1996
Barbara Gaughen later said:
"I do not consider myself as an American woman. I am first of all a mother. An American mother, a Chinese mother, a Russian mother are all primarily mothers. When it comes to war and peace, I would say: Mothers of the world unite for peace. Governments have no right to use our sons, the flesh of our flesh to become killers or to be killed by other sons of other mothers. It is our fundamental mother's right. It is all governments fundamental duty to solve their problems and conflicts by peaceful means."
I suggested to her to write a World Pledge of Allegiance of Mothers and to create a World Party of Mothers.

~ Idea 589 to 591 ~ 19 to 21 February 1996
Santa Barbara in California is one of the most beautiful, intelligently planned and cared for cities in the United States. Here are three examples which should be followed by other communities:
Idea 589
19 February 1996 a city ordinance does not allow advertisements beyond a modest size, simply indicating the name and purpose of a business, office or institution.
Idea 590
20 February 1996 on each green surface in the city trees are being planted. A "Santa Barbara Beautiful Awards" is given every month to the most beautiful business and home in the city.
Idea 591
21 February 1996 a good number of citizens donate or will their lands to the city to be preserved as parks or grounds never to be built on.

~ Idea 592 ~ 22 February 1996
Isn't it a strange planet where people value and admire more a forest of dead matter, oxygen consuming skyscrapers than a forest of live, oxygen producing trees?

~ Idea 593 ~ 23 February 1996
I think that no species has ever mistreated and destroyed the Earth as has the human species.

~ Idea 594 ~ 24 February 1996
More and more people from the US and highly industrialized countries will move to countries with good air and oxygen like the Central American Republics, and more and more poor people from Africa, Latin America and Asia will immigrate to the "rich countries" to fill manual and service jobs. A mixed united humanity will result.

~ Idea 595 ~ 25 February 1996
I just cannot understand that so many governments, nations, businesses, entities, institutions, religions, scientists, economists and all kinds of other professions and people can go on with their activities and objectives unperturbed, clinging to their beliefs and ideas and forgetting that all around us the Earth, its natural elements on which we depend, its climate, its seas and oceans, its oxygen, its vegetation cover and animal species are rapidly deteriorating or vanishing. No, I will never understand it.

~ Idea 596 ~ 26 February 1996
More brain power and imagination is spent on inventing, improving and promoting new technologies, communications and media than on improving the government of the Earth and of humanity. No wonder that the latter are in deep trouble. As Einstein said: "Perfection of means and confusion of ends seems to characterize our age."

~ Idea 597 ~ 27 February 1996
To keep their monopoly of power, business and the rich decry the mere idea of proper world government and depict it as a way to dictatorship. How about their own already existing dictatorship?

~ Idea 598 ~ 28 February 1996
I repeat my recommendation that a World Commission of Eminent Persons should be established to review the entire current situation of democracy in the world, the reasons, theory, promotion and methodology of democracy, of truthful information, of freedom of expression, and democratic decision making from the local level to the top of the world.

~ Idea 599 ~ 29 February 1996
Ways should be found to give at least a voice to the Earth which is being severely damaged and progressively destroyed. To the concept of democracy (government by the people from the Greek word demos) should be added the concept of Gaiacracy (government by the Earth from the Greek word Gaia, Goddess Earth). Indigenous elders should be allowed to speak in the United Nations or in a new Earth Organization in the name of the Earth, the air, the waters, the soils, the forests, vegetation, animals and all living species.
Only in fables do animals speak in courts. The universe was not created for humans alone. The universe was not created to make money. It was created for all living beings.

~ Idea 600 ~ 1 March 1996
Decide to be a Spiritual Person
Render others spiritual
Irradiate your spirituality
Treat every moment of your life
with divine respect
Love passionately your God given,
miraculous life
Be endlessly astonished at your brief,
breathtaking consciousness of the universe
Thank God every moment
for the tremendous gift of life
Lift your heart to the heavens always
Be a cosmic, divine being,
an integral, conscious
part of the universe
Contemplate with wonder
the miraculous Creation all around you
Fill your body, mind, heart and soul
with divine inspiration
Know that you are coming from somewhere
and that you are going somewhere
in the universal stream of time
Be always open to the entire universe
Know yourself and the heavens and the Earth
Act spiritually
Think spiritually
Love spiritually
Treat every person and living being with
humanness and divine respect
Pray, meditate, practice the art
of spiritual living
And be convinced of eternal life
and resurrection
Robert Muller

~ Idea 601 ~ 2 March 1996
Every person or entity on Earth required to pay taxes should receive with the tax forms a table showing what percentage of the taxes paid will go to the principal functions of government:
general administration
military expenditures
education
health and social security
transportation
the environment
world cooperation and peace
etc.
Each taxpayer should be asked what he thinks of that breakdown, indicate what he wants to be reduced and what he wants to be increased.
This would be a great new form of democracy, a way to hear the people's will. The results should be published nationally and internationally every year.

~ Idea 602 ~ 3 March 1996
I am glad that my idea expressed in October 1995 at the State of the World Forum of the US Gorbachev Foundation is being implemented: namely that world public opinion polls will be held by the Gallup Organization on major issues confronting humanity. Taxation and wasteful, duplicating colossal expenditures by 185 nations should be one of the topics.

~ Idea 603 ~ 4 March 1996
A UN World Security Organization should replace NATO, SEATO and all other regional security agreements or integrate them into a world supra-security system. Bilateral and regional security arrangements are a progress, but left alone they represent a further division of the world. Moreover they are much more expensive to the taxpayers than a straight, well conceived and coordinated world security system.

~ Idea 604 ~ 5 March 1996
At this stage of our wild so called economic development which pollutes the natural air of this planet and of our lungs, I recommend the urgent creation of a United Nations World Air Agency.

~ Idea 605 ~ 6 March 1996
For the same reason I recommend the creation of a United Nations World Water Agency.

~ Idea 606 ~ 7 March 1996
Since the Earth including humanity and no longer humanity alone has become the major preoccupation of the United Nations I suggest that it be renamed the United Earth Organization and reorganized accordingly.

~ Idea 607 ~ 8 March 1996
The UN should proclaim an International Day or Year of Arms Destruction. The destructions should take place in the presence of people in joyful celebrations.

~ Idea 608 ~ 9 March 1996
Wherever there is violent competition or major disagreement and conflict in the world, it must be replaced by reciprocal learning, understanding and cooperation. This is the great light brought to the world by the United Nations and its agencies. The UN is the biggest evolutionary progress since Darwin. It should become the world peace and non-violence organization par excellence. It should establish and foster neutral, trans-entities mediation instruments in as many fields as conceivable in all parts of the world and at all levels of society to help solve differences and conflicts and transform them into cooperation, positive achievements and further evolutionary progress.

~ Idea 609 ~ 10 March 1996
The world merits a yearly World Peacemakers and Peace Heroes Day. The United Nations should proclaim one and substantial, philanthropic aid should be given to them. Awards should be announced and celebrated in the UN General Assembly Hall.

~ Idea 610 ~ 11 March 1996
(my 73rd birthday)
Every person having reached the age of sixty or retirement should take the decision to give volunteer service to a better world during the rest of his/her life. Begin to write down ideas and dreams you would like to see fulfilled, and work on them. Soon you will discover, as I did, as the one-dollar-a-year Chancellor or the first UN University for Peace in Costa Rica, that you do not have the time to get old or sick. It produces miracles.

~ Idea 611 ~ 12 March 1996
We need a world association of radical thinkers, innovators and activists. The United Nations and its agencies and world conferences have done a wonderful job for peace and a better world and in warning humanity of impending perils such as the population explosion, the environment, the climate issue, etc. But progress achieved and implementation of its decisions are much too slow. If we let things continue at the present rate it will end in disaster, possibly the end of all life on this planet.
Audacious thinkers are accused for their extremism or exaggeration. But they might be much more realistic and needed than the diplomats and accommodators who might become the undertakers of this planet and of the human species. I have opened a file with the first names of good radicals: Jacques Cousteau* for the seas and oceans, General Lee Butler (US) and Helen Caldicott (Australia) for the total elimination of atomic weapons, Ralph Nader, the consumers advocate, Selma Brackman of the War and Peace Foundation who asks for the total elimination, not only of nuclear weapons but also of all nuclear energy plants, Garry Davis of World Citizens, Oscar Arias, the Nobel Prize winner who labors for the demilitarization of the planet, and myself who clamors for a proper Earth government. Please, other radicals, send me your name, cause and address.
*Alas deceased later during the year.

~ Idea 612 ~ 13 March 1996
The UN was created by the US and other nations after World War II. These parents of the UN should love their child, nourish its growth and recognize that it is a superior progress over them, as is the case in the flow of time of children over their parents.
I propose that in the year 2000 the City of San Francisco, birthplace of the UN, invite the UN's founding nations to a resounding birthday conference to salute and evaluate their child's progress, and give birth to a new, even better child to cope successfully with the world's problems of the 21st century and third millennium.

~ Idea 613 ~ 14 March 1996
To avoid a repetition of the world population explosion which was detected too late by the international community, Mrs. Julia Alvarez, Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the UN, and I were able to get the UN to convene a world conference on aging in 1982. It revealed that by 2020, the aged population in rich and poor countries will create unprecedented problems for the social security systems of most countries.
From 1950 to today several years have been added to longevity in the poor and in the rich countries (from 40 to 60 years in the former and 60 to 70 years in the latter.)
Although the proportion of older people is highest in Western countries, the major growth of the world's older population &endash; from half a billion in 1990 to almost 1.5 billion people in 2050 &endash; will be in developing countries. By 2025, 72 percent of the world's older persons, about 858 million will be living in developing countries. By 2030, more than three-quarters of the world's older people will live in industrial regions &endash; more than half in Asia, more than a quarter in China alone.
Prolongation of life has been a great success of humanity. In the Roman Empire people lived an average of 24 years. In 1850 the average American died at the age of 45. By 1900 that figure had increased to 48. Now the average life span of an American is 72 and those over 85 are the fastest growing segment of the population. There are already 45,000 centenarians in the US. By 2020 there will probably be more than 250,000. In the next century lives of up to 120 to 140 years will not be uncommon.
The social security systems of nations must rapidly adapt to the situation created by the increased proportion of older persons aged 60 and above from 1 in 14 when the UN started its population work in the 1950's to 1 in 4 in the year 2000. Fortunately the retired are not counted in unemployment statistics.
There is urgent need to hold a second world conference on aging, since fifteen years have elapsed since the first one. The UN has decided to hold an International Year of Older Persons in 1999, but this is not enough. An intergovernmental world conference and a World Organization of the Aged must be added.

~ Idea 614 ~ 15 March 1996
Every head of State and Secretary General of the United Nations should be a Beethoven writing a symphony of peace or a Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel of praise to the Creator.

~ Idea 615 ~ 16 March 1996
We must congratulate the Boston Research Center for the 21st century which gives every year global citizens awards to individuals devoted to peace and to the birth of an authentic, transnational civic society. I suggested to them to honor once in a while global couples who work for the same objectives. There are several outstanding examples of them among the non-governmental organizations accredited to the United Nations.

~ Idea 616 ~ 17 March 1996
It is high time to consider the creation of a whole series of world universities on this planet in order to concentrate expenditures and world academic talent on the colossal, urgent, potentially terminal global problems facing humanity and the Earth. I recommend the urgent creation of such universities by the United Nations and by each of its specialized agencies and world programs.

~ Idea 617 ~ 18 March 1996
Instead of letting business and corporations wildly run ahead and progressively destroy our Earth, governments and thinkers should sit down and consider what a world government by private business and corporations would look like. The first discovery would be that freedom and democracy would disappear: the Earth and capital would be owned by capitalists and shareholders, i.e. by those who possess already capital and money and the rest of the people would not have a chance. All humans would be programmed by advertisement and marketing to buy what corporations decide. As for the Earth, it would be totally defenseless, neglected and brought to its ruin.

~ Idea 618 ~ 19 March 1996
I think that delegates to the United Nations should take less pride in what they obtain for their country than for what they obtain for a better world, including contributions of their country to a better world. At the end of their life, when looking back, it is the latter which will really count.

~ Idea 619 ~ 20 March 1996
How can we not love this beautiful planet above anything else? How can we not love the miracle of being alive as humans? Perhaps it is our loves which went wrong in the 20th century, the love for money, profit and wealth having become No 1.
As we enter the new century and millennium we must get our loves and values straight.

~ Idea 620 ~ 21 March 1996
The rainforests of this planet have acquired such a major importance for the survival of the Earth's diversity and production of oxygen that I suggest a strong coalition and common policy of all countries possessing such forests. They should say to the rich countries: we are ready not to exploit, to keep intact, and even to expand our rainforests, provided you, the rich countries compensate us for that sacrifice and through a Marshall Plan for forestry will aid to provide employment and well-being for our people in return for the oxygen we produce.

~ Idea 621 ~ 22 March 1996
The decision of Russia to pay its debt to the United Nations and to reduce military expenditures by the same amount should be imitated by all countries in default, especially the United States.

~ Idea 622 ~ 23 March 1996
One former US Ambassador to the UN, George Bush, became President of the United States. It would be even better if a former President of the Untied States became Secretary General of the UN, thus being upgraded from a country to the whole world and humanity. He would discover with dismay the ridiculous financial resources at his disposal of which his own country does not even pay its share.

~ Idea 623 ~ 24 March 1996
If I were Secretary General of the UN, I would notify the US government that if it does not pay its dues within a year, I would use my rights under the existing rules of procedure and place the following item on the agenda of the UN Security Council and of the General Assembly:
"Proposal to transfer the seat of the United Nations to the highest bidding, faithfully contributing member country of the organization."

~ Idea 624 ~ 25 March 1996
An American came up with this idea: that all US citizens who love or consider the UN to be important refuse to pay their taxes until the US pays its dues to the world organization.

~ Idea 625 ~ 26 March 1996
It was all right to select New York City as the seat of the United Nations after World War II at a time when humanity was concerned only with humanistic problems and not the Earth (the UN Charter does not contain the words Earth, nature, or resources, nor does it speak of the environment, a word coined by the UN only 25 years later).
Today, since the Earth and nature have become priority No. 1, it would be only proper to transfer the seat of the world organization to a major site of preserved, primeval nature.
The vast, international site of the University for Peace located in a demilitarized country in an area of thousands of acres of primeval tropical forests, a true paradise where one gains peace from nature itself, should be seriously considered. The costs would be very much below those of New York City, not more than a third to one-half, both for the international Secretariat and the 185 national delegations to the UN.
Also: it would fulfill the prophecy of the indigenous God of children, Rasur, that from these hills in Costa Rica a civilization of peace will extend to the entire world.

~ Idea 626 ~ 27 March 1996
The Secretary General of the UN should create and attach to his/her office a World Group of Eminent Mediators, pooling the availability of former heads of state, former Presidents of the UN General Assembly and other reputed, experienced world personalities for good offices and mediation in resolving conflicts around the world.

~ Idea 627 ~ 28 March 1996
I cannot repeat it often enough: the UN Security Council should meet in various regions of the world to make its presence felt and more visible to the people. It should meet in the places of conflict or near them.

~ Idea 628 ~ 29 March 1996
Philanthropy (love for humans) and gaiaphily (love for Gaia, the Earth) have acquired such importance and have an even vaster unexplored global potential and duty that I recommend the transformation of the non-governmental organization INTERPHIL into a UN specialized agency.

~ Idea 629 ~ 30 March 1996
People living in beautiful natural areas should be offered incentives for donating land to local communities to be conserved forever. Municipalities should establish land trusts to that effect. Local inhabitants could donate funds to them to allow the purchase of land to be preserved and never developed. Often, indeed, when we say that we are developing land, in reality we are undeveloping nature and destroying evolutionary results of millions of years. Costa Rica offers interesting laws and examples for the perpetual preservation of land. The Earth Council created by the Rio de Janeiro Environment Conference and located in Costa Rica should publish a survey of all legislations and practices on that subject. A World Trust Fund or Marshall Plan for Nature and Land Conservation should even be considered.

~ Idea 630 ~ 31 March 1996
An important progress in the understanding of evolution is under way: Darwin laid down the law of competition of the species' and the survival of the fittest. Later the discovery of the DNA revealed to us the transmission of the acquired evolutionary wisdom of all species. What we see now is:
1. the colossal intermingling and intermarriages of humans world-wide, like seeds spread all over the globe, creating new common factors of a more evolved global human species:
2. a similar role is played by the media which have become the global nervous system of the human species:
3. innumerable international associations, institutions and firms have become the new global DNA's and memory banks of our evolution, the beginnings of a global brain:
4. as a result a planetary consciousness now reveals to us our errors and mistakes in this new evolutionary period of living and progressing on this planet: overpopulation, overconsumption, colossal wastes and needless activities which damage our environment, nature and the normal functioning of the Earth, in particular its biosphere and climate.
This should not make us despair. On the contrary. We can and will succeed in this new evolutionary challenge. It will be done through a new education, a new role of the media, of industry and economics, the further development of global institutions and warning systems, and last but not least by the incorporation of all politics into a planetary, supra-national system of proper Earth government.
The quicker this is done, the better it will be and the less damage will be done to our precious Earth.

~ Idea 631 ~ 1 April 1996
A new science and art of global and cosmic consciousness must be developed: the transformation of the Earth, humans included, into a conscious cell of the universe. But where is this taught? In the world's religions, but they are fighting over it. I think the time has come to create a World University of Consciousness and Universal Spirituality.

~ Idea 632 ~ 2 April 1996
Since the pursuit of happiness was rightly proclaimed by the founders of the United States as a basic goal of human life, how is it that no government has ever created a Ministry of Happiness? I recommend that such Ministries be created by every government on Earth.

~ Idea 633 ~ 3 April 1996
I recommend that a major philosophical society should begin publishing 2000 ideas to achieve happiness. If none does it, I am tempted to do it myself, after finishing these 2000 ideas for a better world. My first book in English Most of All They Taught Me Happiness, was meant to be a book of Recipes for Happiness. These 2000 ideas are part of it.

~ Idea 634 ~ 4 April 1996
We absolutely and urgently need an Earth government, Earth laws and Earth institutions. Planetary or global consciousness is not enough. If taxes in countries were voluntary, very few people would pay, even if they had the right consciousness of their nation's needs and interests.

~ Idea 635 ~ 5 April 1996
A new Earth government does not have to be built from scratch. The United Nations and its global agencies are a good base on which to build. I have repeated and repeated that we need for the next century a vastly strengthened second generation United Nations.

~ Idea 636 ~ 6 April 1996
A remarkable American lawyer, Dr. Musslewhite, who defends causes around the world on environmental damages concluded that only a United Nations upgraded into a world government (he names it One World Now) can save this planet and humanity. I agree fully with him and endorse his proposals for the transformation of the United Nations.

~ Idea 637 ~ 7 April 1996
Humanity must now extend its views far into the future in order to shoulder its responsibilities towards the future evolution and fate of this Earth. I have therefore recommended
&endash; the creation of a world association of long-term evolutionary scientists and thinkers;
&endash; the convening by UNESCO before the year 2000 of a conference of long-term evolutionary scientists, followed
&endash; by a World Conference on Evolution by the United Nations.
One concrete step will be the convening in 1999 under the auspices of the new Club of Budapest on Planetary Consciousness, of a Summit on the Chances of Evolution for Humanity on this Planet.

~ Idea 638 ~ 8 April 1996
I recommend that the International Association of University Presidents establish a series of Eminent World Academic Commissions to deal with the most recent knowledge of the state of the world and humanity and our pressing problems to be solved. These world commissions would complement the UN World Conferences held so far and the Independent World Commissions of Eminent Personalities listed in Idea 500. They would be a most important addition to these efforts. Foremost among such eminent world academic commissions should be one on the most recent knowledge, views, theories and recommendations on the state of evolution of the Earth and of humanity and on their long-term prospects.

~ Idea 639 ~ 9 April 1996
How shining will be our world when the whole of humanity will be able to say these words inscribed on the Peace Monument of the University for Peace:
"Happy the Costa Rican mother who, when giving birth to a son, knows that he will never be a soldier."
Each time a new country demilitarizes itself, it should inaugurate a similar monument in that country with the inscription:
Happy the Panamanian mother...
Happy the Haitian mother...

~ Idea 640 ~ 10 April 1996
There should be a world law or a law in all 185 nations providing that all newspapers must limit advertisement to 5 percent of their copy. This would save innumerable trees and a colossal waste and recycling of paper on this planet.

~ Idea 641 ~ 11 April 1996
I hope that someday UNESCO or a University will undertake a world survey and scientific study of special power places on this Earth, sacred places, usually on hills richly endowed with oxygen, where humans are elevated into unusual, planetary, all-human, even mystical, cosmic consciousness and thinking. Such places should be used increasingly world-wide by anyone wanting to do deep thinking, even dreaming, and come to far-reaching, long-term decisions. The University for Peace is located on such a sacred hill, in a paradise of nature and oxygen, and has become a place of predilection for thinking groups and conferences. I wish that the United Nations Headquarters would be transferred here.

~ Idea 642 ~ 12 April 1996
During all my life I was intrigued by the meaning of prophecies and dreams. God or fate have led me to live today on a hill of prophecies where I have installed a bench of dreams to sit down and dream. I have come to the conclusion that prophecies and dreams are even more powerful than ideas. I propose to UNESCO to undertake a world survey of the meaning and effectiveness of prophecies and dreams in all cultures of the world. And the UN should become the House of Hopes and Dreams.

~ Idea 643 ~ 13 April 1996
I love the idea of Barbara Gaughen to hold a world conference on ideas for the 21st century and the third millennium. Perhaps this could be the subject of the Centennial People's Peace Conference to be held in The Hague in 1999. The conference could deal with the entire range of ideas for a better world, from ideas for the self, the family, the neighborhood, the village or town, the state or province, the nation, the continent, up to ideas for the seas and oceans (71% of the planet), the atmosphere, the climate and the entire Earth. This would be a most useful preparation for the 21st century and 3rd millennium. Those in power would become convinced that they must change course.

