We are many we are one. We are all in God. Our world will unite into one nation with self-rule for all peoples. We will share visions and make peace and help each other to feel peaceful.
Let us first respect each other enough to agree not to kill each other, to be non-violent with each other, and to be willing to open a dialogue with each other to try to resolve any conflicts. To build more peace it is most important that we stop taking out our pain and fear on each other, and that we help each other to feel less pain and fear. Let us call on everyone, not to kill and not to attack anyone, neither a child nor an adult. Let us help each other to raise and teach children without hitting them. Peace begins at home. Nothing affects peace more than how we deal with our pain. Let us get braver and more honest about our pain. Violence, cruelty, and other emotional disorders have been coming from pain, the pain of not feeling loved enough and touched enough, the pain of having been abused physically, sexually, or emotionally, and frequently also the pain of hunger and malnutrition. It is the hunger for love that has created the hunger for food in our world. We have been living in a love-starved, touch-starved world. We have been intensely competing to satisfy our basic needs for attention, affection, and touching, and this is what has caused most of the competition for power, riches, and fame. We have been competing to find and attract partners to have children with, to have enough food for ourselves and our families, and for just about everything under the sun. Let us become more honest with each other about our real needs and feelings, our hopes and pains and fears, our fears of death, our fears of rejection, our fears of growing old painfully and dying painfully, our fears of not being remembered or appreciated by the living after we die, our fears of being violated, and other fears which we need to address. We need to share more and grow closer, and replace pain and fear with love wherever we can.
We will build a much more peaceful world on our planet Earth. All the land belongs to God, to the one, great, endless unknown, and we will stop fighting over it. Each people that wish will govern themselves as a self-ruling nation within one world-wide-nation, and will be given a seat in a greatly reformed and more helpful United Nations. In disputed territories, the region of self-rule for each people can be extended to those villages, settlements, and population centers where that people dwell, with the whole world evolving into a peaceful tapestry. In some places, small enclaves of the region of self-rule of one people will be surrounded by the region of self-rule of another people, with each of the peoples aiming for peaceful coexistence. The location of borders and the use and sharing of resources will be decided through a consensus process, through a decision-making process that aims for consensus and peace, instead of through war or the threat of force.
We will aim for consensus. Consensus occurs when each person involved in making a decision is able to agree on it. Consensus is most easily reached when each person is given an equal opportunity to be heard, without being interrupted, and when each person makes an effort to arrive at proposals and solutions that all can support. It will help us to reach consensus if we sit or stand in a circle, becoming a circle for consensus, a peace circle. This Covenant of Peace can be amended to create consensus. Peace requires consensus and consensus requires respect, non-violence, and power-sharing.
Let the chief executive of each nation be joined by eleven other people from that nation to form a national executive council of twelve members, sharing power equally, and operating by a consensus process in their decision-making. Let the national executive council replace the office of chief executive. The council can be chaired each lunar month by a different chairperson in an automatic rotation of its members, or be chaired however it decides, and it can also arrange a way to operate without a chairperson. Let each member serve no more than one term in the national executive council. If at first most people want to elect the members of the national executive council, they can do so by writing names of their own choice on a blank ballot. As we all learn more about mastering the art of consensus, it will become more preferable for the national executive council to be selected through a drawing in a national lottery in which every able-minded person wishing to serve has an equal chance of being selected. Selection by lottery will help us eliminate the fierce competition for political power. Elections have divided us, they have been bought or been manipulated in other ways, they have not provided equal time for all the different candidates and points of view. Instead of forming into political parties, which have tried to impose majority rule in violation of the minority, let each person share what is in his or her heart and work for consensus.
Let the people themselves be allowed to address the national executive council directly, and let their words and their concerns be well listened to. Let anyone wishing to speak to the national executive council submit her or his name to a national lottery, and if chosen, be given an appointment to address the council for a brief and equal amount of time. People can also write letters to the national executive council which can be made permanently available for all to read in cyberspace. Let people propose solutions that can help bring consensus.
Twelve is a good number for trying to reach consensus. We can break into six groups of two, and four groups of three, and three groups of four, and two groups of six. And we all can try to compromise somewhat and to unite more, for the sake of peace and harmony.
If the national executive council is repeatedly unable to reach consensus on a certain issue, then a special council can be convened by drawing twelve names in a national lottery of every able-minded person wishing to serve, and that special council, in addition to the national executive council, can attempt to reach consensus on that specific issue. Whichever council first arrives at consensus can hand down the decision that will go into effect. If consensus is not reached in either council, then that special council can resign and another special council can be drawn in another national lottery, and this process can be continued until one of the councils reaches consensus. If none of the councils are able to reach consensus on this specific issue, then let the national executive council hand down the broadest majority-rule decision it is capable of.
Let all members of the national executive council, after completing their one term of service, be invited to serve in a national advisory council for the remainder of their lives if they wish. The national advisory council will aim for consensus among its members on subjects that are of the most vital concern to the nation and to the world. The discussions and decisions of the national advisory council can offer some guidance to the national executive council, to the nation, to people throughout the world, and to the United Nations. The national advisory council, which can also be called the senior council, will have no executive power to enforce its decisions. In each nation the national government will be responsible for providing all members of the national advisory council and all members of the national executive council with special security protection. The time will come when special security protection will no longer be needed for anyone in our world, once there is sufficient education and understanding about the importance of behaving non-violently.
A deep and lasting world peace will require a global end to the weapons race and a global program for disarmament. The progress we make in ending the weapons race and in disarmament will depend largely on the progress we make in non-violence and in power-sharing. In the search for peace, nothing is more important than a commitment on the part of everyone not to initiate violence and to be willing to share power.
