When I was younger, I was attracted to books about the “human condition” or “the human situation.” As a philosopher, even then I wanted to get to the heart of our human situation that was in such turmoil, in such great danger of self-destruction, in such viciousness of hatred, fighting, mistrust, and pointless struggle. From my dissertation to my very first book, I devoted great energy to addressing our common human crises.

Today, our situation has not changed for the better. Far from it. The danger of self-destruction compounds daily as we ignore the collapsing climate and invest ever more of our precious resources in upgrading our nuclear weapons systems of mutual assured destruction (MAD). Is there a way out of this madness?

Throughout the world’s great cultures, deeply informed by Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it was always assumed that the human project was in some way a key to the universe itself, that our existence had cosmic meaning and consequence. With the emergence of the present world, teetering on the balance of self-destruction and planetary existential disaster, the question arises: have we thrown all this sense of the significance of human existence to the ashes of a dead and disowned past?

Rather than using calm reason to take stock of our human condition and asking ourselves whether there are steps we could take to increase planetary stability and ensure a sustainable planetary civilization for our children, we obsess over obvious contingencies—we must stop the flood of immigrants; we must grow the economy faster than our rivals, we must increase the number of bombs and missiles we produce each year; we must persecute those of a different religion, or skin color, or language, or political ideology. Or, perhaps, just as bad, we obsess over details of our personal worlds such as family, personal pleasures and projects, or by simply making as much money as possible, or other distractions—trying not to think about, or listen to, the terror lurking behind the wall.

The work of the Journal of Globalization Studies goes back many decades. It often comes out of Russia with the collaboration of American philosophers and social scientists. Much of its work has attempted to investigate the meaning and significance of the tremendous changes taking place in the past half century or more in transportation and communications that have made our world so much smaller, so much less isolated into subgroups or truly “foreign” nation-states. Through these studies, it has become clear that globalization is not simply an economic phenomenon, but a cultural, social, scientific, institutional, and conceptual phenomenon all in one. The world is becoming one world in all these dimensions.

There have been many thinkers (in addition to myself) who were interested in finding ways to intensify our consciousness of being one humanity, one human reality, one civilization, sharing one existential situation on our common planetary home. My recent book, Human Dignity and World Order: Holistic Foundations of Global Democracy (2024), focuses on this oneness of humanity and our need to recognize this by ascending to a single democratic world system, embracing the unity in diversity of all civilizations. It recognizes the sovereignty of humankind rather than the fragmented sovereignties now tearing our world apart.

In a world that emphasizes cultural, religious, racial, ideological, and national differences, what are the grounds for insisting that our common humanity supersedes all of that? In India, one of the Upanishads declares “the world is one family,” a slogan that today is very common among thoughtful Indians. In Buddhism, “Buddha nature” is said to be within all human beings. In the three Abrahamic religions, humans were all made in God’s image. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that the foundation of peace, freedom and justice in the world is the recognition of our common human dignity.

In Human Dignity and World Order, I observe that the Cosmos has evolved a being with self-awareness, giving us the capacity for self-transcendence. Because we can always question and refute, because we can always think of alternatives, because any answers we might give can always be transcended by more encompassing answers or penetrating questions, there is an “infinity” gifted to us by the Cosmos that unites humanity as the self-transcending being (I do not say “self-transcending animal” because it is precisely this capacity that sets us radically apart from the animals).

All human beings communicate through a language or languages, languages that are all translatable into one another. The argument over whether there is a “deep grammar” behind all languages (Noam Chomsky) or whether there is some other explanation often misses the significance of this fact that unites humanity as the symbolic (language-speaking) creatures that we are. In languages, too, there is an infinity of possible meanings that can be generated that link to human self-awareness and the infinite capacity that this releases.

Breakthroughs in the study of language, such as those by Jürgen Habermas, reveal that the very presuppositions of the possibility of language bridge all of humanity and make possible dialogue directed toward mutual understanding. This is not a simple thing for Habermas. Nevertheless, all people are capable of striving for mutual understanding by entering into a dialogue that seeks to overcome ideological, religious, nationalistic, egoistic, etc., presuppositions on the part of the participants and can, in principle, lead to genuine mutual understanding.

In his 2003 book The Future of Human Nature, Habermas links our capacity for dialogue with the depths of human dignity, our sense of the inviolability and special uniqueness of each human person, which is the heart of our mutual ethical relationships. Habermas also connects this dignity with Immanuel Kant’s formulation of the same idea—our capacity to universalize our situation (given by self-awareness) and to ask, “what if everybody did what I am about to do?” To do what is right is to do what any rational being in this situation would have an obligation to do. This is at the heart of the moral principle that we call human dignity.

All persons have this dignity; all persons share in self-awareness and the capacity for self-transcendence in various degrees; all persons can engage in dialogue directed toward mutual understanding; all normal persons recognize this same ethical imperative. All persons live today on a tiny planet with instantaneous communications and rapid transportation. Should these simple truths be the basis of our thoughts and actions rather than the differences, hatreds, fears, and endless conflicts that everywhere endanger our future?

