~ Idea 3001 ~
This is a world where a few have too much and too many have too little or nothing. It is a wrong world. Planet Earth would be decreed by a celestial outer space council an unproperly managed planet in the universe.
It is high time to declare proper Earth and human government and management the priority item of the agenda of world affairs. Hopefully the heads of states meeting in the year 2000 UN General Assembly will decide that.
~ Idea 3002 ~
It is more important to have ideas than to have money. The best of course is to have ideas and money to implement them and for the rich to become ideapeople and workers for peace and a better world.
~ Idea 3003 ~
I cannot repeat it enough, this world, in order to survive urgently needs:
An emergency world plan to achieve most rapidly the stabilization of the world population;
A bold action in the rich countries to reduce and weed out needless, excessive, Earth-damaging production, consumption, activities and colossal duplicating expenses and wastes between 189 nations;
The creation of a proper evolution and justice-oriented Earth and peoples' government.
The creation of a proper world security system, then suppress all armaments, demilitarize all countries and use the savings for vital purposes.
~ Idea 3004 ~
God is likely to punish capitalism and capitalists for their irrespect and lack of concern for His incredible, miraculous Creation, perhaps the unique planet with life in the entire universe.
~ Idea 3005 ~
I just cannot understand why the human species is always dominated by the will for power. We had the emperors, the kings, the czars, slavery, racism, apartheid, colonialism, dictatorship, religious wars, Nazism, nationalism, all kinds of sovereignties, infallibilities and fundamentalisms. Many of them were defeated but now we have a new one: economic, all human and Earth exploitation by giant world corporations supported by nations which derive benefits from them. At the end of this millennium we are faced with a power alliance between business, national governments and militaries! What can we do?
Only a new world political and economic order can get us out of this situation. I therefore implore the heads of states who will meet at the United Nations General Assembly 2000 to put in motion and implement my ideas on the absolute urgent need for proper Earth government (See Introduction to Part V of Volume IV and Indexes).
~ Idea 3006 ~
When I die I can honestly say to myself that I have done my utmost in innumerable writings, speeches and actions to bring about a better world. Dear God, please recompense me by letting me live as long as possible to work on the implementation of more of my ideas. I would be immensely grateful to You. And please, O Lord, reserve me a special role on Earth from heaven!
~ Idea 3007 ~
Why, why, why?
Looking back in a hundred years humanity might say: why were not nations more enlightened in the year 2000? They had all the needed information about the planet and all life on it. They had experienced both good and bad, anything they could experience. They had all the growing lessons necessary.
Why did they not create a new, better, just world order when the cold war was over?
Why didn't the United States give the world a new, inspiring, hopeful vision of the future?
Why didn't nations at least strengthen ten-fold the United Nations which was a good beginning?
Why, why, why?
Well, let us at least use the year 2000 to begin building a new world order. Let us have a global vision, global concerns, global love for our Earth and all humanity, for a more beautiful, well-preserved planet and a peaceful, happy, fulfilled human family living on it.
Let us place ourselves in the year 3000 and do what we would be expected to do by the eyes, minds, hearts, hopes and souls of our descendants in that year.
May the heads of states meeting in the UN General Assembly 2000 be one of the greatest landmarks and achievements in human history. May they place humanity on the right path to a peaceful, happy, enlightened world. May they be applauded, honored and thanked by their descendants in the year 3000.
As a minimum, dear heads of state, place yourselves in the year 2100 and see what the world will say of your historic meeting in 2000 to respond to your ominous agenda "to focus on means to solve our primary global problems and to reform the means of global governance in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
~ Idea 3008 ~
Despite its many errors over past history humanity is the most advanced species on Earth. We constantly learn and advance. But we also create new, unprecedented problems due to our still insufficient intelligence: the population explosion and the destruction of the environment are cases in point.
We are now learning that we are in charge of the entire further evolution of this planet! This is a new, gigantic challenge to our intelligence. If those in power recognize it we will succeed in the most extraordinary, unexpected way. This is one of our greatest opportunities as we enter the third millennium.
~ Idea 3009 ~
The evolution of any species does not take place without some destruction or damaging of nature. But one species can become so knowledgeable and powerful that it can destroy the entire nature, all other species, vegetal, animal and basic elements. When it comes to that point, that species is in charge and responsible of the entire future evolution of that planet. It can adapt to the new requirements of continued evolution and find the right solutions or it can continue on the course of its existing beliefs and values embodied in its behavior, institutions and laws and will put an end to evolution. The human species has reached that point. This is the decisive, urgent choice we must make. Not only new means and ways of government but new values, new beliefs, and totally new behaviors, wisdom and vision of the human species are needed.
~ Idea 3010 ~
All leaders on this planet - political, economic, scientific, religious, military, educational, etc. - are henceforth co-agents of the future evolution of the Earth and humanity.
~ Idea 3011 ~
Perhaps the most important reports in the world are:
Yearly reports on the state of the world
Reports on the future of the world with ideas, dreams, initiatives and actions for a better world
~ Idea 3012 ~
Reading a historical review from my grandfather's home town in Alsace-Lorraine I was so shocked by the wars, marriages, maneuvers, alliances of dukes, kings, noblemen, bishops, etc. that it seemed almost impossible that even the idea of a minimum world political 'order' such as the United Nations could ever be born!
If some of my great grandchildren read this in a hundred years they will have the same feeling, namely that the image of our current phase of history and political system was pretty shocking, obsolete and seemed hopeless.
And since the medieval order of kings, dukes and bishops, etc. was changed only by a revolution, the French Revolution in 1789, my great grandchildren might comment that the obsolete national sovereign state system was overturned by a revolution too.
At that point the Earth intervened and said to me:
"Dear Robert, remember that the French Revolution was possible only because it was preceded by philosophical writings and recommendations, like those of Voltaire, that the European countries had to move from the feudal system to a national system and that as a result all the internal, feudal, ethnic and other conflicts would disappear. And remember Freud's answer to Einstein that all that is needed for world peace is that the love of the people for their nation now be extended to love for the entire Earth and humanity. And this can be done without a revolution. What you put in the mouth of your great grandchildren is not necessarily a correct prophecy."
~ Idea 3013 ~
I:
Dear Earth, one thing I cannot understand: why did you create a human species so different from all other animals? While you can expect the behavior of other species you cannot expect and control that of humans. They are out of your control, self-centered, most of them without love relationships with you. Your total Earth order would be better, in stable harmony for a long time if you had not given birth to the human species. They even invented atomic bombs and genetic engineering of life forms! Why did you let this happen?
The Earth:
"You forget one thing dear Robert. All this has happened and continues to happen over billions of years. I myself am only a cosmic happening in a solar system which will explode and disappear in 5 billion years. You humans are the latest and most advanced species. You find yourself now in a major transformation: you have learned so much about the Earth and about yourselves. Five hundred years ago you did not even know that I was a sphere. Only twenty-five years ago did you discover that you were damaging what you call the environment, in reality me and yourselves because you are part of me. I am trying to make you discover and correct your errors and find new ways. You are beginning to do it. Unfortunately it is too slow, too reluctant, delayed by wrongly educated humans and powerful interest groups thriving on past values and determined to maintain them.
But people like you are becoming more numerous. Many are looking up to you due to your right information and education gained over fifty years in the first Earth organization called the United Nations. You play a vital role. Your innumerable books, essays, speeches, correspondence, schools and thousands of ideas are a much needed, new urgent education in the world.
Like your compatriot Robert Schuman who wanted a European Union but never saw it while he was alive, you might not see either the united humanity and the well functioning Earth you labored for so hard but you will see it from heaven I promise you.
I also refer to your Idea 552 which is my preferred one, in which you say: "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 her an even more astonishing planet and cosmic success, perhaps the most advanced, ultimate masterpiece of the universe and God. Since each species born from nature is a miracle, we humans are undoubtedly a miracle too."
~ Idea 3014 ~
I see three major events on this planet during the year 2000 which signal great hope for the future:
1. The creation and work of the Foundation for the Future in Bellevue, Washington State, which has taken the year 3000 as the target of our concerns, forwardlooking, thinking, planning and ideas. In August 2000 it will convene some of the world's best scientists, futurologists, visionaries and prophets in Seattle to give their views to humanity about the next 1000 years.
2. The holding of a World Peoples' Assembly in April 2000 in Samoa, to give their views of the future and their expectations from the heads of states UN General Assembly in September.
3. The Summit Meeting of all heads of states of this planet in the UN General Assembly 2000 to deal with this agenda: "to focus on the means to solve our primary global problems and to reform the means of global government in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
As an advisor to the Foundation for the Future I have advised that the views and recommendations of the Seattle conference be submitted to the United Nations and all heads of states. The first two reports of meetings of thinkers are already available (address of the Foundation: 123-10 5th Avenue, S.E. Bellevue, Washington 98004-6265, Tel: (425) 451-1333, Fax: (425) 451-1238, www.futurefoundation.org.)
Regarding the World (later called Global) Peoples' Assembly, my first 2000 ideas and dreams are available to them as well as an excerpt of the most important ideas of decisions I suggest they should take at their meeting.
Regarding the Heads of States Meeting 2000 my 2000 ideas will be available. I will make an excerpt from them of the most important decisions they should take at their summit meeting.
~ Idea 3015 ~
When I think of the tragedies caused to the families of my schoolmates of Alsace-Lorraine who lost a husband or a son in German or French uniforms in World War II, I am moved to request that the United Nations should open a new chapter of human rights, namely the rights of families. It should proclaim the fundamental human right of every family not to see any of its members trained and asked to kill members of other families, not in the name of a nation nor a religion nor of any other institution, entity or person on Earth.
~ Idea 3016 ~
There is no reason, no sense whatsoever to maintain militaries and armaments which are true blemishes to our beautiful, miraculous Earth. This is why Jose Figueres, a respected philosopher insurgent against a dictator, camping with his men in the tropical beauty of Costa Rica decided to send home his troops and those of the defeated dictator when he won, and demilitarized the country by constitution in 1948. All countries on Earth should do the same. God bless him for his wise, memorable audacity. This is why the UN University for Peace is located in Costa Rica. And thanks be given to Oscar Arias, another Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner who obtained the demilitarization of Panama and Haiti and seeks that of more countries.
~ Idea 3017 ~
The Earth Charter submitted by the Earth Council to all governments should give the Earth the fundamental right to be free of militaries, armaments, atomic bombs and atomic energy plants. Yes, we speak only of human rights. How about the rights of the living Earth?
~ Idea 3018 ~
A political speech without inspiration, which does not make you feel like crying or actually cry, is like a weak musical piece. A really great speech must elevate you like a Beethoven symphony. I hope that the heads of state meeting at the UN in September 2000 and in following years will remember this and inspire the entire world to unknown heights and make people cry.
~ Idea 3019 ~
Governments and public authorities from the lowest to the top have no interest in protecting consumers against excessive prices and unfair marketing and advertisement. Why? Because they get higher revenues from sales taxes and taxes on the profits of business. Ordinary citizens and the Earth are the least protected on this planet. This has to be remedied. A deep tax reform or an entirely new revenue and tax system must be conceived for the good conservation of the Earth and the fulfillment and happiness of all humans.
~ Idea 3020 ~
We have a cat in our little farmhouse on Mt. Rasur. One day a stray cat decided to settle there too. For weeks they were fighting each other, competing for food and lodging. Then one day they became friends, loving each other and sleeping tightly together in a basket. I was thinking: why don't all conflicting humans and entities do the same? How they and the whole world would benefit from it. It reminded me of the belief of Robert Schuman, the founder of the European Union, that peace is not merely the end of war and conflict, but must be the birth of cooperation and love. Freud said the same to Einstein.
~ Idea 3021 ~
It is high time that in the year 2000 and the third millennium a new chapter of human rights be opened, namely the rights of humanity as a whole against unfair practices and violations by groups and institutions. An example is the practice of the Monsanto Company which was buying up natural seeds from farmers all around the world to force them to buy every year the Monsanto genetically engineered seeds which will last only two years! This should be considered an outrageous, incredible violation of humanity's rights. Such a case should be brought to a world jurisdiction like the International Court of Justice or a World Court of Human Rights which must absolutely be established in this century. And how about a World Court of Earth Rights and Ethics?
~ Idea 3022 ~
It is reported that the militaries of certain nations are testing new secret weapons which would damage or destroy the environment of other nations, e.g. beams to the ozonosphere to create holes in it above an enemy nation thus letting infra-red rays go through and create cancers. Several others are being developed in this new field of environmental weaponry. I recommend:
1. That this subject be urgently placed on the agenda of the United Nations.
2. That the United Nations create an inter-governmental committee and a Secretariat Unit in charge of reporting on all facets of this new form of armaments and taking proper action against them.
3. That these new forms of armaments which may endanger and damage peaceful countries and the entire Earth be brought as criminal actions before a greatly strengthened International Court of Justice or a special new World Court of Justice against armaments and military crimes.
~ Idea 3023 ~
I recommend to the heads of states a thorough review and strengthening of the International Court of Justice. All existing, planned and recommended novel forms of international justice should be urgently considered in a World Conference on Justice.
~ Idea 3024 ~
Given the magnificence, the miraculous diversity and astonishing forms of life of our planet's nature we humans should be their servants and not their destroyers. How in heaven can we allow a species to disappear every five hours when it took millions of years to create that species?
The Earth Charter drafted by the Earth Council must be accompanied by the urgent creation of a World Court of Nature where the rights of nature will be upheld.
As I wrote this on sacred Mt. Rasur in demilitarized Costa Rica I heard Mother Earth say to me:
"Dear Robert, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart."
~ Idea 3025 ~
"Tell me what are your dreams and you will tell me who you are."
Perhaps this is our real biological function to be performed by each generation and by every human person. Dreams might be a basic genetic evolutionary human function.
~ Idea 3026 ~
My example and that of a number of other retired world servants of the UN and of International Organizations who donate their services to new ventures like the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica has given birth to this wonderful idea: Maurice Strong, the new President of the University for Peace intends to create near the university a Village of Peace for retired world servants who would continue to work for peace and a better world part-time or full-time with or without salary.
Maurice Strong also intends to create near the University for Peace a World Center for Inner Peace, another wonderful idea.
~ Idea 3027 ~
In Ideas 301, 418, 1214 and 1785 I speak and reproduce some of several declarations of human duties and responsibilities known to me. I think that a Universal Declaration of Duties and Responsibilities should now be drafted and adopted by the United Nations as was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949 which had a deep impact on human history since then.
Two duties should be considered in such a declaration:
- the duty of nations to solve conflicts exclusively with peaceful means and not to train and force their citizens to kill other human beings in wars.
- the duties of nations not to keep stockpiles of nuclear arms, the use or accidental activation of which would kill innumerable humans and destroy vast segments of our vital nature.
~ Idea 3028 ~
Another new fundamental human right:
the right of peoples to complain, to receive help in formulating their complaints, to have complaints properly examined by the proper authorities, from local municipalities to the top of the world, and to receive a reply.
Each institution on Earth should provide the necessary help and services (e.g. ombudsmen or women) to fulfill this human right.
This would be part of a re-examination of the entire field of democracy which needs it so badly.
~ Idea 3029 ~
The general conference of UNESCO deserves congratulations for opening a new chapter of human rights: the rights of future generations. It is circulating a Draft Declaration of the Responsibilities of the present generation towards future generations. It provides for the safeguarding of vital aspects of life and well-being of future generations including "freedom of choice in political, economic, social, cultural and religious matters; maintenance and perpetuation of humankind and life on Earth; protection of the environment, bio-diversity, the human genome and the common heritage of humankind; preservation of cultural diversity and heritage, peace development, education and non-discrimination".
I hope that these human rights of our descendants will be given high priority on the agenda of world affairs.
~ Idea 3030 ~
We celebrate today a memorial to Ruth Schneider, a remarkable woman who died recently after a life of great achievements and inspiration to many people. The event will take place on the terrace of Rasur, the God of the indigenous children who appeared to them and prophecized that from his hill a civilization of peace will extend to the entire world. That was the goal of all her life. I am wide awake thinking of Teilhard de Chardin who wanted a Mass of Resurrection in white at his death and the playing at it of the Ode to Joy by Beethoven and I had to fulfill the same wish for Father Emanuel de Breuvery, his Jesuit companion and my director at the United Nations, when he died. I was thinking of my wishes for my death. They were the same. I imagined the same memorial on this terrace and decided to dictate on tape my message of hope and resurrection for that ceremony. I then discovered that I had done it already: the tape is called Passion for Life. How moving it would be to hear Ruth Schneider's message today instead of only testimonies of those who knew and loved her.
~ Idea 3031 ~
I always dreamt that St. Francis and St. Claire would be declared saints of the United Nations. I recommended it to Pope John Paul II. At least I obtained the following blessing for the UN University for Peace:
The Franciscans International decided to erect a beautiful prayer place and bust of the saint in the gardens of the University for Peace. The event was in honor of the common ideals of St. Francis and of the University: peace, love for God's nature and simple and frugal lives, not to tax unduly our Mother Earth.
On 11 March 2000 the Franciscans held a celebration and a Mass for the bimillennium at that shrine. It happened to be also my birthday, the reaching of the age of seventy-seven. At that ceremony I expressed these dreams:
- that in this new millennium every country will celebrate a saint, a noble woman or man who left behind a great inspirational model of life and a message of elevation and hope for all humanity;
- that in many places on Earth church bells, gongs and muezzins will announce again everyday the resurrection of light and day;
- that radio and television programs around the world will start each day with a sacred song e.g. the Ave Maria by Gounod or the Ode to Joy by Beethoven, as thanks to God for the miracle of life;
- that all humans, be they heads of states, artists, religious leaders, business people, educators, scientists, fathers and mothers will ask themselves the question: what good will I do today?
~ Idea 3032 ~
It is so good in the early morning to take care of nature, her plants and animals, to have the feeling to be of service. It is much better than to read newspapers. That is why peasants and people living in nature are happier than city dwellers. The more people will move back to the land the more happy people there will be on this planet.
~ Idea 3033 ~
A letter to Ted Turner:
Dear Ted,
When both you and I will appear before God, He will tell us that we did not do enough despite our belief that we did. Perhaps someday if you feel like it, come to sacred Mt. Rasur in one of the most beautiful places on Earth overlooking the United Nations University for Peace. A modest, second little wooden dwelling is waiting for you where you will be given the answer to, "What more can I do?," awakened by the cocks who announce the resurrection of the light and day.
Do it if possible this year so that you can give your message to the heads of state who will meet at the UN General Assembly in September 2000.
I'm thinking often of you,
~ Idea 3034 ~
Someone asked me, "What is the biggest problem in the world?" I answered, "The United States whose military strategists and big corporations are now ruling the world. They have designed the vastest, most sophisticated, long-term US power strategy in the world, as taught in military academies. They have not neglected anything. They are doing this job for the US alone and not for the rest of humanity and of the Earth. They are now one of the greatest obstacles to world unity and proper Earth government."
I received the comment:
"Are you not exaggerating?"
No, I will never forget the remark of Chou En Lai, the Premier of China when he received Secretary General Waldheim and me and said, "I apologize for receiving you so late in the evening. It is ten o'clock because I have set my watch on Washington time for I cannot be asleep here in China when they are awake in the Pentagon."
The trouble is indeed that the rest of the world is not awake when they are awake in the Pentagon. The damage done to the European Union as a result of the US intervention in Kosovo under the NATO umbrella is a case in point. If you had a secession of any state in the US, would the United States allow NATO to intervene?
~ Idea 3035 ~
The greatest killers on this planet are not individuals but governments. Just have a look at the Dismal Alphabet from Volume III which I reproduce here again in order not to forget it. It should be permanently on the desk of every head of state.
MAY THE SOULS OF THESE DEPARTED BROTHERS AND SISTERS CONTRIBUTE TO WORLD PEACE AND BETTER FUTURE GENERATIONS.
Millions of people have been killed by governments in the last two centuries. National governments are not admirable, praiseworthy, love-worthy institutions. They are often wholesale killers including of women and children. Even in peacetime they waste more than one-half of the total taxes from their people on armaments and militaries. And why are ordinary killers called criminals, put in prison, often condemned to death, while winning generals are called heroes, covered with medals and remembered in monuments and history?
People are really sheep to let this happen and not to revolt against it. There is need for a Peoples' Rebellion against the dismal, dangerous political and economic disorder and injustices on this planet. I hope that the heads of states meeting at the UN in September 2000 will receive a crystal clear strong message from the World's Peoples' Assembly meeting earlier in Samoa regarding a direct peoples' representation in the United Nations.
~ Idea 3036 ~
I cannot visualize how heads of states, Pentagon officials, generals, armaments manufacturers and many parliamentarians can sleep during the night when 1.3 billion people on this planet live on one dollar a day while one-half or more of all yearly world expenditures, a staggering eight hundred billion dollars, are wasted on armaments and training killers called militaries.
I will never understand it. I will die wondering how mad power and money continue to rule this planet in one form or another and might bring it this time to its end because they are now also killing nature. How can God in heaven allow this?
~ Idea 3037 ~
When we created the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, never supported by the US and the rich countries, we discovered that the corn-flake contained in a well-advertised, attractive package was worth only 1/1000th of the price at which it was sold!
Recently, through the Internet I learned that a chemical was added to some cereals in order to make the children addicted to them. According to some people Coca Cola is still not completely free of a drug that makes people addicted to the drink despite the announcement by the United States Government a number of years ago that Coca Cola no longer added a drug.
Well, noone should be surprised by the first peoples' demonstrations in Seattle and Washington.
I will also never forget that when we were young the morning cereal consisted of stale bread which we dumped into hot milk or coffee with milk and sugar. It was the cheapest cereal on Earth. But who still does this except in poor countries? It is cheap, healthy and delicious. People should revert to it and save the money and wasteful packaging of cereals.
~ Idea 3038 ~
I have never forgotten a friend who was mobilized in the French army in Strasbourg and had a grocery store in town. Each weekend he asked for a furlough to go to the store and prepare a large quantity of mustard. He said that it was the cheapest product he could sell. All he had to do was to add water to mustard powder and mix it. It was the product on which he made the biggest profit.
Nowadays I see mustards of all sorts under 'brand names' in small, sophisticated, well advertised containers. The latest I saw was mustard mixed with honey! Who on Earth could invent such a thing? What else will business invent to make profits and raise sales prices? And why don't governments create Consumers Ministries and a World Consumer's Protection Agency?
~ Idea 3039 ~
As long as there will be Ministries of War or Defense in 174 nations there will be no peace on Earth.
I suggest that the President of the United States in his speech to the heads of states meeting of the UN General Assembly 2000 will announce that the Pentagon will be suppressed and will be replaced by a United States Ministry of Peace as President Eisenhower did after World War II. Its Secretary was Harold Stassen, the last living signer of the United Nations Charter, still alive today at the age of 94 and who should be honored for having held this position. The cold war put an end to it. Now that the cold war is over the United States can reestablish that ministry followed I am sure by many other countries on Earth.
~ Idea 3040 ~
In his speech to the UN General Assembly the President of the United States should offer also a bold World Marshall Plan to heal the extreme poverty of a great part of the world and to stop and reduce the increasing gap between the rich and the poor both within countries and worldwide. He would do this in memory of President Johnson whose main ideal during his presidency was to eliminate poverty.
The President of the United States should also pay tribute to President John Kennedy for having launched the US Peace Corps which was loved by so many American people and should become a World Peace Corps.
His speech would thus be a tribute to President Eisenhower, to General Marshall, to President Johnson and to President John Kennedy.
He could also remember these words of General Omar Bradley after World War II: "The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
~ Idea 3041 ~
In a survey of proper world order one country to be looked into would be Switzerland:
Switzerland is a country which has managed to escape world attention with its policy of Swiss neutrality. I mentioned already the location of the second biggest United Nations Office in the world, its European Office in Geneva and of so many United Nations specialized agencies and world programs in Switzerland which is not even a member of the United Nations! Perhaps the effort of Switzerland to get so many international offices established on its soil was to get a good neutral international image in order to divert attention from a number of major misdoings which are being held against it, e.g. Switzerland as a world tax haven; Switzerland and its secret bank accounts said to accept deposits from anyone including dictators and world traffickeers.
~ Idea 3042 ~
I recommend that there should be a world survey and report on the seats of the multinational corporations to see who benefits from them most by order of importance and what attractive benefits they offer. It could be quite a revealing document on who benefits and how to benefit from the world globalization of business!
~ Idea 3043 ~
The United Nations must absolutely re-establish its Center on Multinational Corporations abolished by Mr. Boutros Ghali at the request of President Bush.
I would even recommend that the UN should create a whole specialized agency to deal with this major new phenomenon in the human society and history. Yes a United Nations Agency on Multinational Corporations. This would be an important move.
~ Idea 3044 ~
What incredible wisdom, knowledge and ideas we would find in a world-wide survey of all the cultures on Earth, past and present! Such a survey would reveal to us the ways to be followed and those to be avoided in our future journey on this planet.
Instead of that, the energies of most human groups are devoted to persuade us that their beliefs, their group, their religion, their ideology, their way of life are the only valid ones and even merit to go to war to get them accepted by the vanquished!
How long will such aberration, such blindness continue on this Earth? The UN and its agencies and world programs should be strengthened many times to pursue their efforts on this problem.
~ Idea 3045 ~
The world should adopt new adjectives to characterize cities:
~ Idea 3046 ~
When I appear before God I will probably discover that our supreme divinity is the Earth. She will smile at my surprise and say, "I welcome you and give you my deepest thanks for having been one of the fathers of the first and second world conferences on the environment and co-creator of the first University for Peace on Earth. Please sit next to me on my right and help me judge the national leaders, militaries and businessmen coming up from down there."
~ Idea 3047 ~
The decision of many western couples not to have any children anymore or not more than one or two could bring about a major change on planet Earth and even save it. It is indeed almost irresponsible to have children who would have meaningless lives in such a disorderly, ungoverned planet, progressively destroyed by so-called governments and business. Perhaps with the prospect of having no one to govern anymore, governments might change course and begin to manage the Earth properly.
The diminishing of the western, highly consuming population by 40 million between now and the year 2050 is a first, great, hopeful, sign welcomed by Mother Earth.
