Note: This is the foreword to my book, Saving Humanity
To:
President of PRC, President of USA, President of Russia, Prime Minister of UK, President of France, Secretary General of UN, Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister of Germany, Prime Minister of Canada, President of Brazil, Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister of Australia, President of Mexico, Prime Minister of Spain, President of Indonesia, President of South Korea, King of Saudi Arabia, President of Pakistan, President of Turkey, Prime Minister of Netherlands, President of Argentina, President of Iran, President of South Africa, Prime Minister of Sweden and President of Poland.
Respected Leaders:
This letter and book of mine are worked out with a strong sense of mankind's sufferings.
Though I am only 45 years old, this book cost me almost 28 years of painstaking efforts. During the last 28 years, except for basic living, almost all my energy was devoted to the creation of this book. I spent about 6 years on nothing else but this book. This is because I firmly believe the issues covered in this book directly concern mankind's fate and future.
Among this unlimited universe with zillions of planets, only a few can breed lives. The number of those producing intelligent life and civilization is much less. Fortunately, the blue planet where we live is such a blessed place.
However, everything has its end. Though there are millions of species living on our planet, it is no more than one hundredth of the original number. As all those species have become extinct, there is no doubt that mankind will meet its end someday.
The extinction of any species is a result of the maladjustment of the natural environment. As the only intelligent life on this planet, there is no need for us to cope with the climatic changes with a naked body and fight against beasts with bare hands. What is more, there is no more relying on nature's simple food such as berries or fruits, for we can enjoy our productions creatively. With all of these changes, how come we cannot adapt to the natural environment? Is it possible that mankind will go through a totally different extinction? We all know that it is the mightiness of the dinosaur that guaranteed its survival of 160 million years. However, as a species much more powerful than the dinosaur, how many years can mankind survive?
All of my research and thinking starts from the problem of the extinction of human beings.
Ever since the human being completed its evolution, its creativity has changed the world unprecedentedly. If we find that the changing speed of this world from the savage and wild time to the end of agricultural civilization is fast enough, then the 200-year-ago industrial revolution makes this speed suddenly accelerated. It is exactly from that time that mankind was surprisingly aware of the decisive function of scientific technology in the creation of material wealth, and hence, has all of its enthusiasm dedicated to scientific research and technical invention. During the short period after the industrial revolution, the wealth created by scientific technology was numerous times that of 50 thousand years ago during the human being evolution period.
However, we have to see that it is also a double-edged sword. No matter how much wealth we get from it, the same amount of danger will also be put on mankind. Today, a hydrogen bomb's explosion is equivalent to 56 million tons of TNT. High explosives loaded onto trains that circle the earth can destroy a metropolis in a blink. Compared with the killing method of early mankind history, the destructive ability has increased a million times by scientific technology. Compared with nuclear weapons, bio-toxins made with transgenetic technology are far more powerful. What is more, a single biologist with superb skills could develop them in his own lab. This means that destructive means have developed from being achievable only by groups to achievable by individuals, which is very terrible.
However, by rational thinking, we can tell that the extinction power still has not reached its summit. Science and technology was almost nothing in the middle period of the 18th century when the Industrial Revolution started, and it took only over 200 years to reach the present high level. Mankind should have 200 more years in the future, but compared to history, the starting point of science is much higher, investment is much larger and research methods much more advanced, so science and technology will certainly extinguish mankind. The time left should not be calculated by thousand years or tens of thousands years, because extinction is not far away.
There will always be cruel people in the world trying to retaliate mankind. They will try every possible means to find the most extreme slaughter methods and use them immediately. As long as extinction means come into being, sooner or later they will have it, and the day it comes true, mankind's doom will start. Not limited to this, when science develops to rather higher levels, the scientific experiments will be more high-graded and the power hiding in scientific products will be much more tremendous. At that time, a tiny carelessness in an experiment or misuse of these products could possibly lead to human extinction. Just as misuse of Freon caused damage to ozonosphere and carelessness in many scientific experiments caused deaths, these show that mankind's extinction will be independent of man's will. To avoid extinction of mankind, the only way out is to restrict development of science and technology from developing to a further higher level.