~ Idea 644 ~ 14 April 1996
Legal world provisions should be worked out by the United Nations to allow individuals, institutions and firms to donate their properties and/or capital to an Earth Commons. Outer space, the moon, the atmosphere and the seas and oceans beyond the limits of national jurisdiction have already been declared by the United Nations commons of humanity. A United Nations or World Commons Authority should be created to keep track of these commons and of the treaties already concluded on the existing ones.

~ Idea 645 ~ 15 April 1996
The UN and every specialized agency of the UN should be requested by member governments to answer and report on the following question:
"How would you feel, what would you expect, do and propose if you were transformed into a World Ministry of an Earth Government? For example, what would it mean, what would be the benefits and the drawbacks, the organizational changes required, if the World Health Organization became the World's Ministry of Health?"

~ Idea 646 ~ 16 April 1996
As a first cautious, experimental step towards a more proper government of the Earth and humanity, one could transform one or a few of the existing UN specialized agencies into World Ministries: the International Maritime Organization could become a World Maritime Ministry; the International Civil Aviation Organization could become the World Ministry of Aviation, and the World Health Organization could be made into the World Health Ministry.

~ Idea 647 ~ 17 April 1996
The first, overwhelming, most urgent, imperative priority item on the agenda of world affairs in the 21st century is the proper management or government of the Earth. And no government has the courage to raise it, afraid as they are to lose some of their precious sovereignty, power and glory. The result will be a planet going to pieces, the Earth's nature being destroyed beyond repair, peoples' revolutions and the perishing of the human species itself after or together with what is left of other living species on it.
Please all peoples of the world, wake up.
Please leaders of nations, wake up.
Repeat the miracle achieved by George Washington and the great American leaders when out of the mess of the Confederation they created the United States.

~ Idea 648 ~ 18 April 1996
Of all my 2000 ideas, my greatest appeal is to heads of states and to the most prominent, audacious, forwardlooking thinkers on this planet to become The Founding Fathers of a properly governed Earth and humanity. All the rest will fall into place and become feasible.

~ Idea 649 ~ 19 April 1996
7 November each year should be declared World Demilitarization Day in recognition of the momentous day of 7 November 1949 when Costa Rica by Constitution made itself a permanently demilitarized country and has lived happily, peacefully and in prosperity ever since then.

~ Idea 650 ~ 20 April 1996
Someone asked me what were my three priority recommendations to achieve a better world. My answer was:
1. proper Earth government by humans
2. a total review and rethinking of the economic system
3. a world spiritual Renaissance

~ Idea 651 ~ 21 April 1996
The United States' preponderance in the world is likely to become a curse for the planet if the US does not propose a proper Earth government patterned on its system of balance of powers, modernized to take into account the interests of the Earth itself and the role of business.
These words of Nobel Peace Prize winner Helen Caldicott, former President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, should be heeded:
"We live on a planet that is terminally ill.... The United States has lost its direction and its soul. Use your democracy to save your world."

~ Idea 652 ~ 22 April 1996
It will be with the recent war against nature and the Earth as it was and still is with wars between and within nations: it can only be avoided and resolved by codes, laws, courts and enforcement, which is and has always been the meaning of government, this time meaning Earth government. Government is not the ultimate evil. Non-government, anarchy is. And we live today in a world anarchy.

~ Idea 653 ~ 23 April 1996
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your government.
John F. Kennedy
Ask not what your Earth can do for you, ask what you can do for your Earth.
Robert Muller

~ Idea 654 ~ 24 April 1996
Isn't it astonishing that in no University on Earth, to my knowledge, is there a Department or Faculty or Chair on the Art of Living, and that there exists not a single Doctorate of the Art of Living, when this should be the supreme objective of education?
There is however hope: for centuries there has not been a Peace University or a Peace Department or Faculty in any University on Earth. But recently they are emerging, be it only under the concept of conflict resolution, a new, popular academic discipline. One can hope that the same will happen for the art of living. My writings could serve as the first textbooks as they do in the field of peace education.

~ Idea 655 ~ 25 April 1996
Since the early Fiscal and Financial Branch of the United Nations which was supposed to do it, was suppressed, I recommend that someone on this planet should publish a yearly state of the governmental expenditures of all nations. It would show the colossal duplications and wastes of the national expenditures of 185 governments and almost total absence of world coordination of national efforts and expenditures. The world would benefit immensely from the creation of common services instead of doing 185 times the same thing. Almost nothing is spent on world common services, when our Earth needs such services so desperately. Trillions of dollars could be spared the taxpayers if the United Nations were authorized to re-establish its Fiscal and Financial Branch which would come out every year with a World Budget for consideration by the community of nations. The Fiscal and Financial Committee and Branch was a brilliant prophetic idea of the League of Nations. It included also the mandate to avoid international double taxation and tax evasion, problems even more acute today. Please governments, it is in your own interest to re-establish the Fiscal and Financial Committee of the UN Economic and Social Council. The world would be infinitely more economically run and your national budgets could be reduced accordingly.

~ Idea 656 ~ 26 April 1996
I am very proud that I obtained the proclamation by the United Nations of an International Decade for the Handicapped people (1983 - 1992 ). Since the number of handicapped in the world rose from 300 million in 1983 to 500 million in 1995, I recommend that a UN Specialized Agency for the World's Handicapped be created. It is high time. It would be one of the common world services to be considered.

~ Idea 657 ~ 27 April 1996
Someone called me to give me this secret of happiness:
Have the will to be happy
Have ideas
Implement them
It confirms my own recipes for happiness: I wrote the popular text Decide to be Happy (see Preface to the volume of first 500 ideas). I am writing 2000 ideas to the year 2000, related to the events in which I am involved, namely the Earth and humanity, and I am doing everything I can to implement them.
When I asked the man to give me his name to quote him, he said that it was not his idea. It was the idea of a Greek philosopher called Epictetus. He sent me kindly the quotation. Here it is:
Your happiness depends on three things, all of
which are within your power: your will, your
ideas concerning the events in which you are
involved, and the use you make of your ideas.
(EPICTETUS, A Manual for Living)

~ Idea 658 ~ 28 April 1996
Since business, profit and economics have become the main factors of destruction of the Earth and since this is beginning to be recognized in business circles themselves under the claim for business ethics, I recommend that a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on the New Role of Business be established to accelerate this fundamental change.

~ Idea 659 ~ 29 April 1996
The whole world should follow the example of some radio stations in Costa Rica which start their early dawn broadcasts with Gounod's marvelous Ave Maria to give a spiritual feeling to the listeners. The United Religions, when created, could take this as one of their objectives: to start the day with broadcasts of a religious invocation, church bells, the chofar or the muezzin, or a prayer of thanksgiving for a new day of light and life by all the people of the Earth.

~ Idea 660 ~ 30 April 1996
Have a carpenter estimate the number of trees which were needed to produce the wood used in the construction of your house and decide to plant somewhere in your region or in the world the same number of trees. If you want them to be planted on the sacred grounds of the University for Peace, please send us your contribution. Not a penny will be diverted from it, all will be for the trees. I will make sure of it. For tax exemption, send it to Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica via the Robert Muller School, 6005 Royaloak Drive Arlington, Texas 76016, tax identification No. 75-153044.

~ Idea 661 ~ 1 May 1996
Why don't national governments rethink the purpose and objectives of their Ministries of War or Defense, and their military establishments to take into account the new situation in the world, where war against the Earth, against nature has become the biggest war. They could restructure such ministries or forces, into Ministries of Peace and Security, incorporating the police forces with them. These could be their duties:
World security
Security of the nation
Peacebuilding, peacemaking and good order nationwide
Building the natural security of the country: prevention of the destruction of nature, restoration of forests and nature
Help to other countries to preserve the Earth's nature
This would be a better utilization of the overbloated military establishments and expenditures of nations.
I will never forget the remark of Honduran generals telling me: "If you want to reforest Honduras, we will be ready to do it. We will do it better and faster than anyone else, because we have military discipline." Well, let us use this discipline for the good and salvation of our Earth's nature.
And why couldn't the United States Department of Defense which financed the Honduran militaries in the civilian war finance them now for such reforestation?

~ Idea 662 ~ 2 May 1996
The word business should in most cases be spelled rightly, as it was at the origin: busyness. That is what a good part of modern business is all about. Create more busyness in all possible conceivable busy ways. Necessariness would be better: produce products and render only services which are necessary.

~ Idea 663 ~ 3 May 1996
Since one of the main arguments and justifications of business for producing ever more goods, of promoting the consumption of unnecessary goods and building obsolescence into technical products, is that they give employment, the International Labour Organization should convene a world conference on employment or an Independent World Commission on Employment. In several countries new ideas of employment, especially of young people, have come up, such as ecological tasks (e.g. reforestation) paid by municipalities after young people have been unemployed for more than a period of time. We should revise the whole notion of employment at this stage of our evolution and come up with original ideas beneficial to the survival of this planet, to ourselves and to other species. We should not forget that the Earth and ecology have become our first priorities, no longer business and economics.

~ Idea 664 ~ 4 May 1996
I wish that radio announcers were less noisy, and loud in their performance on the waves, seeking attention but in reality arousing the feelings of the listeners, especially young people. After a few minutes I cannot take it anymore and cut the radio. There is a competition between them to be the most noisy and original. In reality they are ineffective because psychologically the listeners exclude them from their attention. They could be much more effective by saying nice, sweet, inspiring, peaceful, uplifting things and less loud advertisements.

~ Idea 665 ~ 5 May 1996
On the other end of the scale I wonder why announcers of classical music must be so boring and uninteresting. Classical music is addressed to the deepest and loftiest feelings of human nature. The introducers should find ways to be inspiring and uplifting. No wonder that the vast majority of people, especially young people do not listen to classical music. If the composers were alive, they would be shocked that all the presenters have to say is that it is Opus number so and so, volume so and so of their works. Few people care about that.

~ Idea 666 ~ 6 May 1996
A similar phenomenon is happening on television. It is almost impossible to see an announcement of a program or news in a still form. Everything has to jump, to move, to be a profusion of movements, criss-crossing and colors. How do people not get crazy, especially children and youth looking at such jumping, insane images. And every day it is getting worse, because the producers have to outsmart each other to draw attention. In reality more and more people do not pay attention anymore and become immune. My own decision, already ten years ago was to get rid of my television set, and I have lived happily ever since.

~ Idea 667 ~ 7 May 1996
I pray that all the non-governmental organizations accredited to the United Nations will create a Global Movement for a Better World which would publish thousands of ideas and people's initiatives for a better world. Like the phenomenon of the hundredth monkey, there might be a phenomenon of the thousandth idea. If everyone would clean in front of his own home, we would have a clean planet. I would envisage "A Thousand Ideas for Peace and Non-violence", "A Thousand Ideas for the Environment", "A Thousand Ideas to Solve Poverty", "A Thousand Ideas to Live Happily", "A Thousand Ideas for Proper Earth Government", etc.
A publisher who would specialize in such ideas or recipes books would make a fortune and see them become world best-sellers.

~ Idea 668 ~ 8 May 1996
An idea from Holland:
From a group of 15 environmentally-conscious people, representing different disciplines, and then through a campaign showing the relationship between the environment and health, it is possible to stimulate consumers to buy foods and products which do not affect the environment. We are requesting governments to legislate that products be labeled as to their safety for the environment.
Herman van der Neut, Retired, Holland
(from the Brahma Kumaris' Visions of a Better World, page 137)

~ Idea 669 ~ 9 May 1996
The following group came up with a series of ideas:
One hundred and five participants from government departments, the fields of education, media and industry and all environmental organizations in Hong Kong contributed their ideas and experiences at an Environmental Symposium held in response to a deep concern for the state of Hong Kong's environment. Their appeal to all citizens included the following:
• Encourage environmental awards e.g. Housekeeper's Award, Governor's Green Award, Architect's/Engineer's "ECO" Design Award, "Captain Planet Award."• Encourage a pollution index to be announced in all media weather reports.• Encourage the setting up of environmental information kiosks in shopping malls.• Encourage the use of comic strips for environmental education.• Encourage a metropolitan street tree project.• Propose a ban on junk mail.• Encourage traffic free zones.• Encourage rezoning/relocation of industry.• Encourage environmental awareness in families through "A Good Deed A Day" project.• Remember when you "throw things away" that there is no such thing as "away" &endash; it has to go somewhere!(from the workshop report by Beverley Murphy, Hong Kong)
(Brahma Kumaris' Visions of a Better World, page 138)

~ Idea 670 ~ 10 May 1996
I believe that all UN agencies and Departments should begin collecting ideas for a better world and publish them in popular forms. UNESCO could ask all school children and youth in the world to come up with their ideas. They might astonish the world.

~ Idea 671 ~ 11 May 1996
I invite people to do what I decided to do recently: each time I am tempted to buy something I ask myself: is it really necessary, do I really need it, what damage has its production and transportation done to mother Earth? What is her opinion? And in many cases I do not buy it. I write down the price saved and later with the savings I plant a tree or do something good for the Earth or for the poor who have real needs, especially children.

~ Idea 672 ~ 12 May 1996
Avoid making fences with pillars of concrete but instead plant fences of trees producing oxygen, preferably fruit trees giving both oxygen and nutrition to humans, birds and animals. There is nothing more alive, more healthy than a fruit picked directly from a tree.

~ Idea 673 ~ 13 May 1996
In big cities in India and other Far Eastern countries one can see a multitude of little three wheels vehicles run by gasoline engines which are very polluting. It could be a great service if General Motors which has now put an electric automobile on the market, could produce such vehicles run by rechargeable electric batteries. It could do a lot in reducing the air pollution of these cities.

~ Idea 674 ~ 14 May 1996
Be always careful what kind of products you buy and select those which will put the least chemicals into the environment. For example buy white soaps and not colored soaps whose chemical color you will drain into the Earth. But buy brown, natural towels rather than snow white ones, because the production of the latter requires chemicals to whiten them. You might also get both products at a cheaper price. The same with brown and white sugar, brown bread and white bread, etc. Another vast unexploited field is to return to sound natural products and practices of our forefathers and mothers, at a time when there were no chemicals. We must prevent overchemicalization of this Earth by big chemical industries who are becoming our masters. This is another form of renewed democracy, the true power of the people. This is why I recommend the urgent creation by governments of Ministries of Consumption and a World Consumers Agency. Overconsumption has become as preoccupying as overpopulation.

~ Idea 675 ~ 15 May 1996
I also strongly recommend that we move from a "packaged society" to a "refill society", in order to avoid the catastrophic amounts of thrown away packages and containers and their costly recycling. I am glad that in certain grocery stores one can now get refills of products such as water, juices, tomato sauce, mustard, etc.
I remember that when I was a French soldier, I had a friend in the army who owned a grocery store in the city of Strasbourg. He asked for a furlough every Saturday or Sunday to go to his store and prepare a whole pail of mustard by simply mixing mustard powder with water. He told me that it was the item on which he made the biggest profit, mustard powder being extremely cheap. How many other products are being sold to us at exorbitant prices compared to their cost? The case of cereal boxes is another example, the value of the cereal being only one thousandth of the price paid for the whole box.

~ Idea 676 ~ 16 May 1996
I wish that all newspapers in the world would devote an entire section to the environment and to people's suggestions to improve it, consume less, save resources and help save our planet.
The whole question of the media's influence on the environment and on the fate of the Earth should receive highest governmental priority. Only the rich can afford to subsidize newspapers and to pay for advertisement. The poor, the defenseless, the environment, the Earth cannot. It is again a question of real democracy and gaiacracy instead of plutocracy (government by Pluto, the god of money).

~ Idea 677 ~ 17 May 1996
I gave earlier in these 2000 ideas examples of what just one idea can have as effects. Here is another one: when I was stationed at the United Nations in Geneva in the 1950's, once in a meeting I heard that the UN European Transport Commission had finished a draft European convention on road traffic signals and rules which would be submitted to all European governments for ratification. I took the floor and said: why don't you offer it for adoption to the entire world? Tomorrow many people will travel around the globe, will rent a car in a foreign country and might get killed because there are different traffic signals in those countries. Why not have the same rules in all countries? Well, my proposal was adopted, and today when I see in various countries the red sign crossed by a white line meaning that entry or crossing of that road is prohibited, I am glad that I opened my mouth. I sometimes show it to my grandchildren and say: If it had not been for your grandfather you might not see that sign here. And they take me a little more seriously.

~ Idea 678 ~ 18 May 1996
Once coming from Costa Rica I walked with my son Francois, an employee of the United Nations Development Program, in the corridors of the UN after having luncheon together. He suddenly interrupted my talk with him about the United Nations and said: "Dad, why do you always have such crazy ideas? Can't you stop?"
I answered: "Dear son, if we didn't have the crazy idea to create a United Nations Capital Development Fund for the poor countries after World War II, you and many of your colleagues would not have a job today and many people would not receive aid."
At that moment we passed along a big organization chart showing the entire United Nations system. I said to him: "Let me see if it was not an idea of mine which was behind the creation of some of these agencies." I then discovered that in one way or another, it was an idea of mine which was at the origin of 11 of the 32 institutions and world programs of the United Nations. I could not believe my eyes and I thanked God for having given me a fertile mind which I will never cease to use until my death and God willing, even after it. May many of these 2000 ideas be implemented. Dear reader, help me.

~ Idea 679 ~ 19 May 1996
The background of the Secretary General of the United Nations should be changed: Secretaries General were first selected from neutral countries (Norway, Sweden, Burma and Austria), then China used its veto to obtain a geographic rotation since it complained that not one of the world agencies is located in vast Asia. All are located in Europe and North America. So we got a Peruvian and an African Secretary General. After forty years of world service I have come to the conclusion that the Secretary General should be someone with a global background, a world citizen, devoted to the global causes of our planet and humanity. To get the debate started before the end of this century, I submitted my own candidacy not as a Frenchman but as a global citizen, even knowing that I will be defeated since nationals of the five permanent members of the Security Council are not eligible. I also recommended that after six male Secretaries General a woman should be selected (see my novel First Lady of the World). For the first time, several were considered.

~ Idea 680 ~ 20 May 1996
In any debate on the reform of the United Nations consideration should be given to the democratization of the election of the UN Secretary General. It is no longer proper that he should be selected by a secret process and vote among the five permanent members of the Security Council (the US, Russia, England, France and China) and confirmed by a two/thirds secret vote of the General Assembly. The peoples of the world have the right to know who the candidates are and each of them should tell the world what his/her program, general philosophy and commitments would be. I did. The text is reproduced at the beginning of my first 500 ideas.

~ Idea 681 ~ 21 May 1996
We should abolish all military bases on this planet and transform them into world parks of nature or schools and playgrounds for children, peace museums and other good causes of humanity, including places of worship to the Creator of our beautiful Earth. Military bases are an antiquity and blemish to this divine planet.

~ Idea 682 ~ 22 May 1996
A world association of former, transformed military bases should be created to be a model and inspiration to remaining military bases. The association should become a Non-governmental Organization accredited to the UN.

~ Idea 683 ~ 23 May 1996
My idea of having countries in a same region cooperate with each other on common interests, as illustrated by the European Coal and Steel Community which culminated later in the European Union, is shared by a Turkish citizen, Turgut Ozal, who launched the "Black Sea Economic Cooperation Project" for the Black Sea Countries and proposed a "Water Peace Pipeline" to the Middle East.

~ Idea 684 ~ 24 May 1996
The preceding reminds me of the entirely new concept of politics and world government which would be an Earth government built primarily on biological or bioregions rather than human groupings. People of different languages and religions can perfectly live together in the same region, such as a river, like the Rhine River, which is the first binding factor, common concern and interest of the riparian people and has finally led to the borderless union of 16 European countries.

~ Idea 685 ~ 25 May 1996
How wonderful it would be to have a Himalaya Forum, an Andes Forum, a Rocky Mountains Forum, an Alps Forum, as we have the Arctic Forum conceived by Governor Walter Hickel of Alaska. The mountain areas of our planet merit the creation of a World Mountain Agency, considering the vital role played by mountains in weather formation, water sources, forest cover, health areas and places of prophecies closer to God.

~ Idea 686 ~ 26 May 1996
Governments, Parliaments and Courts of Justice can be instruments of abuse, even when elected by the people. This is why sixty countries have created the position of Ombudsman which means in Swedish "representative". Citizens can complain to him or to her about abuses, injustices, corruption, misbehavior and neglect by public officials and institutions. The Treaty of Maastricht creating the European Union has prescribed the creation of a European Ombudsman. Bravo. I recommend that a United Nations or World Ombudsman be created, preferably a woman under the title Ombudswoman. The UN General Assembly should take the decision to establish such a post. I know several remarkable persons who would admirably fill that position.

~ Idea 687 ~ 27 May 1996
The time has already come when people who can afford it move out of Western crowded cities to live in places and countries like Costa Rica, where there is still an ample supply of oxygen and nature.
The time will soon come when the most sensitive central governmental services should also move out of polluted capitals to places of oxygen and nature. This should apply especially to heads of states who need a clear head and to Parliaments, who need the clear voice and the natural wisdom of the people.
The same applies to world agencies. I recommend that the headquarters of the United Nations should be moved to Costa Rica, not to San Jose the polluted capital, but to the paradise of peace, nature and oxygen on the vast grounds of primeval nature of the University for Peace. Simon Bolivar, the great visionary genius, prophecized already that the seat of the world's government should be located in Central America between North and South America, between Atlantic and Pacific, between Europe and Asia. And indigenous people believe that the reconciliation of the eagle and the condor will take place in Costa Rica on sacred Mt. Rasur.