~ Idea 3048 ~
Humans must get their admirations straight: people who try to save our beautiful Earth are more admirable than those who destroy it. Peacemakers are more admirable than arms manufacturers and militaries. The United Nations and Costa Rica are more admirable than the national militarized countries. Nations having no nuclear arms are more admirable than those who have, etc.
Please add your own admirations. See also Idea 2533 in which I recommend that people should boycott and not buy goods coming from countries which have nuclear armaments.
~ Idea 3049 ~
The time has come in human history when in order to save the Earth the decisions of people not to do certain things has become as important if not more important than to do certain things. This is quite fundamental since human beings are constantly assailed by colossal world-wide business, marketing and advertisement to do, to buy and to consume innumerable things which rob us of our most intimate nature, our meaning of life and happiness and destroy our Mother Earth.
Here are a few examples of decisions not to:
Such decisions taken by individuals and families could change the world. Why? Because there are 6 billion people now and we will be close to 9 billion in the year 2050. Every individual action multiplied by 6 to 9 billion can have an enormous influence on the fate of the Earth.
The above 'not to decisions' are even more important for the Earth in the rich countries since people in those countries consume thirty times more than those in the poor countries.
Please remember it. Please, for the Earth and nature's sake, for our survival's sake reduce unnecessary purchases, consumption and activities.
~ Idea 3050 ~
The UN University for Peace and the Earth Council created in Costa Rica by the Rio de Janeiro Conference on the Environment will become the guidelights, strategic center and new Athens of the world and humanity.
~ Idea 3051 ~
The level of global intelligence and knowledge of many leaders is insufficient to manage this planet well and to conserve it with a peaceful, happy humanity on board. There should be a school for heads of states with a Center of Global Information on this planet.
~ Idea 3052 ~
I wish sometimes to have a glance at the US world strategy of the Pentagon for the years and decades ahead as well as those of Russia, China and other major countries of the world. Also, of the major arms manufacturers and biggest multinational corporations. It would tell us a lot. As for groups of countries, the strategies of NATO, SEATO and other military alliances would also be most interesting. And next to these giants, only a small infant, the United Nations, was created to take care of the Earth and the human family!
Yes, it is a major trouble that at a time of evolution when most serious global problems are threatening us and global solutions and institutions are needed, there does not exist a serious world strategy for the future of the Earth and of humanity. This could mean disaster. I recommend that the heads of states at the United Nations General Assembly 2000 should establish a major World Future Strategy Commission.
~ Idea 3053 ~
A World Movement of People saying No to Non-essentials (NONE) should be created as a new world non-governmental association accredited to the United Nations. It should say no:
We are in World War III, the destruction of the Earth by the money holders and by governments, their money issuers and servants. Planet Earth is becoming a pretty ungoverned, chaotic planet in the universe, while with our vast human knowledge and intelligence we could become the best. Let us decide to embark on a new course.
~ Idea 3055 ~
There is no longer a true democracy, if there ever was one, on this planet. What we have is:
An advertisementcracy, etc.
Our Earth is ruled by 200 giant corporations, by 189 governments, by the military and by advertisement, marketing and media magnates. Is this the right sociology of an intelligent species on one of the most unique, marvelous planets in the universe?
~ Idea 3056 ~
It was a miracle that for the first time in all evolution and human history a universal grouping of humans in nations was achieved in the United Nations. It required the horrors, killings and destructions of World War II to give it birth.
It miraculously grew a little and was not abolished as was its predecessor the League of Nations. But governments did not accept to give it a real global role and necessary means and were thus overtaken by global world businesses which now rule the world with many governments as their servants.
This will lead to world disaster if governments do not wake up. Perhaps only a first world catastrophe will wake them up, but they are not even prepared for that.
I was tempted to end the last volume of 3000 ideas with the words, "AMEN to Planet Earth. You will get extinct, filled with dead monstrous cities, abandoned skyscrapers, automobiles, airplanes, yachts, museums, overflowing with objects and garbage." After these words I would have drawn a circle with the Latin words inside, Sic transit gloria mundi, thus passes the glory of the world. Such a big sign could be placed on the surface of our Earth to be seen by outer space beings visiting it.
But my wife Barbara objected and said, "You cannot finish a book with such an ending." I answered, "Well, I give you the last word." And she drew another circle with these Latin words in the middle of it, Sic resurexit mundus, thus resurrected the world. And I wrote my Dream 3000.
~ Idea 3057 ~
Beautiful on this planet is really only the Earth, her nature and all her kin and products. Humans can never please her by any other means than by being beautiful ourselves, beautiful admirers and beautifiers of the wonders of nature. Our monuments and works of art are little compared with her and with us when we are beautiful. Our ideal must therefore be not to make money, to become rich and powerful, to win wars, to build skyscrapers and enormous houses but to be beautiful in the eyes of the Earth. This must become the ideal of humans in the third millennium. We should conceive a new science, the science of being beautiful in the eyes of the Earth and of God, a 'beautyology'. In every government there should be a Ministry of Art and Beauty.
~ Idea 3058 ~
Humanity has still to get its 'yeses' and its 'nos' straight. Here is a beginning of the two lists.
Dear reader, please add your own. It will reveal how we can make it a better world.
~ Idea 3059 ~
The trouble with our current civilization is that everything has to be measured, quantified in exact, precise terms. This is why the predominant idea of contemporary humanity is to make money because money is an exact measurement, supposedly, of life and happiness. This is also why a main purpose of education is to teach how to make money and to produce more goods and services.
Typical of this situation is that we have Ministries of Finance, Economy, Industry, Science and Technology in all governments. But we do not have any Ministries of Peace, Happiness, Beauty and Dreams.
~ Idea 3060 ~
All children born in the year 2000 and thereafter should be declared citizens of the world. All boys should be exempt from military service in all countries. Could some countries take the lead?
~ Idea 3061 ~
We should create on this planet a World Association of Dreamers for a better world.
~ Idea 3062 ~
It might indeed be good to let capitalism survive so that at least a small but increasing minority of people will become rich, rather than try to correct it and produce a society in which noone will be rich. Perhaps this was the major difference between capitalism and communism.
But the new basic challenge to humanity is now: what will become of the Earth?
~ Idea 3063 ~
What can one say of countries whose governments allow business to produce and sell as fruit juices liquids which contain only 4% of fruit juice?
~ Idea 3064 ~
The problem of the Earth' deforestation is so vital for humanity's future that I recommend the creation of a full World Forestry Specialized Agency of the United Nations.
~ Idea 3065 ~
There is such a need not to lose time, not to postpone remedies and to be abreast of time that I recommend the creation of a World Association of Impatient World Thinkers and Activists.
~ Idea 3066 ~
My all encompassing World Core Curriculum of the tremendous knowledge humanity possesses today from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, of our whole planet, of the whole humanity, of the whole human being and of the passage of time from the infinitely past to the infinitely future is a menace to governments because for them the nation comes first, not the highest fulfillment of human life of which they should be proud. The answer to peace is what Freud said to Einstein (Idea 1020) "We will have peace when the love for nation will extend to a love for the entire humanity and Earth."
~ Idea 3067 ~
The children and youth of today and tomorrow will be confronted all life long with such an all invading sophisticated world of marketing and advertisement that it is imperative that they be properly educated to save their personality and natural qualities and not become marketed, advertised beings, victims of what the money, profit crazy, capitalist society wants them to be and to do.
~ Idea 3068 ~
A tree, preferably a fruit tree, should be planted at the birth of every child on Earth. It would be a great, beautiful contribution to the reforestation of our planet since every year 126 million children are born.
I have done it for my four children and nine grandchildren.
And why not do it also on birthdays instead of sending the millions of cards which cost entire forests of this planet, not to speak of gifts.
We should also plant trees at the death of our beloved ones because life will thus continue and their name will be preserved lovingly for a long time.
~ Idea 3069 ~
Humanity is acquiring an ecological consciousness, i.e. the consciousness of preserving, not killing the Earth, our home (Greek oikos, the home).
We must also acquire an anthropological consciousness (Greek anthropos, the human being), not letting humans be killed by militaries, armaments, starvation, epidemics, air and water pollution, pesticides, homicidal violence and the death penalty.
What would we say if we discovered in the universe a planet where they have militaries, trained and ready to kill each other?
~ Idea 3070 ~
In an interview with the head of an Indigenous American Center at the International Radio for Peace I recommended:
1. The creation of a United Indigenous Peoples' Organization following the example of the United Religions Initiative.
2. The establishment of a World Commission of Eminent Personalities for the Indigenous Peoples to look into their lives, cultures, contributions, merits and fate.
3. To have the indigenous peoples come forth with their views on how the Earth should be loved, cared for and governed.
~ Idea 3071 ~
Someone - the UN preferably - should publish world statistics giving an idea of the number of trees which are being destroyed each year on planet Earth to produce:
The total and sub-totals would probably be staggering.
~ Idea 3072 ~
"What good luck for those in power that people do not think," said Adolf Hitler.
Today not only politicians can say that but those really in power, namely the heads of big business.
~ Idea 3073 ~
The global crises which face humanity give us tremendous opportunities provided that we change directions, for as the Chinese say, unless we change direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
~ Idea 3074 ~
Ideas which were right in the past built the nation states with their sovereignty, taxing powers, armaments and readiness for wars. But they are wrong today.
Right thoughts today are: good care of our planet and of all humanity, abolishing borders, armaments, the military, excessive national sovereignty and all the waste and colossal duplications of expenses of 189 artificial partitions of the Earth.
~ Idea 3075 ~
What Abraham Lincoln said at his time applies fully to ours, "The dogmas of the past are inadequate for the stormy present. We must think anew and act anew."
~ Idea 3076 ~
If you think of a great cause or idea or dream and make it the center of your life, of your thoughts day and night, of all your actions and constant networking, seizing every opportunity, every 'coincidence' to foster and implement it you will see the most astonishing things happen. There is in each human being an incredible latent cosmic power which attracts outside cosmic help to the right causes of further human evolution.
~ Idea 3077 ~
Right ideas, dreams, prayers and actions are cosmic energy which make us co-workers with the designs and efforts of the universe and God.
~ Idea 3078 ~
An important idea is that all universities, all governments, all institutions on Earth should have a concern for our future and create a Faculty, a Department, a Ministry or Office of the Future. Things are going so fast that this is an absolute necessity.
~ Idea 3079 ~
Billionaires who have headed huge construction companies, armaments factories, earth-moving equipment companies and many others should, at the moment of their death, not thank God for their blessings but ask to be forgiven for having destroyed so much of God's Creation.
~ Idea 3080 ~
Armaments are not as bad as earth-destruction equipment because vast armaments are usually not used whereas earth-destructive equipment must be used every day and often day and night to be profitable. All human production should be considered from two points of view: the Earth materials which were destroyed to produce them and the amount of Earth they do destroy.
~ Idea 3081 ~
There is need for a Wholistic World Biological Association or Movement to study and cater to all life forms on Earth including the human one.
~ Idea 3082 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I am so glad that you went to the meeting of the advisors of the new Foundation for the Future. I was there and observed you. You learned a lot and you made a determining jump ahead in your thinking, namely that humans are definitely destroying me. You remarked correctly that their big report, Humanity 3000 should have also been an Earth Report 3000. I thank you and ask you to go one step further and no longer speak of the evolution of humanity but of an incredibly damaging era of my evolution caused by humans."
I:
I doubt that anyone would listen to me.
~ Idea 3083 ~
We live basically in a de-spiritualized, hyper-materialized, industrialized, commercialized, marketed and advertised consuming society. Where will this lead us?
I wish that one airline would have the courage to announce its closing because it is destroying the atmosphere. I wish that many industries and commercial firms would do the same. The reason of the Earth must replace the reason of state, of profit and of purely materialistic motives on her surface.
~ Idea 3084 ~
To do nothing, to read nothing, to wish nothing, to plan nothing, to say nothing can be wonderful ways to find one's self, one's innermost nature intentionally created by the universe, the cosmic forces or God. Yes, it is important not to disperse one's self unduly with the outside world and to keep many moments of fascinating, fulfilling in-depth, inner living.
~ Idea 3085 ~
All is one Earth, a tremendous reality and mystery so incredible, so diverse, so splendid. What a privilege it is to be alive, to see this, to study it and be passionately in love with life and with the Earth. I pray God to let me live long to do many more good actions for His beautiful Creation.
~ Idea 3086 ~
The Secretary General of the UN should established a permanent Evolutionary Structural Review and Reform Committee and so should all 32 specialized agencies and UN world programs. The reason is that things move so fast in all fields on this planet.
~ Idea 3087 ~
My compatriot from Alsace-Lorraine, Robert Schuman who created the European Union is called the Father of Europe. My dream is to be the creator of the World Union and be remembered as the Father of the World.
~ Idea 3088 ~
My good friends of the Airlines Ambassadors Association (see Introduction to Ideas 2201 to 2300) should ask all pilots and air personnel to give their views how they see the future of the world. This could be a great source of common sense, wisdom, thinking and future vision.
~ Idea 3089 ~
I wonder if there is a Jan Tinbergen Institute or a University in Holland which has kept his articles, papers, books written by him or on him and outlining his main proposals for a just, orderly world economy? His proposals should be made known world-wide. I remember him fondly when he was a consultant to the United Nations. He had the courage to recommend the creation of a World Treasury financed by international taxes, a World Energy Agency (see my Ideas 46, 293), the worldialization (world common ownership) of raw materials and the creation of major world public services. He fully deserved the first Nobel Prize in economics awarded to him. Alas, he is no longer amongst us.
~ Idea 3090 ~
Dear Emily Cousins and Dan Scott,
The best loving wish we can address to you on your wedding day is to consider yourselves from the very beginning what we are being called now, namely a cosmic couple.
This lesson was given to us by the Mayan Indians who told us that we were wrong to consider the individual as the basic cosmic unit. In their cosmology the couple is the fundamental cosmic unit, because in the couple the previous life experiences and cosmic evolution of all ancestors are combined and transmitted to their children and descendants who will continue humanity's evolution.
Please adopt love, spirituality and the cosmic nature of your union as the highest values of your lives. And try to be as wonderful as is Emily's father, our beloved friend Ewert Cousins.
With all the loving wishes for lots of happiness
from one cosmic couple to another,
Robert Muller and Barbara Gaughen Muller
~ Idea 3091 ~
In a book, Achieving Peace by the Year 2000 John Huddleston, chief of the Budget and Planning Division of the International Monetary Fund offers the following Twelve Proposals for World Peace:
This is a plan worth considering by the heads of states at the United Nations General Assembly 2000 whose task it is: "to focus on means of solving our primary global problems and to reform the means of global governance in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
* Japan has done it in its post-World War II Constitution. More countries should follow that example.
~ Idea 3092 ~
I wholeheartedly and admiringly agree with this statement by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at a meeting of NGOs in Canada in December 1999: "If the global agenda is to be properly addressed, a partnership with civil society is not an option, it is a necessity. I see a United Nations which recognizes that the non-governmental organizations revolution - the new global people power, or whatever you wish to call this explosion of citizens' concern at the global level - is the best thing that has happened to our organization in a long time."
May the World Peoples' Assembly in Samoa be a high point of that peoples' revolution.
~ Idea 3093 ~
Message to a conference in Australia on the future of humanity
The human species is making enormous progress: it has a world-wide, almost cosmic knowledge, in space and in time: it has acquired incredible global auditory, visual and communications abilities; it has global hands and global feet through industry and transportation; a global brain is being born to it; a global heart is nascent; a global soul or spiritual Renaissance is under way.
Yet, it is still in its kindergarten stage: that of business, of material, immediate satisfactions, goods being its toys, the craving for power, money, possessions, the need to show off like children.
The next stages will be those of morality, ethics, distinction between good and bad, an extraordinary wisdom and fulfillment of life, a right harmony with the Earth, her elements, her nature and other species; with the heavens and with the unfoldment of time, which we call evolution.
The revolt against global business is part of this. We witness the birth of a new age, the age of right global values, a gigantic step forward in our and the Earth's evolution.
To contribute to that should be the aim of your conference. Please send your conclusions, views and recommendations to the Prime Minister of Australia so that he can make a memorable contribution to the heads of states meeting held in September of this year at the United Nations General Assembly.
I wish your conference great success. May you help our miraculous human species find its right way and more advanced future destiny on this heavenly, life-blessed, very special planet in the universe.
~ Idea 3094 ~
At each of our birthdays we should update our achievements, our plans and ideas for a better self, a better family and a better world. Birthdays should be stock-taking, planning and dream days.
~ Idea 3095 ~
On my 77th birthday, remembering my wonder at a blooming cherry tree and later at its fruits when I was a child and the fact that I planted cherry trees at the birth of my grandchildren, the following idea came to me:
That a fruit trees garden for newly born children should be created at the University for Peace: parents would come and plant a fruit tree for their new child. The tree would bear the name of the child and a register of all babies will be held. The children of Costa Rica would thus be associated with peace during all their life. Parents, when coming during the weekends to the beautiful gardens of the university would show the growth of the trees to their children and hold birthday parties there. When adults, the registered children could observe the growth of 'their tree', hold birthday parties there and register and plant trees for their own newly born. There would be soon a whole forest of such trees providing food for birds, for squirrels and for monkeys, unique in the world.
Such fruit trees gardens for newly borns could be created in many places of the world.
~ Idea 3096 ~
There should be a world movement for the return of people to the land. Many ideas could be conceived by such a movement for rich and for poor countries. Here is one for the rich ones: people who retire should be invited and receive tax incentives to return to the land, sell their apartment or dwelling in the city, buy a home with land in the countryside and enjoy the rest of their lives in God's divine nature and Creation, helping vegetation, flowers, animals and birds to regain ground and flourish again. At death they should request to be buried into the ground of their land, returned to the body of Mother Earth to be resuscitated as new vegetation and life forms under the generous rays of Father Sun and the miracle of rain. Thus they would never die.
Their survivors would also be saved expenses of the average of $6,500 for dying in a US city and being burned into useless ashes.
~ Idea 3097 ~
I concentrate too much on governments, leaders, institutions, economics, politics. Behind all that there are hundreds of millions of happy families, happy mothers, fathers, children and grandparents. They manage to stick together in the worst circumstances as I was shown so vividly by my family during World War II.
We should therefore also have World Days of:
~ Idea 3098 ~
The following are International Days (I would prefer World Days) already proclaimed by the United Nations.
These are a great progress toward human unity and the recognition of the Earth as a central, over-riding concern.
I recommend also more sentimental World Days:
a World Day of Happiness
It is good that we have already an International Week of Forgiveness but many more such weeks are needed. The United Nations has also proclaimed a number of international decades such as the International Decades for the Handicapped and for the Indigenous People and now from 2001 to 2010 an International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence.
~ Idea 3099 ~
I:
Dear Earth, when I observe the wonderful, miraculous nature of Costa Rica I ask myself sometimes: why did you produce and allow the evolution of humans and their big brains which are now endangering nature with atomic missiles and power plants, wastes, armaments and thousands of different, damaging ways they call progress. I will never understand that they let a species become extinct every five hours and still call themselves intelligent, superior, developing, progressing and constructive! Why didn't you stop evolution with vegetation and animals, but not humans?
The Earth:
"Well, since my round body turning around the sun and receiving its energy has different climatic conditions I needed to produce microbes, crawling and flying insects, birds and animals to continue the life of nature according to season and location. Costa Rica, where you live, has the most favorable conditions for life exuberance: its animals and humans were in proper harmony with my nature.
Humans in the hard and cold conditions of the northern climates had to develop 'intelligence', 'imagination', 'inventiveness', 'creativity', 'hard work' and 'progress' which went up to their head. They considered themselves to be superior to all nature. They then invaded the rest of the world and are now destroying me thoughtlessly, unintelligently and unnecessarily. That is the story."
I:
But can't you stop them? What do you do?
The Earth:
"Well, there are growing numbers of humans like you who are aware of the impending disasters and have become 'environmentalists', i.e. beings animated by the soul, the anima, the life forms and cycles of all life on my body and of my own life and functioning. This is why I have brought you and others like you from the United Nations in a cold northern climate to Costa Rica's sunny exuberant nature to be part of my salvation and further evolution. I expect you and many others like you to be the new, most advanced life forms on my surface, to be my miracle makers. I also made sure that the Earth Council created by the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Conference on the Environment would be located in Costa Rica on the grounds of the UN University for Peace. You will become the most important, inspiring place on my surface."
~ Idea 3100 ~
Dear Earth,
You will be happy to hear that a group of ecologists, economists and geographers from twelve prestigious universities in three countries have come up with the value of the products of your nature: they estimate it at thirty-three trillion dollars a year, possibly as high as fifty-four trillion dollars while the total economic output by humans is only eighteen trillion dollars a year. That means that while the average benefits per human on Earth from human activity is only three thousand dollars a year, the benefits from nature could be as high as nine thousand dollars. Aren't you happy to hear that?
The Earth:
"Yes, I'm delighted that at long last someone has done that. Could you ask the same people to go a step further and calculate the value of the total capital I represent and how that capital is diminishing each year as a result of destruction by humans while they rejoice at the increase of the capital in their banks, stock markets and safes?
They will make strange faces in their wealthy, arrogant skyscrapers when there will be no longer any clear air to breathe, clean water to drink and proper climates for humans to live in. Why instead of listening to economists and scientists don't you ask for the opinions, views, advice and prophecies of the indigenous people who are closest and most intimate with me? They do not need to give dollar values to my natural products and to my nature. It is funny to hear now that my nature is being evaluated in trillions of US dollars, one of humans' dismallest inventions!"
~ Idea 3101 ~
It is quite normal, quite human that we are immensely grateful for the discoveries of science and technology: e.g. electricity, heating, health, nutrition, transportation, longer lives. All our 'natural' senses and organs: eyes, ears, hands, legs, brains have been extended immensely: eyes with telescopes, microscopes, television; ears with radio, telephone; hands with machines; legs with trains, cars and airplanes; brains with universities, computers, etc.
Only the 300 million indigenous people in 5000 tribes in 70 countries, had their doubts about it: what will be the effects of all that on the 7th generation to come (about 500 years)?
Well this question is beginning to arise in the western world too:
- the negative effects of automobiles and aviation contributing to 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the air every minute;
- the effects of better health in the poor countries which decreased the mortality of their children and produced an incredible population explosion, with far-reaching effects;
- television which is affecting the immemorial, natural relations between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren;
- the sudden diminishing of the western population, less prone and capable of reproduction.
And what will be the long-term effects of computers, robotics, biological engineering, nano-technology, etc?
The time has come, in my view, to create a world agency or for UNESCO to look into the adverse effects of human innovations, sciences and technologies and their marketing on the natural characteristics of humans and their transmission through reproduction and genes over time. Are we witnessing evolutionary progress or a dehumanization of humans, except for the indigenous and 'under-developed' peoples of this world?
This new emerging phenomenon must be looked into seriously by humanity. The environmental crisis might be only a first signal of it. The challenges might be much deeper, a truly evolutionary phenomenon on a unique life-endowed planet in an evolving universe.
~ Idea 3102 ~
The preceding also raises this question: will not the second great ideology born from science and technology in the 19th century be the undertaker, the death-bringing biocidal, terracidal ideology of the current humanity? Communism has already capitulated. Fundamentalist capitalism must too, in view of upcoming catastrophes.
~ Idea 3103 ~
One subject for the World Agency on Adverse Science and Technology (WAAST) would be:
the distortion of the night and day reality and its effects on humans beings, a study to be made from the polar to the temperate and equatorial zones. In most western countries, the notion of night is already substantially eroded by electricity, radio, television and night professions. Are we going to lose our immemorial life relation with the sun? To 'dehumanization' and 'denaturing' will we have to add the 'desolarization' of the human species? Solarization through 'vacations' and tourism was seized as a source of immense profit by capitalism to the point that tourism is now being accused of destroying a good part of nature, another subject to be taken up by WAAST.
~ Idea 3104 ~
I wondered a lot of late why the UN population projections for the year 2050 show a decline of 40 million people from 1.2 billion in 2000 to 1.16 billion in the western countries. I thought that it was mainly due to the West becoming very sensitive to the world population explosion.
But the news comes from Denmark that young men recruited into the army show a substantial decline in sperm production compared with their predecessors ten years ago. Does this mean that we are losing our reproduction capacity due to scientific interference with our nutrition perhaps? Is the canned food, soft drinks and alcohol civilization responsible for it? After the environmental crisis will we now see a human reproduction crisis in the West? Well, these are other subjects to be taken up by the proposed WAAST.
~ Idea 3105 ~
Dear God,
Why didn't you decide that those who want to achieve world peace and make your Earth a paradise would live longer, let us say ten or twenty years more? With such an incentive they would have a better chance to achieve these objectives.
God:
"How can you be so blind? I did it already: for example I saved you several times during the war; you are still alive and healthy at the age of seventy-seven; and I have made all great peacemakers immortal. What else do you want?"
I:
You have a point but why did you let so many great peacemakers get killed, your own son for example and others like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dag Hammarskjöld and many more?
~ Idea 3106 ~
A quarter of a century ago a meeting held at the United Nations by the Club of Rome advocating limits of economic growth was labeled by the US extreme right an advocacy of genocide, e.g. the killing of human beings. Today there is no longer such a hard condemnation and a nicer word has been adopted, namely 'sustainable development'. Perhaps we should use a new word, 'naturecide', namely the killing of nature as opposed to genocide. One could also adopt the new words of 'terracide', the killing of the Earth and 'biocide', the killing of life.
~ Idea 3107 ~
The fact of having an idea and not writing it down immediately is to act like a composer who has a beautiful melody and does not write it down. It might never come back. Something of cosmic significance might have been missed. Please, dear reader, remember it.
~ Idea 3108 ~
The United Nations should only hire geniuses, audacious, passionate, deeply committed men and women with ideas reaching far into the future. It will be its only way to victory, not power, force and money.
And if I were the Secretary General I would train the UN staff myself, meet with them to elevate and inspire them, get their ideas, dreams and advice. What a United Nations that would become!
~ Idea 3109 ~
God:
"Dear Robert, you must understand me. How can I still care and have any love for a humanity which endangers my miraculous creation with atomic weapons, a species which is the most anomalous in the whole universe because it destroys its own home? How do you think I feel when I see them put in prison and shoot murderers and cover with medals and honors those who kill wholesale other groups of humans, including women and children, they call enemies? They even celebrate them in cathedrals and temples erected to me!