It is no doubt that mankind can be destroyed by not only scientific power of humans, but also by natural forces. By the present defense ability of mankind, the earliest crisis threatening mankind's survival is a billion years later, while the extinction caused by science and technology will be hundreds of years later, or much earlier. Clearly we can see the reason of mankind's extinction is "suicide" and not "homicide". What is more, scientific discovery and technical creation can be acquired accidentally. In the great length of the future, there must be many accidental fruits in such a long period, and the accumulation of these fruits could very possibly push mankind down into the abyss of extinction someday. Therefore, the action to save mankind is very urgent because of the pressing time limit. Even if we act right now, it is still quite late.
To restrict the limits of scientific technology does not mean to deny positive functions of science and technology to mankind or refuse to use science and technology to benefit mankind. Quite conversely, research of a few subjects that may benefit mankind should be greatly enhanced, and for those safe and mature scientific fruits, not only should they not be limited, but they should also be widely applied all over the world. When this work goes further, mankind's common welfare is definitely available as expected. So I put up my point that we can restrict overall development of science and technology and cause no serious influence to the material requirement of mankind. There will be certain influences certainly. But the overall survival of mankind tops everything. To avoid extinction of mankind, we have to make sacrifices in some aspects.
It is impossible in current society to strictly restrict the development of science and technology. This is because human nature has quite an important feature, and that is everlasting competition. Competition and confrontation exists among all individuals and groups. In national society, the highest authority is the nation. It is certain that nations have competition with each other. What is more, when competition is not restrained, often the solution is war. While expense of war means ruin of the country and slaughter of its people, the expense is so huge that no country will make light of such competition, even if human beings are soon to be extinguished. Because extinction of human being is for the entire human race, it is a future problem and conclusion that is a result of rational thinking. On the other hand, the country's being destroyed is its own issue; it could happen immediately and is a conclusion made after simple thinking.
Whether it is economic, military or comprehensive strength competition between countries, the most important issue of all these competitions lies in the competition of science and technology. It is involved in the fate of the nation and its people, and nations would not sacrifice the development of its science and technology without ease. In order to restrain development of science and technology, there is no other way but to launch unified action across the world, and any lack of coordination at any local part would make this joint effort a failure.
It is a fact that a country's behavior cannot be restricted by any power, not even by international organizations like the UN. Because the truth is that super countries are controlling the UN rather than being controlled by the UN. The unification of the whole world can only count on mankind's ultimate union, or in other words, the great unification of mankind.
It would be hard to imagine that the entire world could be controlled by an ultimately unified regime 100 years ago, or even dozens of years ago. The communication and transportation means at that time were very difficult even for governing a large country. However, with today's instant means of communication and transportation, the globe has long become a "global village", which means that the hardware conditions for the great unification of mankind are ready. The trend of globalization and international organizations like the League of Unions and the UN have not only reflected the people's conscious and unconscious union actions, but also reflected the governments' desire for coordinated global actions. All these are rehearsals of the great unification, and are gathering strength for the revolution.
As a completely new social morphology, the greatly unified society will be different from national society and all previous societies. It is unprecedented in human history. My original intention of the research is to avoid extinction of mankind by science and technology, because it concerns the overall survival of entire mankind. As an intelligent and civilized species, mankind's value is not just simple survival, but it has many other pursuits, such as happiness and enjoyment. Various systems of human society must serve for people's value system. So, could it be possible that the ultimately unified society, as a brand-new social form, could become an ideal one for human being?
All social systems of the greatly unified society including political value, economic value, cultural value and moral value should be designed according to the above standards. For example, present material wealth is much greater than before, but modern people's happiness is generally weaker than before. It is even weaker than that of human beings that had just walked out of caves in Paleolithic times in the opinion of some historians, which proves that material wealth is not the only factor that determines people's sense of happiness. This also shows that the social system of the current human world has obvious shortcomings that go against people's ideals.
To solve the above problem, the greatly unified society should pay special attention to two aspects: the first, build the greatly unified society as a non-competitive society, to make people gentle and friendly. Because people's psychological pressures are huge in highly competitive society and security in the society is weak, people's sense of happiness is low. Without confrontation and competition between nations, the unified world regime is most suitable to weaken competition in society. Secondly, build a common prosperous society. Because sense of happiness occurs in comparison, a society with a wide gap between the rich and the poor is not only unfair, but also a society in which it is difficult for most people to have the sense of happiness. Led by a unified world regime and after present safe and mature technical results are popularized worldwide, people will be able to enjoy a better life because policies and technologies then will not be very different.
