By Garry Davis
You are sitting at your computer... anywhere. You
dial any of a dozen local telephone numbers that
connect you with a regional database: TogetherNet,
CompuServe, America Online, PeaceNet, etc. Outside
the U.S., you might go through the Public Data
Network or a local database service. You log on.
Among the services provided is an entry to the
Internet. You choose that option.
Wham! You're instantly connected to
millions of the world's people! The Internet is
dynamic evidence of one world. Like the Universal
Postal Union founded in 1875, it operates on a world
communal basis accessible to every citizen. The
political implications are revolutionary in both
their public and personal dimensions.
Already, you have resolved to consider yourself a
world citizen. And why not? Your major problems are
global. Besides, it's your world, too. So now,
sitting in front of your computer in your hometown,
logged-in to the world and fellow citizens, you are
actually in a global, synergetic mode. What to do?
The possibilities are endless, and like all new
territory, a bit daunting. Your access to information
is virtually unlimited. You have joined the global
nervous system, the "seamless web of
communication," as cybernetician Stafford Beer
put it, permitting instant, personal feedback from
your fellow world citizens. You are part of a world
people interacting in a peaceful environment termed
"cyberspace." In political terms, you are
expressing the "self-determination of
peoples," a right recognized by the U.N. Charter
and by the International Conventions of Political and
Civil Rights and Economic and Social Rights.
You are a dynamic citizen of the "global
village" of Marshall MacCluhan. In short, you
are now a Net Citizen!
You must learn to behave like one. That's called
"netiquette." Be peaceful! Don't pollute!
Resources are limited, so don't overuse! Be patient!
Don't treat people as means to your end. Give as much
as you receive! There are no Internet police. There
is no positive law to obey or be enforced. Then
again, true citizens don't need police. The word
"citizen" implies self-policing;
"government," self-governing essentially.
How does all this gibe with your exclusionary
national allegiance? Are there still enemies out
there beyond your nation's frontiers? That's what
your national leaders claim. But hold on - you are
already out there in joyous, peaceful communication.
You don't fight people with whom you have implicitly
established a new social contract. Is war still an
option for you when millions of your fellow Net
Citizens are open, friendly, eager to know and live
peacefully with you?
Merely by accessing the Internet in your own home,
you have transcended nationality. Surprisingly,
though, nowhere on the Internet itself will you find
the words "world law" or "world
government."** The omission is significant and
challenging.
Your very presence on the Internet, however,
bestows a contractual right and duty of global
citizenship. Far-fetched? Well, if the pope, Buddhist
monks, Jewish rabbis, Islamic imams/muftis, etc. can
swear primary allegiance to a religion, if the U.N.
Secretary General can swear allegiance to an
assemblage of states, if Justice of the International
Court Of Justice can swear allegiance to so-called
international law, if transnational corporations can
wheel and deal on the global level in overt mockery
of national laws, and if satellite technology has
largely rendered national borders irrelevant, thereby
condoning statelessness and the personal exercise of
sovereign choice, then your right to claim legitimate
world citizenship by virtue of your Internet
relationship is certainly sanctioned as a valid new
and global social contract.
How to manifest this new contract? Simple. Declare
it... on the Internet. Introduce a statement
announcing your new allegiance. Something like this:
"Hello, fellow Net Citizens. I am a sovereign
World Citizen. As such, I declare myself to be in a
global social contract with everyone who is now and
who will be on the Internet. Through this contract, I
declare my peaceful spirit and comportment toward
you. This contract is made freely and without
reservations."
Say it however you want. That's sovereignty:
choice. Then send a copy to your local nation-state
president, informing him of your new primary
allegiance. Begun in the early 1970s as a Pentagon
computer network - designed, ironically, to send and
receive military information after a nuclear war -
the Internet currently has a civilian
"population" of over 12 million. And as
more universities and businesses come on line, the
Net grows at an astonishing 10 percent per month!
"The Internet is much more than a network of
networks. It's also much more than a huge repository
of information. The Internet is a virtual community,
existing only ephemerally in physical reality,"
writes Michael Frasse in "The Mac Internet
Tour Guide" (Ventana Press). "Our
society has made a commitment to openness and to free
communication," adds Lotus Development
Corporation founder Mitchell Kapor, writing in
Scientific American (Sept. 1991).
"But," he warns, "if our legal and
social institutions fail to adapt to new technology,
basic access to the global electronic media could be
seen as a privilege, granted to those who play by the
strictest rules, rather than as a right held by
anyone who needs to communicate." How to link
the Internet with world law? First, let's be clear
that world law has not been explicitly defined.
From the Decalogue through the Magna Carta,
and on to the Declaration of Independence, the
Nuremberg Principles and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, along with all the nation-state
constitutions in between, primordial principles
guiding human action have been enunciated for
millennia. But there are other aspects of world law.
Nature itself, for example, may be said to operate
according to world environmental law.
A common denominator, at least in the social
environment, is communication. Until this century,
communication among humans was restricted and
partial. Now, at last, a global nervous feed-back
system is in place.
"Common" world law is therefore already
operative. Jean-Jacques Rousseau first
wrote about the "social contract" in the
18th century. It is recognized generally as the sine
qua non of democratic governance. People agree
to live peacefully with each other: "My freedom
ends where yours begins." "One for all and
all for one." "Unity in diversity."
"Self-determination of peoples." These and
similar understandings define and clarify the social
contract. Thomas Paine's "Common
Sense," the document that fired the
American revolution, complements Rousseau's credo:
"Society is produced by our wants, and
government by our wickedness; the former promotes our
happiness positively by uniting our affections, the
latter negatively by restraining our vices." The
very fact of the Internet, a concrete evidence of our
society's wants, permits a global social contract to
manifest itself....without overt government!
John Nesbitt's latest blockbuster,
"Global Paradox," (Wm. Morrow & Co.)
likewise illuminates the quickening breakdown of the
nation-state as a result of "forces that are
making the world into a single economy... There also
is evolving a new global code of conduct to protect
those rights spread by the extraordinary reach of
communications technology, which will in time ensure
that all communities are held to the same standards
of behavior." The 20th century human,
dynamically integrated into global interdependence,
is at last being challenged into personal world
governance! But it is at the same time a collective
challenge. A communications vehicle becomes necessary
whereby we can individually and collectively exercise
world governance. Linked to the Internet with the
help of organizations like Kapor's Electronic
Frontier Foundation and their counterparts
throughout the world, World Syntegrity can evolve
into an ongoing global referendum instrument enabling
declared world citizens to vote on global issues
affecting their individual and communal lives.
World government of, by and for the people of the
world is now at our fingertips!
** Until Now!
.gif)