I am giving up humans. They are hopeless. I will let this planet drift away in the universe as a future wreck covered with their ruins and I cannot understand that you continue to conceive actions, write books and deliver innumerable speeches to save them."
I:
I have no answer to that. All I can do is to record your views. I am surprised however that you do not accuse them for killing each other in Your name and for Your glory. That is, thank God, on the way out. We are progressing after all.
~ Idea 3110 ~
I will never understand that mothers who have given life to sons from their flesh allow them to wear uniforms and to kill and be killed by sons of other mothers. How extraordinary that they have never revolted against that. Will there ever come a time when they have the courage to protest, to agitate, to claim it as a fundamental human right?
~ Idea 3111 ~
As I wrote these ideas I received this letter from my coworker, Carolyn Hawkins in California.
Dear Robert,
I was so glad to receive your next ideas. Your work is very important. It may take some years before humanity wakes up enough to be able to hear the truth you are speaking. But take heart, it took the world almost two thousand years to start to realize the truth Jesus spoke. Please, for humanity's sake, keep writing.
Much love to you and Barbara,
Carolyn
~ Idea 3112 ~
If the UN General Assembly 2000 at the heads of states level does not agree to redraft the UN Charter written fifty-five years ago I will recommend that the 134 member states which did not participate in its drafting should draft their own, more modern up to date charter and submit it to the whole United Nations membership for consideration.
Not to redraft that Charter would be a blemish in the history of the nation state system on the eve of a new century and millennium.
~ Idea 3113 ~
I recommend that the UN General Assembly should decide that each member government will give one or more fellowships to their young people desirous to study at the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica. Governments should follow the example of the United States where each of the fifty-one states is required to give two fellowships each for students at West Point (army), Annapolis (navy) and Colorado Springs (air force).
~ Idea 3114 ~
Every morning when waking up, each head of state, head of a world institution and of a corporation should ask himself or herself this question: "What good can I do today for humanity and for our Earth?"
~ Idea 3115 ~
The governments of the rich countries are not very serious and prone to help stop the overpopulation of the poor countries. They say to their people, "Forget about them. They are hopeless." Then they continue to exploit their natural resources at low prices, prevent them from industrializing and leave them the prey of the big multinational companies which have their headquarters and bank accounts on western soil. And these companies see the overpopulated countries as prospective, immense new markets.
~ Idea 3116 ~
Many governments are no longer governing. The multinational corporations are governing the world in thinking, in ideas and in practice.
~ Idea 3117 ~
What a much worse world situation it would be today if the American Confederate States had not become by a majority of a few votes the Federal United States of America! We would have 240 nations in the United Nations instead of 189. In each university of the world they would teach international relations between 240 nations!
It is clear that the present system cannot continue. We must at least follow the model of the United States and become the United States of the World or of the European Union and become a World Union. Utopian, irrealistic will you say. Well, far more utopian and irrealistic are those who believe that the present system can last much longer.
~ Idea 3118 ~
Economist: Increasing packagings, increasing wastes are excellent for the economy; they give birth to recycling and to a lot of employment and all this raises the national product.
Ecologist: Not at all. They are destroying a part of nature, our main capital and reducing the natural product.
~ Idea 3119 ~
I received an invitation to sign a document creating the United Religions Initiative which will be proclaimed on 26 June 2000 in Philadelphia, the anniversary date when on 26 June 1945 the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco. I am happy that this is now taking place. It is in part the result of my opening speech to the World Parliament of Religions in 1993, in which I recommended the creation of a United Religions Organization. But I will write to them that I will not sign it until all religions have decided no longer to require their members to kill other humans in the name of their God. It is only when this is achieved that we will have a true United Religions.
Religious leaders: but isn't that what some members of the United Nations still do?
~ Idea 3120 ~
I:
Dear Earth, I have some beautiful news for you: The Costa Rican chapter of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, (IUCN) just held a meeting at the University for Peace on the subject 'Biological Corridors'. I asked them what that meant. Answer: to create a biological corridor from the south to the north of all Central America so that all nature, species and animals can survive, develop and circulate or spread unhindered in a long corridor. I congratulated them for that excellent undertaking and suggested to change the name to Corridor of Love for Nature. They looked at me with surprise but loved it and adopted it as a sub-name. I could envisage a beautiful article in American magazines entitled Biological Love Corridors for Nature. That might bring them good publicity, understanding, love and perhaps financial contributions.
The Earth:
"I thank you. This is indeed good news. I pray that many such love projects will be born and implemented all over my surface."
~ Idea 3121 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I wish that someone would gather statistics on all human expenses on medical services, pharmaceuticals and other methods of healing human beings and how much you spend on healing me, the mother who gives birth and nourishment to you all. There are so many wounds which are bleeding on my body."
I:
You are right. I will ask the World Health Organization if they have the statistics. That Organization is not dealing with the health of the world, of the Earth. It is dealing only with the health of humans. It would more appropriately be called the Human Health Organization and a new Earth Health Organization should be created. We should spend at least as much on Earth healing as on human healing. We need a new profession of Earth healers, Earth doctors. It would be better than environmentalists. On a healthy Earth there would be more healthy humans.
~ Idea 3122 ~
I recommend that the word philanthropy be translated from its Greek meaning (phil: love and anthropos: the human being) into common language of today namely, love for humanity. A philanthropist would be a humanity lover. Love for the Earth being a recent phenomenon, the Greeks had no word for it. I did it for them and coined the word Gaiaphily, love for Gaia, the Earth in Greek. But much better would be simply love for the Earth. A philanthropist or gaiaphilist giving resources to preserve the Earth would be called an Earth lover. So we would have humanity lovers and Earth lovers and some people could be both.
~ Idea 3123 ~
When tears come to my eyes when I speak and to those of my audience I cannot help it and they cannot help it because it is not I who speaks but the universe which tries to elevate us to our divine cosmic nature, gratitude and responsibilities.
~ Idea 3124 ~
Barbara, my wife considers that beauty and love are the two highest values and means of humanity. They can make us the ultimate wonder in the universe. This reminded me of Dostoyewski and Proust who described a world being saved by beauty. Why don't we do this seriously for all humanity and the Earth as we enter the 21st century and 3rd millennium? Let us make them the Century and Millennium of Love and Beauty. What miracles we would see!
~ Idea 3125 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Barbara, you are right. I gave humans the intelligence and capacity to plant flowers and to improve them. Yes, you can plant flowers everywhere and give me an unprecedented beauty in the universe. You are right: Humans should make the 21st century and 3rd millennium a century and millennium of beauty and love. We could have a new profession and peoples' devotion: Beautifiers, flowerers, gardeners of the Earth. The flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today. The peace of tomorrow is in the peace seeds of today."
~ Idea 3126 ~
In every government on Earth there should urgently be these Ministries:
~ Idea 3127 ~
From a letter by Elizabeth Mann-Borghese who founded an International Ocean University in Canada: "A thousand years is a short time when one thinks of the oceans. Humankind may still be on the path of slow but inexorable decline. If you asked about ten thousand years or a hundred thousand years from now I would envisage pacem in maribus, oceans of peace - without humans. Oceans would adjust to new climates and new species."
That reminded me of our daughter Gisele, an ocean biologist who comments to me: "Dad, don't worry. The quicker the human species disappears, the better it will be for the Earth and for the Oceans."
~ Idea 3128 ~
It would be an incentive for more countries on Earth to demilitarize if the United Nations had an immediate intervention system to help demilitarized countries. That could be organized as part of the World Peace Room which should be created on the thirty-ninth floor of the United Nations to be awake and in operation day and night during the entire year to monitor and be informed of any potential conflicts and outbreaks on Earth. The Charter of the UN provides that a Military Staff Committee should draft such a system. It was never done, due to opposition by the big powers.
~ Idea 3129 ~
The Earth:
"Can't humans understand that my nature and species are incredible, perhaps unique miracles in the universe, the result of billions of years of evolution? Your planet is nothing less than a cosmic miracle and you destroy it with big and small materialistic greeds, games and meaningless lives with unhappiness as the result. You have not yet realized that you are cosmic miracles too."
I:
Among those who understood this was Dag Hammarskjöld the second Secretary General of the United Nations. This is why he created at the UN a room of rest, peace and inner silence, a meditation room in which the universal answer to all world problems was a ray of light falling from the universe on the shining surface of a block of iron ore. Cosmic light gives life to all matter and all beings. It speaks to all nations and people the same language.
Yes, our planet and all its living beings are created by cosmic energy, an energy still transmitted by the sun. This is why we must look up to the sky, see the heavenly cosmic light, receive the rays of light and realize that we must reflect that light in our lives. All religions give us that message, usually calling that energy God, thus bringing it closer to people, for it is easier to pray and love a God than a form of energy. Energy is also a word coined by us humans. The cosmos uses no words. Perhaps no human word will ever be appropriate for it.
~ Idea 3130 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, instead of writing biographies and autobiographies humans should write ideagraphies and autoideagraphies like your 4000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World. What immense good it would do to me and to humanity if every human person would cut a faucet a little earlier and save some water or pick up trash, or not buy unnecessary things. Multiplied by six billion what a difference it would make!"
~ Idea 3131 ~
A student from a group of visitors from the University of Vermont told me after hearing me speak that he saw recently a book entitled A Hundred Ways to Change the World. I commented: that is only a beginning. I have written and published 3000 ways of saving and improving the world and I do not cease writing more of them. It should be a new, very important literature. It should be a main purpose of all literature.
~ Idea 3132 ~
When we want to be driven with our visiting grandchildren to a beach or faraway place in Costa Rica we use the services of a wonderful, very knowledgeable and concerned driver named Tony. On a drive to Nosara I asked him: "What would be the first thing you would do if you were president of Costa Rica?" He answered: "I would immediately order that the deforestation of Costa Rica be stopped."
I expressed surprise thinking that this was already done. He answered: "No. Recently when I drove to a faraway forested area of the country I counted in one morning no less than sixty trucks transporting felled trees."
~ Idea 3133 ~
The Earth:
"For countries to become too rich is a new catastrophe: they add to the destruction of my nature and resources through tourism, industry, transport and business.
I can never win anymore. Tourism is the latest, most advanced invention by the rich countries to make money and destroy me."
I:
Ecological or Eco-tourism is trying to prevent that.
~ Idea 3134 ~
Vegetations are far superior to animals regarding reproduction: they reproduce through innumerable seeds. Trees do it for many, many years. Some of their seeds have even little wings to fly far away. Most animals produce only a few kin. Human females can have nine month pregnancies only for about twenty years.
The Earth:
"Thanks be to God for that."
~ Idea 3135 ~
How can anyone relax and not worry about our children and grandchildren when so many humans and corporations are on the way of destroying this Earth?
I can't.
~ Idea 3136 ~
One of the most revealing and interesting books on Earth would be:
"What Do the Richest People Do With Their Money?"
For example, in Nosara, Costa Rica, one of the most well-preserved beaches and primeval natures on Earth, a rich Italian has built an enormous, arrogant castle-hotel, a pure insult to God's nature. For what purpose? To make more money. That beach alone would yield a fascinating story as would the stories of many beaches and natural tourist places around the world.
~ Idea 3137 ~
One of the greatest proposals made by the United States Government early in the 1950's in the Fiscal and Financial Commission of the UN Economic and Social Council was to create a World Income Bureau which would receive information and publish the incomes of all rich people and all corporations and institutions in the world and their taxation, non-taxation or evasion from taxation. It was alas never discussed nor adopted and we never heard of it anymore. It should be reconsidered by the United Nations. It might contribute to a more just distribution of income, wealth and taxation on the planet.
~ Idea 3138 ~
One of the first tasks of a proper Earth government would be to design a proper world taxation system.
Great world tax experts should design such a system even before a proper Earth government is created. It would be one of the most enlightening reports for an Earth democratic government.
~ Idea 3139 ~
Barbara suggested that a sign should be affixed on every bed where I slept in the world: "Robert Muller slept here."
If that is ever done I would like to see these words added: "Please dream like him ideas for a better world."
~ Idea 3140 ~
We must become shareholders of the Earth, our greatest capital rather than shareholders of private corporations which often destroy the Earth. There must be a way of doing that.
~ Idea 3141 ~
The Earth:
"Why do you humans have such admiration for my nature when you are on 'vacations' and then generally forget all about me and the care I need when you are back to your cities and work?
Why don't you reorganize your society to allow humans to care for me and love me most of the time if not all the time? What a better world it would be. How much nonsense, useless activities and consumption you would spare. Please try it.
Consider these items when considering a proper Earth government:
Head of UN Habitat:
"I fully agree. Let us make the reduction of the big cities and moving of people to the land a main topic of world settlement policy."
Elder Robert Muller:
"I give you in my 3000 ideas many examples which deal with human settling. For example, all central governments, administrations and universities should be relocated in nature. If people would complain that this would be costly, say that it would give employment in the land areas and the money to do it could be deducted from the excessive budgets of the militaries. Perhaps even militaries could be mobilized to help the deconcentration of cities toward the land. One could tell them that big cities are very vulnerable to foreign attacks and must therefore be deconcentrated."
~ Idea 3142 ~
Please dear retirees who live in big cities, leave them, abandon them, sell your apartment and return to a healthy nature in your country or in another one like Costa Rica. You will live more cheaply, happier, healthier and longer lives.
~ Idea 3143 ~
If someone would ask me what are the three most important world conferences I would recommend to the UN to convene I would answer:
1. A World Emergency Conference on Over-population and Over-consumption;
2. A World Conference to Achieve Total World Peace, Non-violence and the Disarmament and Demilitarization of the Planet:
3. A World Conference on a New Global Universal Education of all humans.
~ Idea 3144 ~
In April 2000 the European governments for the first time restricted military air flights and air maneuvers in view of the intensity of civilian air flights over the continent. Well, imagine the situation in the year 3000! A small glimpse of hope is the western population decline by 40 million to the year 2050 and perhaps this decline will accelerate. The skies would be grateful.
~ Idea 3145 ~
I recommend that one of the coming years should be proclaimed International Year of Heads of States. Working together with common ideals for the world they could do wonders. There should be completely new ways of joining their forces and working together, making them the global management council of this Earth. They should create a World Council of Heads of States with their most trusted and brilliant collaborators as its secretariat.
~ Idea 3146 ~
I hope that for the sake of the Earth and of humanity more young people will want to be environmentalists (nature servants), agronomists (nourishment servants), climatists (climate servants), waterists (water servants), animalists (animal servants), Earthists (Earth servants), United Nations and world organizations servants, rather than scientists, new technologists, economists and business servants. We should define what professions we need most for our survival, betterment and salvation of the Earth.
~ Idea 3147 ~
Someone should launch a World Schuman Party which would create a United World as Robert Schuman created a borderless United Europe, with a World Parliament, a World Commons Executive, a World Court of Justice, a World Environment Court and World Public Services in addition to national and local ones. What a blessing that would be!
~ Idea 3148 ~
It would be a good idea to have on the grounds of the UN University for Peace and Earth Council in Costa Rica a museum or research center devoted to the Secretaries General of the UN. It would deal with their ideas, efforts, failures, successes and proposals for a better world and strengthened UN. Students could write theses on such subjects.
~ Idea 3149 ~
Two decades ago when I came to Costa Rica to co-found the UN University for Peace with the President of Costa Rica, Mr. Rodrigo Carazo, I was delighted that peasants had the intelligence to use 'tree fences' for their properties and pastures. These fences were lining the roads beautifully, regularly and producing oxygen. Later the stupid concrete pillars painted white and red made their appearance everywhere. The old way was not 'civilized'.
Well, in the year 2000 I am delighted to learn that tree fencing is now being taught systematically in reforestation and environmental courses. A special tree is used which grows several branches around its very top covered with leaves and these branches simply stuck into the soil will grow into regular, beautiful, oxygen producing fences at no cost. They should be tried also in the western countries which are in great need for oxygen.
~ Idea 3150 ~
All concerns, efforts, sciences, inventions since the 19th century have been for humans. This was an enormous progress over preceding times when humans were ruled and exploited by all sorts of leaders, kings, aristocrats, feudalists, religious rulers, etc.
Since the third part of the 20th century a new era has begun concerned about the Earth, nature and the elements on which we live. This changes everything. Our evolution will never be the same. It is a fundamental new period of our history. What will be the next period? Perhaps a close union of humans with nature, a United Earth, a joint, common evolution of humans and the Earth in space and in time.
~ Idea 3151 ~
This is a world in which the number of birds pictures in books, magazines and advertisements is constantly increasing while the living birds in nature are diminishing. There might come a day when there will be less birds left on Earth than books on them.
~ Idea 3152 ~
There is an urgent need on planet Earth to simplify the wildly increasing complexity of human life and to safeguard the incredible living complexity and diversity of nature.
We should perhaps introduce a new word, the 'dethinginization' of humans, less things in our lives.
~ Idea 3153 ~
I am depressed when I am in airports, in cities, in big buildings, in big crowds and I am naturized, rehumanized, uplifted, reinvigorated, joyinized, happinized when I am in nature. Yes, why not speak of the happinization of humanity through nature?
~ Idea 3154 ~
I pray God to let me be reborn as a bird. I will need no passport, no paperwork, no clothing, no housing and will not be thinginized by ever more life reducing things and unnecessary services.
~ Idea 3155 ~
Together with the word 'depressed' we humans should also use the word 'denatured'. And why not also the contraries 'uppressed' and 'renatured'?
~ Idea 3156 ~
We must make the UN University for Peace and the Earth Council the new United Nations, the Peoples' United Nations, a free academic world body not ruled by governments, in a paradise of nature, a child of Mother Earth in a demilitarized country, a still miraculously preserved part of the Garden of Eden. Let us make from there the entire Earth again a paradise.
Yes, a strategy is needed beyond peace, a plan to remake planet Earth a paradise. I am providing pieces to it in these 4000 ideas.
~ Idea 3157 ~
Many who work in menial, unimportant, unexciting, badly paid jobs in the 'highly developed' countries ask themselves: "Why did my parents give me life? Why did I have to go to school for several years to get where I am? Was it really worthwhile?"
More and more of them decide to give up, not to get married, not to have children, some to turn to alcohol. This is perhaps why the western population will diminish by 40 million as we go to the year 2050. I cannot understand why the western world is still being admired as a model to be attained world-wide. How would we be judged by outer space beings? And why are there never any polls or surveys on the happiness of people?
~ Idea 3158 ~
We must simplify, decomplexify our predominantly materialistic human ways of life and world views. We must resort to the higher, spiritual, moral and divine, cosmic values. This is absolutely necessary to find happiness and continue to progress.
~ Idea 3159 ~
After the United Nations and the United Religions we must also create of a United Ethnic Organization. This is very important. There should be a place on Earth where all ethnic groups can cooperate, learn from each other, see what they have in common, make their special contributions, each of them, to a better world, a better philosophy of life. I recommend that a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on Ethnic Groups should be created to plan and establish such an organization.
~ Idea 3160 ~
Can we, how can we transform capitalism into cooperatism with each other, with humanity, with the Earth, and with further evolution? That is the key issue of our time. If we do not succeed the human species is likely to perish.
~ Idea 3161 ~
Yes, the most fundamental question of our time is whether and how we can correct and avoid the further wounds to the Earth's biosphere, eco-systems and general natural functioning. Until the massive industrial revolution in the 19th century no human activities, not even wars were able to change substantially the Earth. Unfortunately this is no longer so. We cannot solve these problems by counting on those people and countries who caused them and continue to create them, namely technologists, industrialists, businessmen, capitalists and militaries mainly of the western countries led by the United States. That is a fundamental, crucial question awaiting an urgent answer at this beginning of a new century and millennium. The futures of the Earth, of nature, of all species including the human one depend on it.
~ Idea 3162 ~
There are many streets and roads in the world called Evergreen. A large number of them risk being renamed someday Nolongergreen.
~ Idea 3163 ~
It would be good to see statistics on the number of yachts and pleasure boats around the world and their total consumption of fuel and production of carbon dioxide. The rich and well to do who own them have no right to request the non-deforestation or reforestation of woods in the poor countries to produce oxygen.
~ Idea 3164 ~
Speaking of the possibilities of world food shortages the UN Food and Agricultural Organization should gather and publish statistics on dog food, cat food and other pet foods consumed in rich countries and compare the figures with the food needed by starving, undernourished people in the poor countries.
~ Idea 3165 ~
Not all multinational big businesses should be criticized, only those who are harmful and corrupt. For example, those who produce armaments, tobacco, alcohols, war and violence toys, etc. Such a list should be firmly established.
US and western citizens should not be forgotten because they place in the stock markets their savings and wealth looking for the maximum profit. They too should be made aware and accountable for the current adverse situations in the world caused by some multinational corporations.
~ Idea 3166 ~
Americans of the British Colonies in America protested in 1773 against the taxation of tea exports by the Royal British Crown by organizing the Boston Tea Party. They boarded three ships in Boston during the night and dumped into the water 342 chests of tea valued at 9,000 British pounds. Similar tea parties soon occurred elsewhere in America. The British Government responded to this latest colonial challenge to crown authority by passing the Intolerable Acts.
Opponents to multinational companies producing harmful, unethical products might think of similar, highly visible, symbolic parties against corporate colonialism.
~ Idea 3167 ~
Earlier I reported the outburst of young people at the Hague Centennial World Peace Conference in 1999 against Evian water from France and tomatoes from Italy being shipped to countries on the other side of the Earth.
Well, they should know that in Hyatt Hotels in the United States you have on your night table a bottle of Evian water which is charged to you $3.95 if you use it. Ours is indeed a world of incredible racketeering businesses. Anything that can be invented to make money will be invented. One wishes that as much imagination be devoted to the Earth which is slowly being destroyed under these processes.
~ Idea 3168 ~
In a US city of monstrous high-rise buildings and skyscrapers called Bellevue (French origin, the beautiful view) which should be renamed Villainevue (ugly view) I saw foundations for more high-rise buildings. I was not surprised that most of them were multi-level car parkings. But ununderstandable to me was the foundation for a museum which according to a huge advertisement was to cost 100 million dollars!
This is another human insanity when one thinks of how many poor people could be housed with such a sum. It is one more sign of the decadence of the big cities and of the United States which offers such models to the rest of the world. And to top it all when we drove from Bellevue where we had been invited to advise a new US Foundation dealing with the future in the year 3000, to Anacortes where we had family, we were part of three uninterrupted lines of cars for fifty miles! How will this look in the year 3000 if humanity still exists in that year?
~ Idea 3169 ~
The strategists of a government like the United States which is a servant of multinational business are not really interested in reducing the population explosion in the poor countries. If they were it would show in an infinitely higher support by the United States of the United Nations' efforts at population control.
Why is that? They know that sooner of later there will be a major western world economic crisis even if they are able to postpone it for decades by pumping ever more money into circulation. What they will then do is announce a World Marshall Plan of billions of dollars to the poor countries to enable them to buy the machinery and products of the western multinational companies. Remember this prediction of mine.
~ Idea 3170 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, you do not go far enough. You should understand that capitalism and the free enterprise system are a disaster for me. For the contractors, economists, big businesses, stock marketeers and bankers the gross national product and economic growth must go up by all means. But for me, the Earth it is bad and if it continues it will mean my death. And when the stock markets and the gross national products go down it is dismal for capitalists but good for me. Economists then look for new avenues and measures to make them go up again.
In short: the present human behavior, ideals and systems are killing me and will end humanity in the process. The report on Humanity 3000 of the Foundation for the Future is insufficient. There should also be a report The Earth 3000. Earthism and humanism should be your objectives, with proper Earth government and proper human government world-wide. Mark my words: the US will now be the undertaker of human life and perhaps of all life on my surface. I will float as a dead planet in the universe covered with silent, empty cities, abandoned airplanes, billions of cars, mountains of useless objects as a sad gigantic junkyard in the cosmos.
Dear Robert, if you want to prevent that you must do immensely more. It was good, I am glad that you suggested as Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Council to Sweden to convene the first World Conference on the Environment in 1972. You should now propose a World Emergency Environment Conference to prevent the death of life on Earth."
I:
I promise I will.
~ Idea 3171 ~
The western society spends a fortune on pet animals while wild animals barely survive in nature, in the forests. We are a strange species indeed. World and national statistics should be published on the amount of money spent by humans on pet animals and that spent on the preservation of wild animals. Geneticists should also study if pet animals will not change into degenerate species' with the passage of time and become 'deanimalized' as we are becoming 'dehumanized'.
~ Idea 3172 ~
Walking in a wonderful preserve of pine trees along the Pacific Ocean I did not see a single bird or animal. At least I had the consolation that the devegetationing of this Earth will be slower than its deanimalization.
~ Idea 3173 ~
My daughter who is a university professor of ocean biology was surprised to learn that the western population was on the decline and will lose 40 million people by the year 2050. She rejoiced that as a result less waste of the western world will be dumped into the oceans.
~ Idea 3174 ~
In order not to destroy life on this Earth a new human duty should be considered, the duty not to have more than two children. Couples with only one child and childless couples should receive subsidies, especially in overpopulated poor countries.
~ Idea 3175 ~
Young people should refuse to go to universities in big overcrowded cities where there is not enough oxygen and too much pollution. They should go to universities located in nature, on hills and on sea shores with ample oxygen supply. Intelligence and natural, common sense require it.
~ Idea 3176 ~
An overall science should be promoted and taught, namely anthropobiology, the total science of human life (see Introduction). It would include all the distinct sciences and disciplines concerned with humanity, namely:
Anthropology, the birth and evolution of humans
Demography, humans in terms of numbers, totals, reproduction, longevity
Sociology, the ways humans live in groups
Political Science, the ways humans administer themselves, their groups, their cities, nations and planet
Art and Culture, etc.
I could conceive a world university which would be concerned only with this overall human biology, a World Human Biology University.
~ Idea 3177 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I think it would be better if humans would change my name and replace it by what I have really become, namely the planet Business. It would remove the feminine aspect of my nature and make me what I really am now, namely a males' planet."
I:
You may be right. As a matter of fact, this gives me an idea: the Earth Council established on the magnificent grounds of the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica should draw up a world list of the words used for the Earth, their etymology and meaning in all languages. This would give us a precious idea of how humans in the different places of the world perceived you. I know only a very few:
In Greek, Gaya was a goddess who whirled as a nebula in the universe and became the Earth. Western scientific words use it profusely: geology, geometry, geophysics, geography, etc. (geo being a contraction of gaya).
