Saturday, November 28, 2009

Peace: A Familar Model - III

The last blog raised several issues that are very relevant to our mission of eliminating standing armies and the distrust that feeds them from the human experience. The first is the fact that the human race, as is true of every species, is not a loose collection or amalgamation of organisms but is itself and organism.

I was able to find one article on the internet in which the author boldly tries to argue the very opposite. The argument he tries to make here is very strange but I also find it to be interesting in the context of this discussion.

“Sometimes, I speak of a species as one organism. But it is not. A species is a collection of organisms that evolved according to Darwin's Five Laws.
Nonetheless, sometimes the `one organism' metaphor is useful. Just as an organism needs to eat and reproduce, so does a species.
Sadly, the metaphor may also be misleading. A friend of mine recently employed the metaphor to argue against human wars: just as one leg in a human should not fight the other, so one country should not fight another. According to the metaphor, humanity as a species was like a single organism.


I am no authority on the theory of evolution but I do not think that Darwin’s theory posits the evolution of individual organisms but, rather, of populations of organisms. In the final paragraph the author appears to be unaware of the contextual nature of war.

But there are other thinkers who have seen the organismic nature of the species. This is seen in Schaffle’s image of society as a living organism as well as his notion of collective conscience as a composite. Émile Durkheim, the sociologist, also accepted Schaffle’s image of society and was of the view that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and morality must be analyzed as a property of the collective (society) rather than a characteristic of the individual. Hobbes (he of the social contract) also insisted that human behavior could be explained by looking at the "particles" that form the human body. (Click here and here for more on Émile Durkheim’s ideas on this topic.

As we go through the coming postings it will become obvious that the reason why we have not been able to attain sustainable peace, i.e. a condition of peace that does not need to be maintained by the threat of violence or mutually assured destruction, is directly related to the fact that we have a faulty view of the nature or a species. This is because in our search for sustainable peace we are not concerned with how the species functions but with why it does not function as it should. The thinkers we mentioned above were more concerned with exploring the operations of society than in bring healing to a sick species. A machine (which is what a collection of parts is) and an organism may not differ in terms of how they accomplish their purpose but they certainly differ in terms of how they may be repaired.

When a machine malfunctions it is enough to find the part that has malfunctioned and replace it. When an organism malfunctions parts cannot be so easily replaced. A machine does not care where a replacement part comes from, as long as it is compatible. An organism does not accept parts that are not original. This is why after successful organ transplant surgery the patient must continue on a regimen of anti-rejection drugs. An efficient machine can be built by bringing together the best parts available. But a collection of perfect body parts does not mean one has a healthy body. As long as we can we will treat the body to bring healing to one organ because the organ exists first as a part of the body.

Another thing that has hampered us in our peace seeking efforts is the fact that human organizations, arguably our greatest inventions, are machines. Organizational theory is an extension of or builds on General Systems Theory, which recognizes that the universe is a system whose components are also systems. But our interest in organizational theory has obscured the distinction between natural systems, of which the human race is one, and human made or synthetic systems that we have crafted inspired by what we have learned from observing natural systems.

Other issues raised by the last blog include, whether DNA really affects choice based cultural behavior, what is the equivalent in the species of the immune system in each organism, whether the mutations caused by cell division have an equivalent in the species, and the possibility that the type of “gene therapy” I have recommended is appropriate to bring lasting peace to humanity.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Peace: A Familiar Model - II

The zygote is much too small to be seen with the naked eye and few of us have the training necessary to be able to distinguish one type of zygote from another. But thanks to some remarkable work done in laboratories we now know that each zygote, regardless of its species, is home to the deoxyribonucleic acid molecule, or DNA, which contains all the instructions for the survival of each organism and its cells. Knowing what type of DNA controls a zygote cell enables us to predict what type of organism it will produce. This works in a negative way because it is easier to predict what the new organism will not look like than what it will look like. For example, I know that the product of a human zygote will not have wings but do not know whether its earlobes will be attached or not.

DNA is both an important and interesting molecule. It is the ultimate mystery of the universe. No one knows where DNA came from. It seems to have been in existence long before any form of life existed; probably before anything existed in the universe.
Living things are made up of cells and each cell contains the DNA molecule which contains all the instructions for the development and maintenance of the cell.

Working on the assumption that DNA predated every living thing, it appears that each species represents a unique copy of this universal DNA molecule, and the unique characteristics of each species is the result of the genes that make up DNA being switched on or off in a variety of ways. Each species is “perfect” because it is an original copy of universal DNA, for lack of a better term.

DNA directs the zygote to begin dividing itself and each new cell that is formed similarly continues dividing until we have a full grown human being. Whereas each species has a unique original copy of the instructions in DNA each time a cell divides the two strands of the DNA molecule are unzipped and through the process of replication each new cell ends up with a new DNA molecule. Errors are few and far between, but they do occur at the rate of about 1 in 1 billion nucleotides per replication.

Most of these errors pose no threat to us but in a few cases these mutations in the genes cause life threatening diseases like the family of auto-immune diseases in which the immune system erroneously views parts of the body as foreign invaders, or cancers in which certain are instructed to keep on dividing beyond the naturally imposed limits. Because the body has no defense against instructions that come from its own blueprint these diseases pose a threat to the entire body.