~ Idea 688 ~ 28 May 1996
I recommend that in many places of the world this example of Costa Rica should be followed: a landowner donated several thousands of acres of primeval land for the construction of a University for Peace on the condition that it would never be destroyed, deforested or misused for other purposes. This was confirmed by the Parliament which made it an international territory and protected zone. The world needs several such World Universities dealing in a central coordinated fashion with the world's global problems and opportunities. Please philanthropists, donate land for the creation of world universities.

~ Idea 689 ~ 29 May 1996
On her death bed, Margaret Mead said to her pupil Jean Houston: "I had an important insight about the future. The world is going to change so fast that people and governments will not be prepared to be stewards of this change. What will save them is teaching-learning communities..." (p. 228 of Jean Houston's book A Mythic Life ).
This statement has opened my eyes to what I have seen around the world and at the United Nations, namely that the greatest obstacle to our further evolution is fundamentalism, my nation right or wrong, my religion right or wrong, my ideology right or wrong, my culture or race right or wrong, at a time when the whole human species is in the midst of transformation, of teaching and learning from each other, in thousands of ways and communities, from the top of the world &endash; the United Nations, the biggest teaching-learning society on Earth &endash; down to the family. Competition and the survival of the fittest, as Darwin thought, can no longer be the rule of the human society. This phase of evolution had its role. The new evolutionary law is one of cooperation, of harmony achieved through learning and teaching from each other, and the birth of humanity as a meta-organism of evolution in which every human being is a cooperating unit or cell in a new global species, henceforth in charge of the further fate of our common home, the Earth and of all life forms on it.

~ Idea 690 ~ 30 May 1996
I recommend the holding of a UN world conference or the establishment of a World Commission on The Ideal Earth and Humanity in the 21st century. The idea looks utopian, but even if we do not get a clear answer, we will learn a lot and move closer to it.

~ Idea 691 ~ 31 May 1996
I wish that social scientists would study a contemporary new and preoccupying phenomenon, which I would call the kindergarten phase of the global age of human evolution: why is it that humanity and its social institutions are like children in a kindergarten and react and learn only when there is an accident, when they burn their fingers? Can't humanity reach the adult age when major new global accidents can be foreseen and prevented? My famous colleague, environmentalist Gerardo Budowski often says to me: "Robert, if we could only have a few big accidents to make governments and people aware of the seriousness of our environment."

~ Idea 692 ~ 1 June 1996
Private business should not be surprised and angry at the fundamentalism and radicalism of the environmentalists. It is their own fundamentalism and radicalism which gave birth to it. The law of karma functions in political, religious, social, economic and ideological fields as well as in personal relations.

~ Idea 693 ~ 2 June 1996
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with business, except its fundamentalist claim that it is the only form of human society which through competition will bring well-being and happiness to all peoples, the same claim communism had.
Someone should start writing 2000 ideas for a more Earth-conscious, ethical and democratic business world. Writing concrete ideas is a great eye opener on the potential good and evils of any system. Ideas are an essential form of progress and evolution.

~ Idea 694 ~ 3 June 1996
Between now and the year 2000 over one trillion dollars will be left through inheritances around the world. Childless rich people often wonder to what good cause they should leave their inheritance. The subject should be urgently taken up by the Commission and World Organization of Philanthropy I propose in Ideas 426 and 628.

~ Idea 695 - 698 ~ 4 to 7 June 1996
I have observed earlier in these ideas how the fact of being alone in a long train ride after World War II and in a bus ride in the night in India, having nothing to do except to be with my own thoughts and dreams, were two of the most important turning points in my life, leading to my entry into the United Nations and the writing of my first novel.
Again, sitting in the evening in an empty bus from San Jose to the University for Peace led me to the following recommendations:
Idea 695 at least one day a year, or more often, do not watch television, in other words abstain from seeing sights decided by others, and see the natural sights around you: the family, your home and nature;
Idea 696 observe at least one day in a year, or more often, when you do not read any newspapers or magazines, again in order to be primarily with yourself;
Idea 697 observe at least one day a year, or more often, when you do not listen to any radio programs, for the same reason;
Idea 698 observe at least one day a year, or more often, when you abstain from any food, to clear and to give a rest to your body. At the United Nations I observed that my Indian colleagues observed each week a half a day of abstinence, namely on Tuesday.
Two further observations on the above: personally several years ago I have suppressed television altogether from my home. I gave my set away. Following the advice of my mother when I was young (see story How to Read the Newspaper in Most of All, They Taught Me Happiness ), I seldom read newspapers, just glance at the news summary, to remain in touch with main events. As far as radio is concerned, I listen only to stations which give classical music which elevates me. On abstinence, I try to follow the example of my Indian colleagues.

~ Idea 699 ~ 8 June 1996
I recommend that the new United Religions Organization should study the experiences and reasons why all religions recommend times of solitude, meditation, prayer, yoga, inward looking, especially at the beginning and at the end of the day, and what their recommendations for fasting are. I think that there is not a single religion that does not give advice on fasting. All this should be studied scientifically and a science and methodology for better individual life be developed to take us away from the domination of commercialism, consumerism and advertisement which make us slaves of a materialistic world.

~ Idea 700 ~ 9 June 1996
I applaud the plan of the Forgiveness Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, to hold the First World Congress of Forgiveness in Jerusalem in the year 2000. Here is my contribution to it:
Decide to Forgive
For resentment is negative
Resentment is poisonous
Resentment diminishes
and devours the self.
Be the first to forgive,
to smile and to take
the first step.
And you will see
happiness bloom
On the face of your human brother
or sister,
Be always the first
Do not wait for others
to forgive
For by forgiving
You become the master of fate
The fashioner of life
The doer of miracles.
To forgive is the highest,
most beautiful form
of love.
In return you will receive
untold peace
and happiness.
Robert Muller
It would be good if the year 2000 could be proclaimed World Year of Forgiveness and Atonement by the UN and that still unreconciled, conflicting countries, religions, institutions and peoples could forgive each other and start the new millennium on a new basis.

~ Idea 701 ~ 10 June 1996
After reading the preceding text, I plead again, I beg governments to strengthen enormously the United Nations which is their world instrument, to permit for example the expansion of the UN Volunteer Service into a service able to respond to the 60,000 demands it receives every year from young people around the world. What a great help to unemployed young people it would be! Just reduce a little or a lot your military expenditures and send the money to the UN Volunteer Service to accommodate the 58,000 applications it has to turn down every year. The current misallocation of national finances will someday be described as one of the greatest scandals of the 20th century.

~ Idea 702 ~ 11 June 1996
I also propose that national peace services be created in all nations as an alternative to military service. Young people would spend a year in such a service devoted to restoring nature, building dwellings for the homeless, giving service to the poor, to drug addicts, to alcoholics, to the handicapped, to hospitals, to old people, to prisons, to the police, to the Red Cross, etc. These national peace services would give useful employment and would cost nothing: military expenditures would be reduced by the same amount.
I hope that parliamentarians will introduce proper legislation to that effect in all countries, were it only to provide useful employment and exciting life experiences to young people.

~ Idea 703 ~ 12 June 1996
The United Nations or World and national peace services could be of diverse natures and conceived under several titles: a Volunteer Service for the Earth Restoration, a Service for Land Rehabilitation, a Service for Prevention of Drug and Alcoholism Addiction, and so forth and so on. What a wonderful world for the young people this would be! The military will of course defend their budgets for reasons of national security which can be ensured by regional and a world security system. They will also claim that military service avoids unemployment. Well I suggest that military service should be considered as outright unemployment. The time has come for that, especially after the end of the cold and international wars. The environment, the reduction and healing of the effects of the new war against nature and the Earth, should henceforth be considered as one of the major sources of employment. A world conference should be convened on the subject. The military can be substantially reduced by regional security agreements and by a proper world security system under the United Nations, which has become quite feasible today. Or as proposed before they could transform themselves into Ministries of Peace, together with the police.

~ Idea 704 - 722 ~ 13 June to 1 July 1996
THE NEXT 25 YEARS
A PROPOSED TIMETABLE FOR THE TREATY ON
NON-PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR ARMS*
by William Epstein**
1995-2000
Idea 704 • A no first-use agreement by the five declared nuclear powersIdea 705 • Strengthened pledges by the nuclear powers to come to the aid of non-nuclear states threatened by nuclear weapons.Idea 706 • Taking all weapons off alert status; significantly separating all warheads and bombs from their delivery vehicles.Idea 707 • Cessation of the production of weapons-grade fissile material of nuclear weapons.Idea 708 • Achievement of nuclear-weapons-free zones in Africa and Southeast Asia. following the example of Latin America.Idea 709 • Establishment of a verification and control system for the Biological Weapons Convention and full implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.Idea 710 • Full implementation of the UN Register of Conventional Arms and of the UN Reports on Military Expenditures.2000-2005
Idea 711 • Reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles in Russia and the United States to 1,000 each.Idea 712 • Reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles of China, France, and Britain to 200 each.Idea 713 • Establish international controls and safeguards over the dismantling of nuclear weapons.Idea 714 • Devise international controls and safeguards over all enriched uranium and plutonium, military and civilian.Idea 715 • Conclude a treaty banning the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.Idea 716 • Negotiate nuclear-weapons-free zones in the Middle East and South Asia, which would respectively include Israel, India and Pakistan.Idea 717 • Put in place regional structures for the limitation, reduction, and control of conventional arms and forces.2005-2010
Idea 718 • Reduce and dismantle all nuclear weapons of the five declared powers to 100 each.Idea 719 • Reduce ceilings for all countries for their conventional arms and forces.2010-2020
Idea 720 • Eliminate all nuclear weapons from national arsenals.Idea 721 • Transfer a few nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council as insurance against the clandestine retention or acquisition of nuclear weapons.Idea 722 • Reduce all conventional arms and armed forces to levels required for internal security, or for use of the United Nations peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations.*Excerpted from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov./Dec. 1994
**William Epstein is a senior fellow at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). He was formerly director of Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations and has represented the Secretary General at negotiations for several nuclear weapons treaties.

~ Idea 723 ~ 2 July 1996
Since there is a Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Arms, however slow and insufficient it might be, why don't we have also a Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Population and a Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Earth Destroying Activities? Timetables like the preceding would be extremely useful for the salvation of our Earth. One should also conceive a Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Excessive, Wasteful Consumption.

~ Idea 724 ~ 3 July 1996
I wish that a great author would write a best-selling world novel telling how at some time in the 21st century the human species and many other species became extinct on planet Earth as a result of environmental destruction, ozonosphere depletion, climatic changes, cancer and the end of the natural human immune system. He would get all the necessary information from the UN and its agencies, and from Lester Brown who in Washington publishes the yearly States of the World reports and many other vital documents on the current trends which menace humanity and the Earth.

~ Idea 725 ~ 4 July 1996
It is rumored that the United States walked out of UNESCO not because of bureaucracy, bad management and overspending but because UNESCO wanted to convene a world conference on the media and advertisement.
I recommend that the US Congress should open an investigation on this matter. The American people have the right to know what their Executive does.
Note: June 1997: the United Kingdom, the only other country that left UNESCO, has returned to it.

~ Idea 726 ~ 5 July 1996
I would also recommend a Congressional investigation on what files and information the Executive possessed on all past candidates for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations and on what qualifications and/or reasons the US State Department based its choice. Here too the American people have the right to know. The case of Mr. Waldheim's election would be particularly interesting.

~ Idea 727 ~ 6 July 1996
If I were a tourist I would wonder if touring the world is the right thing to do: everywhere one goes one sees the destruction of the Earth by so-called development, or so called marvels of monuments glorifying wars, victories, rulers, despots and religious intolerance and fundamentalism. One feeds the profit hunger of huge tourism business, airplane and other travel companies and contributes to the pollution of our atmosphere. It would be better to stay at home and spend the money on an environmental improvement of the local community, or the reforestation of a poor foreign part of the world.

~ Idea 728 ~ 7 July 1996
Homes of people acquire a soul, the souls of all those who lived in them before. We must recognize these souls, feel their presence, be helped and inspired by them. We should not destroy so easily homes. We should preserve and restore them. It is such a pity that old churches in great cities are being destroyed and replaced by skyscrapers which will never acquire a soul, because there is no spirituality in these arrogant buildings defying the Creator with God Pluto, the God of money and profit. The only modern high building in New York which is acquiring a soul is the United Nations. This is why, whenever I visit it as an elder who has worked so long in it, the tears come to my eyes. I can feel the souls of all those who have labored there for peace and a better world. Please, dear reader, respect and restore old homes. I have saved and restored two of them in my life-time.

~ Idea 729 ~ 8 July 1996
Every collectivity is taxing people: cities, provinces, states, nations, corporations (through profits) to create common services. Only two communities, the most important ones at our stage of history and evolution are excluded from this system and foresight: the whole of the human family and the Earth.
What incredible things could be achieved if common services for humanity and for the Earth would be created and adequately financed! The first one would be a world-wide energy grid which could bring electricity to practically all humanity.

~ Idea 730 ~ 9 July 1996
What a day it will be when the world population will be stable and no longer growing and when the yearly budget of the planet will be limited to its maintenance, natural renewal and beauty, and to the happy fulfillment of all humans on it. Let us make these the main objectives of the 21st century: a balanced world population and a balanced world budget.

~ Idea 731 ~ 10 July 1996
I hear more and more voices saying that the soulless capitalism which now rules the world will end the same way as the second 19th century ideology, communism, already defunct. When I hear many voices from around the world expressing concern about an event to come, I open a file because the global brain of humanity has begun to function and to give us the first warning signals. But as distinct from the demise of communism which has not found a new way, we must face the above dismal hypothesis and do two things: get the best minds of the Earth to think what can be done to avoid a catastrophe which will hurt innumerable people; have all local communities think of the actions they will take locally to face the consequences of the catastrophe.
I am glad to learn that Elizabet Sathouris, the Greek geo-ecologist who was first to take the defense of Gaia, the Greek Goddess of the Earth, is working on plans to create local currencies when the current economic system will collapse.

~ Idea 732 ~ 11 July 1996
One way of helping preserve the Earth is to use our possessions longer instead of buying new things. This applies particularly to homes: we are told that old homes are not efficient, not economical as are new ones. Well, make a careful calculation before you give up your old home for a new one. You will be amazed to see the results.
Advertising and marketing have developed thousands of sophisticated ways to make you buy new things. Regain your personality &endash; an Earth personality &endash; and ask yourself it you really want to succumb to the temptations marketed upon you.

~ Idea 733 ~ 12 July 1996
There is an urgent need for more world universities on this planet. I recommend that UNESCO take up this subject and make a first survey of all existing world universities, including those of the United Nations system: the World Maritime University of the International Maritime Organization; the International Labour Institute of the International Labour Organization; the Training Institute of the International Atomic Agency for students from developing countries; the United Nations University in Tokyo; and the University for Peace in Costa Rica. This beginning by far does not respond to the real needs of the Earth and of humanity. It requires a general review and proper planning on the eve of a new century and millennium. Philanthropists should take a vivid interest in the subject.

~ Idea 734 ~ 13 July 1996
This leads me once again to recommend that the basic framework of University education which rests almost all around the world on obsolete values should be reviewed and reformed. My world core curriculum annexed to the first fascicle of 100 ideas should be considered as one of the new models.

~ Idea 735 ~ 14 July 1996
Most heads or chief executive officers of multinational, global or world corporations deal primarily with their firm's affairs on a global, world-wide basis and leave the internal markets for their firm's products and services to local, national subsidiaries. No wonder that as a result they rule the world. Governments do not do the same. They deal with national affairs and only subsidiarily with world affairs. They should therefore not be surprised that they have lost relevancy in managing the world for the good of all people and the Earth.
I recommend therefore that in all schools of government and political science, students should be taught how multinational corporations run the world often counter to the interests of the Earth, of humanity, often of their own nations and definitely of their children and grandchildren.

~ Idea 736 ~ 15 July 1996
Hasn't the time come to have a look at all the national patriotic holidays in 185 nations and see whether they could not be replaced by concerns for major world issues which did not exist at the time? For instance, the French 14 Juillet could also become a day for human rights, since it was a day of revolution against horrendous human rights violations which reigned in that country at the time.

~ Idea 737 ~ 16 July 1996
Several people from around the world propose that there should be each year a Day of Peace. Well, there is already one proclaimed by the United Nations: the third Tuesday of September, when the UN General Assembly opens its yearly session. Alas, this is not sufficiently known in the world. The media in particular do not pay attention to it, neither do the schools. To my ideas for that day I would add that people around the world should light a candle in their window in the evening.

~ Idea 738 ~ 17 July 1996
After a speech to a group of Elderhostels visitors to the University for Peace, a member of the group told me that conscientious objection to military service was gaining ground in the US and in the world. I answered that I would go beyond that concept: I was claiming the fundamental human right of every human being not to be trained to kill and to kill other human beings, not in the name of a nation or a religion nor of any other group. These groups have no right to call for inhumanity from their members. They have the duty to make peace with peaceful non-violent methods. That duty should be included in a Universal Declaration of Human Duties.

~ Idea 739 ~ 18 July 1996
People should refrain from publishing obituaries of their deceased ones in newspapers. The innumerable pages of obituaries are not read anyway. It would help save innumerable trees.
In my last will I have specified that I do not want my children to publish an obituary of my death.

~ Idea 740 ~ 19 July 1996
It is becoming more and more imperative for the attainment of peace, justice and the efficient administration of this planet that the UN publish each year a world budget showing the total local, national, regional, continental and world expenditures on every aspect of the human and Earth condition.

~ Idea 741 ~ 20 July 1996
You might as well spend a lot of energy on a big world cause than on a little one. You might as well take the whole Earth and humanity as your cause instead of only one of the 185 partitions called nations. No nation anyway will ever be as big as the world, however hard it will try.

~ Idea 742 ~ 21 July 1996
A UN World Agency for the Non-violent Solution of all human conflicts and disputes on planet Earth should be created as the outcome of the World Conference on Violence recommended in Idea 5 of the first volume of 500 ideas.

~ Idea 743 ~ 22 July 1996
In the United States the Vice-Presidency for Global Affairs should be suppressed, this crucial function being reserved to the President who would be aided in his internal preoccupations by one or several Vice-Presidents for national affairs.

~ Idea 744 ~ 23 July 1996
I do not know why the world takes seriously the requests by Japan and Germany to be given the veto power in the UN Security Council. What have they done to merit it? It would be much more justified to give a veto power to the 2/3rds of poor humanity, for democracy's sake, or give a veto to Africa, to Asia, to Latin America and to the Middle East. It would be an incentive for the countries of these regions to work together. Latin America would merit it most, since it is the only denuclearized continent on this planet.

~ Idea 745 ~ 24 July 1996
Since privatization claims to be the solution to all our problems, well let then business be responsible also for full employment and to pay for unemployment.

~ Idea 746 ~ 25 July 1996
Privatization already brilliantly solves the problem of world garbage: it makes consumers pay for all the packages and containers, producing employment, and makes the consumers also pay for garbage removal, disposal or recycling which also gives employment. The only victim in all this is the Earth.

~ Idea 747 ~ 26 July 1996
Since privatization claims to solve all the world's problems provided government disappears, let business also solve the increasing gap between the rich and the poor countries, between North and South, East and West, and even inside rich countries.

~ Idea 748 ~ 27 July 1996
The USA should no longer offer itself as a model to the poor countries of the world. It is a country of aging people, of incredible, excessive, Earth-consuming overconsumption, a country whose people's happiness has not increased over the last forty years, despite the increase in per capita income, a country with incessant noise and advertisements. There are more happy, laughing people in poor countries than in the US. To introduce in them excessive materialism and consumerism will not do good, neither to these people nor to the US. It will only profit big business, the worlds of Coca Cola, soft drinks, cigarette firms, McDonald's, advertisement, violent toys and movies, drugs and alcohol.

~ Idea 749 ~ 28 July 1996
Never forget when you are consuming anything that you are consuming Earth.

~ Idea 750 ~ 29 July 1996
When I spoke to a group of Elderhostels visiting the University for Peace, I said to them that my life, at the age of 73, was pure magic: invisible forces of the universe were helping me in my work for a better world and peace, there were many mysterious coincidences in my daily life, and I had the impression that many unemployed saints were floating around this planet, ready to help. When they saw someone opened to them like me they flooded down to help in the most extraordinary ways.
After my speech, an Elderhostel approached me and said: "Coincidences are the way God talks to you."
What a beautiful remark!

~ Idea 751 ~ 30 July 1996
It is high time to transform the International Consumers Union into a full specialized agency of the UN with tripartite representation like the International Labour Organization: governments, producers and consumers. I would have a whole agenda to propose, including on statistics, from a United Nations point of view, consumption having become one of the most important concerns on the agenda of world affairs. It is likely that the existing non-governmental organization is already dealing with several of these subjects and many more. Here are my wishes regarding to start with statistics:
- I would like to see statistics published on wastes and garbage per inhabitant in each country of the world, by region and for the total world. The US would hold the record with a life-time amount of garbage and waste 4000 times the average weight per habitant;
- Expenditures for the birth of a baby, for education, for housing and for funeral at the end of life. The US would again hold the record for the highest expenditures in the world;
- US advertisement and propaganda speaks only of the high incomes of Americans but seldom of prices and expenditures. At least such statistics would diminish the cravings of people in the poor countries to imitate the consumption habits of the Americans or to wish to emigrate to the US, even illegally.
- It would be in the interest of the US itself to publish such statistics and information in order to reduce illegal immigration instead of paying for more border polices and internal controls.