In German, die Erde comes from goddess Eartha; the same origin of the English Earth.
The Latin Terra, French Terre, Spanish Terra, etc. are all feminine.
I will suggest it to Celine Cousteau, who works at the Earth Council,
The Earth:
"I would like that because I loved so much Captain Jacques Cousteau, her grandfather."
~ Idea 3178 ~
The Earth:
"You Robert, as a Frenchman, you know I'm sure the French saying: Quand le batiment va, tout va. When construction goes well, all goes well. Alas for me the Earth, when construction goes well, I am not well."
I:
Okay, I will recommend that from now on the saying should be: Quand le batiment va, la Terre ne va pas. When construction goes well, the Earth does not go so well.
~ Idea 3179 ~
I dreamt as a youth to serve the world. My dream came true. I served the world all my adult life and I dream now to do it also after my death. Dear readers, read my ideas and dreams, help to fulfill them and spread them. The needed coincidences will come from heaven. And please become a dreamer of ideas yourself. You cannot imagine how happy and fulfilled it made me and will make you.
~ Idea 3180 ~
I:
Dear Earth, since you come from the far away universe why don't you find some outer space beings who know how other living planets have succeeded or perished and together you would judge us and advise us to go the right way. I offer you as a seat, sacred Mt. Rasur in Costa Rica, the place from which according to indigenous prophecy a civilization of peace will extend to the entire world.
~ Idea 3181 ~
God has given me a tough duty in my old age: to rethink deeply the whole Earth and human situation. And the more I do that on my hill overlooking the University for Peace, the more Mt. Rasur seems sacred to me.
~ Idea 3182 ~
God Rasur:
"Dear Robert, you cannot imagine how I love you. You give my message to thousands of people, students and visitors. You keep me alive. You help to fulfill my prophecy through your ideas and dreams. You list all the good things that have happened here on my sacred land: the demilitarization of Costa Rica, the birth of the UN University for Peace and the International Radio for Peace, of a vast protected zone where deforestation is prohibited, of the transfer to it of the Earth Council and I have to add one that you never mention: you yourself who has co-founded the UN University for Peace, has purchased unknowingly my sacred mountain and is living on it in a humble cabin. You are one of my fulfilled prophecies. I am sometimes tempted to call you Rasur Muller instead of Robert Muller."
I:
Dear Rasur, I am so glad that for the first time you talk to me. I will try my best to live up to your expectations. Please speak to me often as does already our beloved Mother Earth.
~ Idea 3183 ~
Flying over deforested areas of Guatemala what was the first thing I saw in the airplane? A luxury magazine, the Two Hemispheres of 219 pages filled with paid advertisements to buy, to buy and never cease to buy. The International Civil Aviation Organization should calculate how many acres of forests in the world are destroyed, to produce airline magazines alone.
Rasur:
"Why don't you propose, the suppression of airline magazines all together? People can bring along their own readings or write their journals and ideas as you do."
I:
You are right. I will suggest it to the International Civil Aviation Organization. It is already bad enough for the environment that air traffic creates an enormous pollution of the atmosphere.
~ Idea 3184 ~
Rasur:
"Dear Robert, why don't you recommend that many people should buy forests or trees? You have bought several hectares of primeval forests on my hills and you are not rich. Many people who are rich should buy entire forests or vast surfaces to be reforested. The children of Kansas City plant every year new rows of trees around the Heart Forest which you suggested to them to plant years ago. This is a fine example. Why don't you start a Heart Forest on one of my deforested areas?"
I:
You are right. I go even a step further. I urge the creation of a World Forest Protection and Reforestation Agency of the United Nations to implement innumerable ideas like that and also appropriate legislations
~ Idea 3185 ~
The whole process of 'further economic development and growth' should be reviewed. A foremost item on the world's agenda should be to render the rich countries accountable and make them pay for the exploitation of the resources of the poor countries. The poor countries should send them their bills.
~ Idea 3186 ~
The time might come when humanity will be the Coca Colized species in the universe. God will sadly shake His head and say the words of the German emperor after World War I: Ich habe das nicht gewollt, I did not want that.
~ Idea 3187 ~
When outer space beings will discover and visit our lifeless planet they will find that its demise was due to two dreams at the beginning of the scientific and industrial revolution in the 19th century: the dreams of communism and capitalism to create paradise on Earth. Communism was lucky and capitulated, giving up. So it became the fault of capitalism for having destroyed the Earth and brought it to an end. If there is a cosmic universal think tank established by God to see how the universe was fairing and how planets would succeed, the conclusion would be: forget communism and capitalism. Avoid them on any other planet.
~ Idea 3188 ~
It was an exciting event for me to fly many years ago in 1949 from Paris to New York in one of the first transatlantic planes which took twelve hours to get there.
Is it not an even greater miracle to fly from Costa Rica to Los Angeles in six hours? No, it is a damage to the Earth whose natural air is being polluted by tens of thousands of similar planes around the Earth. I just give the example of Costa Rica where in 1970 there were 20,000 foreign visitors, most of them scientists who made a great contribution to the scientific knowledge of Costa Rica's nature, and in the year 1999 there were 1,260,000 tourists coming by airplanes just to visit that country and its nature.
~ Idea 3189 ~
It is not from New York, Washington nor from any other city, university or nation on Earth that we will get a chance to save the world. It is perhaps from Mt. Rasur in wonderful Costa Rica and its UN Peace University and Earth Council that a chance might arise. It might become one of the great enlightened places on Earth, the new Athens of the world.
~ Idea 3190 ~
Why are the passengers of this airplane seeing a film with only desperate faces, desperate situations, violence and not one single smiling face as I followed it only visually?
~ Idea 3191 ~
We should use a stationary on Earth with this inscription: From Now On The Earth is Number One.
~ Idea 3192 ~
Increased longevity could be another backfiring success of the western world. By 2020 it might be a disaster in the poor countries as was forecast in the 1982 UN World Conference on Aging. A demographic decline, not an increased longevity would be a blessing for the poor countries.
~ Idea 3193 ~
A new human right could be claimed: the right to the same longevity in all the world.
~ Idea 3194 ~
I spoke and wrote so much in my life to stop all wars and to increase human longevity. They were two of my preferred subjects and much has been achieved on both accounts. Two blessings occur to me now: that I was saved under the most miraculous circumstances in World War II and I reached the age of seventy-seven, two years more than the average life expectancy in the United States.
Rasur and Mother Earth:
"God and both of us took good care of you because you are one of our most significant, knowledgeable, honest advocates. For heavens' sake, for the Earth and Mt. Rasur's sake, never become pessimistic, never give up. Continue your probe into the ultimate depths of the mystery of human life, of all life and of this miraculous planet."
~ Idea 3195 ~
Landing in Guatemala City and seeing this ugly city down below I wondered who had planned such an overbuilt, overpopulated, monstrous city.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, from my point of view you should speak not only of Guatemala City but also of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and so many other monstrous cities in rich and poor countries which think that they are worth fortunes. They will look very poorly when life will have disappeared from this planet and when outer space visitors will see these heaps of buildings on a planet devoid of nature and life. They will ask the question: what insane minds have created such nonsense and spread it all over the Earth, one of the most beautiful planets in the universe?"
~ Idea 3196 ~
It is typical that animals adapt their dwellings to nature, blend them with nature, often hide them and do not overpopulate. Humans on the contrary show off with luxurious, exaggerated dwellings and constructions, to the point of creating monstrous cities with buildings scraping, insulting the sky. We want to show that we are superior to nature. I hope that the Natural Law Party will spread to the entire world and determine what are the right laws of nature regarding our dwellings, constructions and human settlements.
~ Idea 3197 ~
Forests are destroyed to increase agriculture and feed a mushrooming species insatiable in its consumption. Who is behind all that? Can't people see how crazy this is? Now there is talk of sustainable development but never a word about unsustainable Earth destruction. The leaders and top managers of this planet have become the destroyers of the Earth.
The Earth:
"Bravo dear Robert, now at long last you are talking."
~ Idea 3198 ~
I think that humans would be better off talking with and taking good care of the Earth than listening to the current political leaders, businessmen and advertisers.
~ Idea 3199 ~
After reading my biographer's story of how I got continental China re-admitted to the United Nations I am thinking that the world would be in a much worse situation today if this had not happened. There would be a cold war with China.
~ Idea 3200 ~
If only one head of state on this planet would say modestly to the people: I'm nobody. I'm just one of you who wants to achieve a peaceful, better, just, happy and more beautiful world.
~ Idea 3201 ~
I read in the plane from Costa Rica to Los Angeles two speeches I delivered in 1973 and 1978, one at the UN on The Present State of the World, the other at a meeting of the Audubon Society and Sierra Club on A Knot In Time. The first had as a subtitle, Amid the Turmoil and Complexities of Our Age We Must Discover the Basic Trends of Human Evolution. The subtitle to the second speech was We Are Traversing an Extraordinary Moment of Evolution, a Real Knot In Time, a Singular Hinge between All the Past and All the Future of our Planet.
Reading these speeches I was amazed at the information I gave in both of them on the great new scientific, technological, demographic, sociological, economic and other phenomena and trends which marked our human society entering into its global age. It would be very interesting if that information could be updated. Just one example which I gave on aviation: world passengers kilometers have increased from 60 million in 1955 to 632 million in 1976; air freight ton kilometers increased from 1 million in 1955 to 18.9 million in 1976. Well, what are these figures in the year 2000? I will send these speeches to heads of United Nations Agencies like the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Maritime Organization and others to update what has happened since 1976. The figures must be considerable.
On the whole these speeches were optimistic because I believed in economic development and in increasing world interdependencies and cooperation.
Today I would deliver different speeches. I would say that the situation has changed, that we are now destroying the Earth with our new technologies, endless economic development, constructions, over-consumption and over-population. My speeches would take the fate of the Earth, our home as the prime issue and priority in world affairs. My 3000 Ideas and Dreams are dominated by this new awareness.
And as if I needed an illustration of what I felt, it was enough for me to see the continued destructions of the Earth all along the trip culminating in the incredible sight of Los Angeles covered with a brown atmosphere of pollution and wondering how people could accept to live down there.
Yes, what a fundamental change the Earth has undergone in the last twenty to thirty years and many nations, corporations, institutions, educators and people still do not realize it. Well, in the next thirty years they will, if not sooner.
~ Idea 3202 ~
I also said in the second speech:
The number, complexity and significance of scientific, technological, economic, social and ecological interdependencies on planet Earth are so great that the subject would warrant being a new discipline, a science of interdependencies or total Earth science. Separate notions such as technology, economics, social science, ecology, political science are losing much of their distinctness. The separation of man from the Earth is also an error. Humans are part and product of the Earth and her evolution. A comprehensive scientific and ethical approach is needed which will help maximize the physical, mental, affective and spiritual fulfillment of humans, present and future, within inherited conditions and the further evolution of our planet henceforth dominated by the human race. We are still far from such a concept of planetary science and ethics but several major elements have been pressing in this direction of late.
Well, a quarter of a century later not very much has changed: we have now the beginning of a planetary science called biosphere science, the sphere of life, but not yet of a total Earth science including the biosphere, and we are still far away from a global ethics. The first serious step is the Earth Charter drafted by the Earth Council and being circulated in 2000 to all governments (see its text in Annex of Volume VI).
~ Idea 3203 ~
We have plenty of current words for changing the Earth and nature in our favor: e.g. economic growth, development, construction, production, income, profit, gain, valuation, capital, etc. and also names for the professionals who do it: economists, businessmen, developers, bankers, architects, constructors, etc.
But seeing a dozen yellow bulldozers at rest during a Saturday and Sunday across from my wife's house in Santa Barbara, destroying during the remainder of the week a whole hill to build mansions, I wondered what the word bulldozer and bulldoze means and I read in the Webster Dictionary: bulldoze, to bully, to move, clear or level off by pushing with a bulldozer; to force insensitively or ruthlessly; bulldozer, a tractor driven machine having a broad, blunt, horizontal blade or ram for clearing land, road building and comparable activities.
The Earth spoke to me at that point:
"Dear Robert, the words "to force insensitively or ruthlessly" are correct. Their operators never think of what they do to me, that by "clearing" land and roads and many other "building activities" they progressively, inexorably destroy me. Will they ever stop in your economic system? I don't believe they can. You better review all these words which illustrate values and ideals which are becoming wronger and wronger in your over-producing, over-consuming and over-populating world. The situation has fundamentally changed. There is now a turning point in the evolution of this planet in which I am progressively being destroyed and together with me most other species, living beings, vegetation and humans too."
~ Idea 3204 ~
There should be idea boxes or ideas and dream boxes on each floor of the United Nations and of its specialized agencies, regional offices and country offices. The ideas and dreams of the first world officials on this planet might be of great value and effect for our Earth and for humanity.
When I said this to my wife Barbara she commented: "They have idea boxes in practically all multinational corporations. Your idea of dream boxes is even better." I exclaimed: "If the heads of the UN and specialized agencies learn that there are such boxes in the multinational corporations perhaps my idea will be implemented."
~ Idea 3205 ~
I do not know why to produce endlessly more and more goods and services continues to be a fundamental aim and principle of the western world and life on this planet.
In the poor countries the first priority is still to live or not to live, but it is no longer in the rich countries. There happiness should be the principal objective but it is achieved all too often at the expense of nature.
We should set up a list or inventory of human ideals and dreams expressed all over the planet. It might open the door to new higher ways of fulfillment of humanity on a well-preserved planet. Why not a new science of dreams or dreamology and an ideaology?
~ Idea 3206 ~
I love these ideas of Cora Weiss, President of the Hague Appeal for Peace, in her speech to the Millennium Forum held at the United Nations on 22 May 2000:
1. Create an International Disarmament Organization
2. Give life to the Military Staff Committee foreseen in Chapter 7, Article 47 of the United Nations Charter
3. Re-open the United Nations Peace Education Unit. I would even recommend that it should be a major United Nations department. The UN University for Peace could become it.
~ Idea 3207 ~
Humans should devote as much care and resources to the health of our Earth, of the world's nature, to world organizations, to conflict resolution and solution, to peace and non-violence as they are now spending on health.
Part or all of the 800 billion dollars of military armaments expenditures should be directed to the urgent human social and Earth needs we are facing today.
~ Idea 3208 ~
Open yourself to God and to the saints. They are accessible to you, but more important is for you to be accessible to them and become their instruments, their reincarnation, their healing agents of the world. They are anxiously waiting for that. Prayer is the way of talking to them.
~ Idea 3209 ~
I:
Dear Earth, 70 per cent of your surface is covered by seas and oceans, foremost among them the Pacific Ocean. How would you feel if we called you Terra Pacifica, the Peaceful Earth? It might be a good reminder to heads of states, militaries and violent people that wars and violence are a blemish to your heavenly beauty. What do you think?
The Earth:
"This is an excellent idea. Why don't you give the good example and use it in your letterheads and writings? I like also the idea you brought back from Hawaii, the peaceful country in the middle of my Pacific, namely to end your letters with the word: Aloha, which means: may we live in peace."
I:
Do you know what the traditional 'yours sincerely' means?
The Earth:
"No."
I:
It means yours without wax.
The Earth:
"That means nothing. Where does it come from?"
I:
It comes from the Latin sine cera. At each yearly competition of the sculptures of the Roman Empire inspectors went from statue to statue to check if there were any cracks covered with wax. Only the sculptures reported to the Emperor to be sine cera, without wax were retained in the competition.
~ Idea 3210 ~
Eco-tourism is to bring people into real, beautiful, natural, preserved areas, for example primeval forests in Costa Rica. Edu-tourism is to educate tourists how they can love and take good care of their own ecology when they return home.
Business-tourism is to see penguins, geese, ducks and exotic fishes swim in ponds at skyscraper hotels.
The Earth:
"I would prefer non-tourism, no tourism at all. Every human family should take good care of its natural environment and not take planes to distant places releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into my atmosphere. Can you imagine what outer space inspectors visiting the Earth would say if they saw the incredible traveling around me destroying my airs?"
~ Idea 3211 ~
The same way as protozoas became metazoas, the many national groups of humans are now being transformed into a metahumanity endowed with a metabrain, a metanervous system, a metaheart and a metasoul. This is our next phase of evolution. We should help it. Increasing unity among many is increasing diversity. The Unity Churches, the Second and Third World Parliament of Religions and the United Religions Initiative are great examples in the field of spirituality following the example of the United Nations in the political field. It was high time, given the protracted religious differences and conflicts still prevailing on Earth.
~ Idea 3212 ~
Honolulu, Hawaii
Why are there skyscrapers in Honolulu, one of the most beautiful islands in the world, a true jewel of nature in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? It doesn't make sense. But it makes sense to big businesses which all want to have their own skyscraper in every major city of the world, because it increases their capital, visibility and power.
~ Idea 3213 ~
Los Angeles, California
The Angels to God:
"Please dear Lord, do something to remove the name of Los Angeles from that overpopulated, polluted city in the United States. As angels we have to protect that city, fly to it, help its poor people, but our angels' lungs are less resistant than those of humans. For the inhabitants of that city one day of breathing the bad air is equivalent to smoking one to two packs of cigarettes. For us angels it is much worse. We simply cannot fly to that city any more."
God:
"I just do not know what to do. There are so many big cities in the world from which I receive similar complaints: San Francisco in the US, San Jose in Costa Rica are examples."
The Devil, rubbing his hands:
"Ha, ha, I am beginning to win."
~ Idea 3214 ~
It is good once in a while to travel from a not yet western 'civilized' country like Costa Rica to wrongly settled, over-consuming, over-transported, over-constructed, over-everything western denatured countries.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I'm so happy that you're saying that."
I:
Well, American visitors leaving Costa Rica should get at the airport a beautiful little poster to hang on a wall in their home:
"Remember Costa Rica. Try to make the United States and all America from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego an America Rica, demilitarized, oxygenized and rich (rica) in nature. This could be a beautiful plan of the US and of all American countries, North, Central and South, to fulfill the indigenous prophecy that the condor and the eagle will meet someday at a sacred place in Costa Rica."
~ Idea 3215 ~
Someday humans will build islands in the middle of the seas and oceans for people to settle there and survive on the oxygen produced by the seas and oceans (three quarters of all oxygen of this planet). Builders are bound to rush into the empty spaces of the seas and oceans. I am surprised that they have not yet done so.
~ Idea 3216 ~
The objective and results of the World Culture for Peace and Non-violence Campaign launched in the year 2000 by the United Nations and UNESCO must absolutely seek the once and for all elimination of all wars and violence from this planet. All national constitutions should adopt the same article as that included in the Japanese constitution after World War II, namely the absolute prohibition of war as an instrument of governmental policy. The prohibition should include all armaments and militaries.
~ Idea 3217 ~
The Russian dream of a communist paradise has collapsed. The American dream of a business paradise will collapse soon too. There is still a communism in the most populated country on Earth, China. I recommend that the US, Russia, China and other countries open a world debate at the UN on how to achieve a happy humanity on a well-preserved planet. Perhaps a miracle would happen and a new political world system would emerge and save the Earth.
~ Idea 3218 ~
Regarding settling the seas and oceans, hundreds of years ago the Hawaiians planted sea-going farms on wide platforms built on canoes with raised gardens of vegetables and sweet potatoes. These 'farms' also maintained live pigs and chickens for long journeys and in the deep hulls of the canoes stored seeds, coconuts and plant cuttings in dishes to develop the new discovered islands of Hawaii on which they settled. I would not be surprised if soon big corporations will launch something similar to produce more for an expanding world population and make more of those endlessly loved profits.
~ Idea 3219 ~
The same way as so many nations, for example the Spaniards, the British, etc. were exploring the Earth with unlimited enthusiasm and self-interest I wonder if all humanity could not embark and unite around a new and even more fantastic exploration: the way of making this planet a peaceful, just, happy, fulfilled, well-preserved, non-violent paradise in the universe. How exciting this would be. Let us start an all human Paradise Earth Project (PEP). It should accompany the Culture of Peace and Non-violence Campaign launched by the United Nations and UNESCO to totally eliminate war and violence from humanity by the year 2010.
~ Idea 3220 ~
The UN University for Peace together with the Earth Council and the International Radio for Peace will become the new Athens of the world, shining on one of the most sacred, prophetic hills on Earth, Mt. Rasur, name of the indigenous God of children.
~ Idea 3221 ~
Outer space being:
"Dear Robert, why don't you humans give a better name to your planet? You could change it to reflect what you make of it. For instance, now you could call it planet BUMEDAD."
I:
What a strange name. What does it mean?
Outer space being:
"It means planet Business, Media and Advertisement, because this is what rules you humans at this moment. If you continue on the same course, it might even to be your last name."
~ Idea 3222 ~
Henceforth when I am invited to speak in places which require air travel I will decline and say that I do not want to contribute to carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. I will send them relevant extracts from my 3000 (soon 4000) ideas or a message, tape or video.
~ Idea 3223 ~
Dear God, how I thank you for not having let me work for a national government, the military or money making and let me work instead for your new, great light of hope on Earth, the United Nations.
I keep preciously the poster of a painting which my secretary offered me showing Jesus taller than the United Nations knocking at a window. She said to me, "I counted the floors: the window at which Jesus is knocking is your window." I never forgot that message, and I often look at that poster.
~ Idea 3224 ~
There should no longer be any glorification of wars, a basic principle in the Hawaiian culture. War museums should be abolished in the whole world. Alas, the US War Museum in Hawaii, in Honolulu is contrary to the wisdom of the people of that country. I do not know of any museums of slavery, racism, apartheid, terrorism, highjacking, murders, kidnapping, hostage-taking and corruption in the world. There is a recent Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles which shows the horrors of the Holocaust.
~ Idea 3225 ~
There should soon come a time on this planet when all war museums will be abolished. It is already a progress to see that ancient museums of war between the states of the United States or the provinces in France and in other countries no longer exist because the central government does not like such museums. Well, we are now being transformed into a united world and therefore national war museums should also be disliked and disappear. They deal indeed with past periods of extreme violence of which neither the winning nor the defeated party should keep memory. If we want to have peace on this planet we better forget about the notion of war and suppress everything that is connected with it and glorifies it.
~ Idea 3226 ~
The day might come when the inventors and 'developers' of cars and airplanes will be considered as the undertakers, the killers of the Earth.
I hope that some islands of sanity like Hawaii and most islands of the Earth will prohibit cars and airplanes. In such places human life and other life forms would have a better chance to survive.
~ Idea 3227 ~
The United States, the western countries and Japan should no longer be admired and imitated by the rest of the world. They are on an adverse, mistaken evolutionary course. Every year they go down, not up, not better, despite what their stock exchange shows.
~ Idea 3228 ~
Outer Space Council:
"We will never understand how illogical you humans can be on planet Earth. You spend huge resources and make endless efforts to save and prolong human life through health and hospitals and at the same time you spend ten times more resources to produce armaments and train militaries to kill other human beings often in mass murders you call wars. What is the sense of it? We give you 'F', failure in planetary management. You better change course before it is too late."
~ Idea 3229 ~
The Earth's beautiful, pure, friendly skies are becoming increasingly polluted, unhappy, unfriendly skies, perhaps even someday disgusting skies. More and more people are beginning to say: the sky looks disgusting today.
~ Idea 3230 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, why do you humans have so many unresolved problems? Apparently, there are 12,200 of them. It is staggering. By now, you should have found your right ways, beliefs, behaviors, education and proper world institutions. What do you do with wars, militaries, armaments, over-population, over-consumption and have no over-all global government and laws and regulations to deal with these problems on which you spend substantial sums of money and still create destruction to me? I wonder for example how much damage the holding of thousands of peace conferences are doing to me, while armaments production continues to increase and the militaries remain unperturbed and unchanged."
I:
I begin to feel like that myself and am less and less accepting to attend world peace conferences. I send them a message or extracts from my 3000 ideas. The one on peace counts 150 pages.
~ Idea 3231 ~
Comparing our time with all other former times in human history there are many advances made by us but also several very serious regresses.
The heads of states, leaders of the world should meet in frequent session at the United Nations and be in permanent consultation with each other to give answers to these problems. This has become of vital importance for the future of the Earth and of humanity. Also, all governments on Earth should create at least a Vice-presidency for Global Affairs and the Future, and consider the creation of a proper Earth government.
~ Idea 3232 ~
Has God created nations? No, they are a human invention. We must invent, conceive new ideal countries without military training, military 'academies' and armies to kill on the ground, in the air and on the seas and oceans. How can humanity be proud of that? The nation state system has become a fundamental aberration in the evolution of this planet. It might be responsible some day for the demise of the human species. And national education makes the children believe in wrong, purely national values. No wonder that they are so lost and pessimistic. If only all nations would at least demilitarize themselves and offer people a model of peace. It would be a great step toward a non-violent world.
~ Idea 3233 ~
The time will soon come when the only safe way to drink pure liquids will be to squeeze fresh juices from organic fruits or eat such fruits.
~ Idea 3234 ~
The time will come when cities will be supplied with air from oxygen plants the same way as they are now supplied with electricity from power plants and water from water plants.
~ Idea 3235 ~
The time will come when transportation and tourism around the world will be reduced in order to avoid damage to the environment.
~ Idea 3236 ~
A three billion year old planet floating in the vast universe with mountains, seventy percent seas and oceans, fertile lands, immense forests, rivers and lakes, sea shores and deserts, this is where we humans have the privilege to live, the latest, most advanced newcomers in evolution. What an immense, incredible responsibility we have to be a right, positive element in the further evolution of that planet. That is the big question before us in the new century and millennium.
~ Idea 3237 ~
I am so glad that the Conference of the World Peoples' Assembly in Samoa is giving birth to numerous local Peoples' Assemblies around the world. More than a thousand of them are expected to be created in 2000 and 2001. What a great new element of world democracy this will represent!
~ Idea 3238 ~
The following poster souvenir could be handed to foreign visitors when they leave Costa Rica:
Dear visitor, you have seen a well-preserved, beautiful nature in Costa Rica. Please remember it and do something for our beloved Mother Earth in your country, in the place where you live.