As the above mentioned, a greatly unified society is the best choice for most people to have a sense of happiness and safety, so the greatly unified society is suitable to be built into a society that matches people's ideality rather than a competitive society with confrontation. It means the great unified society is not only the one preventing mankind from extinction, but also the one matching mankind's ideality.
As the most meaningful and greatest business for all mankind, the great unification should be promoted peacefully. What is more, the great unification scheme should comply with the principles of feasibility, legality and justice. Feasibility means that the scheme adopted should make sure that the great unification can be carried out successfully, legality means complying with international laws and justice means that the scheme should guarantee democracy and human rights of all the people in different regions and groups.
So I suggested two schemes in the book. As the UN is the core of international relationships at present, the Charter of the United Nations is the core of international laws. The United Nations is commonly considered as an interim system from international anarchy to world regime, so both schemes are designed under framework of the UN.
Every great social change needs foreshadowing of thinking in its early stages, and will be accompanied by bloody killing. The greater change is that the longer time it requires for foreshadowing of thinking the fiercer the killing will be. This is because all previous changes have such features that one party's success will mean the loss of the other party. The fight is for life or death. If science and technology continues its development, it will push mankind into the abyss of extinction soon. So the great unification should be promoted. But will the great unification be possible while avoiding the killing?
By serious analysis, we can find that the great unification will not only avoid the extinction of mankind but will also benefit all mankind in aspects of happiness and safety. Even in the aspect of economic benefit, what mankind gains will also be larger than what we lose. The reason why some countries are rich is because they have used many advanced technologies, while the greatly unified society will popularize safe and mature scientific and technological fruits worldwide. The world will reach living standards of the rich countries at present, and rich countries will not lose anything because of this. Meanwhile, because of the confrontation in national society, our military spending is huge. What is more, because each country is governed separately, the governing cost and trading costs are both high. After the great unification is realized, both the fees will be lowered to the utmost, and interests thus gotten could benefit all the individuals and groups. This revolution will be unprecedentedly a great revolution in human history because the whole human race will benefit from it and the resistance will be relatively small.
In the business of great unification, leaders of medium and small countries will lose most of their vested interests, while leaders of large countries will gain most interests. This is because all large changes of political domains are dominated by large countries, so the business of great unification will be dominated by large countries also. In the business, leaders of large countries act as flagmen, while it is difficult for leaders of small countries to have such a role. The greatly unified society will have one supreme leader, and this position will probably be occupied by a leader of a large country. The possibility for leaders of small countries to have this position is very small.
So, a few leaders of medium and small countries may be against the great unification and upholding justice. They are the major resistance of the great unification, while leaders of large countries are the most reliable strength of the great unification. So this open letter is addressed to leaders of the 25 strongest countries besides Secretary General of UN (I designed a state strength calculation method in my research).
Upheaval times always produce great men. After overevaluation of the great unification of mankind versus survival value, happiness value and justice value of human society, I am sure the greatness caused by this change is far beyond any social change in history. If there are great men in our history, this change will bring up giants. And if there are giants in our history, then most of these fearless giants will come from you.
Respected leaders, we are right here at the eve of an upheaval, which is both a dangerous and a glorious time because it decides mankind's fate. With our arduous efforts, I believe we can take a most pivotal step toward the ultimately-unified society. We will surely glorify the world's history as mankind's saviors, in which only very few could be fearless giants who will guide us to the ultimately-unified society. But most importantly is that these guides could very possibly be the ones among you respected leaders. On the contrary, mankind will quickly go to its end if we ignore today's situation. In case it happens, we let down not only our posterity, but also this precious life and civilization supporting planet blessed by the unlimited universe. It will be a vicious crime beyond any language.
Respected leaders, only you have the right to make this choice to be a criminal or fearless giant in mankind's history. Since mankind's fate is right in your hands, mankind can only be saved by your unified actions. Your unprecedented merits and virtues of preventing human beings from extinction will shine in our history, forever inscribed into the heart of our posterity generation after generation. For the sake of mankind's continuation and our posterity's welfare, I sincerely implore you respected leaders to research into this most fundamental and momentous problem with reasonable and wise mind, and to take action as soon as possible.
Jan. 2007
At Beijing