~ Idea 752 ~ 31 July 1996
The World or United Nations Consumers Agency should also establish lists of products which should be avoided or dispensed with, and develop a world-wide strategy to get concrete results. The battle against tobacco and smoking has already begun, but there are many exceptions in poor countries, where even lottery tickets are inserted in cigarette packages. There are battles against other products to be waged in the interest of the people and of the Earth:
- against alcohol. The word Al kohol in Arabic means the devil; in Muslim countries alcohol consumption is a sin; its production, transportation and sale are totally prohibited. Well, it would be good if all countries of the world would imitate that good example. How many miseries and accidents would be avoided. China should join the ranks, since Confucius said: you drink the first cup of alcohol, and the alcohol drinks you.
- against soft drinks which displace natural fruit juices in the poor countries to a disastrous extent. They produce in addition billions of plastic and other bottles or containers which are strewn all over the world. If you add honey or a sweet syrup to water you have a cheap, safe, healthy drink for your children without carbon dioxide bubbles.
- window washing liquids and many household cleaning products. With plain water you wash windows as perfectly as with window washing liquids and you do not add chemicals to the environment;
- mouthwashes: they can be outright dangerous because they destroy useful, natural bacteria in our mouth etc., etc.

~ Idea 753 ~ 1 August 1996
I ask myself how many basic messages I received during my life. I remember these three:
- the message of the Hopi Indians when I was named Kogyun Deyo, Spider Boy: that I should make a gigantic spider web, catch in it all evil of the world and then throw it far away into the universe;
- the second from the indigenous people of Saskatchewan: to help find a new way for the indigenous and all people to walk closer with the Creator;
- the third from Jean Houston, the friend and student of Margaret Mead: not to continue digging deeper into current avenues of my efforts, but to concentrate on new ones and give the world a vision of what the Earth and humanity should be in the 21st century.
Ask yourself what messages you have received during your life. It should be the duty of parents to give such messages. When I told mine that I was going to be a peacemaker at the United Nations, and said good-bye to them, their only comment was: there is no such profession as peacemaker in the world.
When I see them in heaven I will tell them, to their joy, that it has become one of the most important professions on Earth.

~ Idea 754 ~ 2 August 1996
Further to the above, I received from Barbara Gaughen, my new life companion*, the following message: "Never give up and spread your love to all humanity and the Earth through your optimism. Your optimism for me is an example, as I wrote already on 27 September 1995: how brilliant, how imaginative, how devoted you are to the great causes of humanity and of the Earth! You make everyone optimistic."
* God wanted it that we got married on 27 June 1997.

~ Idea 755 - 756 ~ 3 to 4 August 1996
In response to the preceding I sent her the following fax:
Idea 755 My message to you, dear Barbara, is to write beautiful books centered on the splendor of love: love for the miracle of life, love for children, love for beauty, love for nature, and how each human being can make a personal contribution to these loves and achieve untold happiness.
Your love for me is an example of your miracle-making innermost nature, capacity and results. You validate everyone you meet.
Idea 756 I propose the creation of a World Association of Optimists and Life Enthusiasts.

~ Idea 757 ~ 5 August 1996
What is basically wrong, and might turn out to be tragically wrong in the evolution of this planet is that everyone is working for a particular nation, religion, business or institution, not paying consideration to the world in its interdependent entirety and that of humanity too. This can only be corrected by a basic reform of education which would start with the world and humanity, and then only show the role, place and contribution of innumerable groups, entities, beliefs and institutions. I am sorry to have to say that, but the world core curriculum which I derived from the United Nations and offer at the end of the first fascicle of 100 ideas is a major way out of the chaos in which we find ourselves today, imperiling the planet and the human species itself. We owe future generations, our descendants this new, up-to-date evolutionary curriculum of education. It is of utmost urgency.

~ Idea 758 ~ 6 August 1996
This morning at dawn the following rough scheme of how proper Earth Government should be structured appeared to me:
Outer space and the atmosphere
The Seas and Oceans (71% of the Earth surface)
The land masses
The biosphere (sphere of life)
other species
plant and forest life
the human species
The infinitely small
Energy
Evolution

~ Idea 759 ~ 7 August 1996
I think that the Mayan cosmology is correct when they consider the couple and not the individual to be the basic cosmic unit of evolution. They say that in a couple all the evolution and experience of innumerable forebears of two lines of humans will converge and the couple will give birth to new lines of descendants. This is why they consider the couple to be sacred. How right they are. There is a sacredness in the mysterious, divine act of love and there is a recognition of that sacredness in the miracles of our children and the family. We must therefore re-establish the central value, the miracle of the family in the human society. And the new evolutionary messages are that we should not reproduce indiscriminately and wound the body of our Mother Earth with unnecessary, wasteful, damaging overproduction and overconsumption.

~ Idea 760 ~ 8 August 1996
I do not know if the Mayans conceived of a Divine, Cosmic Couple in the heavens, a God and a Goddess. If they did, I think we should follow their example. There is no reason to consider one sex superior to the other. Alone, none of them can reproduce the miracle of life and continue evolution.

~ Idea 761 ~ 9 August 1996
I would not exchange my wild, "unproductive virgin", primeval jungles in Costa Rica for the biggest, money-making shopping center or sky-scraper in the world. And I am sure that the Divine Couple in heaven will thank me for it, when I appear before them.

~ Idea 762 ~ 10 August 1996
All humans should be Earth-maids. We must clean the Earth, our house and keep it the magnificent, incredible miracle and gift of God it is.

~ Idea 763 ~ 11 August 1996
A good enough reason for Americans to move to Central America is that they will find there truly natural fruits and vegetables undoctored by chemicals, and pure oxygen for breathing coming from the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

~ Idea 764 ~ 12 August 1996
I think we should rename many areas, geographic features and sites of the world, giving preference to natural names, ecological ones. Original indigenous names would be a gold mine and a revelation. The UN International Decade of the Indigenous People should take up this subject. One benefit would be a greater sensitivity, greater concern for the preservation of nature, for our Mother Earth on which all life, including human life, depends.

~ Idea 765 ~ 13 August 1996
The UN should publish a document or popular booklet giving the etymology, original meaning and history of all the names of its 185 member countries. It would be fascinating. How many people, including Canadians know that the name Canada means Kanata, the indigenous word heard by the French explorers, meaning many villages, i.e. country. How many young men are being killed in wars in the name of a country whose name has no meaning to them. Please dear reader, make sure that you and our children know the original meaning of your first name, family name, street, city, province, country, continent and Earth.

~ Idea 766 ~ 14 August 1996
Perhaps this is one of the most important single ideas of these 2000 derived from a 73 years long experience in war, in peace, and at the top of the world in the United Nations: that you as an individual human being, in whatever place in the world you are, whatever profession you exercise, whatever religion or nation or ethnic group or race you belong to, should take as your ideal to love this beautiful Earth, your miraculous life, and in recognition for these gifts to be of service, to always ask what contribution you can make to a more peaceful, cleaner, more admirable, happier world and humanity. And you will be surprised: God and the invisible forces of the universe will help you and shower upon you gifts beyond belief. Try it. My life is an incredible proof of it.

~ Idea 767 ~ 15 August 1996
If we are serious about getting a better world, I recommend that all my works derived from an unprecedented, life-long experience of world affairs, should become required readings in all political and international affairs faculties of this planet. They exist already in several languages. (see Annex to the first 500 Ideas)

~ Idea 768 ~ 16 August 1996
When will be the day when all radio stations of the world will start the day with the hymn of the United Nations written by Pablo Casals or the Ode to Joy by Beethoven, adopted as the hymn of the European Union, and after that only the national hymn. There is not a single country on Earth that does it. No wonder that the world is divided, in disarray.

~ Idea 769 ~ 17 August 1996
It is marvelous that we have on this planet such an incredible linguistic, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, all legacies of an immemorable past, all having something important to contribute to the biological, cultural wealth and evolution of humanity.
But all this was born locally without even knowing that there were other continents and that the Earth was round and circling around the sun. This diversity can therefore not be allowed to stand in the way of a new, immense, widely opened evolution: the global age, the age of total knowledge of our home and of our world-wide human family, the interdependence between the Earth and humanity, between the past and the future, between the Earth and the heavens.
Our present beliefs, institutions and ways of life must take this into account and acquire a global dimension or at least understanding. The past cannot stand in the way of the future and cannot claim to be the infallible, unchangeable, fundamental reality. Education, politics and religions must all be globalized, as has been the case of already so many other things, to start with business. No part can be considered greater than the totality.

~ Idea 770 ~ 18 August 1996
Instead of spending huge sums on trying to find out how life on planet Mars became extinct, the US would better do to spend that money on ideas and measures to prevent the extinction of life on planet Earth.

~ Idea 771 ~ 19 August 1996
Often, after writing or speaking to audiences I feel discouraged when I think that during that time tens of thousands of experts sitting in growing numbers of skyscrapers around the world have devised ever more sophisticated methods to produce more, to sell more and make money, leaving the Earth in a worse condition than it was when I began to write or to speak.
Only you the people can help control the skyscraper dwellers. Please remember me in a small wooden farmhouse on a sacred hill in demilitarized Costa Rica, and who has not given up his optimism, despite enormous odds.

~ Idea 772 ~ 20 August 1996
The greatest error of our time is to take the present world political and economic "orders" as they are and not as they should be.

~ Idea 773 ~ 21 August 1996
Business is not interested in population control: they are interested in growing numbers of consumers and new markets.
But the white western world should be acutely interested, for within a few decades their children and children's children will be minimal in the world, close to disappearance.

~ Idea 774 ~ 22 August 1996
The greatest indictments of capitalism are firms like Coca Cola and Philip Morris and others in the same line of products. It is simply pathetic to see the disappearance of natural fruit juices in the poor countries, displaced by sugared, carbonated water. Parents with low incomes are bleeding themselves to buy expensive Coca Cola for their children who have been programmed by advertisement and marketing to crave for them. And I do not speak of the lottery tickets put in cigarette packets and behind soft drink labels in some poor countries to make people buy them. The history of such firms would be the most enlightening condemnation of the excessive "free market system".

~ Idea 775 ~ 23 August 1996
Capitalism and communism are two political and economic systems born from the industrial, scientific revolution. Capitalism has done wonders for human progress until recently, because it was based on the valid and prevalent view of evolution as competition and survival of the fittest. Communism was a failure because it did not respond to the basic, justified needs of humans at that time. Alas capitalism is no longer good today. It is not good for the Earth which has become preoccupation number one in our evolution. It is not even so satisfactory for humans anymore because of the excessive production of goods which are not really needed for the fulfillment of human life. This is why capitalism is in crisis and does not know what to do to continue to grow except through endlessly increasing marketing and advertisement. The entire economic system of this planet must be re-examined from scratch if we want to avoid an economic collapse in the next century.

~ Idea 776 ~ 24 August 1996
There is growing interest and action to save what is common to humanity: the seas and oceans, the ozonosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere, the forestry of the planet, etc. A new ideology and philosophy is coming to the fore. We should ask an honest man like Mikhail Gorbachev to tell us what was good in certain cases in communism and which would be useful for humanity. Not everything is totally bad in any system. Even Hitler did something worthwhile, still existent today, when he asked for the building of the Volkswagen, the cheap, economic car for ordinary, low income people.

~ Idea 777 ~ 25 August 1996
The University for Peace has carried out a very successful program of Culture for Peace in the whole of Central America. I suggest that the UN launch a similar program of Culture for Peace for the entire world with the advice and experience of the University for Peace.

~ Idea 778 ~ 26 August 1996
The Secretary General of the UN should have a group of idea-men and idea-women advisers. The President of the European Union has a group of long-term prospective thinkers attached to his office. All governments and major institutions should follow that example.

~ Idea 779 ~ 27 August 1996
Whenever a government is accused by Parliament for spending too much, one of the first reductions is to cut the contributions to world cooperation. If I were a Parliamentarian I would ask: could you not reduce expenditures on things you are doing and which the world agencies could do much cheaper for the community of nations, saving expenditures of 185 governments?

~ Idea 780 ~ 28 August 1996
It is not because something seems impossible to achieve, that it should not be tried;
It is not because something has little chance to succeed, that it should not be tried.
On the contrary.
This is why I claim that it is of the utmost importance to sit down and to devise a better way of governing this Earth and humanity than is the case under the current, questionable system.

~ Idea 781 to 785 ~ 29 August to 2 September 1996
These ideas for the year 2000 come late to me, but better late than never:
Idea 781 I recommend that each member government of the United Nations prepare a list of ideas they have proposed in the United Nations since its foundation or since their membership in the Organization. The ideas could be listed in 4 categories:
1. ideas implemented
2. ideas partly implemented
3. ideas which did not obtain agreement
4. new ideas for the 21st century
Idea 782 I recommend that the same be done by the member governments of all the specialized agencies of the UN;
Idea 783
I recommend that the same be done by the past Secretaries-General of the UN, the present one, and all past heads of UN specialized agencies and present ones;
Idea 784 I recommend that the same be done by retired and active world servers of the UN and of its agencies;
Idea 785 I recommend that the same be done by all the Non-Governmental Organizations accredited to the United Nations and to the specialized agencies.
What wealth of ideas and initiatives this would produce for the year 2000! My own 2000 ideas would look pale in comparison.

~ Idea 786 ~ 3 September 1996
All too often I hear people say: I tried but it did not work, so I gave up. Well, we have the sacred duty to try and to never give up. Many of our ideals for peace and a better world will be fulfilled only after our death. This was the case of so many enlightened world servers of the past: those who wanted human rights, those who wanted the abolition of slavery, etc. Here is a more recent, unforgettable example:
Robert Schuman, my compatriot from Alsace-Lorraine, dreamt as a child of the abolition of the borders in Europe, especially between France and Germany. He launched the Schuman Plan in 1949 and it took 43 years until the European Union was born and the borders of western European countries were abolished. But Robert Schuman was no longer alive to see it. I went to his tomb to report it to him.
Please follow his example: never give up your dream even if you will not see it fulfilled.
My dream for a World Union or United States of the World or Earth Government is unlikely to be fulfilled during my life time. It is only a reason for working harder at it.

~ Idea 787 ~ 4 September 1996
We must begin to control the excessive growth on this planet of both our numbers and our consumption. If not, we will end up by destroying our planetary home. An inspection team from another planet visiting our Earth to find out why life became extinct on it, will find this prediction in many writings.

~ Idea 788 ~ 5 September 1996
Economics must be careful not to become the dismal science and business schools its dismal executants. At each promotion of economists and business classes, the Earth must shudder, because they have become the military academies of the war against the Earth.

~ Idea 789 ~ 6 September 1996
A Nobel Prize for Economics was created a few years ago. The first laureate was my dear and admirable friend Jan Tinbergen from Holland who could have been a saint and who did so much good work for the poor countries and as a consultant to the United Nations. It is to be hoped that there will soon also be a Nobel Prize for Ecology.

~ Idea 790 ~ 7 September 1996
If I were a young man I would study economics and business only with the determination to make a revolution in those fields.

~ Idea 791 ~ 8 September 1996
When I suggested to the Albert Schweitzer Institute's President, Harold Robles that I would prefer to stay at their home for the night rather than go to a big, luxurious hotel they had offered me as a choice when I was invited to speak at Yale University, he exclaimed surprised: "You are like Albert Schweitzer. He always refused to go to luxurious hotels."
I answered: "Yes, when I am in such hotels and look at all the lavish constructions, the unnecessary luxury, I am thinking of the Earth destruction this all represents, mushrooming all around the world, spending huge sums of advertisement to create Earth-destroying desires in people."

~ Idea 792 ~ 9 September 1996
Years ago, when I went to the Italian hairdresser at the UN, he always seized my glasses, looked at them and washed them with soap and water.
I remembered this recently and tried it with my glasses. To my astonishment the result was better than with eye-glass cleaning liquid. It takes away the grease from the skin which gets into the rims of the glasses. I recommend it to everyone. It will spare the environment millions of little plastic bottles and who knows what kind of chemicals used in the liquids.

~ Idea 793 ~ 10 September 1996
We have a very substantial and admirable science of life called biology (Greek bios, life, and logos, study).
We still urgently need a science and art of biophily, love for life (phil, Greek meaning love). The word does not even exist.

~ Idea 794 ~ 11 September 1996
There will soon come a time when humans will not be able to be happy as long as there is so much poverty and suffering in the world. More and more well-blessed people will look for poor people, especially children, they can help. One can observe the beginning of this new moral, individual and family philanthropy at the end of this century. UNICEF at the United Nations is the most lovable, gratifying example of it. In reality the United Nations is the first great UNICEF for the alleviation of all human miseries on this planet, including the miseries of the Earth itself.

~ Idea 795 ~ 12 September 1996
Each well-to-do human person and family should ask itself at the end of the year what good it has done, what philanthropy (love for humans) and gaiaphily (love for the Earth) it has done during that year. A good occasion are the tax exemptions offered by certain countries for charitable donations. This field should be better investigated, to include also help to nature, to the Earth. If the Fiscal and Financial Branch of the United Nations would not have been suppressed it would have been a subject for its study and recommendations world-wide.

~ Idea 796 ~ 13 September 1996
I would like to see someday world statistics on the total number of local, municipal public servants, city public servants, provincial and state public servants, national public servants and finally world public servants. The results would reveal that there is an infinitesimal small number of world public servants at the time when they are most needed. Someone calculated that there are 556 soldiers, 85 doctors and 1 world servant per 100,000 inhabitants of the Earth.

~ Idea 797 ~ 14 September 1996
The same statistics would be interesting showing the number of local, municipal politicians, provincial and state politicians, national politicians and global, world politicians (better called planeticians).

~ Idea 798 ~ 15 September 1996
I pray for the creation of world associations of global thinkers, of world leaders, futurologists and planeticians, of a world academy of planetic science, of a world administrative agency.

~ Idea 799 ~ 16 September 1996
The most neglected field of human rights is the field of consumers rights. I hope that the International Consumers Union will soon become a full specialized agency of the UN.

~ Idea 800 ~ 17 September 1996
During my life on this Earth I have discovered what a blessing it is to be married, to share the miracle of being alive with another beloved companion. I had the privilege of a wonderful marriage with a marvelous wife from a faraway land, Chile, whose ideal was to obtain equal rights for women in the world, who gave me four children and nine grandchildren. Alas, she died four years ago from Alzheimer's disease in Costa Rica. God placed another wonderful companion on my way, imbued with idealism and love for this Earth and for all humans. When we later got married on 27 June 1997, our family recited during the wedding ceremony my poem Decide to Be Happy, reproduced earlier in these 2000 ideas. And from a Mayan cosmologist I learned later that we should consider ourselves a cosmic couple.

~ Idea 801 ~ 18 September 1996
It is wonderful that common services are provided to people for their local, urban, provincial and national communities. That is the origin and reason for the local and national tax systems. How strange that nothing similar has ever been thought out and implemented for the new and vastest human community, the world community. What incredible benefits one would derive from the creation of world common services which would avoid the duplication of the same services by 185 nations. I recommend therefore the establishment of a World Commission of Eminent Persons for the Creation of Common World Services, their financing through proper taxation and the establishment of a yearly world budget showing all revenues and expenses at all levels of government, from the local, regional, national, continental to the global, world-wide levels.

~ Idea 802 ~ 19 September 1996
All peoples of Earth should follow the good example of the Latin Americans and take every day a siesta. There is no better way to good health and to avoid tiredness, nervousness and depression. In modern life it is a long day which merits being interrupted by a good, deep rest. In France, the government recommends it to all elderly. If everyone does it, it will be a more peaceful, happy and certainly less neurotic, agitated world. I would like in particular to see the heads of states and of corporations in their skyscrapers take a good midday siesta every day.

~ Idea 803 ~ 20 September 1996
The following fundamental statement has not yet been taken into account by the adult politicians of this planet:
"Until modern times young people could anticipate a future rather like that of their parents. Social change was that slow. Now young people face futures for which their parents' culture cannot prepare them. The young must create the future themselves."
Margaret Mead
In reality youth has barely any voice in national and world affairs. Adults should therefore not be surprised by the frustration, often despair of youth, their frequent addiction to drugs, alcohol and violence. Let us give a strong voice to youth, a participation in the building of a better world, a hope and enthusiasm for the future. In these 2000 ideas I give several of them for youth, e.g. to hold parallel youth parliaments next to national parliaments, parallel youth ministries next to national ministries, to create Youth Ministries in all countries, to hold parallel youth conferences next to United Nations and other world conferences. Philanthropists of the world, please listen to this appeal. The future of the world might depend on it. It is your children's and grandchildren's world too.
Note: I was delighted to learn at the end of 1997 that a first World Conference of Ministers of Youth will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, in August 1998. I plan to attend it or to send them a long list of proposals.

~ Idea 804 ~ 21 September 1996
When one considers that the world spends only 1.3 billion dollars a year on the United Nations which serves the whole Earth and humanity and that the nations of this planet spend more than 1000 billion dollars a year on armaments and militaries; one wonders if there is not a better way to run this planet. To do that, I propose:
1. that a review be made of all the excellent world security systems worked out over the last fifty years which would save us 1000 billion dollars and which can be implemented now that the cold war is over;
2. that the United Nations Secretary General publish a major report with the assistance of all UN agencies for the year 2000, showing how the 1000 billion dollars of savings could be used for the solution of the world's and humanity's major problems:
? billion dollars for world population control
? billion to feed the hungry of the world
? billion to eliminate extreme poverty
? billion to eliminate illiteracy
? billion to improve world health
? billion to provide decent housing to all
? billion to prevent handicaps and take better care of the world's 500 million handicapped
? billion to save and improve the environment
? billion to eliminate remaining unemployment after all the above
The report should be released on 1 January 2000, or before, as a beacon of hope and determination to make this Earth a true showcase in the universe, inhabited by a most intelligent, peaceful, fully evolved and happy human race, living in harmony with itself, with the Earth, with the past, the future and the heavens.

~ Idea 805 ~ 22 September 1996
Regarding multimillionaire and billionaire philanthropists, I am sure that many poor people ask themselves how they could get such fortunes without being taxed by governments or the world community to reestablish justice inside nations and in the world. Many on the contrary admire the very rich. They make the headlines in the press. They should be looked upon with different eyes. The people should say: we do not want philanthropy and charity, we want justice.