~ Idea 3239 ~
The words tourism and tourist should be abandoned. Just to tour a country or the world is not what humans should do. Earth and humanity learning should be the objective or simply Earth learning since humanity is an integral part of the Earth which gives us life, sustains and nourishes us with its elements and products and to which we will return at 'death'. Yes, we should find more appropriate, meaningful, elevating words for what tourism and many other human activities should be. New values require new language.
~ Idea 3240 ~
A beginning of environmental wisdom:
Hilton Resorts Hawaii
HELP PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT!!!
Thank you
~ Idea 3241 ~
The world population, environment and human settlements services of the UN should be brought close together. They should work side by side in the same place and should have joint directors and staff meetings.
~ Idea 3242 ~
Governments in a total review of their territories should establish these categories:
This would be closely associated with an overall intelligent, nature-conscious human settlements policy. Information should be submitted by all governments to the UN to give the world a yearly, global view of where we stand.
~ Idea 3243 ~
Why are there so many ideas, inventions, innovations, imagination, creations, institutions and efforts in all sciences and fields of human activity except the most important one: the proper government or management of our planetary home. A change has begun with the environmental revolution but not in other fundamental fields. This is why I am writing so many ideas, dreams and proposals for peace, right relations between humans, the creation of proper global government and institutions. Many thousands of non-governmental associations try to do it too. But we face the iron curtain of nations.
~ Idea 3244 ~
To work for beauty, justice, peace and happiness on Earth, that is what my beloved wife Barbara and I were born for and work for in a farmlet on top of a sacred hill in demilitarized Costa Rica, next to the UN University for Peace. But is there any hope when such extraordinary, numerous forces are against it?
~ Idea 3245 ~
I propose the creation of a World Flags Association. It could cover the following subjects:
- study all national flags and judge their value. Those advocating war or violence should be eliminated; those advocating peace should be congratulated and serve as models.
- propose new, original world flags in many fields; the stars, the universe, outer space, the sun, the Earth, the air, the biosphere, mountains, rivers, waters, forests, gardens, etc.
- propose new, original world flags for more human groupings: the whole human family, continental, regional, provincial, city, family and individual flags. My World Core Curriculum of Global Knowledge and Education in Volume I could be a framework for ideas.
~ Idea 3246 ~
I hope that the United Nations or a philanthropic organization will assemble and publish all existing new draft charters, revised charters and proposed amendments to the UN Charter. This might yield a marvelous collection of ideas, many of which would be worth being examined in the effort to provide this planet with a much needed, better global organization or government. The results might give birth to a serious effort at the beginning of the 21st century and 3rd millennium to put this planet on a right track and in better shape as far as human activities, goals, dreams, purposes and responsibilities are concerned. Such a document would be very valuable to all heads of states and leaders of institutions.
~ Idea 3247 ~
Anyone who shares the view of my wife Barbara that we need a United Nature Government for this planet should send her ideas. It is excellent that we have already a new world party, the Natural Law Party which recommends that we should seek guidance from the laws of nature for the ways we behave on this planet and govern it. This is a vast new field practically unexplored to which many ideas should be contributed to make this planet a Terra Pacifica, a Terra Unida, the beginning of the era of the Earth.
~ Idea 3248 ~
Since the aim of government is or should be the pursuit of the people's happiness, I recommend that each government on this planet should publish a year-end report on the happiness it has provided to its people, not only economic but all other forms of happiness, e.g. the creation of natural parks, of children's playgrounds, the reduction of violence, the embellishment of nature, the preservation of antiquities, the provision of new public services, help to the handicapped, to the indigenous people, to the elderly, etc. On the basis of all such governmental reports the United Nations should publish a yearly World Report on Happiness including its own efforts and successes in providing happiness by achieving peace and through its 32 specialized agencies and world programs.
~ Idea 3249 ~
In each government and at the world level there should be an office or agency specifically dealing with recycling which has become a major new human activity. We are finally following the example and evolutionary wisdom of nature which recycles everything. It should become a true science taught in schools and universities and no longer be considered a side activity. The creation of a World University of Recycling would be a blessing for humanity. It could do a lot to help stem the current waste explosion.
~ Idea 3250 ~
There is great need for a world global ethical science and behavior. We absolutely must determine what is good for humanity and the Earth and what is bad for them. For example, a war started by a nation might be good for it but it is bad for humanity. If I kill a neighbor, steal his money and occupy his land it might be good for me but it is bad for society. The same is now true world-wide in our global world. I propose therefore the creation of a World Ethical Agency which would study and review all forms of ethics and give guidance to humanity. My World Core Curriculum in Volume I could be a basis for its agenda. To mention only a few:
It would be a great eye-opener for humanity. The time is ripe for it. It should be done as part of the Culture of Peace and Non-violence World Campaign launched by the United Nations and UNESCO.
I recommend also a name for it: ethicology, the science of ethics.
~ Idea 3251 ~
Each government should submit every year a report to the United Nations on the peace and help it has received from the United Nations and other countries for its people and also what it has contributed to the peace and progress of other countries and of a better world.
Such a report could also be submitted by governments and by the United Nations Secretary General for the entire period since the creation of the UN after World War II. The document would be of great value to the next generation and to future global historians.
~ Idea 3252 ~
The yearly States of the World Reports and States of the Nations Reports should be less dry, less academic. They should have an echo with the people and be written as much with the heart and soul as with the brain. One seldom finds the words love and happiness in them. Before being published they should be read and be given more feelings, more beauty, more hope, more inspiration and encouragement by poets, elders and indigenous people who know that the Earth and human life are true miracles.
~ Idea 3253 ~
Since we are 100% Earth (70% water and 30% Earth matter) not to mention the oxygen provided to us day and night, it is our obligation, our sacred duty to take good care of the great miracle our loving Mother Earth is. To be good Earth servants and caretakers has become more than to be economists, business people, financiers, bankers, advertisers and marketers. We should be saintly servers of the Earth.
~ Idea 3254 ~
I was so happy that following an idea in my opening speech to the Second World Parliament of Religions in 1993, Bishop William Swing of Grace Cathedral took during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in San Francisco the initiative to create a United Religions similar to the United Nations. After his visit with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to major religious leaders around the world the United Religions Initiative Charter was signed on 26 June 2000, the anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter. Bishop Swing must be congratulated as the founder of that new world organization.
I hope and pray that a similar initiative will be taken to create a United States of the World or a World Union or a United Earth. May such an initiative be taken during the UN/UNESCO Culture of Peace and Non-violence World Campaign 2000 to 2010.
~ Idea 3255 ~
As I pointed out in My Testament to the UN the United Nations cannot be as bad as certain obstinate, conservative groups claim it to be, since it has received a dozen of Nobel Peace Prizes.
If Alfred Nobel came back to Earth he would rejoice but would probably ask why the European Union, the second greatest progress since his death, has not received a Nobel Peace Prize. The abolition of borders between fifteen countries of Europe including the most warring ones, namely France and Germany, would very much merit the Prize.
~ Idea 3256 ~
The celebration of the year 2000 and our entry into a new century and millennium are an ideal occasion to make a comprehensive review of the rights of all human groups on Earth. Here are a few which still require utmost attention:
In addition, thanks be to God a new chapter has been opened, namely the rights of Mother Earth, of her nature and of her elements. The Earth Charter drafted by the Earth Council (see its text in Annex of Volume VI) has been submitted by the United Nations to all governments. In addition, as I've pointed out in Idea 1970, we must work on a whole series of particular charters for outer space, our future evolution, the atmosphere, the seas and oceans, world water, world species', the Earth forest covers and vegetation, the Earth's top soils, mountain areas, the world's great lakes, arid and semi-arid zones, the Arctic and Antarctic and for islands. The same procedure was followed after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when charters for children's rights, women's rights, indigenous rights, racial equality, etc. were undertaken.
It is interesting that in the 1950's we were only concerned with human progress and protection. The Earth was taken for granted, but now at the beginning of the 21st century and third millennium she has gained equal if not first priority. These new efforts together with the implementation of human rights and the appearance of human responsibilities and duties represent a very remarkable progress of humanity. It is a hopeful sign that humans can succeed and find their right relationships between themselves, with the Earth, with the heavens and with time.
~ Idea 3257 ~
When the human rights of mothers will be taken up by the United Nations the following should be considered, as so often proposed:
~ Idea 3258 ~
Humanity has been able to get rid of slavery, colonialism, racism, sexual discrimination and apartheid. It will be as able to get rid of borders too as proved by the creation of the European Union. Next will be armaments. All that is needed is love, world leadership and audacity. We also need more dreams, ideas, excitement and tenacity.
~ Idea 3259 ~
The United States, a federal government, has the luck to have the United Nations on its soil, the first truly world-wide organization of this planet. Why doesn't the US harbor a new, even greater prophetic, providential dream: the dream of transforming the United Nations progressively into a world republic, confederation, federation or union? It would be of immense benefit to the entire world including the United States which would become the greatest history making country ever. Please US, wake up to another great dream. Be worthy of George Washington and the great Americans who gave birth to the United States from a mess of disputing, sovereign, armed, cut-up former British colonies, almost without rhyme or reason. Remember these words of George Washington which fully apply to our time:
"The primary cause of all disorders lies in the different state governments
and in the tenacity of that power which pervades the whole of their systems."
This is even more true of the world of nations today. We should also remember this statement by another great president, Franklin Roosevelt at the end of World War II:
"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
To engage into new ways toward proper world order might prevent the US from falling into decadence as did all great empires on this planet which insisted on the maintenance and increase of their power, did not adapt to the new requirements of evolution and disappeared.
~ Idea 3260 ~
A man who heard me speak in a philosophical society in the 1980's decided to become St. John the Baptist and to play the saint's role! He sent me a paper on the state of the world which starts with this paragraph:
"We are in a state of institutionalized inhumanity. The rich have gotten richer while our other brothers and sisters in God live in poverty, hunger and without adequate housing or medical care. This has been done in the name of free enterprise. The powerful are free to ignore and exploit the poor. We have become the new Sodom and Gommorah, the cities in the Bible destroyed because of their wickedness. This is now far worse because it is global."
I love the words 'institutionalized inhumanity' which describe so adequately the institutional situation of our world today. We should also speak of institutionalized antinature.
I sent him the following note:
Thank you for your letter of 29 April. I love in particular the first paragraph in which you used the excellent words of 'institutionalized inhumanity'. May many more people imitate you and play the role of great saints, prophets, visionaries, seers, outer space beings, departed ancestors and give us their messages. May many rich people become Franciscans and make the vow poverty. A better world would ensue.
~ Idea 3261 ~
"The centers of power and influence never remain the same: they were among others Egypt, Athens, Rome, Spain, London and Paris. Today they are Moscow and Washington. They never last because power is unable to adapt itself to new evolutionary trends. Power believes it will always remain and that it must do everything to remain and increase. It then misses evolution and falls aside it. Power is locked into its own logic and incapable of lifting itself into new trends, visions and solutions."
Since I wrote this in my Testament to the UN, published in 1992 it has been the case also of Moscow. And it will next be the case of Washington too if the United States sticks to its present world power policy and doesn't see the absolute need of adaptation to the evolution of humanity and of our planet. This can only be done if the United States adopts a new vision, a new dream for the world as a whole. It is lucky to have the United Nations on its grounds. It can build up the United Nations progressively into a World Confederation or Union similar to the European Union or conceive an entirely new governing system for the Earth and humanity.
No one can stop evolution no matter how giant a power is, whatever cause it might defend, whatever missiles and arms it may possess in the air, on the seas, in the soils and in the heavens. On the contrary non-adaptation to evolution will cause its demise like that of the dinosaurs. United States, you better heed this warning and draw the right conclusions. Transform the Pentagon, your main strategist, into a Terragon and capitalism (kaputalism) into planetwide Earthism and Humanism.
~ Idea 3262 ~
We need more Earthitects than architects, at least an equality of the two. The first would take care primarily of the Earth (Earthism) the second of humans (humanism). Nowadays, as a result of the older ideologies of free enterprise and socialism, the greatest emphasis is still on architecture for human purposes which neglects or pays insufficient attention to the Earth. That imbalance can be fatal and must be corrected. Humans must receive the best well-being, longevity, health and happiness but in harmony, non-destructive relations with the Earth. As the ancient philosopher Seneca said, "True wisdom consists in not departing from nature, but molding our conduct according to her wise laws." This is the objective of the newly created World Natural Law Party.
~ Idea 3263 ~
To the criticism that a federal Earth government will be a dictatorship there is this answer: the US Federation gives freedom to all its citizens between the fifty-one states; the European Union gives freedom to all the citizens between its fifteen member nations. Those who give the least freedom of migration, a freedom in the larger context of the world, are the lonely sovereign nations. A World Federation of Nations, a World Republic or a World Union like the European Union would give all humans much more freedom than they have today, create a true world democracy and prevent any national dictatorship.
~ Idea 3264 ~
Since the United States federation of states and the European Union of nations are highly successful, admired models of multi-national democratic government why not consider even broader unions including the broadest of all, a United World Federation, a World Republic or a World Union?
As President Truman said: "It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for states to get along in the republic of the United States."
~ Idea 3265 ~
Since the prospect of a Proper Earth Government is remote from the minds of most American people who are programmed by the US tenants of power there is one other great hope and example which can be followed, namely the recently created European Union between fifteen of the most belligerent states which have ever existed on this planet. Around this European Union a broader union of all nations can be built. The European Union could take the first step and unite with the newly created United States of Africa.
~ Idea 3266 ~
I am delighted that Maurice Strong, the former Secretary General of both the first and second world conference on the environment in 1972 in Sweden and in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro has come out with a book entitled Where On Earth Are We Going. In it he describes the world as it will be in the decades to come, a world of disasters and destructions and predicts that the Earth has not more than thirty years to survive on its present course. Coming from him who has lived this on a day to day basis during all these years at the highest world level this means something. It is a very serious warning. This is also why he has decided to move the Earth Council to the natural grounds of the UN University for Peace whose presidency he has taken over in order to get his message to the world from an academic institution rather than the United Nations with its political limitations. The sacred grounds of Mt. Rasur might become the new Athens of the world.
~ Idea 3267 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, one problem with you humans is that you do not look at the consequences of your actions on the long-term future. I have existed for billions of years and will still survive for many millions of years. You exist only for 100,000 years and if you do not change course you might vanish in the next 1,000 years. The least I expect from you is to think ahead for these 1,000 years, but you do not do that. Your leaders do not think beyond the next elections and future stock markets. You have no Ministries of the Future, no main organ in the United Nations dealing with the future and you think that you are intelligent. And I will have to deplore the vanishing of my most advanced, precious species."
I:
You are right but there are increasing numbers of people who are beginning to look into the far future. There is in particular the Foundation for the Future in Bellevue, Washington which is looking as far as the year 3000. I will suggest to that foundation to create an International Association of Futurologists to the Year 3000.
Barbara, having listened to you will also open a web-site, 'Save the Earth' on which you and the people can express their concerns and ideas. This will be broadcast by the International Radio for Peace attached to the UN University for Peace and the Earth Council in Costa Rica.
~ Idea 3268 ~
All the super wealthy and wealthy people who have personal or family archives, museums and art collections should consider henceforth that this Earth and humanity might come to an end in the third millennium and that their memorabilia and possessions will float on a dead planet, valueless except as a curiosity for outer space visitors. Why not therefore devote your attention, efforts and resources to the salvation of the Earth and of humanity. This would permit your memorabilia to survive for thousands of years to come. Please visualize and work for a date far in the future on which you would still like to see humans visit your collections and study and use your archives.
~ Idea 3269 ~
The United Nations has rightly proclaimed a whole series of World Days, International Weeks and Years but must now also actively promote World Centuries and Millennia to help our long-term fate and future. Each century until the year 3000 should be given a name and there should be proclamations such as Earth 3000, World Population 3000, The Seas and Oceans 3000, The Environment 3000, Agriculture 3000, Human Settlements 3000, Science 3000, Longevity 3000, World Ethics 3000, etc.
~ Idea 3270 ~
The heads of states meeting in September 2000 at the UN should recommend that the United Nations Secretariat and all the 32 specialized agencies and world programs should submit their visions and plans for the year 3000. It would be a new page in human history, a new form of intelligence, the birth of a species capable of looking into the whole future of a planet.
There should also be Ministries of Ethics in every government and a Commission, Department or Unit of Ethics in the United Nations and in each UN Agency, to judge the ethics all along these thousand years.
~ Idea 3271 ~
We must begin to suppress and stop many things on this planet, not to constantly add more to the products, activities and movements of humans.
Thus looking at the Father's Day cards received I feel that all these wishing cards for an increasing number of occasions everywhere in the world should be dispensed with. They are a waste of sizeable tonnages of paper. In the giant card-producing firms they have employees whose main task is to come up with more occasions to produce ever more diversified cards. Good wishes should be hand written by people in their own deep, sincere words and not in words written by others for business purposes.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I read over your shoulder what you just wrote and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will let you know my ideas on what else humans should dispense with in order to prolong my longevity and theirs. I have a long list."
~ Idea 3272 ~
Biologists tell us that most evolution takes place as a result of crises. The world economic and ecological crises looming ahead will force us to adopt new values and reforms, and create new institutions and legislation to permit further evolution. But the more changes can be made now, the less severe and misery-causing these crises will be.
~ Idea 3273 ~
There is at least one successful capitalist who no longer believes in capitalism and predicts its demise: George Soros. I highly recommend that he should create and chair a World Commission of Eminent Personalities on the Future of Capitalism.
~ Idea 3274 ~
A time might come when historians will describe with as much dismay and horror what humanity did to the Earth and nature in the second half of the 20th century as they write today about the horrors of past wars. Our bad human relationships history is now being followed by a bad Earth relationships history.
~ Idea 3275 ~
We must absolutely stop and avoid all remaining wars on this planet in order to devote all our attention to the Earth which is crying for help. Wars have become totally obsolete, unjustifiable and unnatural. They kill not only humans but also nature.
~ Idea 3276 ~
Gentlemen,
My grandchildren in the United States showed me a note regarding your World in the Year 2050 Competition of The Economist. They thought that I should compete for it. I told them that it was they themselves, the young, who should do that and not their 77 years old grandfather. I congratulate you for launching that essay and wish that you will send me a copy of the winning contest.
But I thought that I should perhaps also send you my conclusions, proposals and forecasts after a life of fifty years of service with the United Nations and with the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica. I thought that such a paper might be of interest to you. I will publish it as an update to My Testament to the UN of 1992, a contribution to the year 2000 and the third millennium. I will also address it with a personal letter to each head of state before their meeting during the General Assembly of the UN this fall which is to "focus on means to solve our primary global problems and to reform the means of global governance in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
I hope The Economist will submit its views and ideas in response to the competition. Personally I will soon come out with more volumes of ideas and dreams for a better world, bringing the total to 4000.
Yours warmly,
~ Idea 3277 ~
It would be interesting if the 189 governments of this planet would agree that one country on Earth in the tropical zone would cease to 'develop' and pay its population to live in harmony with nature and with only basic, necessary human tools and services. Valuable lessons could be drawn from such an experiment by the rest of the world. Perhaps people there would be happier and less violent and frustrated than are those in the 'rich' countries.
~ Idea 3278 ~
It has been calculated that with the total savings from armaments and militarization of more than 800 billion dollars a year we can save all nature, feed all the hungry, educate all children of the world and make this planet the most stupendous success in the universe. Please, dear heads of state, do this miracle and you will become the greatest, most famous leaders in all human history.
~ Idea 3279 ~
The word 'environment' is not correct. The Earth' nature is not 'around us'. We are an intrinsic part of her. All our bodies come from nature. We live day and night from her elements (air, water and food) and at death we should return to her to be recycled into soil, vegetation and other species'. I propose therefore that the Ministries of Environment, born from the UN's World Environment Conference in 1972 in Stockholm should be renamed and converted into Ministries of the Earth. We should also rejoice that Natural Law Parties launched by British scientists exist now in more than 100 countries. They should become the first and foremost political party in the world.
~ Idea 3280 ~
There exist in the US more and more very remarkable retirement communities in which people above a certain age live in simple, comfortable dwellings, have common services and meals together, have discussion groups, hear speeches, have reviews of good books, receive house aid and medical help, etc. I propose that similar communities be created where people of any age inclined to do so would also live in simple, comfortable dwellings, would watch only good television, would hear only good radio, receive only good newspapers and magazines and fulfill the dreams which they could not fulfill in the outside, hectic, noisy world. They could write their thoughts and souvenirs, look into their inner self and achieve optimum health, peace and happiness. They could be called Optimum Health, Peace and Happiness Communities, little paradises on Earth.
~ Idea 3281 ~
In all retirement and optimum health, peace and happiness communities there should be benches of dreams, happiness, beauty, thanksgiving, forgiveness, love and other great, fulfilling concepts used by humanity since times immemorial. See Idea 984 for the list of the benches we have in our Park of Peace, Dreams and Love in Costa Rica.
~ Idea 3282 ~
Since the UN's first World Environment Conference in Stockholm in 1972 the words 'sustainable growth' and 'sustainable development' are more and more used instead of economic growth and economic development. This is good but insufficient: first, one almost never hears the words 'unsustainable growth', 'unsustainable development', 'unsustainable consumption'. Secondly, nature and the Earth having become a major, if not the main concern of humanity, the words 'Earth damaging' and 'Earth destroying growth or development' should also come into use. Finally, 'Earth care' and 'proper Earth management' should go side by side at par with economic development and growth.
~ Idea 3283 ~
Which will be the first countries on Earth to have the foresight to create Ministries of Evolution or Ministries of the Future or even a Vice-Presidency of Evolution?
~ Idea 3284 ~
One reason which is seldom adduced to stop conflicts and wars is that they destroy not only human beings but also a lot of nature, housing and public services which cost so much to rebuild. I have never seen statistics on that. We must absolutely achieve peace, not only for the sake of peace between peoples, but as a major contribution to the preservation of our nature and acquired capital.
~ Idea 3285 ~
In order to reduce very substantially the incentives to warmaking all countries should no longer attach glory to victories and wars. Celebrations of victories, war museums and monuments to war winning heroes and generals should all be abolished.
I am so happy that the Earth Council created by the second World Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro has moved to the University for Peace because the two working together will be able to give a new message to the world, namely that we must absolutely accelerate and attain total peace in order to devote all our efforts to the preservation, survival and beautification of the Earth. And what a symbol it is to be located in one of the first demilitarized countries on Earth!
~ Idea 3286 ~
I propose the creation of a World Association for Our Miraculous Planet Earth to make her a true model and paradise in the universe. Such an association could raise the question: How can we afford to have thousands of nuclear armaments which endanger this planet and almost five hundred nuclear energy plants, the wastes of which are re-atomizing the Earth? We must remember that it took millions of years for the Earth to lose her nuclear radiations, Only after that life became possible.
~ Idea 3287 ~
Ordinary citizens should make an effort not to admire the showoffism of which there is so much around us. For example, do not look at beautiful modern cars or limousines with which the owners want to show off when driving around. Do not look at and admire the very elaborate and shiny motorcycles on which young people sit and speed to be a show off and be admired. Do not admire big villas and mansions the owners of which want to show off and be admired. Turn your eyes away from all this and perhaps when they see that nobody admires them they will also become more sensitive to the need for simplicity and modesty on this planet. Yes, there should be a world wave against overconsumerism and showoffism, two of the major exports of the United States and the multinational corporations.
~ Idea 3288 ~
Built-in obsolescence by many manufacturing firms in order to sell new products is a major item which should be inscribed on the agenda of the World Agency of Consumption when it is created.
I also suggest that there should be a movement to create around the world happiness stores, peace stores, United Nations stores, forgiveness stores, compassion stores, love stores, hope stores, thanksgiving stores, etc. What a difference that would make!
~ Idea 3289 ~
All depositors with banks should request to be informed how many skyscrapers these banks possess and how much capital they have invested in luxury buildings and offices around the world. All this with the money of the depositors and the interests paid by the borrowers.
~ Idea 3290 ~
I sometimes have the feeling that I represent at the United Nations the innumerable deads caused by the will for power of conquerors, dictators, nations, religions, ethnic groups, wealth holders, etc. I hear them say to me: we were first of all humans. Why did they do that to us and to our dear ones?
And I answer them: I will do my utmost so that it will never happen again. I will fight for a new death: the death of all the weapons on this Earth and of all institutions in which they prepare and train wholesale killers of other human beings.
~ Idea 3291 ~
We had the very important American Revolution for Independence. We had the very important French Revolution for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
We now need a World Peoples' Revolution for Proper Earth Government.
~ Idea 3292 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I like your Appeal to All Leaders of Nations at their meeting at the UN in September 2000. Could you give them also this message from me:
Dear Heads of States,
I am so happy that you are meeting during this crucial year 2000, the onset of a new century and millennium, to look at the global problems facing me and humanity, how they could be solved and the means and instruments required to solve them.
This leads me to beg you to be each of you my representative, the spokesperson of your Earth, of your mother, of the various provinces of my surface which you administer, not only of the peoples. To the titles of Chiefs of States, Presidents, heads of governments, leaders of nations, please add also that of Representatives of the Earth. Think of me as much as you think of your people. When you wake up in the morning and ask yourself what can I do for my people today, ask yourself also what can I do for the Earth. I pray you to do that. I will love you for it. I will recompense you with much happiness for it. And the children of your children will bless you."
~ Idea 3293 ~
If only the 15 countries of the European Union were quickly joined by more countries from the rest of Europe and other regions of the world to consider steps towards a larger Union, ultimately a World Union. This would be a tremendous success, a major historic step towards a better world political order. It could mean the salvation of our human future.
Humanity will have an incredibly great, happy, peaceful, prosperous, safe future before it, if we believe in it and work for it with ardor. Dear heads of states, please believe in it, have faith in it and the miracle will happen. That is the message from an old UN servant and from all the dead of past wars.
~ Idea 3294 ~
When will we be able at long last to call our Earth a Garden of Eden, a Garden of Peace, Love, Beauty and Happiness, a paradise in the universe?
Yes, Peace, Love, Beauty and Happiness, a Paradise Earth should be our objectives for the 3rd millennium, to be attained as rapidly as possible. The higher the objectives, the closer one gets to them.
