A Letter to the People

From the Benevolent Leader of the United Peoples of the World
Nadezhda Mira

A Hope for Our Future
For millennia, our species has been plagued by war, famine, disease, and the most egregious assaults against our fellow human beings. After thousands of years of strife, it is possible that we stand at the threshold of the golden age, on the very verge of our true Utopian dream; this Utopia is not unreachable, is not fantastical. It is real, it is practical, and it relies on the marriage of reason and compassion, of logic and intuition. It rests on discerning a common good, and on establishing a moral and ethical interaction with one another that upholds that common goal.

Through the ages of enlightenment and progress, humankind began to take hold of conceptions of human dignity, of rights and responsibilities—however, these conceptions were largely rhetoric-laden and lacking in action. The capitalist machine could not allow for such conceptions to be realized, requiring the exploitation of our brothers and sisters to fuel it’s ever-expanding need for profit and growth. Many revolutions sprang out of this injustice, but the people were confused, were unaware of their condition and the source of their oppression. They saw gross inequality, and merely sought revenge against those they envied in addition to simply alleviating their situation. These political revolutions occurred without the ideological and psychological revolutions required to secure their lasting legacy, and thus the world fell in and out of progress and change, exchanging one exploitive regime for another. Violent measures were taken to squelch opposition and counter-revolution cycles—they failed, and eventually a despot was reinstated and the people fell back into the same rhythm of exploitation and injustice. This cycle continued for thousands of years, until the great revolution of The Ninth Age.

It is my hope that this letter will serve to explain the philosophy that compels my rule in this interim transition, and that it will help to establish a common human goal for us all, securing the ideological revolution in addition to the socio-political-economic one, the wounds of which are still fresh. We are not yet out of the woods. The light is close, however, and if we can now band together and establish our common will, we can facilitate the lasting ideological revolution that will pull us through this transition phase, minimizing the chance of a counter-revolution that would plummet us back into darkness. Violent oppression cannot secure my reign, no matter how noble or supreme my intentions for humanity may be—I have learned from the mistakes of those in positions of authority before me, and I believe we have suffered enough losses to reach this point, and from here we can only proceed willingly without coercion. It is only fear and uncertainty, only a lack of a common goal and an ability to understand our world and ourselves that locked us in our state of perpetual harm and injustice. In discerning the general will, the key to our liberation awaits us.

The General Will
First articulated by the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in the year 1762 of the Old Calendar, the general will is that which represents the interest of all of humanity. If each person were well informed, reasonable, and interested in the good of humanity, the general will would be the end to which s/he reasoned. This is not to be confused with the will of the majority, which could merely be assessed with a vote. The will of the majority could very easily be the result of the collective individual wills in society, which are marked by self-interest. Rather, the general will is that which is in the interest of humanity as a whole, and given the criteria above, every reasonable person would arrive at the general will in any given situation.

In the age of its conception and for many ages to follow, the general will was regarded with skepticism; because of the newly tolerant ideas of the progressive enlightenment that followed in the centuries after Rousseau first wrote of the general will, coupled with need of the capitalist machine to justify exploitative and unjust practices, a conception of cultural and normative relativism gained increasing favor for several thousand years. It was employed under the guise of benevolence and tolerance, and in actuality served to perpetuate a host of the most unspeakable crimes against humanity. The idea of a general will that would be absolute, unwavering, indestructible—this idea was discarded as a weapon in the arsenal of the would-be despot, as an ambiguous and easily manipulated antagonist of democracy and individualism. In the age of complete autonomy, of individualized isolationism and competitive separation from humanity, the conception of the general will was unfathomable, confusing, and contradictory to what many regarded as intrinsic to human value.

However, as the degradation of the human condition became nearly unbearable and the people of the world became increasingly aware that individualism and competitiveness were failing humanity at a miserable rate, consideration to this concept of a general will regained fervor—slow at first, but catching like a contagion out of desperation and necessity. The key to accepting the general will as a reality lies in accepting the moral responsibility to act in the interest of others—fundamentally, it lies in knowing how to discern the general will.

Discerning the General Will
We all possess the facilities of reason and emotion. The general will can be determined using either of these facilities. First, I will give an account of the general will derived from reason.

Given a specific human goal, it would be a simple task to know which acts were in support of that goal and which were destructive to it. The simplest way of looking at this question is in the format of an if-then situation; “If the human good were defined in terms of the ability to live a healthy life free from fear of bodily or psychological harm, the it would follow that _______ action would/would not be in the interest of humanity. Given this model, I am will arrive at the same decisions as you, the enlightened citizen of the world. Given that human dignity and the preservation of life and happiness, I could reasonably assume that actions that caused suffering, exploitation, and competition would be acts that go against the general will. Similarly, acts which preserved the human capacity for love, life, peace, prosperity, and health would be actions that were presumably in accordance with the general will.

From an emotional perspective, the general will can often be derived intuitively. If a shift to caring and personal responsibility to and for every other human being occurred in child rearing, then what would be produced would be a generation of intuitively caring, compassionate individuals who acted in accordance with the general will seemingly instinctively, with no logical weighing of actions necessary. This is our aim, or duty as a society—to produce a world of people who are naturally inclined to love life, humanity, and all that preserves the former.

Private Property and the General Will
We have already accomplished the first step toward producing a society where caring and compassion reign supreme—the abolition of private property. Without the notion of private property and the competitiveness it produces, it is the natural inclination of people to be caring and compassionate—indeed, even from a self-serving perspective, it benefits the individual to live in peace and security, free from harm and fear. Being such dependent creatures, humans naturally benefit from cooperation, interdependence, and peace. The illusion of benefit from competition was purely symptomatic of the disease of private property.