~ Idea 806 ~ 23 September 1996
The same happens in the current relations between rich and poor nations: the rich nations exploit the poor by buying at miserable prices their mineral and natural resources with which they make big profits at home. And then they offer a pittance of aid to the plundered countries. The latter should say: we do not want aid, we want justice. I recommend that all foreign aid given by the rich nations to the poor should be called reparation aid, after deduction from it of all armaments purchased from such aid at the insistence of the giving country.

~ Idea 807 ~ 24 September 1996
Perhaps the scant practice of having idea-men and idea-women attached to high offices such as world institutions, heads of states and global corporations, should be replaced by the practice of establishing "wisdom counselors", because wisdom is more than intelligence, it includes love, cooperation and common sense which are sorely needed for our successful further evolution. The indigenous people give us good examples: they assign an important role to the elders and take decisions only after taking into account the effects on the seventh generation. The fact that the modern, western society has rarely, if ever done that during this century might be the reason why we are in such trouble today.

~ Idea 808 ~ 25 September 1996
People should be urged by government at all levels to conserve water resources, to use as little water as possible, in order not to deplete underground water tables and to be accustomed to it when serious water shortages will develop in various parts of the world. The time has come to create Ministries of Water in all governments and a World Water Agency in the United Nations.

~ Idea 809 ~ 26 September 1996
I recommend that all countries which have a federal system of government, e.g. the United States, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and several others, should form a new group in the United Nations and work together in the light of their experience, for the creation of a world federal government.

~ Idea 810 ~ 27 September 1996
All national pledges of allegiance should be preceded or replaced by a pledge of allegiance to the Earth and humanity.

~ Idea 811 ~ 28 September 1996
Since so many of my dreams have been fulfilled during my life, I believe that dreams are the surest ways to new realities. My ultimate dream is to see this Earth preserved and improved as the most beautiful paradise in the universe with a humanity living in peace, well-being and utmost happiness in it.
Is that dream too big? I do not believe so. All we have to do is to dream it, to want it, to work for it and it will happen.

~ Idea 812 ~ 29 September 1996
Professor Dietrich Fischer, author of the Introduction to my eighth hundred ideas, sent me this proposal:
"Create a Center for Legal Education and Research" (CLEAR), where some of the best legal scholars and legislators from around the world could meet to exchange ideas on what constitutions and laws have worked well, under what conditions, and what pitfalls have led to ambiguity and conflict. They could transmit their combined knowledge to some of the brightest law students from around the world. This could help countries that are still struggling with establishing well-functioning legal systems, so that they would not have to repeat all the costly and painful mistakes that others may have gone through."
An excellent idea!

~ Idea 813 ~ 30 September 1996
How grateful we must be to nature! If we had to water and irrigate all the crops on the planet, we would never be able to do it. And rain does it so naturally in so many places of the world. It even replenishes the waters of our rivers and underground water tables from which we irrigate. Nor would humans be able to produce industrially all the oxygen needed by the lungs of 5.6 billion people. And nature does it so well, producing oxygen from the surface of the seas and oceans and from the vegetation cover of the Earth. The gravest challenge now to humanity is not to destroy, not to interfere unduly with these natural processes. Nature must become infinitely more valuable and respected by us. Humans must become infinitely more humble and devoted to the Earth from which we come and to which we will return. Each year's Earth Day should be our thanksgiving day to Mother nature.

~ Idea 814 ~ 1 October 1996
Our lives are encumbered with too many "things". As a result we do not think enough, we do not dream enough, we do not pray enough, we do not meditate enough. Our miraculous inner self is robbed away from us by the excessive things around us. We must clean our houses from all unnecessary, meaningless things imposed upon us by marketing and advertising. We must visit the miraculous nature around us and our rich inner self.

~ Idea 815 ~ 2 October 1996
I applaud the initiative taken in the US State of Kansas by a volunteer organization to give children a voting opportunity in national, state and local elections. It is good for candidates to hear the voice of children. For information contact the office of Kids Voting, Kansas Inc. c/o the Topeka Capital Journal, 616 SE Jefferson, TOPLON, KS 66607.

~ Idea 816 ~ 3 October 1996
Many years ago in the 1960's, at the UN I assembled statistics on how many people were killed in current wars at that time, including Vietnam, and people killed in automobile accidents. The figure of the latter was more than twice the number of the first. And yet people have more outcries against wars than accidents.
In a proper Earth Government or World Union there should be a Registry for Accidents and their Prevention. It would keep world-wide statistics on all accidents, study their main causes, publish them and ask the public for their help in prevention and reduction. It would not only save many lives and handicaps but also huge resources to social and health insurance systems. A great role can be played by the media in such an effort.

~ Idea 817 ~ 4 October 1996
Anyone who goes to Costa Rica and stays at one of the big, lavish American or multinational wasteful, arrogant hotels, is losing a precious part of their time, life and money in that beautiful country with its paradise of nature and simple, frugal life.

~ Idea 818 ~ 5 October 1996
At my death I will leave a lot of ideas behind me, as I did during my life. It was my way of thanking God for the miracle of life. I have even received many generous, marvelous advance payments from God.* They require that I work even harder until I am recalled to heaven and asked for my final report.
* Like my beautiful, younger, fabulous wife Barbara Gaughen, married in June 1997

~ Idea 819 ~ 6 October 1996
The whole world should rejoice at this news:
General Butler, the former Commander-in-Chief of the US Strategic Air Command, along with 60 other military leaders from around the world released a statement calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
It begins: "We, military professionals...are convinced that the continuing existence of nuclear weapons...constitutes a peril to global peace and to the safety and survival of the people we are dedicated to protect."
It concludes: "We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear weapons-free world...We must not fail to seize our opportunity. There is no alternative."
There is no doubt that this should be one of the top priorities on our world agenda as we enter a new century and millennium. General Butler and his 60 friendly military leaders should further come up with an effective world security plan, including a UN or World Strategic Air Peace Command.
The above recommendation should also be extended to the abolition of the 443 nuclear energy plants in the world* which generate more than 10 tons of nuclear waste each day (3,700 tons a year). It took millions of years for this Earth to loose its original nuclear radiations when born from the sun, and it was only after that clean-up that life was able to appear on this planet. Builders of nuclear arms and nuclear energy plants should be brought before the planned World Criminal Justice Court. We cannot accept a reversal of the evolution of this planet for national sovereignty, defense purposes and/or economic reasons.
*Plus 36 more under construction in 14 countries.

~ Idea 820 ~ 7 October 1996
The frequent encounters and reciprocal visits of heads of states of this Earth are a substantial progress in human affairs, peaceful relations and world cooperation. I would suggest that such visits should include their families. Often, their spouses already accompany them and become friends. But even more important would be that their children, the future generation, could meet, become friends and give their ideas and dreams to their heads of family. Why not create networks or associations of spouses of heads of states, and networks or associations of their children? Great ideas might come from them.

~ Idea 821 ~ 8 October 1996
A world Human Settlements Prize should be awarded each year by the United Nations for the best ideas, initiatives and actions to stop the insane, continuing growth of monstrous cities in which humans will be unable to live sooner or later. A return of people to rural, natural areas where they will recover their sanity and good health should be fostered by all UN agencies, governments and institutions in the world. We must decitycize this beautiful, miraculous planet. "Small is beautiful" applies also to cities.

~ Idea 822 ~ 9 October 1996
Who told us, who gave us the right to govern this Earth? Look at the job we are doing. We are in the full process of destroying it. It is rather the laws of nature, of evolution which should govern us or at least guide us. It is providential that a World Party of Natural Law has been created by British scientists and exists already in 85 countries, including the United States. At this stage of evolution and degree of human intervention in everything under the sun, we must absolutely raise the question: how should this planet further evolve according to natural laws, how should it be properly managed, cared for, what should be the right evolutionary role, task and responsibility of the human species? This should be inscribed as the priority item on the human agenda of world affairs on the eve of a new century and millennium.

~ Idea 823 ~ 10 October 1996
The word politics should be abandoned. It was coined by the Greeks from the word polis, the city, because Greece was a city state. They had no idea what the rest of the world was, that the Earth was round, a globe turning around the sun, that there was a vast world ocean with other continents emerged from it.
What word should we use, if it is in reality the task of humans to "govern" this Earth or at least to stop destroying it?
Let us try the world "management":
Personal management science of the individual individualism
Family management family science familism
Community management community science communalism
Village management village science ruralism
City management urban science urbanism
Human regions management regional social science regionalism
Natural regions management bioregional science bioregionalism
Provincial management provincial science provincialism
Nation management national science nationalism
Continent management continental science continentalism
World Ocean management ocean science or oceanology oceanism
Biosphere management biosphere science biospherism
Lithosphere management lithosphere science lithospherism
Atmosphere management atmospheric science atmospherism
Ozonosphere management ozonosphere science ozonospherism
The globe's management Global Earth science or Earthology globalism
Outer Space management outer space science outer spacism
Solar system management solar science solarism
Our galaxy management astroscience or astrology galaxism
The cosmos or universe cosmic science or cosmology universalism
We must ask this question: can we, should we interfere in all these areas, modify them, rule them, tamper with the laws of the universe, of nature and of galactic, cosmic evolution?
What an incredible, mind-boggling picture this provides, not to speak of the place in time of each segment and of the totality, the holism of it: the little we know of their past, what we know today and what we will need to know about their future and the future consequences of our actions on them?
Take only the first segment: personal management which includes the meaning of life, the science of the body, the mind, the heart and the soul, individual creativity, the art of living, personal fulfillment, the achievement of happiness, reproduction, contribution to further evolution, etc.
Or take the other living species' in our earthly biosphere, their astonishing variety and numbers, their role in nature, from the biggest to bacteria and microbes. And all this is interdependent in a monumental whole moving in time with a life-span, role, responsibility and benefits for each.
We humans cannot even grasp the nature of eternity and of infinity, bogged down as we are in our limited form and limited time from which we judge everything else!
So what can we do, what should we do? There is no ready answer, but definitely the word politics, i.e. management of city does no longer apply. Planetics would be a first progress.
I recommend that we look into this and do what I propose in ideas 527 to 547, and 557 to 564, taking as the occasion our entry into a new century and millennium.

~ Idea 824 ~ 11 October 1996
For all the above segments of the cosmic reality there should be
- a science (the thorough knowledge of it)
- a strategy or plan or objectives, or non-intervention
- a methodology (how to do it or to leave it alone)
E.g. for the individual person, there should be:
- a science of individual, personal human life
- a strategy or plan or objectives: the attainment of happiness, of fulfillment, of contribution to further evolution
- a methodology: the art of living, its ways, human practices and methods
Regarding our planetary home, the Earth should no longer be secondary to nations, but nations must be secondary to the Earth and evolution. National sovereignty has become an evolutionary aberration. While it was a progress in earlier times, now it is a harmful obstacle to the future of our planet, humanity and of themselves.

~ Idea 825 ~ 12 October 1996
I wish that for each of the 21 segments of human life listed in ideas 527 to 547, a column be added showing what initiatives or plans are under way to do the fundamental rethinking needed. This could be a most important document. The United Nations and its agencies should collect that information and bring it to the attention of the world. Here are a few examples:
A new political system for planet Earth: the report of the World Commission on Global Governance headed by Mr. Ingvar Carlson, former Prime Minister of Sweden;
the forthcoming meeting of the World Federalist Movement in Montreux, Switzerland, 19 - 21 September 1997
the United States Initiative Philadelphia II for a proposed Federal World Government.
the meeting planned in Holland in 1999, United Democracies to draft a Constitution for the World
A new education: the report of the UNESCO World Commission on Education in the 21st
century, headed by Mr. Jacques Delors, former President of the European Community.
A new philosophy: the forthcoming 20th World Congress of Philosophy in Boston, 10 - 16 August 1998.
A new cosmology and long term view of evolution: the conference of long term evolutionary scientists on the future of the world, to be convened by the Club of Budapest on global, planetary consciousness, in Weimar in 1999.
A new spirituality: the United Religions Initiative and the third World Parliament of Religions in Capetown in 1999
All of these and many more could be considered as preparatory steps to the year 2000 during which the United Nations will hold a General Assembly 2000 of heads of states accompanied by a World Peoples' Assembly 2000.

~ Idea 826 ~ 13 October 1996
It is wonderful to live in a country where there are no militaries! I dream that soon all humans will live in countries without militaries in a totally disarmed world. Having this thought on sacred Mt. Rasur in Costa Rica, above the UN University for Peace I make it a prophecy: soon there will be no longer any militaries and armaments on this beautiful planet. Please, dear people, dream and act for the same.

~ Idea 827 ~ 14 October 1996
The United Nations should publish each year a report on the philanthropy received by the UN and all its agencies and world programs. I am sure it would look like a trifle, compared with the philanthropy received by national institutions when nations are already overfinanced and multiplied 185 times in the world at a time when the Earth and humanity should be given top priority by philanthropists in order to foster a more rational, just, economical, natural and social world order.

~ Idea 828 ~ 15 October 1996
US citizens should follow the example of the US government which refuses to pay its assessments to the United Nations budget if the UN does not reduce its budget or for other reasons hostile to world conferences, specialized institutions and world servants. US citizens should refuse to pay taxes for the same or similar reasons, the first being the astronomic expenditures of the US government on armaments and the militaries.

~ Idea 829 ~ 16 October 1996
The UN should publish a yearly report on national prohibitions, restrictions and outright deductions from their contributions to the UN budget of people's philanthropic contributions to the UN, to its world agencies and world programs. It would be an eye opener for the public.

~ Idea 830 ~ 17 October 1996
Since the cold war is over and the UN has done a remarkable job in reducing, almost eliminating international wars, the US should reduce its military budget at least by the amount of its contribution to the UN. As a result the UN would cost nothing to the US. Russia gave a good example by paying its arrear assessment to the UN through an equivalent reduction of the military budget.

~ Idea 831 ~ 18 October 1996
One of the few right environmental decisions taken in the last thirty years was the agreement not to extend the building and use of supersonic airplanes for civilian air transportation. France which invented and constructed the Concorde, uses it only for transatlantic flights, but no other country does. The interesting fact is that the agreement was not reached for environmental purposes, but for the fact that the United States had almost the monopoly of existing big passenger planes and did not want to see the new planes developed by France extend to the world. It is commercial reasons which rule this century and the world, not the preservation of the Earth and of its nature. This should no longer be allowed in the next century.

~ Idea 832 ~ 19 October 1996
For millions of years we humans did not really change the basic functioning of nature, of the Earth. But now, with our sizable world population, insatiable consumption, incessant new inventions, technological and scientific changes, world-wide marketing and advertisement, we are changing the fundamental functioning of the planet. We risk destroying it and ourselves in the process. It is time therefore to listen to the wisdom of the indigenous people who have an immemorial, intimate knowledge of nature and take no decision without evaluating the effects on the seventh generation. They should be the wise leaders of the Earth, not the chief executive officers of the multinational and national corporations who have only one thing on their mind: how will the decisions increase profits, the power of the corporation, its world-wide market and its position in the stock-exchange. Since they are the dominant power and object of admiration, envy and imitation on this planet, they will mean our end as well as that of evolution. I sometimes think that the Roman Empire has not been as decadent as is this new empire. The title chief executive officer should be changed to chief execution officer. As someone said: the destruction of a work of art is called vandalism; the destruction of the Earth is called development.

~ Idea 833 ~ 20 October 1996
I urgently recommend the convening by the UN of a world conference on architecture to make sure that architectural education and the architects profession will pay utmost attention to environmental requirements and that the main objective should no longer be for bigger, more luxurious, unnecessary buildings bringing in more money to them. Architecture and the building industry must undergo a fundamental philosophical change. The same way as we need more frugal and simple living, we need more simple and frugal dwellings. The building explosion is as bad as the population explosion and consuming explosion.

~ Idea 834 ~ 21 October 1996
The subject of ethics, especially world ethics, is popping up everywhere in the world these days. It means that the global brain of humanity is giving signals. We have reached a sufficient level of global consciousness to consider the creation of a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on Ethics. I would give them a whole file of initiatives and work already undertaken around the world on the subject.

~ Idea 835 ~ 22 October 1996
It is wonderful to hear play and sing at the end of the Sunday mass in Ciudad Colon, the seat of the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica, the Ode to Joy of Beethoven with its heavenly notes and lofty words by Schiller calling all humans to brotherhood. The tears come to my eyes when I hear the simple choir of peasants perform this heavenly music. I dream that the Ode to Joy will be played some day in all churches and temples of the world. I wish also that it be played at my funeral mass which I want to be a mass of resurrection in white as were the masses of Teilhard de Chardin and Emmanuel de Breuvery. I will also leave behind a recording of my performance of the Ode to Joy on my harmonica which my grandfather taught me to play. It will be my good-bye to earthly life. I wish to be buried into the Earth without a coffin, on sacred Mount Rasur so that I can resurrect soonest into other vegetal and animal life forms, possibly into a beautiful, lofty, inspiring tree spreading out its leaves to the cosmic rays of the sun. This will be the contribution of my life in another fascinating form.

~ Idea 836 ~ 23 October 1996
Humanity must devote as much, if not more attention to the healing of the Earth and of humanity as we devote to the repair of machines and to the healing of human beings. There is need for a holistic Humanity and Earth health care and medicine. We devote infinitely more attention, research, energy and resources to scientific and technological feats on individual health and medicine than on a healthy Earth and Humanity.

~ Idea 837 - 838 ~ 24 - 25 October 1996
How is it that only a few exceptional humans are uttering throughout history the obvious, fundamental laws and wise precepts for good, happy, fulfilled individual and social lives on this God-given, miraculous, incredible planet?
Why, why, why are they the exception? Why are not all children of the world taught these precepts? Don't we want them to be peaceful, happy and fulfilled human beings?
Why is education dictated by obsolete nations and television?
Why is education of adults dictated by big business through the media, marketing and advertisement?
Why not by a Jesus, a Buddha, a Mahatma Gandhi, a Mother Teresa?
Why, why, why?
I therefore recommend these two ideas:
Idea 837 A World Commission of Wise People should be established on perennial wisdom and happiness;
Idea 838 Somewhere on this planet, on a prophetic sacred hill bathed in oxygen and close to God, a University of World Wisdom and Happiness should be created to teach the perennial precepts of all great sages, prophets and saints of all human history, religions and cultures.

~ Idea 839 ~ 26 October 1996
If there is one idea which should be high up on the agenda of the United Nations it is how our world should be better governed. Alas, the cold war prevented any discussion of the subject. A youth conference on The Challenges to World Government just held at the University for Peace recommended that the United Nations hold a world conference on world government before the year 2000. I gave the proposal my wholehearted endorsement.

~ Idea 840 ~ 27 October 1996
In a file entitled "After my death" I slipped a note from a Franciscan sister of Caldwell, New Jersey, suggesting that I should be canonized a saint. Well, I would not make it as a Catholic saint, but I might be one of the first global, political saints. My compatriot, Robert Schuman, father of the European Union will be the precedent of a political saint when he is canonized.
I recommend that the United Religions Organization, once established, should consider the proclamation of universal saints, including political, economic, and environmental saints. It would enchant me in the afterworld to learn that I would be proclaimed one of them.

~ Idea 841 ~ 28 October 1996
The basic Greek philosophy &endash; textually the love for wisdom &endash; turned around three concepts:
knowledge
love
beauty
This concept is valid for all levels of society, from the individual, the couple, the family to the entire humanity.
At the level of humanity, the situation at the end of this millennium is as follows:
- we have attained a tremendous knowledge of our planetary home, of humanity and of the universe, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large;
- we have not yet been able and taught to extend our love from the nation to all humanity, as Freud pointed out to Einstein;
- we are only beginning to be conscious of the beauty of our earthly home, of its miraculous nature and life forms, of the miracle of life and of the universe, and that beyond personal beauty, the couple's beauty, family beauty, local and national beauty, we must also now care for the beauty of our planetary home, of our miraculous Earth.
The United Nations is recommending these great remaining feats still to be accomplished and I am sure that humans can and will succeed, if they support and listen to their world organization.
And after all the above, peace and happiness will be the result.

~ Idea 842 ~ 29 October 1996
During my early days at the United Nations I created a spiritual Peace on Earth Society (Pacem in Terris) for UN staff members and delegates. It still exists today. On the eve of the new century and millennium I would transform it into the UN Peace, Justice, Love and Beauty Society.

~ Idea 843 ~ 30 October 1996
We have on this planet professions like interior designers and landscape experts. Why don't we have also Earth designers and Earthscape experts? I consider myself to be one of them. The Earth, our magnificent, so beautiful and lovable home in the universe deserves many, many such new professionals. All designers and landscapers, be they interior or exterior, should remember that their work can contribute to a more beautiful and well preserved planet and avoid its unnecessary destruction and resources depletion.

~ Idea 844 ~ 31 October 1996
To visit an American supermarket is to visit a new decadence. Just think what it represents in terms of unnecessary destruction of the Earth and wastes. It must be staggering.
Please, dear reader, return to simple, frugal lives and to small family shopkeepers who can make a living and be employed from your customership.

~ Idea 845 ~ 1 November 1996
I recommend that the living former Secretaries General of the UN be invited to the UN General Assembly 2000 and offer their views, dreams and recommendations for a better UN and world in the 21st century and third millennium.

~ Idea 846 ~ 2 November 1996
I recommend that the living former Presidents of the UN General Assembly be invited to the General Assembly 2000 and offer their ideas, dreams and recommendations for a better UN and world in the 21st century and third millennium.

~ Idea 847 ~ 3 November 1996
I recommend that all Secretaries General of the UN and Presidents of the General Assembly write after their office not so much an autobiography but a Testament to the UN as I have done and an Ideary as I am doing now.

~ Idea 848 ~ 4 November 1996
The young people of the world should request that each national delegation to the UN should include a youth, because youth must absolutely be heard in world affairs and the shaping of the future. There should be a yearly report by the UN to the world outlining the views, dreams and recommendations of the world's youth.