~ Idea 3295 ~
There is a lot of talk and advertisement for eco-tourism, meaning ecological tourism: to visit the natural highpoints of our planet. More important in my view should be the term edu-tourism, the education of a right ecological care of nature when the tourists go home. More generally I have increasing doubts about tourism, which has become a major source of pollution and destruction of the Earth through carbon dioxide emitted by transports, especially long distance aviation, construction of hotels, roads and airports etc. Tourism must absolutely be seriously reviewed in all its aspects. It has become a new, colossal business, a novel cause for more Earth destruction. If measured by ecology economists, world tourism might show negative results for the Earth. Good ecology starts at home. This is where it should be loved, taught and practiced.
As a first improvement I recommend that people should ecodiscipline themselves and go on tourism only every second, third or fifth year.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I thank you for saying this. What I see happening to me through tourism is often destruction. Education tourism, good ecology at home and personal ecodiscipline should be the major approaches."
~ Idea 3296 ~
I reached the age of seventy-seven thanks to the fact that I stopped smoking more than forty years ago. I decided that when I accompanied my father who felt sick in his lungs to a doctor who asked him after examining him, "Do you smoke?" "Yes." "How much?" "Two packs a day." "Well, I'm sorry to tell you, you have an advanced lung cancer." And my father died a few months later.
I have never forgotten that lesson and never smoked anymore in my whole life.
~ Idea 3297 ~
A second reason why I am still alive at seventy-seven is that I was able to lose a lot of weight. In the US I gained weight up to 227 pounds. Twenty years later, thanks to a healthier way of life in Costa Rica I weigh only 190 pounds, having lost thirty-seven pounds.
~ Idea 3298 ~
Late in my life I learned another great lesson in Costa Rica: at my retirement from the UN I became volunteer Chancellor for one-dollar-a-year of the UN University for Peace in a magnificent, natural, primeval wonderland. I bought an old farmhouse and farmland adjacent to the university. There we have cows, a magnificent turkey, a flock of chickens and monkeys in the primeval woods. In order not to be eaten in the night by coyotes coming from the woods the hens and the cocks fly up on top of trees near the farmhouse. The roosters begin to sing the resurrection of the day at four o'clock in the morning dialoguing with cocks in the valley. In order to get enough sleep Barbara and I decided to go to bed early, not later than 7:00 to 8:00pm. As a result we wake up with the cocks having had eight to nine hours of sleep and you cannot imagine how much work you can do between 4:00am and 8:00am before getting involved in daily affairs.
We also decided to have a siesta each day after luncheon because a total of eight hours from 4:00am to midday is almost equivalent to a whole working day.
What we did confirmed an old popular saying: hours of sleep before midnight count twice.
~ Idea 3299 ~
Now, at my advanced age do I have any prospects of a still longer life?
Well, the following might help:
In May of 2000 I had a hernia operation which forced me for two weeks to eat little and to drink no alcohol whatsoever. Well, I was frequently drinking beer which is very popular in Costa Rica and being a Frenchman to have often wine with meals. After those two weeks I did not feel the slightest need for any alcoholic drink anymore and with my wife we decided to give it up completely. On the fourth of July, having American guests to celebrate the US national holiday, we made an exception and were sick the following day. Thus, alcohol (al kohol, Arabic the Devil) was eliminated for good from our lives.
~ Idea 3300 ~
Another discovery to keep in good health was the following. I once said to my wife Barbara that my Hindu colleagues at the United Nations fasted one half a day each week on Tuesday afternoon until the following morning. We did it a few times and after the fourth time I woke up totally rejuvenated, feeling extraordinarily fulfilled and young. Having gone to sleep at 7:00pm we woke up at 5:00am which meant ten hours of sleep without even having to go to the bathroom once. I could not believe it.
A few days later we had a rich, heavy dinner with guests and went to bed at ten o'clock. The following morning, after a restless night, I was a total disaster. We decided therefore to eat very lightly in the evenings and to become almost vegetarians.
Drinking only pure water and juices squeezed from fresh fruits and no human, manufactured, artificial, carbo-dioxided 'soft drinks', is also a major factor for a long, happy life.
~ Idea 3301 ~
The human being was born to walk and to live and work in nature. Offices, cars, airplanes, trains should never let us forget that.
Providence wanted me and my wife to live after retirement in one of the most beautiful, nature-endowed areas in the world with the purest, highly oxygenized air one can dream of, on a sacred, prophetic mountain covered with primeval forests in Costa Rica. There my blood was rejuvenated and my body kept in good form. Everyday I walk four times from our small farmhouse to the University for Peace and back for a distance of two miles and many times also I climb with my wife on top of Mt. Rasur which has one of the most beautiful panoramas in the world. Barbara does it every morning.
Our love for nature and animals is paid back by so much peace and happiness. And we want to pay back that gift with our proposals and work for a world-wide peaceful, happy human family on one of the most miraculous, beautiful planets in the universe.
~ Idea 3302 ~
What kind of loving, caring teachers and leaders can governments be who spend more than half of all tax incomes on militaries and armaments?
~ Idea 3303 ~
The main, real reason of the retarded US extreme right to oppose any idea of a World Federal government is that it would challenge, diminish and put an end to US capital colonialism which is gaining most of the world supported by US armaments and foreign aid. The accusation is launched that World Federalism would lead to dictatorship. Well, the US Federal Government has not led to the dictatorship of any President, party or state.
A better chance for a more just world order rests henceforth with the European Union which is more socialist and more democratic. The more countries join it the better it will be. May this become a fast and vast movement.
~ Idea 3304 ~
There should be a World Parents' Association to exchange experiences and wisdom of parenting in all cultures and to create common public institutions. I could well see a United Nations Parents' and Family Agency and the birth of a new, comprehensive science of 'Parentology'.
~ Idea 3305 ~
I recommend to all grandparents to move to the land when they retire, to buy or rent a farmlet and raise animals, were it only chickens. The grandchildren would love it and never forget their stays and vacations with them. We are doing it here in Costa Rica. It is a great blessing on both sides.
~ Idea 3306 ~
I also recommend the creation of a World Association of Grandparents to exchange experiences and wisdom from all cultures and create common public institutions. I could well see a United Nations Grandparents' Agency which might be a great help to achieve peace and a better world with their wisdom.
~ Idea 3307 ~
Dear housewives, do not buy colored paper towels or towels with colored designs or inscriptions. They only add artificial colors to what is returned to the Earth through waste disposals and recycling. Use only white paper, or do not use paper towels at all: use cloth towels which can be washed and reused many times. Every bit multiplied by the 6.1 billions we are helps the environment. Never forget it.
~ Idea 3308 ~
My numerous ideas for a better world are my way of thanking God, the Earth and humanity for the incredible gift of life I received from them. They did so much for me. What I'm giving back to them is only a tiny drop of the ocean of gratitude I feel in me. May many human brothers and sisters of mine do the same.
~ Idea 3309 ~
Capitalism has done wonders for humanity and we must be thankful for it. But its growth and success has created a lopsided power which is now destroying the Earth due to over-population and the over-consumption of the Earth's elements and resources. We must urgently remedy this situation and devise a new planetary economic system (oikos nomos, Greek the management of our home) for the benefit of all humanity, the preservation of the Earth and the proper survival and evolution of both. This is our most urgent task and duty toward the future generations.
~ Idea 3310 ~
Walking in our forest in Costa Rica I said to Barbara: these trees are superior to humans. How lucky they are. They receive their energy directly from the sun through their leaves and their food and liquids from the soil. They do not have to go to school, to study, to have a profession, to get dressed, to make money, to go to an office, to produce and consume so many things, to have a home, a car, go on tourism, go to a doctor, to a hospital, finish in an old peoples' home.
And when they die they all return to the Earth. I feel that we should all be buried in the soil without a coffin in order to be re-absorbed and reborn by the Earth. A tree should be planted above our remains for our resurrection into this other form of life. Also, a tree, preferably a fruit tree, should be planted at the birth of every child. With these two actions, two trees would be planted for every human being, at birth and at death. 128 million newly born and 50 million departing ones every year would reforest and increase rapidly the life forms of this planet.
~ Idea 3311 ~
I dislike excessive nature-impairing advertisements. Typical examples are the enormous panels advertising cigarettes, alcohol and soft drinks in the magnificent nature of Costa Rica along some main traffic roads . I am astonished that youth and ecologists do not dismantle them.
We must absolutely convene a World Conference on Advertisement. This new gigantic modern profession which has a whole science, strategy, and elaborate methodologies must be reminded of ethics by governmental and legal actions.
In the meantime individuals can take some measures. For example the scale I use to weigh myself displays very visibly the name of the company which produced it. Why do I have to see that name every day for years? I covered it with a correction fluid. It disappeared beautifully and I do no longer have to see it anymore.
Dear reader, look around your home or apartment and see what advertisements you can get rid of. When I told it to Barbara, my wife, she did it immediately.
~ Idea 3312 ~
The colossal increase of products and services in all countries of the world speaks strongly for a comprehensive world-wide, orderly system of standardization. Given the close relations between standardization, economic development, international trade, transport, and marketing I recommend that the International Standardization Organization (ISO) be made a full specialized agency of the UN.
~ Idea 3313 ~
In a letter of the apostle St. John regarding human relations he says: Whoever hates his brother is a homicide. Well, he goes much further than I who only says that a military who kills another military or civilians is a homicide.
~ Idea 3314 ~
I saw an old man in Costa Rica who was offered Coca Cola. He tasted it and rejected it saying that it was medicine. When will the day arise when water will be again the drink of God and when humanity will avoid all the so-called soft drinks bubbling with carbon dioxide which we refuse to breathe through our lungs but accept to go to our stomach and leave traces of solid carbon on the lining of our intestines. We need a consumers' revolution.
~ Idea 3315 ~
Soon there should be a new field of study and science, an addictionology covering the vast, growing field of addictions. It should study scientifically the methodology and strategies of making people addicts. A World University on Addictions could render humanity a great service. Just to mention a few addictions:
~ Idea 3316 ~
When, after many thousands of years will we finally create a United World? What are we waiting for? One way would be for more countries to follow the example of Hawaii and join the United States which would then become the United World with a world-wide democratic government and indispensable institutions for welfare, justice, peace for all and a well-preserved planet. No nuclear missiles, armaments and militaries would be needed anymore, only a United World Peace Agency and Police.
~ Idea 3317 ~
Another avenue would be for more countries to join the European Union to become tomorrow's World Union.
~ Idea 3318 ~
A third way would be for some countries to join the United States and others to join the European Union, both joining then in a United World.
~ Idea 3319 ~
Still another way would be for the United States and the European Union to merge into a Euramerican Union offering the rest of the world to join it in a World Union.
~ Idea 3320 ~
When we look at us human beings we see that we are all made of intakes and outflows: intakes of air, nourishment, water, sight, hearing; outflows of speaking, breath, liquids and wastes. And we see that many animals around us and also vegetations have similar intakes and outflows. Many species have eyes, ears, a mouth or a beak to take nourishment and to drink. Trees and plants are getting intakes of solar energy through their leaves, and liquids and nourishment through their roots. They have no eyesight, no hearing, they have no voice but they have perhaps other invisible ones. I wonder if there exist across the board sciences which study all the eye sights, all the ways of nourishment, all the hearings, all the brains, all the sounds emitted by humans and animals and so on and so forth. This could be the great world comprehensive biology of the Earth. There should be universities specializing in what we have in common with, and different from all other species. The results might be wonders. I apologize if there are already such universities. I would like to hear more about them.
~ Idea 3321 ~
When one sees the relations between a mother and her children, of any animal mothers with their little ones one cannot help thinking of the love of Mother Earth for us, her children. We should study the relations of that mother with us the same way as we study the relations, the progeny of animals and plants on Earth. The creation of the World Party of Nature is a good step in this direction. I hope that it will become the major party in all countries as quickly as possible so that we can rethink completely and correctly our relations with our Mother Earth and develop the right attitudes and behavior toward her.
~ Idea 3322 ~
One of the great lessons we have learned from the environmental crisis and now the climatic one is that from now on we humans must subordinate ourselves to the Earth. The Earth comes first and we humans second. We must declare Earthology, the right relations between humans and the Earth, the foremost science on this planet. We must see, agree, approve or condemn everything primarily from the point of view of the Earth and no longer solely from our point of view. The new century and millennium will be those of the preeminence of the Earth.
~ Idea 3323 ~
"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again... And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France.
When will we also teach them what they are?
We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move.
You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?
You must work - we must all work - to make the world worthy of its children."
Pablo Casals
Casals held such language wherever he went. He cried each time he came to the United Nations which he considered to be a great human miracle.
In the schools which bear my name the children are told from the first day that each of them is a miracle never to be repeated again. This is why they never fight in these schools, because a miracle does not hurt another miracle.
~ Idea 3324 ~
In the Robert Muller Schools the children are also shown a World Core Curriculum which encompasses all human knowledge (see insert in Volume I and IV) and are told that they should be happy to be alive today and to receive a knowledge which no Emperor or king in the past ever received.
~ Idea 3325 ~
I sometimes think that the human species has become an aberration. But then I remember that humans became aware of their excessive growth - the population explosion only in the 1950's; of the environmental crisis - the destruction of nature - only in the 1970's; and of the misdoings of global business world-wide only in the 1990's. This list of global awarenesses to which one can add the concern for climatic changes, is only at its beginning. What will be next? Perhaps this is something very new and hopeful in our evolution. Our new global, cosmic awarenesses in the 21st century could become the biggest progress ever in our evolution.
~ Idea 3326 ~
It also occurred to me that the consciousness of global peace is very recent. It was born internationally only with the League of Nations which did not survive. But the United Nations survived and grows despite the hostility of blind, retarded elements.
Could it be that disarmament, demilitarization and the denuclearization of this planet could have the same fate?
In that case humanity would save 800 billion dollars of wrong expenditures each year, with which all urgent problems on this planet could be solved.
~ Idea 3327 ~
We are beginning to hear of over-consumption as a problem in the rich countries parallel to over-population in the poor ones. But how about over-production which precedes over-consumption and is promoted by over-marketing and over-advertisement? The whole economic system of this planet must be seriously rethought.
~ Idea 3328 ~
Having been invited as one of the speakers at a UNESCO conference on creating a Common Framework for Ethics in the 21st Century I read in their basic document that, "The participants of a first meeting in Paris identified eight world problems while Aurelio Peccei, the founder of the Club of Rome counted twenty-seven. The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potentials of the Union of International Associations in Brussels has identified 12,203 world problems put forth in international journals and in the documents of some 20,000 international non-profit organizations."
It reminded me that a few years ago the Union of International Association, of which I am an advisory member, asked its members what new subjects they could study. I answered that a project could be to draw a list of international and global problems. Hardly did I imagine that they would do it and identify so many of them. But they went an excellent step further by showing the existing potentials of solving them.
~ Idea 3329 ~
Barbara wants to run for Mayoress of Santa Barbara since a beautiful neighboring community where she lives now called Goleta located in a magnificent nature will be annexed to Santa Barbara. I said to her, "Yes, but you should rather think of running for Mayoress of the World. Why don't we start a series of dialogs in which I would ask you, 'As woman Mayoress of the World, what would you do?'" This could be an interesting contribution to the solution of our world's problems. Mayors are closer to the people and to the Earth than far away governments in their capitals. Such a book Mayoress of the World, could be a useful complement or improvement of what I wrote in my novel First Lady of the World in which a woman becomes Secretary General of the United Nations.
~ Idea 3330 ~
Another idea would be for the International Association of Mayors to put this question to all its members: "How would you govern the Earth if you were her Mayor or Mayoress?"
~ Idea 3331 ~
A World Conference on the United Nations Charter Review is an urgent obligation of governments toward the fate and future of humanity and of the Earth. Not to do it at the onset of the 21st century and 3rd millennium would be an unforgivable negligence of the 189 national governments of this planet.
~ Idea 3332 ~
I strongly recommend that in every magazine and newspaper of this planet there should be a section on ideas and dreams for a better world. The fate of humanity and of the Earth can be determined from the top down by international institutions, governments, states and local authorities, but also from the bottom up by the people. The individual members of the human family should formulate their dreams and ideas. This would be an important democratic means on our planet.
~ Idea 3333 ~
The fact than an idea or proposal has no chance of being adopted should not be a reason for not formulating it. An example given by the rich is the following: the Republican Party in the United States has submitted to the US Congress a draft legislation according to which all estate taxes would be abolished. This would mean that the wealth of the rich would be inherited by their children or descendants without paying taxes! They know perfectly that such a legislation has no chance of being adopted. Well, the Democratic Party could propose an opposite legislation asking for the redistribution of wealth!
~ Idea 3334 ~
A reason why the idea or any proposal for proper world or Earth government is being rejected by the US is that it would lead to world dictatorship. This is an accusation launched and nourished by the rich who do not want to share their wealth with the poor. In reality they fear that a world democratic government would give a majority to the poor of the planet and that they would no longer be able to keep their privileges. The same situation prevailed in France on the eve of the French Revolution.
~ Idea 3335 ~
There are many tax havens or islands in the world which the very rich use to avoid taxation either by depositing their wealth in the banks of such countries (e.g. Switzerland) or by taking domicile in such havens. If the total amount of capital accumulated in these tax havens were known to the world it would create a shock. This is why I recommend the re-establishment of the Fiscal and Financial Commission of the United Nations and its Fiscal Financial Branch. I worked there when I was a young UN official. Alas, at the insistence of powerful lobbies, both this Commission and its Secretariat were abolished. It would be a shame if humanity would not re-establish them.
~ Idea 3336 ~
I wish that all astronauts from the United States and other countries would join in a World Astronauts Association accredited to the United Nations and would tell the world how they think our planet should be well-governed.
~ Idea 3337 ~
In order to help a better settlement of humans on this planet and avoid excessive changes from one place to another, municipalities should envisage tax reductions to those people who remain for many years in the same place and housing. More generally a new, imaginative taxation policy should be devised world-wide in order to keep many people on the land and have fewer people move to cities.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, please add this: humans, my bewildered children, are spending more and more time, imagination, education and money on how to produce infinitely more goods, how to build more industries, more cities, shopping centers, homes, roads and airports than on how to preserve, save and improve me. Don't they understand that I am their original, most precious capital and home?
~ Idea 3338 ~
The same way as many people did not use the supersonic airplanes because of their damages to the environment, there will come a day when the majority of the world's people will no longer take airplanes for their travel. Hopefully many networks of very fast long-distance trains will be available on each continent. The access by air and by car to so many American and big cities of the world has become such an ordeal that it should a be a world-wide policy to build, re-build, maintain, improve and extend the distances of fast railroad systems.
~ Idea 3339 ~
There is a very substantial increase of passengers from poor countries who travel by air to visit members of their family who emigrated to rich countries such as the US and Canada. This costs them plenty of money and it congests air traffic. I hope that fast long-distance railroad lines will be built to facilitate the trips of such people at lower costs, for example from Mexico to the United States and Canada.
~ Idea 3340 ~
I recommend that the International Railroad Association should become a full specialized agency of the United Nations' added to the UN International Civil Aviation Organization and the UN International Maritime Organization. An International Road Transportation Agency must also be created. Together we would have a World Transportation Agency which could do wonders for a coordinated World Transport Policy, standardization, etc. The already existing Transport Commissions of the Regional Economic Commissions of the United Nations would be integrated into it.
~ Idea 3341 ~
When will governments and all public services in the world pay as much attention and resources to our precious, life-giving and bearing Mother Earth as they do to human affairs? No wonder that the Earth is on the decline and that doubts arise about the future of a rapidly growing humanity.
I recommend that all budgets in the world should show the sums budgeted for the Earth, for her seas and oceans, for her nature and future as are now budgeted for human needs, concerns, the political system and future "economic growth".
~ Idea 3342 ~
I do not know if governments and the International Labor Organization keep good statistics on environmental professions and public services, for example people employed in world, international, national, provincial and local parks and forests. Job opportunities should be systematically favored and developed in this new major field of human concern, especially jobs for youth.
One could also conceive that abandoned farms should be purchased by governments and given to young people to keep them on the land.
~ Idea 3343 ~
In 1974 a friend of mine, President of the Association United States - China told me of his intention to create transnational corporations between the poor countries of Asia and the western rich ones. I told him of my idea that the head of a great corporation should develop a model of a transnational corporation which would adopt its own rules of ethics before being forced to do so in ten or twenty years by governments.
This idea is only being taken up now in the year 2000, pretty late to redress the situation.
~ Idea 3344 ~
As early as 1974 I recommended that the best brains of the planet should consider the effects of the arrival of billions of more humans and foresee great regional planning conferences for all continents leading to a major world conference on the planet's resources and the humanity to be accommodated. It never took place.
~ Idea 3345 ~
We should not live in a world of diminishing forests and fields and increasing highrises, skyscrapers, parking lots and airports.
~ Idea 3346 ~
In a proper Earth government there would be no spies, no CIA's, etc. The savings by 189 governments on that subject alone would merit to create a proper Earth government.
~ Idea 3347 ~
I once heard of a textile firm which produced garments with the picture of elephants and wild animals promising to pay a small percentage of the sale price to the World Wildlife Fund. It is good idea to be followed by other businesses, better than most advertisements one ses on t-shirts.
~ Idea 3348 ~
The French revolutionaries abolished the king, the sovereign of that time but then they gave themselves the absolute sovereignty of the nation. Since then wars and power contests continued between sovereign nations.
Why not
Political scientists should review all this and determine if any sovereignties are still permissible, affordable, in the interdependent, globally endangered 21st century. The entire political system of this planet must be reviewed from scratch.
~ Idea 3349 ~
Edmund Burke said, "A politician should be a philosopher in action."
I would also say: A United Nations official, a world servant should be a philosopher in action.
~ Idea 3350 ~
The United Nations has raised claims for racial equality and equality of women and men. Would it not be worthwhile to raise more equalities to achieve a better humanity: more equality between professions, more equality for education, more equality of income and wealth? Yes, why not create a science and philosophy of equalities on this planet?
~ Idea 3351 ~
Someone should launch the idea of eco-hotels and eco-lodgings around the world to allow ecology minded people to avoid the big, luxurious, lavish hotels and find simple, frugal, eco-respectful lodgings. Such eco-lodgings could become models of how we should all live in a greater respect and harmony with nature.
~ Idea 3352 ~
From a World Awareness Network established in Nicosia Cyprus I received a document with this inscription:
If you can dream it, you can do it.
How right they are.
~ Idea 3353 ~
The United States is now practically ruling the world. Americanism is the biggest power that has ever existed on this planet and capitalism has won as the ruling ideology of humanity. The US and capitalism must absolutely review the current world predicaments and change course. If not, they will ruin the world and themselves. A totally new element has emerged in the late period of the 20th century: the preeminence of the Earth.
~ Idea 3354 ~
The present ways of humanity are disastrous for the Earth. Humans have become a mistaken, aberrant species which might now put an end to the normal further evolution of this planet. This is the most urgent and important problem facing us in the 21st century.
~ Idea 3355 ~
Life is a product of this planet, of its functioning and conditions (sun exposure, warmth, air rain, etc.). All life forms are born from matter of the Earth plus solar energy. Of all these life forms the human species is now over-exploiting, damaging and destroying the Earth for its own purposes considering itself no longer born from and part of the Earth but superior to her. Almost all our inventions are for our own benefit. Human proliferation, consumption proliferation, production proliferation, activities and movements proliferation are not in the interest of the Earth. Henceforth the most important inventions and efforts we must make are for the Earth and her nature. Will we?
~ Idea 3356 ~
A message to Ted Turner,
Dearest Ted,
You must absolutely go beyond the media and save the Earth. Please create THE TED TURNER WORLD CABINET, an idea of Douglas Gillies who interviewed you recently. It could change the course of the world.
Most warmly,
Robert Muller
~ Idea 3357 ~
I think that with my 3000 and more ideas I leave behind me more than any UN Secretary General has ever done. Future Secretaries General, heads of states, heads of great human institutions should follow my example and write down their ideas and dreams for a better world. The result would be fantastic. Their biographies should be accompanied by ideagraphies.
~ Idea 3358 ~
I propose the creation of a new profession on Earth: paradise advisors.
~ Idea 3359 ~
My Testament to the UN published in 1992,* fruit of 38 years of experience at the United Nations, should be a classic for all people interested in how our world is managed or rather mismanaged in this last century of the second millennium and beginning of the third.
In particular it should be a required reading in all international and political science faculties in the world. So should my 4000 Ideas.
*Hopefully, it will be reprinted some day in a series The Robert Muller Classics.
~ Idea 3360 ~
No newspaper on Earth should be allowed to have more than ten to twenty pages a day and no magazine more than forty to fifty. What a saving this would represent for the forests of the world!
~ Idea 3361 ~
Humans should cease or reduce their reading of newspapers and books. The first are overflowing with bad news, advertising and obituaries leaving readers totally depressed. Books are predominately murder and scandal stories or novels of which one must read hundreds of pages to know the outcome or find any valuable ideas. The quantity of waste paper produced by both and the damage caused to forests is colossal.
~ Idea 3362 ~
We need a world revolution against human explosions and crazinesses:
The time has come when we humans must think what is feasible and limit ourselves to what is necessary within the framework of the resources and the renewal capacity of the Earth. We are still far from that wisdom.
~ Idea 3363 ~
Peace and security by the United Nations are an utmost priority. But the real miracles and results will come from the total demilitarization and disarmament of this planet.
~ Idea 3364 ~
In order not to bring this Earth to an end more humans should decide not to have any children anymore or to have only a few. The Earth will be very grateful to them.
The Earth:
"How right you are my dear Robert. They are all coming out of my flesh, air, and liquids and then destroying me. They are a true catastrophe in my long history and will put an end to my further evolution."
~ Idea 3365 ~
Stopping the further 'economic development' explosion, human population explosion, consumption explosion, accumulation explosion, transport and travel explosion must urgently become the new priorities of humanity if we are to survive. This goes far beyond the environment, the green revolution and sustainable economic development.
~ Idea 3366 ~
We do not need to fear that an atomic war will put an end to humanity. Endless economic frenzy will do it more slowly but more surely, more definitely, and planet-wide.
~ Idea 3367 ~
The time will come when human beings will not be allowed to take airplanes for more than a total mileage during their lifetime. Perhaps the same will happen for automobiles too.
