The 16th session of the Provisional World Parliament is scheduled for December 7-10, 2025, in Pondicherry, India, and online, offering humanity a way out of its current suicidal trajectory. Every time we organize a session of the Provisional World Parliament, I am confronted anew by the “problem of origins.” As a philosopher, I ask myself, from where does “the new” emerge in history and in human affairs? Political philosopher Hannah Arendt calls the truly new in history “miracles.” Astonishing new realities have emerged within the history of civilization, she reflects. “Yet we know the author of these ‘miracles’.” Arendt declares: “It is men who perform, then—men who have received the twofold gift of freedom and action can establish a reality of their own.”

Let us hope she is right. Arendt cites the birth of democracy in France and the USA as examples of such “miracles.” But today, more than two centuries after the birth of democracy, we find ourselves not illuminated and transformed through societies around the globe focused on freedom, human rights, the rule of just laws, and respect for dignity. We find, rather, the world divided into some 194 militarized sovereign nation-states, struggling with vast and accelerating systems of violence to survive, dominate, manipulate, and out-maneuver one another. The 1948 groundbreaking affirmation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” is ignored today nearly everywhere on Earth.

We find ourselves ever more readily on the brink of that nuclear war that could wipe out humanity. At the same time the planetary climate is plainly collapsing all around us portending horrific mass-migrations, ever more wars, and endless conflicts as the planet’s capacity to grow food for its immense population radically shrinks due to super heatwaves, superstorms, super droughts, super floods, rising ocean levels, and other super ecological disasters. Meanwhile, the one-dimensional robot-people who currently run the United States and some other places live within a fanatical never-never land entirely divorced from the realities of our human situation. (To use this metaphor is clearly an insult to Peter Pan.)

These neofascist robot-people live in an alternative “reality” in which there is no climate collapse, no threat of imminent nuclear holocaust, and no common humanity whose dignity and freedom must be respected and cultivated. They also accept without question certain historical structures (such as a system of militarized sovereign nation states and a globalized capitalism) as if these were eternal verities and certainties beyond question. Rather than, as Arendt and many others have pointed out, simply contingent historical phenomena, several hundred years old that might be entirely outdated in terms of 21st-century realities. That these structures might be a fundamental cause of our present ecocidal and suicidal problems is a question entirely beyond the pale of the robot-people and their never-never land greed, fears, and hatreds.

On the surface of things, it does not look like any rebirth for humanity, and our common human future is on the table in the near future. However, there is a bigger picture. The world contains millions of people who have some understanding that science has evolved a new holistic paradigm pointing to a very real possibility that human thinking might itself become holistic—in harmony with the holism of the cosmos and our planetary ecosystem. Advances in both the theory of evolution and the psychology of human growth reveal patterns of growth toward maturity (and away from never-never lands) that are evolutionarily “destined” to move toward greater levels of compassionate adulthood, mutual self-understanding, and cooperative action.

All of these developments appear to make room for the emergence of the truly new in human affairs, a newness that implies not only human survival beyond climate collapse and possible nuclear holocaust but also a new human flourishing in peace, justice, and freedom on our precious planet Earth. This is not pie-in-the-sky day-dreaming. Any sane person can easily imagine that it does not have to be this way (as philosopher Jürgen Habermas and many others have pointed out). We can easily imagine that nuclear weapons could be abolished, and we can envision the practical mechanisms by which this could take place. We can also easily imagine what an ecological civilization would entail (people living on Earth in harmony with biosystem limits and ecological imperatives).

Literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of books by ecologists and environmentalists have articulated a quite similar vision of what an ecological human civilization on Earth would look like. I wrote one of these books, published in 2021, called The Earth Constitution Solution: Design for a Living Planet. The parameters and requirements of an ecological civilization are fairly well known. Almost invariably, these thinkers affirm that an ecologically sustainable and flourishing civilization show that this requires both ending war and establishing a world with planetary social justice.

One of the early pioneers in this flood of integrated visions came from Buckminster Fuller in the 1970s, writing about how to pilot “Spaceship Earth.” He understood how much wealth the world would have to distribute to everyone, and how great our capacity for environmental sustainability would be, if human beings transcended the absurdity of militarized sovereign nation-states and began working together for the common planetary good. Like children, we fight over each piece of Earth: “This is mine! No, this is mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! MMMAGA! (Mad America Goes Apeshit).