In the 19th Century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche identified “nihilism” as the future of our human condition. All “grand-narratives,” all metaphysical answers to our human situation that once appeared to give meaning and significance to our existence, have been called into question. And our situation is, Nietzsche insisted, one of radical contingency. It is not that we have not yet found answers about the meaning of our human condition, but that such answers are, in principle, impossible. Just meaningless musings. Nietzsche contended that this realization on the part of humanity would drive us mad—into wars and conflicts the likes of which the world had never seen.

Was he correct? Less than two decades after his death in 1900, we entered World War I, and thirty years later, World War II, and we have intensified and hunkered down on this war business ever since, with umpteen millions of war-related deaths since the end of World War II. While our planetary ecosystem continues to collapse all around us, we invest trillions of dollars into war, militarism, and the preparations for nuclear Armageddon.

It may be that Nietzsche was right that the age of grand “answers” to what it means to be a human being is forever past and that we are left in a kind of existential solitude in which the Cosmos and the foundations of existence are silent about what it all means or does not mean. To this day, there is a continued interest among philosophers concerning the apparent “nihilism” of our human situation and its consequences. The 20th century generated a substantial literature about human forlornness, about our “thrownness” (Heidegger), or our “nothingness” (Sartre). Man is a stranger (Camus) to himself and others.

But this lack of answers could also bring us together. We might focus on the simple features of our human universal condition as outlined above: on our common communicability, our common capacity for self-transcendence, our common dignity, and our common planetary home that we all share. The universe has evolved this self-awareness that we find in ourselves. We did not do it. The universe has become conscious of itself in us. Why? What do we do with this cosmic gift? Or is it a cosmic curse?

We share a condition that is without answers, yet we share this condition. Rather than fighting over elusive answers—which are not forthcoming. Rather than blame people for not being Christian, or not being Muslim, or not being born as “Americans,” or as not being Hindus, why can’t we simply take stock of our common situation and find ways to deal with it—precisely as a common situation—in all its radical relativity and interdependence?

Actually, the Buddha said something very close to this some 2500 years ago. He refused to talk about the meaning of our human situation and rejected all such discussion as missing the point. The point was that there is a path, a way of living, that leads to peace and freedom independently of any grand narratives about the meaning of our human situation. We are all bound together by our common human situation, by this common life.

Today, such a path might overlap with that advocated by the Buddha but would also be somewhat different. Today, the path would include a worldwide commitment to dialogue directed toward mutual understanding in the light of our universal human condition of communicability, self-transcendence, and dignity. Given the horror of our present condition, such a path would certainly be a movement toward genuine liberation.

The path would require humility, simplicity, freeing ourselves from egoism, dogmatism, ethnocentrism, obsessions, hates, and fears (very much like the 8-fold path recommended by the Buddha). But the path would also envision a world of freedom, justice, and peace—exactly the consequences of the recognition of human dignity as envisioned by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One might think of this as Buddhism for social and civilizational liberation and not simply for personal liberation. However, labels are not what is important here.

The realization of the contingency and radical finitude of our human situation needs only result in the despair of nihilism if we make unreasonable demands that conflict with the simplicity and truth of our situation. Instead of a dark cloud hanging over us, can we perform a gestalt switch from negativity to positivity, from darkness to illumination? Can we take the path of wisdom and freedom from all such burdens? The universe has gifted all humanity with this astonishing transcendence and hence inviolable dignity. We do not need more answers; we need to live from our common humanity.

The movement behind the Constitution for the Federation of Earth is more than anything else, an attempt to follow such a path. The Earth Constitution, for the first time in history, is not premised on territory, or wealth, or power, or conquest. It is premised on human dignity and designs institutions that are structured to protect the equal dignity of all and therefore make possible genuine dialogue directed toward mutual understanding on the part of the World Parliament as well as for all humanity.

We are discovering the radical contingency of our multiple intersecting identities—national, racial, cultural, religious, linguistic, etc. This contingency and mutual interdependency are fundamental to our situation and will not change. What needs to change is our attitude toward it. We can embrace this as part of the common heritage and dignity of self-aware creatures with a common planetary home called Earth. Under the authority of the Earth Constitution, the 16th session of the Provisional World Parliament is organized for December 7-10, 2025, in Pondicherry, India. People from many religions, nations, races, and cultures will be coming together to take steps toward ratifying, as well as improving, the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

There are no “grand-narratives” here. This is not partisan. It is not ideological. It is simple and straightforward. We human beings need to unite in dialogue under the principle of unity in diversity if we want to liberate our common human project for peace, freedom, and justice, and if we want to survive our own pending extinction. We unite by forming a democratic world system that embraces everyone and every nation. We do not need more “answers” than this. As the Buddha declared, there is a path forward that does not require grand answers but nevertheless can bring us salvation.