The discussion during our recent Humanity for Peace Coalition meeting offered very interesting and thought-out interventions, including the Ten Principles proposal by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute which is a great platform to lay out a new direction for our planet.
The current crisis is going much deeper than geopolitical issues and International treaties. As I argue in my book titled The White-West: A Look in the Mirror, we are facing maybe the first global cultural war. The tensions of the White-West with China and Russia are not about technologies, economies, or energy but about cultural hegemony. Europe was doing just fine with Russia and the US was okay with China until the White-West began to fear it was losing control.
Just a few weeks ago we commemorated the 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. We must remember that the atomic bomb was developed for cultural dominance, not just as a war weapon. Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King wrote in his diary, “We now see what might have come to the British race had German scientists won the race [to develop the atom bomb]. It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe“. The objective of the destruction was to subjugate the Japanese culture by killing its civilians. This technique was used before during slavery and the colonialism period, creating a “Negro” and people of color subculture.
With the Trump phenomenon in the US and the rise of right-win candidates all over the world, the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Taliban in Afghanistan should not be understood as political issues. The U.S. Republican Party is now a white supremacist structure, the latest example being the revision of Florida’s education curriculum, which questioned the slavery period and goes far beyond making political points.
Our work today goes on requesting peace, diplomacy, and diversity. Our challenge is to build a new culture that will represent and integrate all our aspirations and bring us together toward a different future for our humanity. The question is, are we ready to lose our need to control everything? Human beings are as much in control of their destiny as we are interdependent on everyone and everything else. Do we have faith in our personal future as much as in that of all humanity?
Creating a new culture is not just having a slogan used by corporations and business-minded marketing communication. It’s something that affects our lives daily, it’s something that transcends all things that we have learned and believed. The 1960s were interesting in that sense: they had colors, music, a lifestyle, icons, and faces. Today what are we identifying with, what brings us all together? We have always found an intellectual justification for our division and mistrust of our universality. The question is not if AI is good or bad but how can be used to humanize the earth. We are not just against the war in Ukraine but against all wars because wars kill people.
We need to go deeper than in the 60’s. It’s necessary to build a culture based on our internal faith in humanity, with an unstoppable direction toward the future, a love for nonviolence, and a sincere reconciliation with oneself. We are facing a profound moment in human history. We are moving toward the first planetary human society, where the human being is becoming a central value and where everything else becomes secondary. Where each and everyone has the moral compass set to “treating others as you want them to treat you.” We are in front of this paradox where the Doomsday Clock is at 90 seconds to midnight and at the same time our development and possibilities are at their highest. In just a few years, we overcame a worldwide COVID pandemic, and the BRICS nations are meeting in South Africa, moving our humanity to a more multipolar world and contributing to the construction of a Universal Human Nation. Let’s build together a different culture that will change the direction of the world giving meaning to each one’s contribution to overcome pain and suffering.