How Can Eight Billion People Share One Earth?

The next great achievement of humanity may not be discovering another habitable planet. It may be discovering how eight billion human beings can live on this one with understanding, prosperity, fearlessness, and coexistence.

Seen from space, the earth is obviously one thing. Seen from the ground, it is divided into a great many pieces, each defended by people who are mostly trying to keep their families safe. This post asks a large question carefully: how can eight billion people share one earth? And it starts from a small place, because that is where any honest answer has to start.

This may sound utopian, or like a plan for world government. It is neither. It is a direction to test, starting with families, and it asks nobody to give up their community or culture.

Two ways to imagine unity

There are two ways to imagine the world becoming one.

The first is from the top: one power, one ideology, one set of rules, spread until everyone is inside it. History has tried this many times. It has usually needed force, and it has rarely lasted, in part because people who are made to belong don’t trust the thing they belong to.

The second is from understanding, upwards. People who understand themselves and their relationships form families that work. Families that work form villages that work. And so on, outward, each step resting on the one below it. Nothing is imposed. Each level exists because the level beneath it chose it.

Only the second kind of unity can be trusted. It is also the only kind K4M2A is interested in.

Step 1: Aim for an undivided society, not a uniform one

Madhyasth Darshan calls this an undivided society (अखण्ड समाज). Among the ways the Sanhita describes it: a human tradition free of individualist, communal and opportunist tendencies, where people’s awareness is human first, before it is the awareness of any particular community; and one that lives with clarity, prosperity, fearlessness and coexistence.

That does not mean erasing communities, languages or ways of life. It means none of them has to be defended against the others. A person can belong fully to their family, their village and their culture, and still be human before any of those.

“Taking part in the larger order and being organised in yourself are the same act.”

Step 2: Build order upward from families

Madhyasth Darshan also describes how such an order could be built, and it begins in the home. In what it calls a family-based order of self-rule (परिवार मूलक स्वराज्य व्यवस्था), a family of about ten people is the first unit. Each family chooses one member to take part in the next level. Ten families form a family group. Groups form a village family. Step by step, through ten levels, the same pattern reaches all the way to a world family assembly.

What matters is not the exact number of steps. It is the direction. Order grows outward from families that are already living well, instead of being handed down to families that are not. A good system needs less control as the people inside it understand more, and this is a system designed to rest almost entirely on understanding.

Step 3: Take care of five things at every level

In Manav Vyavahar Darshan, Shri A. Nagraj lists five things any human order must look after, at every level from family to world, and what success looks like in each:

Education and culture. Successful when people actually understand the meaning of things, not only the facts.

Justice and security. Successful when relationships are recognised, their values fulfilled, and both sides satisfied. This is what we mean by fairness.

Production and work. Successful when every family produces more than it needs.

Exchange and storage. Successful when goods are exchanged on the basis of the labour that went into them.

Health and restraint. Successful when people’s bodies are fit to live out what they understand.

Notice that none of these is about power. Each one is about a relationship working.

Step 4: Begin with order within

All of this can sound very far from an ordinary Tuesday. But order outside us and order inside us are not two separate projects. A person who is resolved within cannot help but be just in relationship, and a just person is already a small piece of an undivided society, wherever they live.

So the road to one earth doesn’t start with a treaty. It starts with a person who understands what they need, a family that isn’t afraid of its neighbours, and a village that can say how much is enough.

An idea to test, not a plan to impose

We want to be honest about what this is. It is a direction, drawn from a philosophy we find convincing, and it is not proven at the scale of a nation, let alone a world. By our own standard, it has to be tested by living it, first in a few families, then in a village, and reported honestly, including where it doesn’t hold.

If it can work for ten families, it is worth trying for a hundred. If it can’t, we would like to know why.

A protocol to try

Take the five areas any human order has to look after, education, justice, production, exchange and health, and ask them of your own household:

How do we help each other understand, not just know? How do we settle disagreements so both people are satisfied? Do we produce more than we need? How do we share and exchange with others? Are our bodies fit for the life we want to live?

Find the weakest of the five. That is where your household’s part in one earth begins.

Limitations

• There is no example yet of this order working at the scale of a village, let alone a nation.
• Ten levels of chosen representatives could, in practice, concentrate power the way other systems do.
• Our summary of Madhyasth Darshan’s social order is short and in our own words, and may miss important details.

References

1. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, अखण्ड समाज (undivided society), p. 1
2. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, परिवार मूलक स्वराज्य व्यवस्था, p. 112
3. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, मानव लक्ष्य (the human goal), p. 148
4. Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 144