Rousseau also wrote of this relationship between the human condition and private property. He contended that before the inception of private property in human society, our interactions were marked by peace, prosperity, and cooperation. From this socially constructed evil, however, arose avarice, self-interest, corruption, competition, and destruction. Our human condition was for so long bound by this evil, and only with its abolition could we free ourselves of its destructive grasp. One of the defining characteristics of humanity has been the urge to improve, the impulse to create and progress. With the creation of private property, however, we nearly secured the destruction of our species and our world. Rousseau saw this compulsion to manipulate our world, and was aware that it was the impetus for moving into society and eventually constructing private property. He did not, however foresee a way in which we could break out of the cycle, could reject our greatest downfall as a species. For Rousseau, there was no going back once the consciousness of humanity had been poisoned with avarice and competition. In the destruction of that which bound us, however, we relinquished our chains. It is essential to understand fully, however, for the lasting peace we seek, how private property is inconsistent with the general will.

If peace and the preservation of life and humanity is agreed to be the most fundamental goal of human existence, then competition and private property would have to uphold that goal and not diminish it. From experience alone, we can clearly see that was not the case. However, from both a philosophical and a intuitive perspective, we can also abstractly perceive the inconsistency between the two. Individualism and capitalistic competition replaced much of our connection to and reverence for the natural world and each other—when we commodify people and we commodify our natural world, we must by course of action disconnect in order to allow the exploitation and moral rape of our natural world and the people in it. This disconnect requires the suspension of concern for human welfare, for consideration of the general will—it is not in the interest of humanity to treat people as an ends to some other means—that produces suffering. It is not in accordance with the general will to commodify and exploit the planet’s resources—that leaves our world barren and stripped of beauty, in addition to plummeting our species into a pitiful wasteland of squalor, degradation, and starvation. Finally, one can perceive the inconsistency with the general will and capitalistic competition and private property through the separation of the laborer from the labor.

Marxism and the General Will
The historical sequence of events as they have played out was foreseen by a man named Karl Marx, and he wrote of this progression through phases of consciousness and economic systems. He contended that the creative impulse of humankind, deemed by Rousseau to be our ultimate downfall, while on the one hand was the impetus for the production of private property, was simultaneously destroyed by the social construction it produced. This destruction occurred by alienating the laborer from the labor. The creative process therefore was transformed from an intrinsically compelling force to merely an ends to a mean—material gain. These material possessions were not the product of our creative force, and the drive to acquire them far exceeded our basic needs. The need for economic expansion is an all-c0nsuming one in the capitalistic model, and fulfilling basic needs was not enough to sustain its insatiable appetite. Additionally, the void left in the wake of the destruction of our creative capacity desperately needed filling, and we reached for the only thing accessible—material things. This materialistic competition in which the laborer is alienated from the labor is counter to the general will—it results in a rapid loss of the creative capacity, leaving the individual feeling hollow and searching for void-fillers; the void fillers which are most readily available and beneficial to the economic system (and therefore encouraged) are materialistic; these materialistic desires are incapable of replacing our creative capacity and leave us wanting. Furthermore, this materialism and desperate need to fill our meaningless and alienated lives with unattainable amounts of material things pits us against one another in competition—personal gain becomes primary, and avarice and selfishness silence the general will. What is left is a sea of individuals pitted against one another in eternal competition, with no regard for the general human welfare, nor any regard for any other individual human life that does not stand to benefit one’s own interests.

Putting the General Will into Practice
As I am in a position of authority, the decisions I make will derive from the general will. It is of the utmost importance that you, the people, understand from where I derive the decisions, as well as the process I employ to reach that end. I will discern the general will in the same way each of you will—I will act with a marriage of intuition and reason, and will make decisions with both the general interest of human dignity in mind as well as from a caring and compassionate heart. It is my deepest inward desire to see our species and all life on our planet flourish. Some decisions will be difficult, as many in all our lives are from time to time, but in those circumstances we must do the best we can, and valiantly act as defenders of humanity and life and love in the best way we are able. We must all employ this hybrid use of reason and compassion in our lives, and must make it our chief objective to rear our children to know how to listen to their hearts. We must foster in them love and compassion, and do our best to explain to them fear and hatred, as well as the things that logically and intuitively foster each. In this manner, we may hope to break our socialized chains and fears and move forward ourselves, at the same time bringing new life into the world free of these chains from the beginning.

I am not a perfect ruler. None of us is a perfect being. Perfection is a word conjured up for those who wish to distinguish imperfections. The word is useless, and possesses no real value or meaning. What is useful, what we can employ, is our best. As a ruler, I feel it is my most profound and honored duty to uphold human dignity and functioning, defending humanity against any foe, intentional or unintentional, from a position of love, compassion, and fellowship. Enemies of humanity, if they exist now or ever will in the future, must not be annihilated. They must be embraced, must be brought into the fold. They too benefit from the general will, are part of humanity, and deserve to have their human dignity preserved. It is to them I speak to as well, and I implore them to consider the reality of the general will, and our ability to know it both in our minds and in our hearts. Once we embrace the reality of our condition and of our potential to know our common good and work towards it, we will have effectively achieved our Utopia—not by witnessing it as an end, but by continually creating it through our interactions with each other born out of compassion.