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 The ABCs of Human Survival examines the effect of militant nationalism and the lawlessness of powerful states on the well-being of individuals, local communities, and global citizenship.
Based on the analysis of world events, Arthur Clark presents militant nationalism as a pathological pattern of thinking that threatens our security, while emphasizing effective democracy and international law as indispensable frameworks for human protection.
Within the contexts of history, sociology, philosophy, and spirituality, this book calls into question the assumptions of consumer culture and offers, as an alternative, strategies to improve overall well-being through the important choices we make as individuals.
Introduction and Overview
Martin Luther King Jr.’s concise and memorable statement describes the choice we face as human beings: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”
A great deal of twentieth-century history, and early evidence from this century, suggests that as a species we are choosing the second option. And we seem to be making this choice unconsciously, almost completely unaware that we are even involved in a process of choosing. We see the consequences of our choice but fail to recognize them as such, and fail to understand where they are taking us.
Personally I prefer the first option as described by King, which I will refer to throughout this book as “Option A” — learning to live together as human beings. When the term “Option A” appears in the text, you can remember it as the advantageous option. I will refer to King’s second option as “Option B.” You can remember it as the bad option. ...
Download The ABCs of Human Survival: A Paradigm for Global Citizenship
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Arthur Clark
Published by Athabasca University Press in
conjunction with the Consortium for Peace Studies at the University of Calgary.
Contents
Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The pathology of nationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Choosing the future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The necessity of democracy and law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The personal is political . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
War is a disease: The case of Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The practice of medicine and the practice of citizenship . . . 12
A personal journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
About this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Principles of global community and global
citizenship: A synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Chapter One: Choosing the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Where are we going? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Where do we want to go? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The practice of medicine and the practice of
global citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Pathogenesis: Why are we so self-destructive? . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Pathogenesis: Nationalism and warfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Democracy and international law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
The rabbi’s son from Krakow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Choosing the future: Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter Two: Axioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
First Axiom: The map is not the territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Second Axiom: The map changes the territory . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Third Axiom: We choose our maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Fourth Axiom: Good, bad, evil, important, and
unimportant are in the eye of the beholder . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Fifth Axiom: Political leaders are not competent to
determine the value of a human life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Chapter Three: Paradigm Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Who are we? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Pathology of the old paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The new paradigm and human options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Chapter Four: Principles of Global Community . . . . . . . . 81
Principle 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Principle 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Principle 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Principle 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Principle 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Principle 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Principle 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Principle 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Principle 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Principle 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Principle 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Principle 12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Principle 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Principle 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Principle 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Principle 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Principle 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Principle 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Principle 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Principle 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Chapter Five: The Case of Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Saddam Hussein and the U.S. government
before and after August 1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
The U.S. invasion of Panama, Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait, and the 1991 Gulf War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Communication, scholars, the media, and
propaganda for war . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Economic sanctions and weapons of mass destruction . . . 151
The U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq, March 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Democracy, the occupation, and the ongoing
violence in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Terrorism and the destruction of Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Responsibility for the destruction of Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
A way forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter Six: Principles of Global Citizenship . . . . . . . . . 181
Principle 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Principle 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Principle 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Principle 24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Principle 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Principle 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Principle 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Principle 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Principle 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Principle 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Winds of change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
The power of one . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Civil disobedience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Chapter Seven: Practicing Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
The global citizen as hero for our time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Imagination and knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
A 35 percent solution and the game of global
citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
The basic building block of democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
The Parkhill Pulse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
The city as microcosm of the global community . . . . . . . . . 230
A Calgary Centre for Global Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
The genius of citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Chapter Eight: Prognosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Your choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
About the Author
Dr. Arthur Clark is a Professor of Neuropathology and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Calgary, and an active staff neuropathologist at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary. He carries lifelong experience with militant nationalist culture, having come of age during the Vietnam War and serving two years as Captain in the United States Army Medical Corps.
In 1995, in honour of his late wife, he established the Dr. Irma M. Parhad Programmes at the University of Calgary, which focus on ways to improve worldwide health and well-being within the framework of international law.
He is also currently involved in a project to establish a Calgary Centre for Global Community, to be based on the values and vision that informed The ABCs of Human Survival.
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