~ Idea 849 ~ 5 November 1996
And why not consider a Main Committee of Youth in the UN General Assembly, which would examine all the items of the agenda world affairs and formulate the recommendations, ideas and dreams of youth for their solution?

~ Idea 850 ~ 6 November 1996
It is easier to change oneself than to change the world. Therefore, let us all begin with ourselves and see how a better personal life, a better behavior and greater frugality can contribute to a better world.
Multiplied by 5.6 billion individuals, what a different world it will make!

~ Idea 851 ~ 7 November 1996
City mayors will tell you: if we do not grow we will die. I say on the contrary: if you continue to grow you will die.

~ Idea 852 ~ 8 November 1996
As we enter a new millennium, given the colossal knowledge we now possess of our planet and of humanity, there will be need for the first time in human history and evolution, for century mid-terms and millennium mid-terms strategies: our visions and objectives for the years 2025, 2050, 2075, 2100 and each following century until the year 3000. The whole future of our planet and of our species to the year 3000 must now be the object of yearly, decade, mid-century, centennial, mid-millennium and millennium plans, visions and strategies.

~ Idea 853 ~ 9 November 1996
More generally I recommend that a Permanent World Commission of Long-Term Evolutionary Scientists, Thinkers and Visionaries be created to report yearly to the United Nations and to the world their views on what should be done and what should be avoided to continue the evolution of this planet.

~ Idea 854 ~ 10 November 1996
The European Union, the greatest new dream and progress in proper Earth government and cooperation , must now take the relay from the United States which has forsaken its role as a dreamer for proper, progressive world cooperation through the United Nations. The world would be well-advised to place its hopes in the European Union as a model for tomorrows indispensable World Union.

~ Idea 855 ~ 11 November 1996
I am glad to visit often the United States to be reminded that this is not what the whole world should look like someday.

~ Idea 856 ~ 12 November 1996
Which will be the city, the state, the nation which will have the courage to declare: we will stop the further growth of our population, we will stop the further growth of industries, we will stop the endless growth of transport and traffic, we will stop the destruction of our nature, of our Earth, etc.

~ Idea 857 ~ 13 November 1996
I dream that I will be appointed the Servant General of the World People's Assembly in 2000 and that the governmental UN General Assembly 2000 will honor me with the title Servant General Emeritus or Wise Elder of the United Nations. I will place this dream on my bench of dreams on sacred Mt. Rasur.

~ Idea 858 ~ 14 November 1996
More generally, I recommend as I did already in my novel First Lady of the World, that the title Secretary General of the UN be changed to Servant General of the Earth and Humanity.

~ Idea 859 ~ 15 November 1996
It is utterly wrong to make the poor countries envious of the rich ones, mostly for marketing and commercial purposes, and to give them western excessive consumption and living habits. This will not even be of benefit to the rich countries, because these habits multiplied by 9 to 10 billion people in the next century will mean the end of all life on this planet through the destruction of its natural elements.

~ Idea 860 ~ 16 November 1996
Since we all want our children and grandchildren to be happy, why don't we request that happiness should be taught in all schools and be put on the agenda of all governments and world organizations? How many schools and institutions do it? Very few, I am sure.
We forget the wise ideal defined by the drafters of the US Constitution: the pursuit of happiness. This should henceforth be our world ideal. The recently coined concept of sustainable development should be replaced by happiness ensuring development.

~ Idea 861 ~ 17 November 1996
Business and sovereign nations will be the undertakers of life on this planet. Humanity must rapidly change its priorities. This should be a top item on the world's agenda for the next century and millennium.

~ Idea 862 ~ 18 November 1996
What we call gross national product and income is often in reality a gross Earth and nature destruction and loss. We better revise our language, false concepts, values, and definitions if we do not want to go under on this planet.

~ Idea 863 ~ 19 November 1996
If you want a different world than the one we have now cut up into 185 "sovereign" nations, a One World with common services, ideals, institutions and pooled efforts and resources, you must start this in the schools. I am glad that there are already 33 Robert Muller Schools around the world which are doing that.

~ Idea 864 ~ 20 November 1996
Winston Churchill proposed in 1950 the creation of a European army, and in February 1951, my compatriot Robert Schuman, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, opened in Paris a Conference for the creation of a European army. Alas, this bold, historic attempt was defeated by communists and extreme right nationalists. Now that communism has given up and that we have a borderless European Union, the idea of creating a European Army has reappeared and has a good chance of being implemented.
Beyond that, I recommend that the governments of the world should not let this century and millennium pass without holding a World Conference on the creation of a world army. Perhaps a miracle will happen and the world would save 900 to 950 billion dollars of military expenditures and use this tremendous sum for infinitely better purposes, especially social and environmental ones.

~ Idea 865 ~ 21 November 1996
Humanity badly needs political saints, saints who wear a suit and a necktie. I am so glad to be a member of the canonization committee of Robert Schuman who wanted to become a monk, but guided by God and the miseries of World War II, became a political man and created the borderless European Union of 16 countries, including the former archenemies France and Germany. His sainthood is expected to be proclaimed in 2000 on the anniversary day of the creation of the European Union. What a great event it will be.

~ Idea 866 ~ 22 November 1996
If someday my picture or bust should be displayed in the Robert Muller Schools, I would like to have these words inscribed on them:
"It is in the United Nations, humanity's House of Hope, that I received the education which is now given to you. Blessed be the United Nations. May you be the builders of a permanently peaceful, just and happy world."

~ Idea 867 ~ 23 November 1996
The United Nations should not only be the world organization entrusted with peace between nations. It should become the eminent world organization of non-violence, giving guidance, assistance, and ensuring non-violence in all sectors of human life on this Earth.

~ Idea 868 ~ 24 November 1996
When I look at a forest, at a tree, at a flower, at a hen, at a cow or at a horse, I see a perfect creation. Each is perfectly what Creation, God, the cosmos or evolution wanted to create.
And I ask myself: am I as perfect as they are? Do I live, think, behave in the perfect way my Creator expects me to?
I ask myself this question all the time, and have constantly God, the cosmos, the marvelous evolution of this planet present on my mind. Do I do my duty to them?
This is what we modern people must call spiritual, cosmic or evolutionary consciousness. The next century and millennium will be that new period of civilization, a spiritual, cosmic one.

~ Idea 869 ~ 25 November 1996
I dream that five exceptional leaders, heads of states from the five continents of this planet will meet and lay down the foundations of a World Union, the same way as three great leaders of Europe, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi raised their vision above their nation and created the European Union, a blessing for that region after thousands of years of wars and divisions. May the same now happen for the world. Very soon, please, leaders of nations.

~ Idea 870 ~ 26 November 1996
Perhaps the above council could be extended to include a head of state, spokesperson for the Seas and Oceans, one for the Earth, especially its climate and biosphere, and one for the long term evolutionary prospects of our planet and the human species.

~ Idea 871 ~ 27 November 1996
I wish that UNESCO would undertake a world-wide survey and study of the holy, visionary, sacred places of this planet and of the prophecies uttered on them.

~ Idea 872 ~ 28 November 1996
In the year 2000 the leaders and great thinkers of this planet should have the courage to express their views and hopes:
- on what kind of year 2100 they would like to see;
- on what kind of year 3000 they would like to see.

~ Idea 873 ~ 29 November 1996
I hope that a great publisher or UNESCO will publish the views and fears which prevailed in the year 999 on what would happen on 31 December 999. The general view was that it would be the end of the world. They should also publish a book on the state of the world in the year 1000. It would help us to better grasp our past journey, evolution and future progress and role on planet Earth.

~ Idea 874 ~ 30 November 1996
Perhaps from the year 2000 on we should see the Earth as our home, as our dwelling:
- it would have rooms with different families of people,
- no room should dictate to others how to live,
- all families would contribute to the common services, safety and maintenance of the house,
- everyone would aim at keeping the entire home in good shape, harmony, peace, beauty and diversity.
Let us make the Earth, our home, a masterpiece, the most beautiful, most durable, most lovable mansion in the universe. Let us all have that objective.

~ Idea 875 ~ 1 December 1996
The UN and its agencies should collect and prepare for publication in the year 2000 a compendium of personal pledges and commitments of people and institutions to achieve a better, more just and happy human society and world.
Please, dear reader, write down your pledge, commitments and promises and send them to the Secretary General of the UN. Your human brothers and sisters and the Earth will love you for doing it.

~ Idea 876 ~ 2 December 1996
I walk with God and always ask Him: what more good can I do? What do You expect from me? And when an idea comes to me, I know that He is my inspirer and will be my helper, friend and miracle-maker. I am no longer afraid of anyone or of prevailing views and powers.

~ Idea 877 ~ 3 December 1996
All religions ask this question: What, dear God, do You expect from us? Once all the world's religions will be united, we will see at long last a tremendous world-wide spiritual Renaissance and cosmic civilization on Earth.

~ Idea 878 ~ 4 December 1996
Every human collectivity is taxing people: cities, provinces, states, nations, corporations (through their prices and profits) to create common services and provide goods.
Only two communities, the most important ones at this stage of evolution are excluded from this system: humanity and the Earth.
What incredible things could be done if common services for humanity and for the Earth were created and adequately financed. Thank God, the European Union provides now an outstanding example of what can be done when the World Union is created.

~ Idea 879 ~ 5 December 1996
Economics has really become a dismal science. And business schools will finish this planet. The Earth shudders at each graduation of a business class in the world. They are the new military academies in the war against her.

~ Idea 880 ~ 6 December 1996
Why is there a Nobel Prize for Economics and none for Ecology or the Environment?
Claes Nobel tried to convince his family to establish one, but did not succeed. He therefore created his own Earth Prize, but it does not have the same visibility and effects.

~ Idea 881 ~ 7 December 1996
United Nations world conferences have been a monumental blessing in giving the world's people renewed consciousness of old, still unresolved world problems and new problems due to our accelerating global age (e.g. the population explosion, the environment, the world's climate, etc.)
Alas, the US Congress instead of being grateful and pleased, no longer wants any world conferences, arguing that they are costly and useless.* I propose that on the contrary we need more of them on global problems and dangers confronting humanity. If other governments agree with the US and no longer want new world governmental conferences, I recommend that the people should do them. There should be continued World People's Conferences on population, children, women, the aged, human rights, indigenous people, the world's climate, the environment, demilitarization, disarmament, world security, violence in all its forms, the world commons, the seas and oceans, outer-space, etc. Perhaps a better United Nations and world democracy would ensue.
*In reality, it is because the US wants to promote its own ideas and leadership of the world's future.

~ Idea 882 ~ 8 December 1996
Two new human rights must be fought for in the new century:
- the right not to pay taxes for armaments and military expenses;
- the right to non-military service or to alternative environmental service.

~ Idea 883 ~ 9 December 1996
Socrates when he saw the Athens market exclaimed: "So many things which I do not need!"
What would he say today if he saw an American shopping center!
At least in his time the Athens market was not a danger to the future of the Earth, whereas today the shopping centers spreading around the world are.
Today, Socrates would ask: "And what will they do with all the goods they will not sell?"
Do we know? It would be fascinating to learn it.
As an author I once learned that when a US "best-selling" book is launched on the market say at 300,000 copies, easily 100,000 to 200,000 copies are returned by bookshops and shredded! What a world of waste! But it is included in the gross national product!

~ Idea 884 ~ 10 December 1996
Nothing prevents a country from deciding that at each parliamentary election a candidate will be elected to represent that country at the United Nations. It would bring Parliaments closer to the UN. Which will be the first country to do it? We need new ideas.

~ Idea 885 ~ 11 December 1996
Each golf course builder or club should be required by law to donate to the local community a piece of land of equivalent size to be made into a local forest or park for the poor.

~ Idea 886 ~ 12 December 1996
Humanity must begin to educate a new breed of elevated, enlightened, global citizens who are in communion with the Earth, the universe and evolution. The schools teaching the world core curriculum are the precursors of such an education.

~ Idea 887 ~ 13 December 1996
The phenomenal growth of international associations and world non-governmental organizations in recent decades has become such an important world political and social factor that I recommend the establishment of a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on People's Representation and Participation in World Affairs.

~ Idea 888 ~ 14 December 1996
Why should the United States or any other country in the world be afraid to be conquered and taken over by another country and therefore arm itself up to the brim to defend itself? Who on Earth wants to take over the United States or any other country? They are all in such a mess and have enormous headaches.

~ Idea 889 ~ 15 December 1996
In a proper Earth government it would be imperative to have a world progressive income tax system to finance common world services and projects and to redistribute income to the helpless and poor. The existence only of local and national income taxes is a total aberration on this planet. It reminds me of Buckminster Fuller's remark: "National borders and bureaucratic jurisdictions act as blood clots in the free flow of goods and services." He should have added: and justice.

~ Idea 890 ~ 16 December 1996
The budgets of Ministries of Foreign Affairs of nations should not include the country's financial contributions to the budgets of the United Nations and of its agencies. These should be included in the budgets of the corresponding Ministries e.g. the contribution to the Food and Agriculture Organization should be under the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture, the contribution to the International Labour Organization under the budget of the Ministry of Labour, and contributions to UN Peacekeeping Operations under the Ministry of Defense and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc. This would make financing of international organizations more rational. It could lead to a new and much needed reinforcement of national and world cooperation through the cheaper, joint financing of common services and endeavors.

~ Idea 891 ~ 17 December 1996
The World Federalist Association proposes that UN Peacekeeping Operations should be financed from the defense budgets of nations rather than international affairs. How right they are!

~ Idea 892 ~ 18 December 1996
We are beginning to realize that wars against each other must end and that new wars must be declared: the war against waste and the destruction of the planet.

~ Idea 893 ~ 19 December 1996
We humans are too intelligent. Our intelligence will kill us, unless that intelligence and our hearts make a great jump into the future, into the universe, the entire planet and the whole of humanity. That is our main challenge for the 21st century and 3rd millennium.

~ Idea 894 ~ 20 December 1996
To the various new fundamental human rights I have claimed in these 2000 ideas, I would like to add: the fundamental human right of young people to form a family and not to be prevented from it by unemployment.
The reason is that the creation of descendants, at least one or two, is a fundamental cosmic, natural law: the experience of life of ancestors registered in the DNA must be transmitted to descendants in the flow of evolution.
Governments will have the duty to ensure employment of young people. It can easily be done in the way suggested in the next idea.

~ Idea 895 ~ 21 December 1996
The employment of young people must be an absolute duty of government, from local communities to cities, to provinces, to nations, to regional unions and to the top of the world. A world plan must be established to that effect. Regarding employment at the top of the world, I have outlined the tremendous possibilities offered by the United Nations World Volunteer Service, adequately financed. Reductions of military expenses on the planet should be used in priority for the full employment of young people. Vast employment can be found in environmental tasks, such as the greening, reforestation, waste management of all communities. Military service must be replaced by environmental service and peace service.

~ Idea 896 ~ 22 December 1996
Talking to visitors from Kansas City about the Heart Forest planted at my suggestion near the International Airport as a symbol of their city as the "heart" of the United States, gave me the idea of planting a heart of red bougainvilleas on the beautiful slope of our sacred Mt. Rasur, visible from the airport of San Jose.
What a great symbol it will be for Costa Rica and for the first University of Peace on this planet.

~ Idea 897 ~ 23 December 1996
Dear brothers and sisters, here is my advice after decades of work for the world and for humanity at the United Nations:
- firmly believe, be convinced that a peaceful, non-violent world is possible
- that universal well-being is possible
- that making the Earth a paradise is possible
- proclaim, prophesize that it will happen
- love passionately to work for it, neglect no avenue, no detail, no opportunity, no person you meet
- persevere, never give up, not even after death
- be a shining example of what a miracle-maker a human being can be

~ Idea 898 ~ 24 December 1996
The time has come for humanity to enter a new age: the Age of Wisdom. I see at the top of an Earth Government a World Wisdom Council, composed mostly of women and elderly men, including indigenous elders, who would be consulted on every world law, initiative or new technology and say:
- it is not wise to...
or
- it is wise to...
For example they could say that it is not wise in any community to let some individuals become excessively rich and powerful, etc.

~ Idea 899 ~ 25 December 1996
"In our way of life...
with every decision we make,
we always keep in mind
the Seventh Generation to come...
When we walk upon Mother Earth,
we always plant our feet carefully,
because we know that the faces of our
future generations are looking at us
from beneath the ground.
We never forget them."
Oren Lyons
Faithkeeper of the Onondaga

~ Idea 900 ~ 26 December 1996
There was a time when a number of great people like George Washington, James Madison, George Mason and others had the vision and courage to propose a Constitution for the United States of America against the vociferous and staunch opposition of the state powerholders of their time. Where are the great people of today who will dare to conceive and propose a Constitution for the United States of the Earth?
Dear contemporary political leaders, you will all be forgotten as little people by future generations unless you wake up to the supreme needs of this Earth and of its genial human race. Please, a few of you, have the courage to wake up and to propose against all opposition a World Union following the example of Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi who succeeded against all odds in creating a borderless European Union of 16 former belligerent, quarreling nations.
Please, do not miss that tremendous historic opportunity on the eve of a new century and millennium to become famous and be loved and honored by future generations.

~ Idea 901 ~ 28 December 1996
For its own sake and progress all humanity should celebrate each year the birth of George Washington, the father of the United States, of Franklin Roosevelt, the father of the United Nations, of Robert Schuman, the father of the European Union, and of other great humans who united nations towards the ultimate creation of a World Union which must at long last be created and bless humanity in the 21st century:
George Washington: 22 February 1732
Franklin Roosevelt: 30 January 1883
Robert Schuman: 29 June 1866

~ Idea 902 ~ 29 December 1996
The budget of practically any nation, multinational firm and hotel chain is bigger than that of the United Nations. And yet, only the United Nations is genuinely concerned with the fate of our Earth and of Humanity. Many other institutions could not care less, preoccupied as they are only with their constituencies, stockholders and customers. This will lead to catastrophe. A new, stable system of financing all-Earth and all-human concerns and projects is needed on this utterly mismanaged planet.

~ Idea 903 ~ 30 December 1996
The rapid global quantitative and qualitative changes on our planet are the most preoccupying and hopeful subjects to be identified, studied, anticipated and acted upon by humanity. And yet, they have only recently begun to attract attention thanks to the United Nations. They are insufficiently acted upon by most of the 185 nations which divide the planet among themselves. And they receive only an infinitesimal part of the financial resources of the planet.
The present political, sovereign nation-state system and the economic system of this planet must absolutely be revamped.

~ Idea 904 ~ 31 December 1996
This is the end of another year, with only three years left to the first of January 2000. My efforts since 1995, the 50th anniversary of the United Nations whose world-wide celebration I obtained from the UN General Assembly, to get the same Assembly decide the world-wide preparation and celebration of the year 2000 have failed so far. My correspondence and journals will record the efforts I made with several governments and UN officials to get this item on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. At least a number of governments and innumerable private people's organizations have decided to celebrate that year. Soon it will be a landslide which the UN will have to join. I wonder why my dream 2000 written already in 1977 for Margaret Mead on Earth Day of that year, has not moved any UN delegation to do what I propose in it. Don't they have a heart or at least a forward-looking brain?*
* 7 September 1997: I am glad that the Secretary General of the UN proposes at least to hold a General Assembly 2000 at the heads of states level with a companion People's Assembly 2000.

~ Idea 905 ~ 1 January 1997
My wish on this first Day of a New Year, is that humanity will wake up to the turning point which we have reached and change course before it is too late. Never before has there been a time when the whole fate of the Earth, of humanity and of all life forms on it are at stake. On the average our Earth is seized with major climatic changes every ten thousand years. But with human overpopulation, industrialization and overconsumption of the Earth' resources, we risk such changes much earlier. Climatologists tell us that it will happen in less than one hundred years.
How will the year 2097 look like? What will the estimated 11 billion humans living in that year think of our year, of our beliefs, behaviors, actions, lack of planning and dreams for the future? I wish I could return as a spirit in that year to see what happened since I wrote these 2000 ideas.

~ Idea 906 ~ 2 January 1997
It will not be easy to turn the clock in favor of the Earth instead of power, business, armaments, militarism, wealth, glory, materialism and consumerism. Why are so few leaders aware that we must absolutely change our values, abandon wrong ones from the past, and think about the long-term fate and evolution of the Earth and humanity?

~ Idea 907 ~ 3 January 1997
The concept of sustainable development is now largely accepted in the world, as well as that of sustainable population. No less important is the concept of sustainable consumption.

~ Idea 908 ~ 4 January 1997
One of the historic decisions we must expect from the UN General Assembly 2000 is to hold a special session of the Assembly to remain in permanent session until it has drafted a Constitution for the world, commensurate with the needs of the 21st century and third millennium.

~ Idea 909 ~ 5 January 1997
Having been asked to comment and support the Declaration of Mt. Vernon I sent the following text:
The Declaration of Mt. Vernon honoring George Washington and urging the United States to take a bold initiative towards a United Nations World Federation should be given top priority on the US agenda of world affairs. The same way as the great Americans who met in Philadelphia saved a major part of North America from continued disorder, this time the whole world requires it. After forty years of service with the United Nations and direct aide to three Secretaries General, I pray, I beg, I implore the United States to repeat the Philadelphia miracle for the entire world.
This is my dream from the sacred indigenous Mt. Rasur in demilitarized Costa Rica.
Robert Muller
One-dollar a Year Chancellor of
the UN University of Peace,
former UN Assistant Secretary General

~ Idea 910 ~ 6 January 1997
Foreign economic aid has often as a main objective to get rid of surpluses, to promote a rich country's own exports of industrial machinery, armaments, inventions and sales by multinational corporations operating from their territory.
The citizens of the rich countries should be very vocal and insist that foreign aid should always include a major part of environmental aid. The winds of our common atmosphere and the waves of our interconnected waters and oceans bring the pollution of everywhere to everywhere and to everyone on the planet.
I hope that at least one rich country in the world will give the example and decide to give aid to the poor countries only for population control, environmental purposes and the maintenance of frugal, simple lifestyles, no longer for so-called economic "progress" or "development" which in reality often means regress and destruction of the Earth.