~ Idea 3368 ~
The Earth:
"The extraordinary airplanes which carry people and goods over thousands of miles around the world are considered results of geniuses and great managers. But nobody says what they are doing to me, the Earth, how much carbon dioxide they emit, the damage to my atmosphere, the increase in world tourism, business and construction they create, further contributing to my destruction."
~ Idea 3369 ~
The decadent Romans said:
In vino veritas
In wine is the truth.
In our modern society where wine and alcohol are spreading to the entire world, except the Muslim one, I would say In vino calamitas, in wine is calamity.
In France it has reached the point that if you do not drink wine you are considered to be sick. It doesn't occur to Frenchmen that alcohol and wine are one of the major causes of sicknesses. The opposition to alcohol must take the same way as the opposition to smoking. There is no reason why governmental health services financed by taxation should bear healing costs of wrong, health-impairing consumptions.
~ Idea 3370 ~
There is on this planet a new form of conquest, of colonization, namely consumption conquest or colonization. That is what the big world companies do: get the people at home and world-wide accustomed, needy, addicted to particular consumptions. Coca Cola is the classical example rightly called in the poor countries Coca Colanization. And there are infinitely more examples of this world consumerization by the advanced, rich and endlessly greedy western business.
~ Idea 3371 ~
France should have this ideal: to become the most rural, reforested, revillagized country on Earth, an example of sanity to be followed by other countries. Yes, a renewed, revillagized world. Reboiser et revillagiser. This should be stimulated with strong subsidies, incentives, tax exemptions and transfer of military expenditures.
~ Idea 3372 ~
My ideal, my dream as a Frenchman who loves this beautiful country, would be to see France become the first most advanced middle-sized country in the world and demilitarize itself. As a result it could become even more peaceful, more just and more beautiful. Please, dear God, make this dream become true.
~ Idea 3373 ~
An excellent news announced at the heads of state Millennium Assembly at the United Nations in September 2000:
The Organization of African Unity has decided to unite the entire continent of Africa into the United States of Africa with a common Parliament for the entire continent, a common currency, a common Court of Justice, etc.
This means progress toward one of my proposed approaches to proper Earth government in Volume IV, Ideas 1901 to 2000 of my 2000 Ideas and Dreams, namely a continental approach. One could conceive five continental unions, the European Union, an All-American, or an All-North American and All-South 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.
~ Idea 3374 ~
I wish that someone would write a book on what the world would be in the year 3000 if communism or capitalism had won. It is not impossibles that communism would turn out better than capitalism. At least the Earth would not be destroyed.
~ Idea 3375 ~
The main objective of money should no longer be to create new factories, new productions and more consumption but to permit the financing of world and local common services, especially public services and activities who would give an income to all peoples of the world. This thought came to me this morning when I saw several gardeners working on the grounds of the UN University for Peace. They create beauty, not anything essential, consumable but they receive an income which permits them to live and to have a family. Perhaps the World Treasury proposed by the Nobel Economics Prize winner Jan Tinbergen of Holland should be created.
~ Idea 3376 ~
We do not live in a democracy anymore. We live in a moneycracy. Money and those who hold it rule the world and our lives. A thorough world survey of this fact would reveal a pretty frightening situation, an aberration in the evolution of humanity on this planet. We need urgently an ecocracy, the rules and requirements of our home now in peril of destruction. The Natural Law Party, launched in the world by British scientists seems to be a great promise and new hope; it recommends that all humanity and all institutions follow the laws and rules of nature. I urge the Natural Law Party to propose a Natural Earth World Government.
~ Idea 3377 ~
One great thing all governments of planet Earth should at least do is to create:
This would help enormously the state of the world and our future survival and fulfillment.
~ Idea 3378 ~
The United Nations must absolutely create a main committee or organ on the future. Such a body should instill into the whole United Nations system of 32 specialized agencies and world programs, into all governments and the whole world the need to plan each coming new decade and new century up to the year 3000.
We have already a good number of yearly states of the world reports. We need also future states of the world reports.
~ Idea 3379 ~
Dear God, how much more must I still work at the age of seventy-seven instead of enjoying the farm I acquired for my children and grandchildren in Costa Rica?
God:
"I only fulfilled your dream inscribed at the entrance of your farm cabin: 'I dream that someday I will live as an elder of the United Nations on a hill with a magnificent view and spend my remaining time writing the beautiful stories of my life and my dreams and ideas for a better world.'
It is here that Jose Figueres decided to demilitarize Costa Rica.
It is here that you helped create the first University for Peace on this planet.
It is here that the Earth Council, created by the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Conference on the Environment was established, as you wanted.
It is here that the first International Radio for Peace gives you a world voice.
It is here that you are writing your thousands of Ideas and Dreams for a Better World.
I only did what you dreamt."
I:
Thank you dear God for reminding me of it.
~ Idea 3380 ~
It is so good to see students of the University for Peace meet in the open air on the magnificent grounds of Mt. Rasur and to hear them laugh and express their dreams and joys for studying peace, conflict resolution, respect for nature and all other good things taught by that blessed university. What a great example it must become for all universities in the world.
~ Idea 3381 ~
The world's people want proper Earth and human government so much that national governments must soon get out of their way and let them have it. The Peoples' Assemblies created all over the world will help it.
~ Idea 3382 ~
If Alexander Hamilton lived today he would say these words about the United States' policy towards the United Nations:
"If you do not will the means, you do not will the end."
Yes, the last thing on Earth the US Government wants to see is a successful UN loved by the people.
~ Idea 3383 ~
In a World Union on the model of the European Union in which member nations keep most of the sovereignty on internal affairs, a Parliament of the World Union would be able to adopt a world legislation on the multinational corporations which now rule widely and uncontrolled the world, often to the detriment of nations, of the Earth and of their inhabitants.
~ Idea 3384 ~
Perhaps in order to save the Earth, overpopulating and overconsuming countries should be temporarily excluded from the United Nations until they have reasonably reduced their population increase and their overconsumption.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, that is an excellent idea. But there would be very few nations left in the United Nations!"
~ Idea 3385 ~
The human species has become scientifically, technologically, economically and politically an out of bounds, crazy species, an evolutionary misfit. The earlier this is admitted at the heads of states level, the better it will be.
~ Idea 3386 ~
In each Prime Minister's Office there should be a Unit of Philosophy having among others the task of preparing yearly reports on the state and future of that nation from the philosophical, ethical and evolutionary point of view.
~ Idea 3387 ~
The United Nations should prepare yearly current states and future states of the world reports from all points of view, including the philosophical, ethical point of view.
~ Idea 3388 ~
Without proper Earth government and laws each nation does strictly what it wants and the sum total of what they do and want might be very detrimental, even disastrous to the Earth and to humanity. It is incredible and of bad omen that we do not yet have a proper Earth government, not even an attempt towards one as we enter the 3rd millennium. This might cost us very dearly.
~ Idea 3389 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I really think that the best that could happen to me would be the disappearance of the human species. All other species would rejoice and evolution could continue. The human species seems to me hopeless."
I:
Dear Earth, I cannot agree with you. I have seen so many good things and miracles happen that I will throw my hat and all my efforts in favor of the ultimate success of the human species. Please don't give up hoping.
~ Idea 3390 ~
When will we at long last call our Earth the Garden of Eden, a miracle of peace, love, beauty and happiness in the universe?
Yes, peace, love, beauty, harmony, cooperation and happiness should be our principal objectives in the 3rd millennium, not money, business and more power. The higher, nobler the objective, the closer one comes to it.
~ Idea 3391 ~
It will be much easier to plan and work intelligently for a just, happy, fulfilled humanity on a well-preserved Earth than to cope in innumerable, disorderly ways with the multitude of problems besetting us now on Earth. Yes, why not try to achieve paradise Earth within the next hundred years? Let us set Paradise Earth 2100 as the target, the logo for the celebration of the year 2100.
~ Idea 3392 ~
Thank God we have now an Earth Charter drafted by the Earth Council established on the grounds of the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica. We also have a Charter of Nature drafted by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and a Charter of Water by UNESCO. These are wonderful, hopeful signs for our and the Earth's salvation. We need many more such Charters to guide us on a safe, ascending journey on this planet.
~ Idea 3393 ~
All Ministries of Art on Earth should be renamed Ministries of Beauty and Art which would foster beauty everywhere and by everyone, not only by artists.
~ Idea 3394 ~
We must create at the UN University for Peace a Faculty of Happiness, Love and Beauty, as major ways to achieve peace and human fulfillment.
~ Idea 3395 ~
Why not have in Universities a new faculty called 'Achievement of Paradise Earth'? Isn't that a major dream and objective of the human species? Such faculties could render us a tremendous service. We must create one at the UN University for Peace. It will be one of my objectives.
~ Idea 3396 ~
I love this wonderful statement by Pablo Casals:
"I long for the day when the peoples of the world will sit together bound in happiness and love for beauty as in one great concert hall."
Yes indeed, happiness and love for beauty. This is why I do not cease to recommend that all governments should have a Ministry of Happiness. Pablo Casals would add: and Love.
~ Idea 3397 ~
The Earth Council, created by the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Second World Conference on the Environment should work out proposals for a proper Earth government. Its Earth Charter is a first, very substantial step towards it. Its implementation will indeed require legislative steps, governmental actions, proper Earth government.
~ Idea 3398 ~
We have more than 30,000 international peoples' associations working for the good causes of a better world and humanity. But surprisingly not a single one tries to achieve Paradise Earth. The word is not even mentioned by a single one of them.
I am at fault myself: I am writing 4000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World but that is not enough. If God allows me to live longer, I must write and publish the next 1000 ideas on how to achieve Paradise Earth, and select from the first 4000 ideas those which are related to that achievement.
~ Idea 3399 ~
The world of today, with its 189 sovereign nations is in the same, if not worse condition than it was when George Washington and his aides concluded that the 49 sovereign confederate states of America could not continue and proposed a federation of these states. The United States of America was created with a minimal margin of votes for which all United States citizens are grateful today. We must absolutely achieve the same with the creation of a federation or Union of all nations of the world. It is even more important, because now the entire fate of the world and of humanity is involved.
Not to do it would be an unthinkable evolutionary irresponsibility.
~ Idea 3400 ~
My compatriot Albert Schweitzer was for reverence for life. I am for admiration, passion, enthusiasm (Greek en theos, God in us) for life.
~ Idea 3401 ~
Forgiving and forgetting are two different things. Forgiving is beautiful as I said in my exhortation Decide to Forgive. But forgetting should not be allowed, for, as Santayana has said, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."
~ Idea 3402 ~
A symptom that our current human condition is sick politically, economically, socially and spiritually lies in the fact that such a great number of criticisms are leveled against it and innumerable remedies proposed to it. From such a sea of dissatisfaction a revolution is likely to arise to give birth to a new human society at a more advanced, just stage of evolution.
What shall be this new human society? That is the great challenge posed to our generation.
~ Idea 3403 ~
Visiting Paris I was astonished how nearly all its public and private buildings have been cleaned and restored to the original beige, almost white color of their beautiful stones. I commented to Barbara: this tremendous work of beautification has been possible only because for fifty-five years there has not been any war. She said: you must write this in your ideas. Yes, can we imagine how beautiful this world will be once there will be no longer any wars. I think it is one of the straightest ways of achieving paradise on Earth.
~ Idea 3404 ~
In my idea 857 of 13 November 1996 I dreamt that I would be appointed Secretary General of the World Peoples' Assembly in 2000. I placed that dream on our Bench of Dreams. Well, it was fulfilled: I was appointed Lifelong Honorary President of the Global Peoples' Assembly by the Samoa session in 2000!
The second dream in that idea is still unfulfilled: that the UN General Assembly would honor me with the title Secretary or Servant General Emeritus or Wise Elder of the United Nations. It would be the most beautiful recompense for all my lifelong efforts.
~ Idea 3405 ~
I recommended in Idea 640 a world law or a law in all nations that newspapers must limit their advertisements to five percent of their copy. Four years later, in 2000 the contrary has taken place: in big newspapers like the New York Times one sees now entire pages with one big slogan or advertisement.
~ Idea 3406 ~
In every locality on Earth there should be a house of worship, of spirituality where people can find a relationship with heaven, with peace and with all other great qualities of life, see their children considered as children of God, and receive the good words and holding hand of a soul minister during sickness and at the moment of death.
What a more wonderful world it will be when in each village, town and community the church bells, the muezzins and the gongs will announce the resurrection of the day, the hours, midday, and the onset of the night.
~ Idea 3407 ~
In a beautiful country like France no multilevel apartment buildings should be allowed to be built. They disfigure villages and small towns. Every family should be given facilities to build their own modest house. Big cities should be deconcentrated. France should dream and become a model, a showplace, a paradise of villages and little communities with preserved traditions, nestled in a beautiful, well-preserved, heavenly nature.
~ Idea 3408 ~
There should be much more decentralization in the world. A whole science, strategy and methodology of it should be developed. There should be as many ideas if not more, for small localities than for big cities. Alas, this is not the case become the fastest moneymaking for builders and construction companies is in great cities.
~ Idea 3409 ~
I dream of a total decentralization of this planet, a world of villages with few cars, no airplanes and little tourism. Why could that not be an ideal? Why should the contrary be the ideal?
~ Idea 3410 ~
Wine is beginning to be produced in all climates and regions of France as I could observe during a long train trip. I wonder how much land is thus taken away from nutritional and pasture products in favor of a non-nutritional, health impairing, but highly profitable product? French people should be taught and told that alcohol is health impairing and rightly called the devil by the Arab civilization. Confucius too, in China said: "You drink the first cup of alcohol and the second cup will drink you."
~ Idea 3411 ~
Automobiles, airplanes, business, tourism, big cities and the population explosion are likely to bring about the end of humanity and of life on this planet. There is almost no way out of this situation. Each of these factors is too deeply entrenched and constantly growing and governments are incapable or unwilling to stop the degradation.
We need a World Emergency Conference to Prevent the End of Life on Earth.
~ Idea 3412 ~
Governments should levy special taxes on people who have needlessly more than one car per family. A whole set of world and national legislations are needed to reduce or stem the air traffic and automobile explosions. These must be added to the population and overconsumption explosions of which only the first has received attention and visibility. Please dear rich and affluent people of the world have the discipline to reduce if not eliminate your travels around the world. The fate of the Earth is more important than tourism to far away countries.
~ Idea 3413 ~
To use or visit the French international airport of Roissy in Paris gives you the most glaring proof that our planet will go to pieces, that it is simply impossible to go on like that for long. The Foundation for the Future in the year 3000 should hold a meeting in Roissy to get an illustration and proof of it.
~ Idea 3414 ~
All scientists who are studying the human being and human life will tell you that each of us is an incredible miracle of trillions of cells, innumerable flows, networks and organs which defy imagination. It is therefore a blemish, an awful sin to see humans trained, used and honored for killing other humans grouped in different nations, religions or beliefs. We must call this an outright obsolete, enduring form of slavery. It must be challenged, fought and suppressed as was slavery. Let us all arise against military slavery. How beautiful it will be when this blemish of humanity will be gone. There cannot be any glory attached to killing other human beings, other miracles, other children of God.
~ Idea 3415 ~
Humans should get their dreams straight. These can no longer be those of the industrial, scientific, economic revolution. Right relations between all humans, with the Earth, with her nature, with our descendants, with the future of our planet and with the heavens are the right dreams.
~ Idea 3416 ~
"The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is or ought to be the end of all government."
George Washington
This is why I recommend that Ministries of Happiness be created in all governments and a Commission and Department of Happiness in the United Nations.
~ Idea 3417 ~
We must have great audacity and courage to save this Earth from destruction and to achieve a better, happier humanity. We must wage a battle against militarism, armaments and the destruction of nature by big business, a battle similar to the past ones against slavery, racism and colonialism which we won.
Other major battles should be against overpopulation, overconsumption and for a poverty free humanity.
~ Idea 3418 ~
Instead of communism and capitalism which were born in the circumstances of the end of the 19th century we need in our new circumstances a combination of humanism and Earthism: the achievement of happy, fulfilled human beings in harmonious right relationship with a miraculous, well-preserved Earth.
~ Idea 3419 ~
Someone has called me a 'paradiser' who tries to make the whole Earth a paradise. Dear reader, please become a paradiser too. Let us be numerous to become the 21st century and 3rd millennium Earth paradisers.
~ Idea 3420 ~
Dictating my handwritten journals over many years, which people would be unable to read, I wondered: this will take an enormous time and will anyone transcribe them? Will anyone publish them? Will anyone ever read them?
And yet they are important views and historical facts covering thirty-seven years of one of the first international world public servants' life, actions, ideas, successes and defeats, and also a wisdom to be improved and perfected by today's and tomorrow's youth.
This idea has occurred to me: I should write even more audacious books and publish them as well as those out of print under the title suggested by Barbara: the Classics of Robert Muller who should have been Secretary General of the United Nations, a Nobel Prize winner and the first President of the first Earth government.
And publish also those of Barbara under the title: the Works of Barbara Gaughen Muller who should have been First Lady of the UN, a Nobel Prize winner and the First Lady of the first Earth government.
Why not?
It would force us both to think out the human and Earth conditions to the utmost ideal limits. The time has come for someone to do that.
~ Idea 3421 ~
We should make a serious effort to deaviationize this planet. The quick increase of aviation, quick transportation of ever larger numbers of people and quantities of goods is dangerously polluting the heavens. At seven o'clock in the morning over the valley of Geneva in September 2000 I counted already in the blue skies seventeen streaks of aviation exhausts from planes leaving Geneva airport. I wonder what the total number and the total exhaust of carbon dioxide is for the world as a whole and will be in the year 3000 at the present rate of increase.
~ Idea 3422 ~
We look too much at the world population problem in its characteristics, components and growth between countries, especially the rich and the poor countries. We should look with equal interest and concern at a population problem between rural areas and cities. Policies for more ruralization and less citization should be thought out and proposed by the United Nations for all continents and nations.
~ Idea 3423 ~
There is need for someone, why not the UN Secretary General, to write A NEW UNITED NATIONS.
~ Idea 3424 ~
We need an international association of men and women who are audacious, peaceful revolutionaries whose ideas and peaceful actions would receive world-wide attention and inspire more people to see a world change for the better.
~ Idea 3425 ~
When visiting a country like Costa Rica, and there are many others, one sees tens of thousands of Coca Cola advertisements, infinitely more than crosses in the name of Christ. The only chapter on which Christianity beats Coca Cola is the number of churches. I am surprised that Coca Cola's world imperialists have not yet thought of Coca Cola churches and temples.
~ Idea 3426 ~
I recommend a world movement for giving only good, beautiful, inspiring names to natural sites, cities, streets, buildings, people, children, etc. in order to create more beauty, happiness, elevation and philosophy all around us on this beautiful planet Earth.
There are already many. For example the Pacific Ocean, the names of saints for cities, for children.
Etymological records should be established for a whole series of names: the names of countries, of natural sites, of cities, villages, streets, family names, personal names. Those would be fascinating records to provide inspiration.
All new streets, cities and communities should be given beautiful, elevating, lovable, inspiring names.
People should also give beautiful names to their homes which mean so much to them, etc. Dear reader, add your own suggestions.
~ Idea 3427 ~
Tourism agencies should provide visitors with the etymology of the high points, geography, cities, shrines of the countries visited. This is particularly necessary for countries which have a different language, traditions and history.
~ Idea 3428 ~
If Humanism and Earthism are adopted as the new ideologies for the 21st century one of the first things to do would be to establish lists such as:
- what have we achieved already to ensure Humanism?
- what do we still have to do to achieve full Humanism?
- what have we achieved already to ensure Earthism?
- what do we still have to do to achieve full Earthism?
~ Idea 3429 ~
I hope that one day a really universal, updated, forward-looking modern model university will be created on this Earth, if possible next to the UN University for Peace and the Earth Council in Costa Rica. The university could be based on my World Core Curriculum (see table in Volume I) used so far only in elementary and secondary schools. It would provide the widest, most total, up to date structure of an educational institution in the entire human history so far.
~ Idea 3430 ~
Two years ago I sent to all my grandchildren my story The Cleanest Mile on Earth. One of them who is a Boy Scout told me that as a result in his school district the Boy Scouts have a road cleaning assignment. He is part of a Boy Scout team in charge of cleaning five miles. Bravo! After all, some of my ideas have an effect.
~ Idea 3431 ~
Having a glance at the list of my new words at the end of the preceding volume I wonder why I see there 'thankology' (the science to thanks) and not 'thinkology' (the science of thinking) and 'dreamology' (the science of dreams). There exists already the word ideology but it represents a body of beliefs like capitalism and communism and not a vast open science of ideas, which should be called ideaology.
~ Idea 3432 ~
Even if experts would prove to me a thousand times that the Earth and the human species will sooner or later perish, I would not change my decision to work day and night for our better, optimum, fulfilled, miraculous future. During the night too, will you ask me? Yes, because sacred Mt. Rasur on which we live makes me dream every night of ways to save and embellish the Earth and the human species.
~ Idea 3433 ~
A message from Erika Erdmann who was the research assistant and librarian of Roger Sperry, the Nobel Prize winner for his research and discoveries on the human brain. She publishes a precious magazine called Humankind Advancing:
10 October 2000
Dear Dr. Muller and Barbara,
Yes, it would be wonderful to have a section "Ideas and Dreams" in Humankind Advancing and all other magazines. I will think about how to arrange it. I have read your last collection with joy and marked several good quotes for publication. Your Appeal to Leaders of Nations will appear in full in the next issue. It is simply amazing how you can find among the ruins of a seemingly tumbling-down world-wide culture so much reason for optimism!
With much love to both of you,
Erika Erdmann
~ Idea 3434 ~
15 October 2000
Dear Dr. Muller and Barbara
"I am delighted to be on the net and find Robert Muller! My signed copy of Most of All, They Taught Me Happiness is a well read and reread book, and as I thought with whom to share my idea, Dr. Muller's name came up on my inner lightboard. People must have thought of the following, but perhaps his expansive connections would assist spreading the idea if you two agree that:
Jerusalem should so obviously be THE international city of our planet. It should be a special principality just as the Vatican is in Rome. As the core of three of the five major world religions, it cannot 'belong' to any of them. I have even pictured the UN being centered there. How would this change the world? It would have to be for the better and toward world peace.
So, that's the idea; do with it what you will - and as I take the time in the next few days to go through this site thoroughly, I will be delighting in knowing where Dr. Muller is and what he is up to now."
Thanks for listening,
Billie Hobart
16 October 2000
Dear Billie Hobart,
I received your message with joy. I am glad that you kept in memory my first English book Most of All, They Taught Me Happiness. A little anecdote: when I finished the manuscript my wife, a Chilean diplomat, said to me: you must be kidding; after all your years at the UN you should have written a book on the UN. I answered: No. I wrote on happiness, because in the horrors of war you cannot find happiness. War must therefore be abolished. And I came to work for the UN, because it is a good chance to avoid wars. But it is only an instrument. The ultimate, most important objective is the happiness of people.
Your idea is splendid. It crossed my mind several times over the years. But I am almost sure that it was tried in the early years when Count Bernadotte was in charge of the Mid-East question. It could perhaps be revived, especially now that we have the United Religions Initiative, a religious United Nations, which I got finally established in the light of my book New Genesis and my opening speech at the World Parliament of Religions in 1992. May I suggest the following:
Send by fax to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan your idea and ask if it could not be a solution to the problem. Ask if it has ever been tried. He has always someone like me who discusses such messages with him and gives an answer to the person who wrote. Let me know what the answer will be, because even if it is negative, I will come up with something else. I will include yours in the fourth thousand ideas, half finished. Everything starts with a dream and an idea.
And thank you again for your message. It made my day in my little farmhouse on sacred Mount Rasur, above the UN University for Peace in demilitarized Costa Rica.
May God bless you
With my warmest wishes,
Robert Muller
~ Idea 3435 ~
We must now see a fundamental Earthshake against an outdated fundamentalist capitalism which must take into account the new evolutionary phase of our human inhabited planet, namely the Earth preservation and salvation phase.
~ Idea 3436 ~
The simplest way to solve the problem of unemployment in any country is to suppress the army, military training and armaments expenditures and launch an anti-poverty, pro-nature, art, and beauty program with the totality of the money saved.
Indeed, why does it take a war or a menace of war to produce jobs and resources to keep the economy floating or 'improving'? This can be achieved by implementing the articles of the UN Charter calling for a central world security system which would put an end to the need of army and defense expenditures in 170 not yet demilitarized countries.
~ Idea 3437 ~
My brother-in-law in Strasbourg who is in his seventies has lost a good part of his memory, except how he passed the test necessary to give him his job as an engineer in the French railroads, how he met my sister, and war stories how the Germans attacked their village at the border in the North of France, how the family had to move out and became refugees. When they returned at war's end they found the house completely destroyed. His father, forty-five years old, an artisan, died three weeks later on a mattress in the cellar. They didn't have a single bed left.
He ends these memories thanking God for having given him a good family, a good job and children who are doing well.
His memories struck my mind: my main memories are the same: war memories, how I got my job at the United Nations and how I met my life companion. And my same thanks go to God.
What are yours?
~ Idea 3438 ~
A remembrance by Ambassador Hoveyda from Iran: when he came to New York in 1949 as a young diplomat of the Iranian Mission to the UN he was utterly astonished that the price of a barrel of petroleum exported by his country was that of a hamburger! Well, fifty years later, in 2000 the head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, on the occasion of a price increase of petroleum made this comparison: the price of a barrel of petroleum (159 liters) is twenty-six dollars while a barrel of Coca Cola costs seventy-eight dollars and a barrel of cognac $7,800.
~ Idea 3439 ~
The United Nations Meditation Room, conceived by Dag Hammarskjöld is incomplete in my view.
It shows a ray of light beaming in obscurity from the ceiling of the room on the top of a high, rectangular block of fine iron ore he imported from Sweden, his country of origin.
Its symbol is that this iron block was created by the energy of the cosmos. It is part of the cosmos as is all matter of the Earth. He considered himself to have come from Sweden as a hard, rational economist and was transformed by the United Nations into a mystic. This iron ore block was shown floating in the universe in a famous film by Stanley Kubrik: Space Odyssey 2000.
The change that I would introduce is that after a while the ray should fall on the head of the meditating person to convey to him or her that the human being is a cosmic reality too: we are born from the Earth which is all born from the cosmos, hence we are all cosmic, living, heavenly beings, the most advanced of all on this particular planet.