Perhaps the most fundamental quality of mature people is that they have grown beyond the ego, have sublimated and transcended childish egoism in a process that more and more enables them to “take the view of the other,” (as philosopher George Herbert Mead expressed it), to empathize with others and grow toward mutual understanding. This process, with its inclusive trajectory, ultimately ends with all humanity. In the early 21st century, a growing portion of humanity has acquired a mature “world-centric” perspective. They have a capacity to understand our human situation and to move toward an even higher “cosmocentric” perspective that asks (with 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant) to what purpose has the cosmos given us this twofold gift of “freedom and action”?

For a sustainable civilization beyond war and poverty to happen, we need to be able to recognize and appreciate emergent initiatives for what is truly new. We must not simply imagine a mitigated version of the war system or the endless economic growth system. At present, the world is struggling between two versions of the militarized nation-state capitalist paradigm. The collective West is struggling to maintain a monopolar world that includes the hegemony of the US dollar and a neo-colonial economic system that unites North America and Europe with common geo-political interests. The genocidal regime in Israel is a key pillar in the violent drive to maintain this hegemony and prevent the Moslem world and the larger Asian world from achieving any forms of multipolar autonomy.

At the same time China, Russia, India, Iran, and other nations have been rapidly developing economically (often using a state-run capitalist growth model) and have joined in the BRICS movement to establish a multipolar world in which trading can take place between nations independent of the global reserve currency favored by the West. All sides in this struggle take the idea of economic growth very seriously, and all sides take their military prowess very seriously—always blaming the other countries for initiating and maintaining the endless wars (wars that always risk spinning out of control into a nuclear holocaust that could wipe out us all). They fail to realize two things: (1) that the sovereign nation-state system is itself an antiquated war system and (2) that “you cannot have endless growth on a finite planet” (which is perhaps the most fundamental ecological principle articulated by the above-mentioned ecological literature).

So, what would a paradigm shift to the truly new entail? As I mentioned above, the host of ecological thinkers going back to even before Buckminster Fuller agree: wars must be ended and nations disarmed.

Humanity must ascend to an “ecological consciousness” in which we understand the planet’s finite and integrated ecosystems and simply begin to live in harmony with the rhythms of our biosphere.

Humanity must solve the problem of extreme poverty and begin to develop worldwide, inclusive and cooperative communities in which people affirm a common good that supersedes the egoistic goods of both individuals and nations.

Such a transformation would clearly qualify as one of the “miracles” of human history that Hannah Arendt appreciated so deeply. But does it require a sort of “utopian” transformation of human nature to become something entirely different from our present egoistic and nationalistic obsessions? I argue that it requires no such thing. It simply requires that we establish a World Parliament under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

Such a transformation would surely qualify as one of the “miracles” of human history that Arendt appreciated so deeply. But would such a transformation require a sort of “utopian” illumination of human nature in which we must become something entirely different from our present egoistic and nationalistic obsessions? I argue that it requires no such thing, at least not in the short run. For there are common-sense transitional steps we can take.

It simply requires that we establish a World Parliament under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. We all know that “federations” can actualize effective organizational principles. We all know about voting, electoral districts, judicial decisions, a bill of rights to protect individual rights, etc. The Constitution for the Federation of Earth establishes all of this, making possible a reasonably smooth transition from a fragmented system of militarized nation-states to a federated system that emphasizes a common planetary good (ending wars, getting rid of nuclear weapons, protecting the environment, etc).

One unique feature of the Earth Constitution is that it establishes a “Provisional World Parliament (PWP)” as an institutionalized transition from the fragmented world of warring nations, whose response to the climate crisis has thus far been totally inadequate, and all of whom remain committed to economic growth. The World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) has been sponsoring sessions of the PWP since 1982, some of them truly significant and attended by world leaders. But this upcoming session will establish a Permanent Secretariat for Provisional World Government that may serve as the catalyst to awaken humanity to the absolute need to unite beyond nation-states, simply as the human beings that we all are.

With this hope and vision, we will be holding the 16th session of the Provisional World Parliament this coming December. And with this event, we are again offering the world something new—the miracle of a genuine opportunity to participate in the growth of a “Provisional World Government” transitioning toward a democratic earth federation in which people and nations prefer the common good (and survival) of humanity to their own egoistic and illusory fantasies that “success” can somehow be achieved through putting their nationalist “self-interests” before our common human project. Delegates to the Parliament must, of course, affirm the project itself, a project that offers the best and most effective means toward the goal of a democratic Earth Federation (in the form of the Earth Constitution).

Each of us, being human, is intimately aware of that cosmic creative force that can bring something truly new into human civilization. We know (from the inside, as it were) the authors of those “miracles of human history” that continue to amaze and astonish us. We are those authors. As Arendt declared: “It is men who perform them—men who have received the twofold gift of freedom and action can establish a reality of their own.” I, for one, will be in Pondicherry, December 7-10, 2025. Where do you expect to be?