~ Idea 911 ~ 7 January 1997
Being a Frenchman, some dear friends from my region of Alsace-Lorraine in France have expressed surprise that I have never received the Legion d'Honneur, the highest award given by France, after all my services in the United Nations. They have proposed me for that distinction. It gives me the idea that we should have a World Legion of Honor to be given to world citizens who should be legion in the world.

~ Idea 912 ~ 8 January 1997
I also recommend that a Legion of Honor be created by the European Union, honoring its great founders Jean Monnet, Pierre Uri, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, Rene Lejeune and others.

~ Idea 913 ~ 9 January 1997
Legions of Honor should also be created by other regional Unions in formation, such as the Central American Association and Parliament, and tomorrow the Union of the Americas, the reunion of the eagle and the condor.

~ Idea 914 ~ 10 January 1997
Since the truth comes from the mouth of children, I recommend that UNICEF arrange for the drafting by children of a new Charter of the United Nations, starting with the words: We, the children of the world,..."
The UN Secretary General should similarly arrange for the drafting of a new UN Charter by youth, starting with the words: "We, the youth of the world,..."
The two texts would be an expression of the hopes and dreams of the next two generations who will be adults in the 21st century. They should be made known world-wide in the year 2000.

~ Idea 915 ~ 11 January 1997
Humanity has moved too fast away from the Earth's natural biosphere to a manmade technosphere, without asking the fundamental question which the Iroquois elders always ask: what will be the effects on the seventh generation? I welcome therefore the creation in the United States and in 85 other countries of a new political, planetary party: the Party of Natural Law which received in the 1996 US elections 2.5 million votes. It would indeed be a wonderful first step if we asked ourselves the question: what will be the effects of new technologies on nature and on the seventh generation?

~ Idea 916 ~ 12 January 1997
During the world congress on science and religion in Calcutta, after my speech imploring for a world spiritual Renaissance, the idea was submitted to me to create the world's first University of Yoga. Sri Sayananda, made me the honor of suggesting that I should be its founder. To move from heading the first University for Peace on this planet to the first World University of Spirituality and Yoga would indeed be a beautiful linkage and elevation. Perhaps the University could be built next to the University for Peace on sacred Mt. Rasur in Costa Rica or on Meditation Mount Ojai in California and I could be the elderly, honorary Chancellor of both.

~ Idea 917 ~ 13 January 1997
During the same congress, a Hindu Scientist, Dr. Amit Goswami, approached me with this remark: "In the light of what you said is it not time to get rid of the theory and words quantum (quantity) and physics (physical only) in the modern sciences?"
A worthwhile idea to be considered.

~ Idea 918 ~ 14 January 1997
To help a spiritual revival of our materialistic, economic, business-dominated planet, I recommended to the Bhaktivedanta Institute in Calcutta which is building a World Temple of Understanding in Mayapur on the Ganges, to create also a World Association or Agency for the preservation and development of sacred sites, temples, cathedrals, places of pilgrimage and worship all around the world.
Beyond that we must restore the entire Earth, especially its wonderful nature, as a Temple to God. Nature is not merely ecology (our home), it is a sacred home, a most wonderful, endlessly miraculous and astonishing home.

~ Idea 919 ~ 15 January 1997
At that world congress in Calcutta, which brought together scientists from around the world, including Nobel Prize winners, I was astonished that all Hindu scientists, be they mathematicians, atomic physicists, biologists or chemists, were quite able and at ease to integrate their science into the spiritual cosmological vision of our place in space and time given by the ancient Vedantas, whereas western scientists were unable to lift themselves to a spiritual dimension. I was later told that the same happened at a world congress on psychiatry. Why does the West remain so retarded and reluctant to transcend our temporary analytical and materialistic phase into a universal phase? They should remember the prediction of Leibniz that with the discovery of science humans would spend many years absorbed and exhilarated by their analytical discoveries, but that the time would come when they will be lost in them and will need to have again a comprehensive, whole (today we say holistic) view of our universal reality and place in time.

~ Idea 920 ~ 16 January 1997
Seeing the disastrous pollution, the overcrowding and human misery of a megacity like Calcutta, and the overexpanded monstrosity of cities like Bangkok and Seoul, which have more skyscrapers than New York City, one can only conclude that overpopulation and western influence are the two major causes of the progressive destruction of the Earth. The American dream is becoming a nightmare for the Earth.
While overpopulation is being dealt with, albeit too weakly, the destructive influence and penetration of western "civilization" and consumerism in the poorer regions of the world has not been taken up at all. It must urgently.

~ Idea 921 ~ 17 January 1997
On our stopover in Bangkok to Calcutta, I was delighted to read on the front page of a national newspaper that the government had abandoned the idea to buy an outer-space satellite and that it would reduce military expenditures and increase help to the poor instead. I kept the newspaper to write and congratulate the government on this decision. But two weeks later, on our return trip, the Bangkok newspapers announced that the Prime Minister of Canada had visited Thailand and had sold them the satellite. Moreover he made a speech advocating the advantages and marvels of nuclear energy the technique and plants of which Canada is eager to sell.
While we were in Calcutta, the city received the visit of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who pressed upon the Indian government to reduce its tariffs and obstacles to the importation of British goods!
What better illustrations of the preceding ideas could there be?

~ Idea 922 ~ 18 January 1997
Several persons suggest the creation of a world council of sages, of wise spiritual elders whom the United Nations and its members would ask for advice. This should be implemented: I could see on such a Council former Secretaries General of the United Nations, Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar and Mr. Boutros Ghali. Although I am not famous enough, I would like to be a member too, being the Patriarch of the planet's first University for Peace in demilitarized Costa Rica.

~ Idea 923 ~ 19 January 1997
I like the idea of British scientist Neil J. Shendge to create a global network which would tap solar energy in tropical regions and transfer it around the world to provide electricity to those who need it. It should be complemented by other renewable sources of energy (eolian energy, geothermal energy) and would gradually replace all fossil and nuclear energy in a global girdle of electrical power generating units in the tropical regions. Such a global solar network becomes economically feasible because only the initial capital costs are involved without any recurring "fuel" costs. Needless to say, solar energy is completely free from pollution (see Visions of a Better World published by the Brahma Kumaris, an NGO of the United Nations, page 114)

~ Idea 924 ~ 20 January 1997
"When I go to our villages I find among the poorest, the worst-off, people who are happy and smiling. There is a certain spirituality, a certain fulfillment. You can see it on their faces, you can see it in their behavior. And then you go to another area, where what we call development has taken place, and nobody is really happy. They are scowling, they are frowning, they are not a peace with themselves. And how can anybody who is not at peace with himself create peace in the world?"
Rajiv Gandhi, India
I have made the same remark in New York City: when I hear someone laugh, I turn around and notice that the laughter comes invariably from young, poor immigrant Latinos.
Hence my claim and idea that we must teach happiness by other means than endless more material consumption and "goods." Simple, frugal lives are in my view a major factor of human happiness and peace. Ask any Franciscan.

~ Idea 925 ~ 21 January 1997
From a lady Professor at the State of New York University at New Paltz, I received a Christmas letter with this statement: "1996 was best remembered for our quadrennial presidential "selection", an event my friend, political analyst and author Michael Parenti calls "the greatest show on Earth." The USA has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where the electoral process system features campaigns that run for almost two years, cost gargantuan sums of money, almost all of it raised from corporate special interests which want to ensure their place in this plutocracy which calls itself a "democracy."
As a foreigner I did not know that political campaigns in the US could be financed by voluntary contributions, which is seldom the case in other countries. I am glad therefore that I recommended in Idea 284 the creation of a world commission on democracy.
Note: The word plutocracy means government by the rich (Pluto was the God of wealth), democracy (demos, the people) means government by the people.

~ Idea 926 ~ 22 January 1997
During our trip to India Barbara and I were often dreaming of Costa Rica and came up with the idea that all Central America should be made a protected world park or region, reforested, with people living in rural communities, loving and protecting nature, with no more than two or three children, happy to see their basic needs fulfilled, protected from consumerism and advertisement, living profoundly spiritual lives, grateful for the miracle of life and of God's wonderful nature.
Back in Costa Rica I asked if the Culture of Peace program for Central America of our University had a plan for peace with nature. I was told that it did but that not a single government was interested in it. They wanted foreign investments, industries, trade, tourism, more trucks, cars and transportation, airplanes, etc. It was a good illustration that what is wrong on this planet is the basic philosophy, ideology and values of our time. As long as this will not change, as long as there is not a new education, a new spirituality, a renewed relation with nature, especially of the leaders, the present course will not change. The whole economic system of our world and society must be rethought from scratch. If not, it will collapse.

~ Idea 927 ~ 23 January 1997
After returning to Costa Rica I resumed my usual task of cleaning the mile between my farmlet and the University for Peace, which I walk every day. It took me a couple of days to get it clean. I had the curiosity of counting the objects of pollution: I picked up 17 soft drink plastic bottles, 32 empty packets of cigarettes, 27 plastic bags, 2 empty concrete bags, 43 empty beer cans, and a good number of pages and discarded newspapers and paper napkins. Most of this comes from city dwellers who come with their children to the wonderfully preserved nature of the University for Peace. I thought sadly: everybody complains about pollution, but very few do anything about it. Here like in the United States I am considered as a fool who will never win. And yet after the job was done, I was able to walk on an absolutely clean mile. And I derived great happiness from it.
I also thought that in an orderly Earth government the firms producing the polluting objects should be made responsible for them and be taxed accordingly to pay locally unemployed people to clean them up.

~ Idea 928 ~ 24 January 1997
Perhaps some firms would make good sales if they sold and advertised their products as "least packaged products" to help the environment.
I cannot repeat often enough also that there is an urgent need for consumer information, enlightenment and protection from the world level down to the local communities. Outright business robberies, probably the most widespread and most sophisticated in the world, are not prosecuted and punished, while a hungry person who steals food from a store is arrested.

~ Idea 929 ~ 25 January 1997
Barbara Gaughen and Baroness di Pauli from a British peace organization rightly remark that there is a wave of peace organizations around the world but that they do not have the necessary critical impact on governments because they are not organized in one world movement or party. There are several solutions to that: create a World Peace and Non-violence Party active in each country; create a World Federation of Peace Movements. Catherine Margerin who visited the Peace University and Costa Rica to organize a millennium conference and celebration on 1 January 2000, made this wonderful proposal: make this millennium celebration a Peace Olympics which would be repeated every four or five years in another country. Within a day she gave me a detailed proposal on which we will work.

~ Idea 930 ~ 26 January 1997
Since the United Nations is not authorized to do propaganda for its aims and activities and is only authorized to put information before the public, I propose that all governments should be submitted to that rule. Parliaments should not vote any funds for the propaganda of their country in other countries.

~ Idea 931 ~ 27 January 1997
Since the United Nations which works for the global interests of the whole Earth and humanity is financed by national contributions and is not allowed to have world taxes, I suggest that national governments should similarly be financed from contributions by local communities and have no taxes of their own. It would be interesting to see the results. I propose the creation of a world-wide association of tax-payers to take up such subjects.

~ Idea 932 ~ 28 January 1997
Similarly, since humanity is not allowed to have its world army or security force, and only nations have this right, I would recommend that armaments manufacturers organize a lobby to have all states, provinces and local communities possess an army. Ridiculous and awful, will you say. Well, this is how ridiculous and awful our beautiful Earth is with 170 national armies. An inspection team from outer space would give us grade F, failure in planetary management or as my son Francois says: a triple DDD, dumb, disastrous and dangerous.

~ Idea 933 ~ 29 January 1997
It would be worthwhile to establish a World Commission of Eminent Astrophysicists and Astronauts who would be asked to consider themselves the representatives of outer space or the universe and would give us their judgment on how we manage or mismanage this particular planet. It would be a change from politicians who stick to their national constituencies and interests and consider any other order than the national one inconceivable.

~ Idea 934 ~ 30 January 1997
I recommend that the 1999 Summit of long term evolutionary scientists and thinkers on the Chances of Evolution for Humanity on this planet, organized by the Club of Budapest, should go beyond evaluating our chances but should outline the measures we should take to stay alive and to keep this planet well preserved and capable of further evolution. They might be the ideal persons to draft a Master Plan for the Survival and Further Evolution of Planet Earth and Humanity.

~ Idea 935 ~ 31 January 1997
The last thing humans are trying to consider is unfortunately the most important and urgent one, namely: how this planet and humanity should be governed properly for the salvation of the Earth and the survival of our species and of all other species.

~ Idea 936 ~ 1 February 1997
The most urgent, overriding problem on this Earth at this point of evolution is ignored: to look at the totality of the Earth, including the human species born from it and nourished by it, and conceive a proper preserving government of this fantastic, perhaps unique, miraculous, life-bearing celestial body in the entire universe.

~ Idea 937 ~ 2 February 1997
All major human decisions should be made in nature. Why do the heads of big corporations sit in skyscrapers and heads of states in the middle of crowded "capitals"? If they were located in the midst of our miraculous, life giving, nourishing and inspiring nature, they would observe her laws, learn to love her and make right decisions. Leonardo da Vinci based his entire life and art on nature and recommended it in his journal. Even marriages should be held in nature.*
*We held ours in June 1997 in a natural park on the shore of the Hudson River.

~ Idea 938 - 941 ~ 3 to 6 February 1997
As we move towards the 21st century and a new millennium it is our absolute duty, given the political chaos in which we live, to review seriously the world political system as it stands encrusted today. There are several ways to go about it (see ideas 557 to 564). The four most important ones are:
Idea 938 to forget about all national boundaries and divisions of this planet. Take only the Earth, humanity and all its nature and other species and draft a plan how we could efficiently manage that Earth, preserve it, render it ever more beautiful and have a happy humanity live on it, as well as preserve its rich variety of other living nature and beings;
Idea 939 follow the example of the European Union and work towards the creation of a World Union;
Idea 940 create a world federal government like the United States, a United States of the World or any other world federal system of which a large number have been proposed;
Idea 941 reform upward and strengthen enormously the United Nations. Ideas to that effect exist by the dozens.

~ Idea 942 ~ 7 February 1997
To better judge our progress, achievements, failures and follies we should be ready to report at any time to an outer space inspection team on how we treat our beautiful celestial body, the Earth, and achieve the well-being and happiness of all human beings admitted to the miracle of life. The United Nations should publish a yearly report to the universe, and the religions yearly reports to God. This would be much more revealing than states of the world reports addressed to ourselves. These latter omit the cosmic nature of our evolution on this planet in the universe.

~ Idea 943 ~ 8 February 1997
At the present stage of evolution when the human species is becoming a global species, a science, strategy and methodology of peace, non-violent relations and cooperation between all humans, professions, institutions and with nature must be developed.
The World Association of University Presidents should put this subject on its agenda.

~ Idea 944 ~ 9 February 1997
The same applies to prevention. Incredible sums of money, efforts and resources are devoted to:
- heal wars and conflicts;
- heal sicknesses of the body and mind;
- heal victims of accidents;
- heal environmental damages to the Earth
- heal the consequences of violence;
Priority and proper resources should always be given to prevention, in order to avoid ever growing massive expenditures on healing, and thus ensure a properly administered humanity and planet. We have not yet reached that stage of maturity in our evolution. I recommend the creation of a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on Prevention or a World Institute on this subject.
This requires a new politics or planetics. I am glad that the new political party of Natural Law being created around the world is responding to that need.

~ Idea 945 ~ 10 February 1997
As illustrations of the preceding, here are examples:
- as a result of the preventive and mediation work of the United Nations, international conflicts have practically disappeared from this planet and will be a thing of the past in the next century;
The same work and efforts are now needed for resolving ethnic and religious conflicts, mostly within nations. The creation of the United Religions which I proposed at the World Parliament of Religions in 1992, will be a great new page in this effort.
- as a result of the work and innovative methods of mediation of the International Labour Organization, labour conflicts which were on top of the list of violence at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the current one, have fallen to the bottom of the list. Practically all labour conflicts in the world are solved by right governmental, employers and workers' relations and by agreements on the recourse to mediation worked out by the ILO. The worse action laborers can take is to go on strike.
I am a great optimist, because once humanity has decided to do something together, the results are fabulous.

~ Idea 946 ~ 11 February 1997
I cannot repeat it often enough: we need several great common world engineering projects which will help save us incredible sums of money spent on national duplications, increase the productivity of the world economy and help us save the environment (see Idea 250). The building of world hydroelectrical plants in the Amazons and Himalayas would be the first to be considered, feeding a world electrical and energy grid as proposed by Buckminster Fuller and me years ago in the United Nations. This cause is pursued today by the GENI Institute (Global Energy Network International) in San Diego.
I recommend that a government place an item on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly or of the UN Economic and Social Council: "Study of proposals to build common world hydroelectrical projects on suitable sites in poor countries where lack of resources prevents their building, and creation of a world wide energy grid, fed also by other sources of energy, such as solar, wind, sea and geothermal energy."
See also Idea 923

~ Idea 947 ~ 12 February 1997
I recommend that the GENI Institute extend its interest and activities to great world engineering projects more generally or that another Institute or World Association be created on that vital, promising subject.
I also recommend that a member government of the United Nations should place an item on the agenda of the UN, entitled: "Inventory and study of all great world engineering projects which would increase the efficiency and productivity of the world economy and respond to humanity's need for common endeavors and investments."

~ Idea 948 - 950 ~ 13 to 15 February 1997
Idea 948 It has been announced that President Clinton will visit several countries of Latin America, including Costa Rica where he will meet the Presidents of the five Central American Republics. I propose that this meeting should take place on the international grounds of the University for Peace where a program of Culture for Peace and Human Rights is being carried out for all Central America.
Idea 949 On that occasion President Clinton should sign the United Nations text adopted fifteen years ago, establishing the University for Peace. The vast majority of American people, including the thousands of visitors from the USA we receive each year would deeply rejoice at that news. They often express astonishment and shame that their country has not signed that instrument and is not supporting the first University for peace on this planet.
Idea 950 On that occasion one of the Central American Presidents should quote the statement from a letter of 6 September 1815 by Simon Bolivar in which he suggested that some day the capital of the world should be located in Central America:
"The states of the isthmus of Panama until Guatemala will perhaps form an association. This magnificent position between the two great oceans could become with time the emporium of the universe, its canals will shorten the distance of the world, and will widen the commercial links between Europe, America and Asia; they will bring to that happy region the tributes of the four parts of the world. Perhaps this will be the only place where some day the capital of the Earth will be established, and not in Constantinople as was dreamt by Emperor Constantin in the old hemisphere!"
Well, this supports my proposal that demilitarized Costa Rica should be considered as the seat of the United Nations, in view of the dissatisfaction of the United States and its persistence not to pay its dues to the world organization. The UN would merit to be located in Latin America, the sole continent on Earth free of nuclear weapons, thanks to the Treaty of Tlatelolco obtained by a UN official who received the Nobel Prize for it, Alfonso Garcia Robles from Argentina. The costs of operating the United Nations in Costa Rica would be considerably lower.

~ Idea 951 ~ 16 February 1997
As the simplest approach to the demilitarization of the planet the UN General Assembly should adopt a resolution asking that all countries still having militaries and armaments should reduce their military and arms expenditures in their budgets by 15 percent or more, allocating the savings to expenses for the poor, the environment and other worthwhile projects, or as tax savings to their citizens.
If I were the Secretary General of the UN I would inscribe this proposal on the agenda of the General Assembly.
I have never understood why the Secretaries General of the UN have not amply used their right under the rules of procedure of the General Assembly and of the Security Council to inscribe provisional items on the agendas of these two central bodies of the UN. I was always told that this was too dangerous and that member governments would not like it. Which member governments? Of course those who do not want the Secretary General to have any power, not even that of proposing novel initiatives or ideas which could be contrary to the interests of one particular country or group of countries, even if they were of highest interest to the Earth and humanity.
In one case, when I was able to convince a Secretary General to take a bold initiative in the Security Council, namely on terrorism, I was transferred to another position shortly thereafter. Nevertheless I am proud that the Security Council adopted an early international convention on terrorism. Indeed, sooner or later any country on Earth might be menaced by terrorism.

~ Idea 952 ~ 17 February 1997
World Awards for a Better World
The 185 nations of the UN General Assembly have a vast unused power, the power of incentive, of inspiration, of reward: I suggest that an Awards Committee be established by the General Assembly to give awards to governments who have best performed in implementing decisions of the United Nations, for example on disarmament, demilitarization, human rights and the environment. All governments would be asked to contribute to a World Awards Fund which would make such awards as prestigious as the Nobel Prizes. A mere one million dollars contribution by 185 governments would bring in 185 million dollars for prizes! Philanthropists would also be asked to contribute to the fund. The General Assembly could decide on an international tax on air travel to yield money for such a fund. Each tourist or air traveler would be told that the small tax he pays is for the granting of World Awards for a Better World. Private persons would be asked to make voluntary contributions or bequests to the Fund. Such contributions could be asked from people world-wide on Human Rights Day (10 December), on World Environment Day (5 June) and on new Days to be established, such as World Demilitarization Day, World Disarmament Day, etc. The whole field of philanthropy and gaiaphily (love for humankind, love for Mother Earth) by millions of people around the world, has received insufficient attention by the United Nations. Since the Charter of the UN starts with the words "We, the Peoples", let us give an opportunity to the peoples of the world to say what they are ready to do and to contribute. The subject should be placed on the agenda of the General Assembly.

~ Idea 953 ~ 18 February 1997
I was glad to fly two American Airlines planes from Costa Rica to Miami and from Miami to Washington which showed no movies. It was wonderful. During six hours I was alone with myself, could reflect about my life and its meaning and could write down my thoughts, feelings and ideas for a better world. It was like being in a monastery, high up in the skies, closer to God.
More airlines should follow that example.

