A New World Picture

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Globalisation with a humane perspective

UN leads the way

"Let us be clear as to what is our ultimate aim. It is not just the negation of war, but the creation of a world of security and freedom, of a world which is governed by justice and the moral law. We desire to assert the pre-eminence of right over might and the general good against selfish and sectional aims. … We must and will succeed." Thus formulated the British prime minister Clement Attlee the goal of the United Nations in London in 1945.

Has the UN succeeded in living up to these elevated goals? The answer - almost half a century later - must be "no". On the other hand we see that the need for a UN that really works in accordance with its original intentions is greater than ever in the internationalised world of today.

A logical explanation

The needs put on the agenda by evolution or life itself actually point in the same direction as the goals of the United Nations. Evolution has lead to an ever stronger longing for a life in peace and harmony in more and more people simultaneously the world over. The fact that life has integrated and merged all the nations and peoples of the world and has made us mutually dependent on one another could seem to be a strange coincidence.

But there is nothing coincidental about this development, says Martinus. . With his world picture he provides a logical cosmology with an inspirational force that can integrate, mobilise and liberate the human and intellectual capacity that the project "a peaceful world" demands.

The world is suffering from a lack of love

But a cosmology, however good it may be, is not enough in itself. It is, as Martinus expresses it, "not the honey that must come to the bees, but the bees that must come to the honey". It is hunger that makes bees seek honey. Experiencing hunger is the same as experiencing a state of deprivation. Many people suffer from a lack of such things as food, heating, clean water and healthy housing conditions. And even more suffer in both the inner and the outer sense from a lack of health and peace, even though they may have a surfeit of food and other physical goods.

The lack of all these things is, when all is said and done, a symptom of a lack of love. It is the lack of love that causes such an unequal distribution of the world’s assets that large sections of mankind must starve and freeze. It is a lack of love that forces people to elbow their way forward at the expense of others. Everything else will ultimately be unimportant. For this reason a "science of love" is needed in order to satisfy Man’s spiritual hunger.

The "world state" in the making

Spiritual science is this "science of love". Its key message is that the development that takes place in the individual through the accumulation of his or her own experiences is the only way to a peaceful, united word than. In order for mankind as a whole to become interested in creating a global culture of peace, the contrasts between the various peoples must be levelled out. Here the technical evolution is of fundamental significance.

Previously the various peoples lived more isolated from one another in completely separate worlds. What did, for example, the Eskimos in Greenland know about the Aboriginals in Australia, and vice versa? Today it is quite another matter. The technical evolution has conquered all distances and connected the whole world together, making it a unit. "The world state came into existence when the first circumnavigation of the Earth was completed, and it has since then continuously stabilised its existence", says Martinus in a characteristic quotation.

World society at the level of the stone age

Martinus compares present world society to a society whose individuals are the nations. Each nation is thus in principle an individual. But the difference between the world society and a modern national society is that the world society as yet lacks an actual system of law and justice. And a world society without a world government and without a world police force is a society at the level of the stone age. This is important because the weapons of the world society’s individuals, that is the nations, are far more advanced today that those of stone age people were.

The anarchy that such a lack of order creates has, however, made many people realise the need for international cooperation and regulation. For this reason we see an ever clearer evolutionary tendency in the direction of a world authority and an international system of law and justice.

The new culture of giving

Just as we today regard it as a matter of course that one cannot monopolise the ownership of our common air or sunshine, so will people of the future also regard it as a matter of course that our material goods constitute, from a cosmic perspective, mankind’s common inheritance and property. For this reason one of the future world government’s most important tasks will be to administer and distribute these assets so that they will be a joy and blessing for all individuals and peoples.

Such a fundamental change in the world’s administration of assets cannot of course take place before a corresponding change has taken place in the mentality and morality of the individuals. The egoistic "grab-and-take" disposition that dominates individuals and society must be replaced by a "culture of giving". Such a culture is slowly being born on Earth. Its structure - both the inner structure in each of us, and the outer structure as it manifests itself in society and the world - still bears the characteristics of an unfinished embryo. It is a structure that is not yet ready to live an independent life. But it grows a little day by day and is continuously supplied with new nutrition from the "placenta" of the experiences.

12 points about the development of mankind and world society

In the first volume of Martinus’ main work Livets Bog (The Book of Life) he describes in Chapter 4 an international world kingdom in the making. He lists 12 points on which the terrestrial human energy of development will be focussed during the gradual creation of the future world society.

The victory of unselfishness over selfishness in all its forms. (The victory of common interest over private interest).
The creation of an international, democratic world government.
The disarmament of all countries for the benefit of the establishment of an international, impartial, world police force.
The development of an international, undisguised, not secret, supreme system of law and justice, represented by science’s most eminent beings in spiritual as well as in material fields, who would be qualified to know the difference between "abnormal actions" and "crimes", knowing the course of evolution and life’s eternal laws and being thereby a guarantee for absolute right and justice for everything and everyone.
The abolition of the private possession of natural resources in favour of their appropriation by the world state.
The abolition of money in favour of the establishment of an individual’s personally rendered work as the only denomination, and the receipt for it as their only means of payment.
The establishment of a common fund for childhood, old age and illness for the world state based on deductions from the work receipts.
The employment of machines for shortening material working hours in favour of study days and spiritual research.
The abolition of all bloodshed and policies of aggression.
The abolition of torture and capital punishment in favour of expert arrangements for internment and education.
The development of vegetarian food, of health, of the care of the body, and of healthy, light housing conditions.
The development of spiritual freedom, tolerance, humaneness and love for all living beings, for people and animals, for plants and minerals.

(Livets Bog, chapter 4, section 118).