Let all members of the United Nations meet together as many times as necessary to arrange, through a consensus process, a permanent international ban on all further weapons research, production, and sales, and to develop a procedure and schedule for global disarmament. Let us convert from war preparation to peace preparation economies, from all the weapon manufacturing industries to industries whose products continuously lessen and minimize the damage we might cause each other and the life around us. Let those who have been making weapons of war be offered jobs in the work of disarmament, or be given financial assistance by their national governments until they are able to enter into alternative livelihoods. Let weapon manufacturing facilities be retooled to produce peaceful and environmentally clean products. Let time, energy and resources that have been directed towards war preparation be redirected towards the increased health, peace, and well-being of everyone. Let all peoples and governments assist in this great work.
To end the weapons race and create the level of trust necessary before we can completely eliminate the most destructive weapons from our world, let all nations agree to permanently prohibit all further research, production, and sales of all conventional and non-conventional weapons of war, and further agree to all simultaneously open themselves to teams of United Nations weapons inspectors. Let all nations then agree to simultaneously begin reductions of all types of conventional weapons by a certain percentage each year. Then let all nations agree to a simultaneous program whereby a certain percentage of all existing types of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and of any other existing types of weapons of mass destruction, will be properly dismantled and safely disposed of every year for a certain number of years, so that at the end of those years there will be no more such weapons anywhere in our world. Let former weapon manufacturing facilities be converted to facilities in which existing weapons will be properly dismantled and made ready for safe disposal. After we completely eliminate the most destructive weapons from our world, then in a similar manner and over a longer time period we will eventually eliminate all the remaining conventional weapons as well. Let us choose life, refrain from violence and from threats of force, and together create a world without war and without weapons of war.
Let us get food now to those who need it and eliminate starvation, hunger, and malnutrition from our world.
Let the gap between the richest and the poorest among us stop growing, and let us really begin now the processes that will continuously reduce this gap. Some of these processes will be voluntary, and some will have to be legislated by governments. New laws concerning corporations and world trade will need to be passed to insure the steady shrinking of this tremendous income inequality gap, instead of more of its skyrocketing growth. Let peaceful meetings be held between the richest and poorest among us, and indeed between all of us, to try to brainstorm and implement creative and generous solutions to this problem. Let us evolve from global corporate capitalism to an emphasis on local production for local consumption. Endless economic growth is completely incompatible with the ecology of our small and limited planet, and so the current system by necessity cannot go on indefinitely, and the sooner we change it the better. Let more work places peacefully become owned by all who work there, and let them practice power-sharing and decision-making by a consensus process. What will most help create more economic justice in our world is each of us feeling and being more loving and generous.
Let us learn from the past without blame, and avoid punishment for punishment’s sake. Everything happened the only way it could for an endless number of reasons. Let there be fair compensation for those who have been injured or suffered damage, to be awarded by judges or juries, and to be paid partially by national insurance funds set up for this purpose. Let one who has illegally or deceitfully caused another damage or loss make every effort to fairly compensate the damage and loss caused that other, with any amount in excess of the first person’s ability to pay being covered by national insurance. Let us take responsibility not to hurt each other, including not to hurt those who have been unable to take that responsibility until now. Let the focus be on real and effective rehabilitation instead of punishment, on rebuilding instead of destroying lives. Let us all think positive and be kind.
Let there be an end to all torture. Let us make every effort to successfully rehabilitate and free prisoners as quickly as possible.
Let us be willing to open a dialogue with anyone, to try to save lives, to try to create more peace, and to acknowledge that God is one, God is endless, God includes all of us.
A great light will come out of Jerusalem. Let us come together peacefully and share our various visions about Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and more. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are like the frosting on the cake. Let the children of God not fight over what the frosting will be, and instead get busy making the cake of peace, whose most important ingredients must be respect, non-violence, power-sharing, and decision-making by a consensus process.
A refocused, reformed and ever reforming United Nations will become the international government of the one world-wide-nation that will emerge. The United Nations General Assembly with many more members will meet in a number of places including Jerusalem, where it will sometimes gather in a big open tent on a hilltop. The General Assembly will aim for consensus, and consensus in the General Assembly will be the supreme statement of the United Nations. The United Nations Security Council can consist of at least eighteen members, none of whom will have a permanent seat, all of whom will be chosen from the General Assembly in an automatic rotation of its members, and each of whom will be able to exercise a veto to block consensus if need be. If the Security Council is repeatedly unable to reach consensus on a specific issue, then let it hand down the broadest majority-rule decision it is capable of. The Security Council will work to build more equality, justice and peace throughout the world, will aim for consensus among its members, and will help guide the General Assembly to reach consensus.
We will protect our precious planet and be gentle with life on Earth which is all one being. Let us remember that we live on a finite planet with finite resources and with a diversity of ecological systems that need to be protected. Throughout the world some ecological systems have been totally destroyed and others greatly destroyed by Human Beings. Let us stop destroying forests and other wilderness, and allow wilderness to gradually return. Let us stop killing and really start protecting Whales and Elephants and so much more magnificent Wildlife. And let us make a real effort to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun and contribute to global warming. Protecting life on Earth requires that we control and get beyond our population growth and our materialism, and that we learn to eat as vegetarian a diet as we can.
Let us take responsibility to try to find and practice safe family planning without resorting to abortions.
Remember that all violence is coming from pain and fear and creates more of the same, so it is not our destination, and so we need to abandon it to get to our destination.
Love is our direction and our destination. Love is life believing in itself. Love is having pleasure in accepting. We will become so much more loving and peaceful. We will serve and protect God by protecting life. We will disarm, and celebrate life, and share enough for everyone, and thank and protect God. We are many we are one.