~ Idea 954 - 957 ~ 19 to 22 February 1997
At a meeting of 24 visionaries which I attended in Washington, the following proposals were made:
Idea 954 that a Grandparents Foundation be created to which grandparents would contribute funds in order to leave to their grandchildren a better world:
Idea 955 that a World Vision Day be proclaimed by the United Nations, preferably on 1 January each year;
Idea 956 that in each community meetings be held between religions, educators, labour movements, community organizations and business to discuss the future of that community;
Idea 957 that the US Party of Natural Law should become a world-wide party.

~ Idea 958 ~ 23 February 1997
On 21 February, when speaking at the commemoration of George Washington's 265th birthday in Mt. Vernon, I asked myself this question: what would George Washington think and do if he were alive?
This led to the following idea: why wouldn't a group of prominent US thinkers and visionaries espouse the personalities of George Washington, James Madison, George Mason, Benjamin Franklin, etc. and gather in Philadelphia as they did 200 years ago to give birth to the United States of America and lay the foundations for a United States of the World?
See Idea 559

~ Idea 959 ~ 24 February 1997
The same could be done by European visionaries and thinkers who would espouse the personalities of Jean Monnet, Pierre Uri, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, the founders of the European Union, and lay the foundations of a World Union.

~ Idea 960 ~ 25 February 1997
Third, a group of world thinkers and visionaries could espouse the personalities of Confucius, Socrates, Simon Bolivar, Einstein, Gandhi, Confucius, Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant and give their views on how the world should be governed.
In such groups I would be happy to impersonate my compatriot from Alsace-Lorraine, Robert Schuman, or my beloved master at the UN, former Secretary General U Thant.

~ Idea 961 ~ 26 February 1997
Similar groups should be formed by women espousing the personalities of famous women: Jane Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Peace Pilgrim, Madame Curie, and others. Or women should be included in the above groups on an equal basis.

~ Idea 962 ~ 27 February 1997
Finally I would recommend that all heads of states and former heads of states should impersonate their most famous predecessors. For instance the President of the US should impersonate George Washington or Franklin Roosevelt and ask himself what would be their policy towards the world and the United Nations on the eve of the 21st century and third millennium? All heads of states should have on their desks busts of their preferred predecessor(s) and try to reach their same fame, elevation and world recognition.

~ Idea 963 ~ 28 February 1997
On the occasion of the commemoration of George Washington's birthday in Mt. Vernon I was invited to stay at the home of Dr. Felix Rosenthal a scientist in mechanical engineering. When I asked him why he had become a world federalist, he answered:
"Because I have observed that nature prefers to bring things together rather than separate them. For instance a glass of hot water and a glass of cold water, when mixed together will blend, but it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them. Similarly, sand and cement will mix easily but it would be impossible to separate them again. The same applies to humans: once they will be one, all mixed, nature will be satisfied, we will be at peace, successful and difficult to separate."

~ Idea 964 ~ 1 March 1997
If only the Yeltsin-Clinton meeting this month could take as its main subject not whether NATO should be extended to the Eastern European countries but the fate and betterment of our whole Earth and humanity.
It is a strange and sad phenomenon that most of the 185 heads of states of this planet consider themselves the champions of their cut-up parts of the Earth and do not dream together as the collective junta, the corporate board, the holy alliance of the Earth and humanity.
They should come together every year in the General Assembly of the UN as an action-tank, think-tank, love-tank, soul-tank, inspiration-tank and future-tank to give guiding light to the world and to all its peoples and institutions.
Well, whether they will read it or not, I sent to both leaders my updated World Action Plan 2010, brought already earlier to the attention of governments in my novel First Lady of the World. Whether I will succeed or not, I will never give up my dreams, ideas, action proposals and interventions for a better world.

~ Idea 965 ~ 2 March 1997
What is the main reason of the preceding situation? It is wrong education. All heads of states have been programmed by their national education to be the champions, the fighters, the heroes of their nations, even at the cost of a war. Their models are national heroes and victories. It does not even occur to them to be world heroes. This is why, contrary to their belief, they will be soon forgotten by humanity and given no prominent place in world history. Only elevation brings greatness.

~ Idea 966 ~ 3 March 1997
For the first time in my life, when visiting the Cathedral in Washington, I was not touched, moved or inspired. A few days later in New York when seeing a synagogue, I suddenly got the explanation of my new feeling: why should I go into a closed building with walls and a ceiling when in Costa Rica's primeval forests and magnificent nature, I have the greatest temple to God, without walls, with the infinite sky as the roof filled with endless beauty and life? Why lock up God or the Creator in buildings made of stolen materials from the Earth, erected by 5000 different religions dividing the human family, some of them still making wars on each other?
The indigenous people are much wiser to consider nature, its miracles, beauty and nourishment as the manifestations of the Great Spirit.

~ Idea 967 ~ 4 March 1997
I am glad that at least there exists an Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington which brings together 31 denominations of Hindu, Islamic, Judaic, Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. It is unique in the United States. I wish that this good example be followed in all cities and countries of the world. To talk to each other, to learn from each other, to see what one has in common, and to cooperate are the first steps toward avoiding conflict and to enter a new phase of evolution. The address is: 1419 V Street NW, Washington D.C. 20009.

~ Idea 968 ~ 5 March 1997
When I mailed today a good number of letters to several countries around the world, I was surprised that I had to pay only 12 dollars. I said to the post official, "If the US Postal Service were privatized, I am sure that I would have to pay much more than that amount to a private firm, and you would not have a permanent, stable job."
He smiled and answered: "Yes, I am very proud to be part of the US Postal Office and to be of service to the people."
Beware, dear people, of the new ideology of privatization which has been launched by big, profit hungry business.

~ Idea 969 ~ 6 March 1997
Since both the United States and the Russian Federation are the biggest, most powerful countries on Earth and are both federations, why don't the Presidents of the two countries appoint a group of experts to draft at the end of this century and millennium the constitution of a World Federation of nations?
They would go down in history as having rendered one of the greatest services to the Earth and to humanity.

~ Idea 970 ~ 7 March 1997
For heaven's sake, dear political leaders, please solve for the celebration of the year 2000 the three remaining international conflicts: the Middle East, Cyprus and Kashmir. Use any opportunity, for instance the holding in Jerusalem in 2000 of an International Congress on Forgiveness.* Do not let Chou En Lai's prediction to Secretary General Waldheim come true, namely that the Middle East conflict will still exist in a hundred years.
And if you cannot resolve them, inscribe an item on the agenda of the Security Council and of the UN General Assembly entitled: "Persisting unresolved conflicts on which the Secretary General will report from time to time." But do not give each of them the honor of a separate item on the agendas. Also ask the Secretary General to prepare reports on the number of meetings, time consumed, documents, reports, pages and money spent on efforts to resolve each of these conflicts.
*See also Idea 27 in first volume of 500 ideas.

~ Idea 971 ~ 8 March 1997
Publishers should ask all authors except those of novels and mystery books, to provide at the beginning of their book a summary of its objectives and contents and at the end, a list of concrete proposals. The practice of executive summaries should be more widespread.
There are many people like me who receive numerous books dealing with world problems but I unfortunately do not have the time to read them. At least the author would have a chance to see his ideas promoted and implemented, or to have his/her book read entirely if the ideas are good and inspiring.

~ Idea 972 ~ 9 March 1997
I recommend that there should be as many ideas for the improvement of humanity's social and political conditions as there are for making new inventions, producing more goods, and devising endless new ways of advertisement, marketing and programming people to consume. What a difference it would make.

~ Idea 973 ~ 10 March 1997
We are able to have thousands of perfectly, smoothly running airplanes around this world, without practically any accidents. Why is it not possible to obtain a perfectly running, just, happy human society? Why so few ideas, efforts and means for that loftier objective? We do not need 2000 ideas for a better world, we need many thousands of them, a vast world social engineering science and art. The peoples of the world should literally drown the leaders with ideas so that they will give up their wrong values of power, endless greed, nuclearization, militarization and armaments.

~ Idea 974 ~ 11 March 1997
On this 74th year of my magical life, prepared and educated by an entire life of world service, I have the following thoughts:
- I feel powerfully drawn back to nature, to a divine, loving relation with my mother Earth, like St. Francis on the hill of Assisi;
- I no longer want to live in big cities. I want to live in the midst of nature, the wonderful nature of Costa Rica;
- I no longer want to pray only in human temples with walls and ceilings. I want to pray to God in the immense, wonderful temple of Creation;
- I do not want my body to be locked up in a casket and vault of concrete, I want to be returned to the Earth to relive again in other life forms;
- I want to help prevent this Earth from being destroyed;
- I hope that through my world core curriculum all humans will soon be rightly inducated into the universe, the Earth, humanity and eternity to become true world servers during all their life;
- I hope to be a model of what one global human being can be, should be and can do in the 21st century;
- I hope to leave behind me inspiring deeds, writings and testimonies to inspire similar magical lives on our divine planet;
- I want to spend my heaven doing good on Earth.

~ Idea 975 ~ 12 March 1997
God Rasur said to the children that the divine was in each tree, every flower, every bird, every animal, every butterfly.
He should have added: and in you, in every child and human being.
Indeed, we are all made of earth, water and air which are concrete solar, i.e. cosmic energy. We are not human beings distinct from the Earth and from the universe, we are made of the Earth, of the sun, of the universe, we are live universe on a particular cosmic planet, endowed with a cosmic, universal consciousness. Jesus and all sacred emissaries from the heavens told us that.
In a proper Earth government, every human being should therefore be considered unique, sacred, divine. No human should be forced to kill other divine, miraculous cosmic units for the "greatness" of artificial nations or the "truth" of any religion, nor of any other entity, institution or philosophy.
To its splendid human rights work which is truly of cosmic inspiration, the United Nations must now add an identical work on human responsibilities and duties particularly towards our mother Earth, its wonderful nature and the universe.

~ Idea 976 - 981 ~ 13 to 18 March 1997
From two Canadian visitors to the University for Peace to whom I gave a copy of my fascicle of first 100 ideas, I got the following ideas:
From Ms. Shirley Farlinger:
Idea 976 Write a UN Marriage Certificate for the next Millennium.
A couple would agree:
- to have only one or two children
- to raise their children peacefully
- not to work for the military
- to settle arguments by peaceful resolution
- to make all decisions together
- to manage their money so that local industry which is ecologically sound is supported and other industries are boycotted.
Idea 977 Adopt a world code for resources extraction:
Many wars are caused by the desire to extract natural resources from other countries. A country and a community must have the right to refuse access to resources.
Idea 978 Ways should be devised to stigmatize or even prosecute any UN member country which has offered or accepted bribes to influence their UN vote.
From Professor Derek Paul, Physics Department, University of Toronto:
Idea 979 extend the co-generation idea, namely the idea of using waste from one process to achieve one or several desirable results.
Thus a group of Canadian NGOs called CANet, have proposed a plan for Canada to achieve its international obligations on CO2 reductions under the Framework Convention of 1992 and the Berlin Mandate of 1995, while at the same time achieving the additional following results:
- reduce the federal deficit for 8 years
- create 360,000 new jobs over ten years
- increase the prosperity of households.
Idea 980 Introduce, as a temporary measure until advance designed vehicles come into use, a limit on power-to-weight ratio of vehicles, to reduce wastage of fossil fuels caused by speeding.
Idea 981 Equal representation in national parliaments of both sexes.
This can be achieved by having one woman and one man elected from each electoral unit. The INUITs in Canada are planning to do this in their new Parliament in Nunavik, to be established in 1999. Many new ideas then follow on the question of how such a parliament should function.

~ Idea 982 ~ 19 March 1997
Scientists, technologists, firms and people should not constantly accuse or complain about government, but should encourage it and give their ideas how it could be improved. Just and good government is an absolute necessity for the progress of humanity and the preservation of our Earth. Total privatization would lead to the loss of freedom and democracy in favor of the rich and to the demise of the Earth through economic wars and competition.

~ Idea 983 ~ 20 March 1997
UNIVERSITY FOR PEACE
Message on Earth Day
sent to the President to the UN General Assembly for the peace bell ringing ceremony at the United Nations on the celebration of Earth Day commemorated each year on the day of spring equinox.
On this Earth Day 1997, I cannot fail to remember that I saw three fundamentally different periods of world history reflected in the United Nations during my years of world service since the end of World War II:
1. from 1945 to the 1970's there was an unprecedented period of world humanism reflected in the United Nations: avoid wars, prevent the early death of children, eradicate world epidemics, define and defend universal fundamental human rights, suppress colonialism, racism and apartheid, improve the well-being, health, literacy and longevity of all humans, etc. At that time we believed that the resources and life elements of our Earth were unlimited. The UN charter does not contain the words Earth, nature and natural resources.
2. in the 1970's, with the first world conference on the biosphere of UNESCO in 1968 and the first UN world conference on the environment in 1972, a second period was opened: while the agendas of the preceding period were still in large part unfulfilled and even overtaken by the population explosion, the world's preoccupations were extended to the Earth and nature around us, namely "the environment".
3. in the 1980's, the world conference on the ozonosphere in 1978 and the two world climate conferences of 1979 and 1987 opened the eyes and consciousness of humanity to major menacing climatic changes on our planet. Since then the Earth has become priority number 1 of our concerns.
This represents a fundamental change in the evolution of our planet. From now on the world will never be the same. This is why it has become imperative that we should seek the ways and means of proper Earth government, namely the wise management, saving and preservation of our planetary home of which we are integral part and whose further evolution henceforth largely depends on us.
May the celebration of each year's Earth Day and the messages delivered on that day help our beautiful, miraculous planet and the human race, its most advanced life form, become a masterpiece and model of planetary and life evolution in the universe.
May in particular the spring equinox of the year 2000 be the widest and most important celebration of Earth Day ever.
Robert Muller
One-dollar a Year Chancellor

~ Idea 984 ~ 21 March 1997
Barbara Gaughen and I have ordered hundreds of golden stick-on-plastic plaques with this inscription:
BENCH OF DREAMS
We give them to the Robert Muller Schools, visitors and friends of ours or of the University of Peace, exhorting them to build benches of dreams in their gardens, city parks, schools and playgrounds, or other places. We want the world to dream as many dreams as possible. We hope that our example will be followed and that numerous such benches will spread around the world and lift the spirit of people in the construction of a better world. Like we do on our finca, adjacent to the University for Peace, on sacred Mt. Rasur in Costa Rica, they could also erect benches of love, peace, hope, vision, thanksgiving, faith, happiness and forgiveness, devoted to the great philosophical and spiritual ideals which have always helped humanity to progress in our mysterious journey in the vast, unfathomable universe.

~ Idea 985 ~ 22 March 1997
Often now, when I am invited to speak somewhere in the world, I am asked to inaugurate a bench of dreams! This is how the word spreads around. When I accept a speech, I often express the wish that a bench of dreams be inaugurated on the occasion of my visit. And it is always done! It is no longer a dream! And it will engender many more dreams until our Earth will become the Planet of Dreams, which is my dream.

~ Idea 986 ~ 23 March 1997
To
John McConnell,
Founder of Earth Day
Dear John,
Today is Barbara's birthday and she came up with the following dream:
"Every birthday of the 5.6 billion persons of this planet should also be their Earth Day to celebrate the Earth, which is their mother, to give thanks for the miracle of life and promise to take good care of the Earth.
With all our love and admiration,
Robert and Barbara

~ Idea 987 ~ 24 March 1997
I often think that if the UN or anyone would keep statistics of the financial help and free services given by national and international volunteer associations to the poor, destitute and handicapped of the world, the results would show that this is superior, perhaps even far superior to governmental international aid.
Since the UN is the main coordinating agency of world aid, I recommend that a Main Committee of Voluntary Associations be created by the General Assembly. Why the General Assembly and not the Economic and Social Council? Because that aid is also in large part given to political efforts of the UN: complementary aid to the peacekeeping operations of the UN Security Council, aid to refugees, aid to victims of human rights violations and natural disasters, etc.
This is a great, growing, promising field of world affairs which deserves much more attention from politicians, planetic science, education and world administration.

~ Idea 988 - 995 ~ 25 March to 1 April 1997
I love to quote my compatriot from Alsace-Lorraine, Albert Schweitzer, who said to a group of visitors in Lambarene, Africa: "I cannot say what your destiny will be, but one thing I can tell you: if you are of service to others, you will be recompensed with untold happiness."
Having a glance at a book The Teachings of Buddha brought from Japan, I found these good advices by the Buddha:
"There are seven kinds of offerings which can be practiced even by those who are not wealthy":
Idea 988 The first: is the physical offering. This is to offer service with one's labor;
Idea 989 The second: is the spiritual offering. This is to offer a compassionate heart to others;
Idea 990 The third: is the offering of eyes. This is to offer a warm glance to others which will give them tranquillity;
Idea 991 The fourth: is the offering of countenance. This is to offer a soft countenance with smile to others;
Idea 992 The fifth: is the oral offering. This is to offer kind and warm words to others;
Idea 993 The sixth: is the seat offering. This is to offer one's seat to others;
Idea 994 The seventh: is the offering of shelter. This is to let others spend the night at one's home.
"These kinds of offering can be practiced by anyone in everyday life."
I discovered to my shame that of all these offerings I had practiced satisfactorily only the first and the fifth by offering all my retired years free of remuneration to the UN University for Peace and by giving advice to innumerable people, individually or in speeches, writings and letters. I will henceforth make an effort to practice the others too and would also like to add one more:
Idea 995 The eighth: is the offering of kind advice and inspiration by correspondence and by answering all letters received from human brothers and sisters.

~ Idea 996 ~ 2 April 1997
Example of what one person can do: in the 1920's when the League of Nations was created, the wife of a French League official, Mme Bouchardeau, created a League of Nations Women's Guild, of wives of League officials. Her idea was that they could be active, collecting funds with their handicraft products and use these funds to help children in poor countries, on the advice and recommendation of women of League officials working in those countries. As a result, the aid was guaranteed to go directly to projects and children who needed it. The Guild was the origin of the creation of UNICEF after World War II, but Mme Bouchardeau decided that this was not a reason to go out of existence and she created the United Nations Women's Guild which performs the same service. They have a sales counter in the UN visitors area and sell UN towels, T-shirts and various other products. The profits are channeled to projects in poor countries. I tell this story because today I received a letter and two checks from the UN Women's Guild of 600 and 1000 dollars respectively for a school of poor indigenous children which I had recommended to them near the University for Peace, the other for a Catholic school in Chile dealing primarily with alcohol and drug addiction. The donations are in memory of my dear deceased wife from Chile, Margarita, who was President of the UN Women's Guild for several years. A stone will be laid as the foundation of a future library in the name of Margarita Gallo de Muller, and the money will be used to build a refectory for the indigenous children.
Yes, what one person can do. May the spirit of Madame Bouchardeau and of Margarita Muller inspire numerous women in the world to have dreams and take similar initiatives for a better world.

~ Idea 997 ~ 3 April 1997
Great, famous people should not spend their precious time writing their memoirs. Their first priority should be to publish their dreams, ideas and visions, and try to implement them.
My 2000 ideas as a countup to the year 2000 should induce many writers to do the same. The benefits to the world and humanity would be immense, a true new political and social breakthrough. They would also elevate the spirits of the readers to higher and broader horizons and concrete actions. Books and publications of ideas should become a new world literature.

~ Idea 998 ~ 4 April 1997
From 4 to 6 April 1997 the Canadian International Foundation of Learning convened a Global Citizens 2000 Congress in Vancouver to mark the date of 6 April 1997 when there were 1000 days left to 1 January 2000. What better idea and time to launch a project encouraging youths to see themselves as global citizens. Young people from eleven schools were brought together as teams of creative energy, working with their teachers and community leaders to show how and what we all must learn to become global citizens in the 21st century. This included not only knowledge to bring economic success in the world's market place but also an appreciation for what must be done to assure sustainability and peace in an increasingly interdependent world.
I was invited to be the opening speaker and a participant in this three days Congress which culminated at midnight of 6 April in a launching of 1000 balloons to mark the countdown of 1000 days remaining until 1 January 2000.

~ Idea 999 ~ 5 April 1997
Here are some of the ideas formulated by the young people brought together in Vancouver. Their final report will be submitted to the United Nations:
- The UN should proclaim International Act Days rather then React Days.
- A World Day for Endangered Species should be proclaimed
- A new Economy 2000 should be proclaimed, all international debts being reduced to zero
- A United Nations of Youth should be created
- People should boycott overpackaged products
- More people should plant trees worldwide, a World Arbor Day should be proclaimed
- There should be Global Environmental Clubs
- There should be Global Citizens Fairs
- There should be Global Citizens Diplomats and Club Memberships for Life
- There should be Mother Earth Clubs
- There should be Peace Through Friendship Pen Pals
- There should be Youth Environmental Clubs
- There should be Youth United Nations Clubs
- There should be School Courses on Planetary Preservation
- There should be Amusement Parks on Solutions to Pollution
- There should be Car Free Downtowns
- There should be a World Day of Ideas for a Better World
- There should be Robert Muller Fans and Fax Clubs
More ideas are in the works.

~ Idea 1000 ~ 6 April 1997
During that youth congress in Vancouver, this text of mine was distributed to the participants:
Decide to be a Global Citizen
A good inhabitant of the planet Earth
A member of the great human family
Pray, think, act, feel and love globally
And you will aggrandize yourself
to the outer limits of being
Know this planet
Love this planet
Care for this planet
For you come from Mother Earth
You are made of her elements
You are the Earth become conscious
of herself
You are her eyes, her ears, her voice,
her mind, her heart and her soul
Save your mother Earth
From her matricidal children
who destroy her
who divide her
who spike her with nuclear arms
who hold their territories to be
greater than humanity
Unite, global citizens, to save and heal
planet Earth
And to make our Mother bloom again
As the most beautiful planet
in the universe.
Robert Muller