Such a realization can change our life and the entire human society and its relations with the Earth and with the heavens.
The great founders of religions were not wrong. This was the message of all of them. Most of them gave it the name God. A United Religions has now been created to bring back spirituality, the belief of humans in their heavenly cosmic nature, origin and role.
~ Idea 3440 ~
The message of the indigenous, sacred Mt. Rasur in Costa Rica is similar to that of the UN Meditation Room:
Rasur, the God of the children, emerged from the Earth in the form of light and told them that the miraculous nature around them was the creation of the Great Spirit, that they must take loving care of that nature during all their life. Before vanishing he prophecized that a civilization of peace will extend from that hill to the entire world. It is there that the demilitarization of Costa Rica was born, that the first University for Peace was created, that the UN Earth Council is located as well as the International Radio for Peace.
I am almost tempted to have a light projector installed on top of Mt. Rasur to send a beam of light on the peace monument below.
~ Idea 3441 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, why doesn't the UN define for each poor region in the world the kind of happiness and fulfillment of good lives they should seek instead of letting them be invaded by the excessive, often wrong ideals and habits spread world-wide so intensively by American and western business, finance, marketing and advertisement?"
I:
Dear Earth, it is a very good idea. I will recommend that the UN set satisfactory ideal consumption levels and standards of life for all regions in the world.
The Earth:
"Thank you, it would mean so much less destruction of my body and of the natural elements on which you live."
~ Idea 3442 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, why do humans call my nature wilderness compared with their settlements and ways of living? In my view the real wildernesses on my surface are the monstrous human cities and proliferating means of transportation, not my nature which is in equilibrium."
~ Idea 3443 ~
I wrote a popular story of my life entitled Happy Even in Prison. Someone should write stories or a book titled Happy Even in a Monstrous City.
~ Idea 3444 ~
Planet Earth and nature must henceforth always be first if humanity is not to perish.
~ Idea 3445 ~
The Earth:
"Any species which proliferates in numbers and can no longer augment on my surface, given the limits of my nature, decides to stop growing and even diminishes.
It is a first good sign that the human species is beginning to do that too: the western population will for the first time decline by forty million between now and the year 2050. This is very significant since a western human being consumes thirty times more of my resources than a person in a poor country. In my eyes the population forecasts for the year 2050 would therefore show a decline of consumption of my resources by 1.2 billion people in the rich countries. Alas this is wiped out by the increase of the population of the poor countries by 3 billion. Your efforts must therefore continue to be directed at reducing the population explosion in the poor countries. I congratulate you dear Robert for recommending that the United Nations should convene a World Population Emergency Conference."
~ Idea 3446 ~
Most people and institutions in the world are writing nowadays only on one side of a page. The back page remains usually blank.
I suggest that people print on that back page a text which is important to them. For example, on the back of the UN University for Peace's paper I photocopy the text of my Dream 3000 or one of my Decide to poems, for example Decide to Be Peaceful, Decide to be Happy, Decide to Forgive.
~ Idea 3447 ~
In addition to world, national, provincial and municipal parks a new type of community should be created for the preservation of the Earth, namely:
Harmony Communities i.e. areas in which a number of families would live in harmony, in right relationships with nature without destroying her.
In earlier ideas I proposed that an entire nation in a forested, tropical zone such as Paraguay or Guatemala could be made with world aid a Harmony Nation.
~ Idea 3448 ~
There should be a new general science of sustainability on planet Earth. It would encompass:
etc.
It should consist of:
1. A science, i.e. scientific investigation of what is sustainable to the Earth, how she can reproduce what humans are consuming, damaging or destroying from her.
2. A strategy: to what and whom it should be addressed, targeted, e.g. deforestation, land use, air destruction, climate modifications, water infection, etc.
3. A methodology: what to do to change and heal the current situation: legislation, education, fines, new technologies, reduction of activities, of consumption, right ethical advertisement and marketing, changes or creation of institutions.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I congratulate you for this far-reaching idea. Thank you."
~ Idea 3449 ~
Will humans ever become really smart? Reviewing my life in war and peace I often doubt it. Then my natural optimism and non-giving up return and make me dream and conceive again endless new ideas.
~ Idea 3450 ~
The cosmic energies which have produced hundreds of thousands of plants and species in the favorable life conditions of this planet might now give up their designs and efforts. Why? Because man, the most advanced species has not recognized his duty not to reatomize the Earth, not to destroy her living conditions and to save the plants and the species which are necessary for this planet's further evolution.
The human species governed by 189 sovereign multi-directed nations, military forces and giant businesses is very likely to put an end to the evolution of this rare, perhaps unique life-bearing planet in the universe, if we do not change course.
~ Idea 3451 ~
The United Nations must urgently be transformed into an appropriate all Human and Earth Evolutionary Agency to help humanity fulfill the requirements and challenges of further evolution.
E.g. its recommendations for peace, population control, consumption control and saving the Earth's natural living resources must absolutely and urgently be implemented by governments.
~ Idea 3452 ~
Perhaps the new ideology for the 21st century will be eco-humanism (oikos, the home and humanity) or Earth-humanism, taking good care of humanity and of the Earth in order to achieve a happy humanity on a well-preserved Earth. Cosmo-humanism, cosmo-earthism and cosmocracy might be next, namely the fulfillment of our further evolution in the universe through awareness and implementation of what the cosmic forces, God, the Great Spirit or other universe spirits expect from us.
~ Idea 3453 ~
If the United Nations were located in Russia, China or another country which would not pay its dues and not ratify the treaties agreed to in that organization the United States would be the first to protest and request that the United Nations be moved to another country. But for the US to do so is considered normal and rightful. Unfortunately, due to the dominant power position of the United States in the world, the rest of the world remains silent.
Hopefully the UN will soon transform itself into a community, into a family of all humans, as dreamt by its founders.
~ Idea 3454 ~
Here I am at the age of seventy-seven completely at a loss about the meaning of my life after so many experiences in so many places of the world. I do not see the sense of my temporary, small life on this tiny planet in the infinite universe and eternal stream of time. From most points of the universe our planet Earth cannot even be seen, being so small. Hence, how about me?
Then I remember having once seen in an exhibit on the universe a very long map on a wall representing an infinity of galaxies, stars and planets. There was an arrow saying, "In this area is our solar system and the Earth." There was not even a dot to represent them! I was deeply shocked, but after a while I redressed myself saying: well, on this non-represented dot, in this empty area, I am fully alive and able to see and embrace this entire, fabulous map of the universe designed by fellow humans.
And I suddenly felt very great, extended to the universe of which I am a cosmic creature, a being at one with the heavens, with the Earth and with infinite time. Might it not be the meaning of all human life to feel the totality, the incredible marvel of everything that is part of it? Yes, our Earth and all its living creatures are creations of the universe and so are we. We must therefore contribute to the ascending, further evolution expected by the cosmos. Our Earth is a miraculous, perhaps unique manifestation, embodiment, creation, transformation of the mysterious forces of the universe. And all humans are temporary, miraculous co-participants, co-workers in it. How marvelous, how beautiful it is to be blessed with life!
~ Idea 3455 ~
I have said this before, but I cannot help repeating it in view of its importance:
In 1970, during the twenty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations we published a forecast that in the year 2000 the world population, at the rate of increase at that time, would reach 7.3 billion people.
Well, due to the UN warning, during the fortieth anniversary in 1985, this estimate was down to 6.1 billion (in October 2000 we reached 6 billion). The UN's warning thus achieved in thirty years the non-addition of 1.2 billion more humans to the world population.
But, at the current rate the world population is still estimated to increase to 8.91 billion in 2050. almost 3 billion more than now. And during the last thirty years we have destroyed thirty percent of the nature of this planet.
The Earth:
"You are right dear Robert to repeat and repeat these figures. Don't governments and people realize that this will lead to catastrophe if humanity does not change its reproducing and overconsuming ways? My whole future evolution is at stake."
~ Idea 3456 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I am sometimes glad that humans are dying. If not, what would they not invent and consume, willingly or unwillingly destroying me?"
I:
I do not agree with you, they are part of you and return to you. They will learn to love and preserve you. Have patience. It is such a new lesson to learn.
~ Idea 3457 ~
If Julius Caesar returned to Earth he would say to us: if you know so much about the universe from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, if you have discovered that it is a breathtaking, unlimited cosmos how come that I see nowhere statues of Gods? We knew much less in Rome but everywhere you could see statues thanking the Gods for what we knew, what we were and what we had.
~ Idea 3458 ~
It occurred to me very belatedly when explaining the Robert Muller Schools and their curriculum to my daughter-in-law Mari-Téré that the early program in which pregnant mothers are educating and talking to their children in their womb was already practiced by my mother when she was pregnant with me.
She told me once that she dreamt to marry a very intelligent man but out of necessity, being an orphan she married my father who was a wonderful, kind and handsome young man but was not an intellectual.
She wanted therefore to bear a child of intelligence who would go far in life. She prayed for that everyday and told me her dreams in her womb hoping that I would not disappoint her.
Well, I tried my utmost to fulfill her dream. Mothers' dreams must be included in the dreamology, the science of dreams for a better world.
~ Idea 3459 ~
This has become a very unjust, unethical planet in the universe due to the continued selfish purposes of business, the sovereignties of nations, the supremacy of materialism, the militaries and the victory of the strongest. I recommend the urgent convening of a UN World Conference on Justice, Ethics and the Future of the Human and Earth Community.
~ Idea 3460 ~
There exists an International Association of Landscape Architects. I looked at the etymology of these words and learned that architect means "the designer and supervisor of the construction of buildings" and scaping means "to improve the appearance of a piece of land"
I recommend that this association should change its name to: World Association of Earth Beautifiers.
~ Idea 3461 ~
We should establish a world list of "you cannot be happy if..."
there is a war
there is hunger
there is no home
there is crass injustice
there is no nature
there is no fresh, pure air
there is violence in your neighborhood
there is no education
there is no employment for your children
there is no beauty
etc.
Yes, it would be interesting to establish such a list. I can prove at least one of them, namely you cannot be happy if there is a war. That was my case when I lived the incredible horrors and dangers of World War II and decided that I would devote my life to peace in the world and put an end to all wars, militaries and armaments. Lists of "I am happy when..." should also be written by everyone.
~ Idea 3462 ~
From our well-preseved, little farm on sacred Mt. Rasur we can see more and more planes landing and taking off in the valley below. They are now bringing daily two thousand foreign tourists to see in Costa Rica a nature they envy, having in large part lost theirs at home. What a pollution these planes produce. It seems that no country can win anymore.
~ Idea 3463 ~
I heard over the radio that the number of near collisions of airplanes in the United States is increasing very substantially: it now reaches about 150 daily.
~ Idea 3464 ~
The whole scientific world, the whole business, marketing and advertising worlds are filled with ideazation, i.e. constantly new ideas. The only worlds which are almost devoid of ideas are the political and the social worlds which are the most important ones to bring about a better world and ensure our ascending evolution.
~ Idea 3465 ~
The only good, significant political changes in the last fifty-five years, since the creation of the UN were:
no world war
decolonization:
the end of the cold war
the creation of the European Union of fifteen countries henceforth without borders between them
the creation of Ministries of the Environment
the creation of a Vice-President for Global Affairs in the United States.
Still missing are:
Ministries of Peace
Ministries of the Future
Ministries of Happiness
Ministries of Cleanliness
A proper global Earth government.
~ Idea 3466 ~
How many leaders in the world worry about the fact that there will be seventy-eight million more people in the world in this year 2000 after deducting from the 128 million of newly born the 50 million humans who will die and that next year the increase will be only a little less, namely seventy-six million more people?
A much more rapid decline of population should be a priority item on the agenda of world affairs.
~ Idea 3467 ~
There is another very fundamental human right which must be claimed by the people of the world: the right to just and proper government at all levels: municipal, state, provincial, national, continental and world level. The present political system which lets the rich get richer among countries and inside countries cannot be allowed to continue. Revolutions against it must be avoided by rapid correction.
~ Idea 3468 ~
I will never cease wondering how the supposedly most advanced, intelligent species on planet Earth, humanity, can take such contradictory, opposed stands on the following:
- on the one hand consider the killing of a human being by another as the highest conceivable crime, take innumerable measures to prevent it and punish it most severely including by a death penalty.
- on the other hand tolerate that its territorial subdivisions called nations arm themselves with the most horrible weapons capable of destroying all life on Earth, to have entire armies of killers who are congratulated, honored, medaled and remembered as heroes in history.
What would we say if we found in the universe another planet with a species doing that?
~ Idea 3469 ~
Positive thinking, dreams, ideas and optimism are creating cosmic waves which in mysterious ways still unknown to us help our dreams become a reality. Since we are all cosmic beings this is not unnatural.
~ Idea 3470 ~
What a wonderful world it will be when we will do as much for the Earth as we do already for one-fifth of humanity.
At this point an outer space being talked to me:
"Dear Robert, from our point of view your world is still in distress: your system makes the rich ever richer, lets the poor grow in incredible numbers and barely begins to devote any resources to your Earth. You do not have at the top a proper government and administration for the totality of your beautiful planet and for all humanity. Your future is very doubtful. You must absolutely change course."
~ Idea 3471 ~
It is forgotten that early in the 1970's when the environmental issue came up in the United Nations Russia proposed that a commission on the environment be created in the UN Security Council. To elevate the issue or to be able to use the veto?
~ Idea 3472 ~
My grandparents lived through two European wars (1870-71, 1914-18), and one of them lived also through World War II.
I lived through World War II and now I am in the middle of one of the biggest wars ever in human history, the undeclared, unplanned and unwanted war against nature, against the Earth. It is prophetic that the Earth Council created by the second UN world conference on the environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 has moved to the site of the UN University for Peace. Together they we will work very hard to obtain not only peace among humans but peace also with our dear, unique, magnificent, miraculous Earth and nature.
~ Idea 3473 ~
The two fundamental options of humanity for its future are moreness and lessness: there is still need for much moreness for humans in the poor countries, but there should be the beginning of more lessness in the rich countries. Alas, the current philosophy and 'values' are for moreness everywhere which will lead to the destruction of the vital elements of the Earth and to the end of evolution.
A factor of hope is the loss of population of forty million people from now to the year 2050 in the rich countries, since a western person consumes thirty times more Earth resources than an inhabitant of the poor countries.
~ Idea 3474 ~
Another factor of hope is the birth of a strong movement of voluntary simplicity and frugality of life by the inhabitants of the United States. This should become a major movement in all rich, overconsuming countries and in affluent segments of the populations of all countries.
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I thank you for this and the preceding idea. They bring me elements of hope but I would add two comments:
One is that the US has become the model for the rest of the world. While the US has a vast territory per inhabitant and can still afford the ideas of moreness, many other countries in the world no longer can but are copying the United States.
Secondly, even if more United States people have opted for more simple and frugal lives they must market and advertise moreness of buying and consumption because they work for corporations which must develop and export moreness wherever they can in the world, whether they want it or not due to King Stock Market..
I therefore still do not see the salvation of the human species."
~ Idea 3475 ~
It is the duty of all humanity to be optimistic, to dream, to have ideas and to reject all pessimism and negative thoughts, feelings and actions because they emit mysterious cosmic rays or flows of energies of communication which contribute to a better or to a worse world.
~ Idea 3476 ~
At a conference on world peace and inner peace in May 1999 at the International School of Amsterdam created on the basis of my World Core Curriculum, the following thought of mine was the guideline:
"The time has come for the implementation of a spiritual vision of the world's affairs. The entire planet must elevate itself into the spiritual, cosmic throbbing of the universe."
During the conference these other statements were also cited:
"Our main task today is to raise individuals to a higher spiritual level enabling them to respect their inner selves and be impelled by a moral force."
Gorbachev
"If in the next ten years we do not succeed in giving a soul, a spirituality selfhood and a meaning to Europe our efforts will have been in vain."
Jacques Delors
President of the European Commission
"What I believe is that Europe needs more soul."
Jacques Santer
Prime Minister of Luxembourg
~ Idea 3477 ~
Do not bring your money to the rich, to the big stores, to the supermarkets. Do not buy the Coca Colas and other soft drinks. Support the little merchants who need you to live moderate lives and bring up well their children.
~ Idea 3478 ~
Since new wars between nations have become very unlikely the US military have developed a new strategy to justify their existence and the substantial funds they receive. Here are some elements of that strategy:
1. To be the armed champions against drug trafficking in the world. Examples: the agreement received from Costa Rica that US war vessels can navigate all the coastal waters of that demilitarized country to prevent the illicit entry of drugs via sea. Another example, 1.3 billion dollars given to the Colombian army to fight drug dealers, possibly an excuse for a new war in that country like the earlier ones in Central America.
2. The development of an 'environmental military security'. For example, measures to provoke holes in the ozonosphere above nations which do not agree with the United States so that infra-red rays will create skin cancers on the population of that country.
And there must be others. According to Napoleon and Clausewitz, militaries must always have a total strategy without any loopholes, without any possibility of being taken unaware. The United States militaries have a total review of their strategies and methods every five years. The poor minuscule UN has not been allowed to do that even once in all its 55 years of existence.
~ Idea 3479 ~
If architects and so-called builders could devote as much time to nature and to the Earth as they do to make more money from construction it would become an infinitely better world. We need 'Earthitects', people specializing in preserving and helping nature to regain ground and ever more beauty. Why not create Departments of Earthitecture in universities?
~ Idea 3480 ~
How can any human be happy and proud to kill another, even many other human beings? Does this exist on our planet Earth? Yes, and wholesale. Those humans are called militaries. They even get medals and honors for it.
How long will this last on a planet which had the intelligence, ethics and courage to suppress colonialism, slavery and racial genocide, killing whole groups of humans? Let us make military genocide a first target on our continued humane progress and evolution.
~ Idea 3481 ~
We should have a multitude of planned Earth recovery areas, Earth recovered areas and Earth protected areas, decided and implemented by municipal, local, provincial, national, continental authorities and by the United Nations.
The Earth:
"I would be very thankful for that."
~ Idea 3482 ~
Municipalities and governments should decide and implement legally that any building permit submitted by builders and architects must be accompanied by an environmental impact study and a minimum requirement of land planted with trees and vegetation.
~ Idea 3483 ~
I often think that I am a nut coming up with my ideas.
Barbara comments that the people and the Earth need my nuttiness!
~ Idea 3484 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, the same way as there is a Kyoto Convention on the limits and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the various countries of the world there should also be a world commission and a convention on the maximum surfaces of highways, roads and streets allowed per each one hundred thousand inhabitants in each country of the world."
~ Idea 3485 ~
What one human person can do:
Reading the final copy of Ideas 3001 to 3500 before printing I learned with astonishment the size of the following international aid programs I helped to create.
The United Nations Development Program which matches the combined aid of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank:
The World Food Program which is the biggest aid program in the world, even bigger than the United Nations Development Program:
The International Development Association linked with the World Bank which complements the classical loans of the World Bank with concessional aid at more favorable interest rates and repayment conditions than those of the Bank.
What a satisfaction this was to me. After all it pays to have ideas and dreams and not to accept that they are impossible.
I must open a file on the successes I had in my life. More and more come back to my mind.
~ Idea 3486 ~
I could have not delivered the passionate speech which obtained the creation of the UN Development Program (see Idea 1924 in Volume IV).
I could have not proposed that the rich countries stop burning their surplus agricultural crops to keep prices high, and to create instead a UN Fund to channel them to the hungry people of the world. (The World Food Program).
I could have not proposed to the World Bank to create a new agency helping them to give more favorable loans to poor countries. (The International Development Association)
I could have not written 4000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World. Perhaps a few more good miracles will happen, God willing and you dear reader too.
~ Idea 3487 ~
To dream as I dream is not only a joy but also a duty. It is the product of fifty years of world service. I have little personal merit. I am the result of the gifts and inputs of many, many people during my life. They as speaking to you through me.
~ Idea 3488 ~
Reading a chapter from my book New Genesis I found that in 1982, when the book was published, the world population was 4.8 billion people. Well we are now 6 billion in October 1999 and will be 6.1 billion at the end of 2000, i.e. 1.2 billion more in eighteen years. And a child born today will live at the age of fifty in a world of 8.91 billion people, 2.8 billion more than today.
Does this not call for the convening of a United Nations World Population Emergency Conference as I repeatedly insist upon?
~ Idea 3489 ~
I received anonymously the following text by a Zimbabwan lawyer:
1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police.
2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.
3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother.
4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.
5. Imagine that members of that nations' black minority, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.
6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that nation's black minority were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.
7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 537 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.
8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its mostly hotly disputed district.
9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.
10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.
None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange world country.
~ Idea 3490 ~
In the year 2000, there is still no evidence or sign that there exists any other planet with life in any of the large number of solar systems in any of the vast galaxies of the universe. The number of conditions for life to be born on any planet is still the highest improbability figure biologists and mathematicians have ever put together.
The Earth being an incredible, miraculous, perhaps unique body in the universe endowed with the most incredible variety of life forms is it possible that we humans, the most advanced and knowledgeable of all species are still incapable to bring good order, harmony and preservation of these miracles and are even beginning to destroy them?
This is ununderstandable, outright madness. Yes, we are becoming an evolutionary destructive, flabbergasting misfit of evolution.
Doesn't any great leader or country or movement arise in this calamity to change that course and help our continued miraculous evolution towards a perfect, admirable planet in the universe?
No, I will never understand it. May this miracle at long last happen in the 21st century. May God or the mysterious forces of the universe allow it.
~ Idea 3491 ~
"People retire so that they can give their ideas after a whole life of experiences." Please dear reader, if you are retired take note of this important remark by my wife Barbara. She recommended to me on 11 July 1994, when there were 2000 days left to 1 January 2000 that I should write down every day an idea. I am happy that I did it and will continue until I die. I hope that many readers will do the same.
~ Idea 3492 ~
The Earth:
"Dear Robert, I know that you humans, my children, love massaging and caressing. Would it not be possible for you to at least caress me once in a while?"
I:
That is a very good idea. Henceforth each time I go into nature I will caress your grass, your flowers or the leaves of your trees.
The Earth:
"You could also hug some of my trees, please."
~ Idea 3493 ~
The Earth does not belong to us humans, we humans belong to the Earth. We are living Earth which cannot and does not ignore us. The cosmos does not belong to us humans, we humans belong to the cosmos. We are living cosmos which cannot and does not ignore us.
~ Idea 3494 ~
Coming from abroad and visiting big stores in the United States at years intervals I can only conclude that US and world capitalism have become crazy. Producers do not know what to invent, produce and sell anymore. The time will soon come when more than half of total US production of goods and services will be waste. In western Europe it is the same if not worse. Spread to the poor rest of the world it might mean the end of life on this planet. It is absolutely necessary to reverse that trend. The ministers of environment of governments should look into it, challenge it and come up with a completely new economic system for this planet.
~ Idea 3495 ~
The United Nations has succeeded to end political colonization of the poor countries by the rich, powerful ones.
Alas, that colonization has been replaced by economic, business and consumer colonization.
A great new challenge has thus arisen: the debusinessization, dedollarization, deadvertization, economic decolonization of the poor countries and the creation of a true, proper, just economic world.
~ Idea 3496 ~
God convened a meeting of all the saints in heaven and asked them which ones wanted their name withdrawn from cities on Earth which were overpopulated, overpolluted and beset with many social problems and violence.
Quite a few requested it following the example of the angels for Los Angeles and Saint Francis for San Francisco (see Idea 2743 in Volume VII).
But one, Santa Barbara took the floor and said:
"I do not want this to be done for Santa Barbara in California. I love that city. All her inhabitants and many visitors and people love it. It is a jewel of well-preserved nature and I was killed in the Middle Ages for loving nature. It has trees lining all its streets. Its air is the purest one can have. Its traffic is fluid. It is famous for its cleanliness and for the prohibition of advertisements beyond a very modest size. It should be a model for many other cities in the world. I continue to recommend to it further improvements. For example, it has a Chamber of Commerce, but not a Chamber of the Environment. It has a Bank of America, but not a Bank of Nature. It has a Santa Barbara Bank and Trust but should have a Santa Barbara Earth and Beauty Trust. It has a Washington National Bank but I would like to see a Santa Barbara Natural Bank. I am sure they will do it and therefore I ask you dear God to maintain my name for that city of which I am so proud."
God:
"Okay, it is agreed."
~ Idea 3497 ~
The Earth:
"I do not like your words 'national parks'. Is my nature going to be parked like animals in a zoo or cars in a parking lot? Please give it a better name. For example, Virgin Mother Earth where all my nature on Earth would be protected."
I:
I will try.
~ Idea 3498 ~
It is only when we dream, pray and meditate that we are fully part of the invisible, heavenly, cosmic energies called by some God, the Gods or Great Spirit who want us to help them further shape it into a marvel of evolution in the universe, into the paradise it was always meant to be and has become already in large part.
~ Idea 3499 ~
December 9, 2000
Dear Robert,
As you suggested I have written down what I see as the next world or universe organization beyond the United Nations.
The first level would be an extension of the model of the United Nations to all segments of life. That is, an information gathering and mediation group for every conceivable aspect of life of this planet and beyond.
i.e.
Etc.
The second level above these organizations would be an overarching Global, World Government or Universe Organization comprised of representatives from all the other organizations. This overarching organization would have legislative and judicial powers with world level courts and world laws.
Also needed is a cohesive world monetary system and world or global stock market.
All decisions by any of the groups would have to be based on what is best for the survival and flourishing of the Earth as a whole and humanity as a whole.
Carolyn Hawkins
Thank you, dear Carolyn for these splendid views. May they be seriously considered by heads of states and by all political parliaments, parties, circles and universities in the world.
The Earth:
"And thank Carolyn Hawkins on my behalf too."
~ Idea 3500 ~
I feel dutibound to conclude these 3500 ideas and dreams for a better world with this ultimate, overriding one:
This planet desperately needs our help. Please stop excessive, wrong, unnecessary economic 'growth', reduce constructions, business, child reproduction, unnecessary consumption and travel, overadvertisement, overmarketing, overpackaging, overpollution, overpopulation, overgarbaging and anything else that can harm or destroy our miraculous planet Earth so unique in the universe. Let us be instead her caring, loving children. Let us rethink our future. Let us be careful.