It is important to note that mutations found in an organism only affect that organism. Neither cancer nor any of the autoimmune diseases threaten the survival of the human race but they threaten the life of the person who is diseased. Because these diseases are not caused by the environment in which the cells are but by the instructions within those cells, the best cure is to change the faulty instructions. This is what gene therapy attempts to do. Other medical interventions are able to avert the threats but they come at a heavy price.

Next time we will take a look at the lessons we can learn from these genetic diseases in our quest to design a future without distrust and standing armies.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Peace: More on the Familiar

In recent years fascination with the role that DNA plays in our lives has increased dramatically. Most are aware that our biological and physiological traits, e.g. whether our ear lobes are attached, the color of our eyes or whether we are able to roll our tongues, are determined by our genes. Some researchers also believe that genes influence alcoholism, homosexuality, and a predisposition for anxiety.

In 2007 researchers at Oxford University announced the discovery of a gene that appears to increase the odds of being left-handed. The Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database lists more than 2,000 observable traits with a known molecular basis, including Down syndrome, schizophrenia, and many forms of panic disorders. One scientist has also claimed to have identified genes that are linked to homosexuality as well as the existence of a "God gene" for religious experience (Learn more here). All of this comes with the warning that:

“While the idea that researchers can find a single gene for a specific behavioral trait makes for an exciting news story or a sensational movie, it simply isn't true. Human traits, especially involving behavior, are likely to have a complex genetic basis incorporating many genetic and environmental influences.”

In spite of this caveat, there can be no doubt that everything that humans do is influenced by our DNA.

This is so obvious that no one paid much attention to a scientist who boldly stated that everything that happens in the world depends on the sequences in the human genome, partly because our socialization has caused us to focus on the way that DNA affects us as individuals rather than how it affects us all as a species. We don’t all have the same genetic markers and the presence of a particular marker often only indicates that there is some probability that any behavior associated with this marker will manifest itself in later years. On the other hand, what is characteristic of humans is manifested in all humans.

There is more to the DNA story than presently meets the eye. DNA affects the way we behave as a species. But the relationship between DNA and personal behavior is different from the relationship between DNA and species behavior. Over the next few blogs we will explore this difference.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Peace: A Familiar Model - I

It turns out that the life cycle of the human race is very similar to the life cycle of individual human beings. This is very important in our search for peace as it provides insight into how we can solve this problem using information we have already discovered and are familiar with. Let us start by taking a look at the life cycle of the average human being.

Each human begins life as a zygote. The zygote is formed through fertilization, when the male sperm combines with the female egg. It is interesting that everything about the beginning of life is automatic except for the act of placing the sperm and the egg in the same environment.

From then on everything is driven by cell-division. Cell division is the basis of life. Each of us have about a trillion cells that all came out of a single zygote through this process of cell division. One cell divides into two, two divide into four, four divide into eight, eight divide into sixteen, and so one, until you have a trillion cells.

Of course, this is not all. During the early divisions cell begin to differentiate. Some cells take on specific characteristics and become heart cell, muscle cells, bone cells – all types of cells associated with the eleven organ systems in the human body. By the time a child is born the zygote has become a fully equipped human being, ready to take on the world. The organs are maintained through continued There is a limit on the number of divisions that All of these processes occur automatically under the guidance of the DNA molecule which contains all the instructions for building and maintaining a body. Each zygote has a copy of human DNA and this copy is replicated each time a cell divides.

The human race went through a similar process. I base this conclusion on some ancient writings that present a relatively accurate view of the early years of the human race. Most people know these writings as the book of Genesis in the Scriptures of the Jewish and Christian religions. I would not be surprised if other religions have similar accounts.

In any event, according to Genesis the human race began with one individual, Adam, who would be the counterpart of the zygote. Adam was then divided resulting in two individuals, the woman and the man Adam and Eve. Just as we see in the body the division continued and there obviously was some differentiation that resulted in a number of unique people groups.

Under Attack
Each of the organ systems in the body is important but one of the more important is the immune system. The immune system protects the body from daily attack from a variety of pathogens. The immune system knows which organisms are part of the body and it attacks any organism that it does not recognize as a friend. Because of the immune system the body is able to fight off disease caused by foreign organisms. But there are a set of diseases that the immune system is powerless against. It can fight the symptoms of those diseases but it cannot fight them.

Scientists have discovered that somewhere in the division process mutations in the genes occur, resulting in the DNA giving wrong instructions to certain cells. One type of these instructions results in auto-immune diseases in which the immune system falsely identifies parts of the body as being foreign and launches attacks against them. In the other case cells continue to divide beyond the natural limits on cell division resulting in cancers that threaten the life of the organism.
It is easy to see the connection between these diseases and the lack of sustainable peace (dis-ease) that humans experience. We can use developments in the fight against cancer and immune diseases to inform our next steps on the road to health and peace.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Peace: Born into Ignorance?

Somewhere in this conversation the idea has emerged that the human race is not a loose conglomeration of individuals but an organismic whole. When I say that the human race is an organismic whole I mean that it is a unified organism in the same way that individual human beings are organisms. And just as each of us is born and develops into mature adulthood there was a time when the human species was birthed by the earth’s ecosystem and it has gone through a process of development or evolution towards maturity.

There was a time in the distant past when one could traverse all 196,935,000 square miles of this planet, the third rock from the sun, and not find one single human being. But when humans did arrive they found a thriving eco-system that supported a great number of disparate species and life forms. We were “welcomed” as a legitimate member of that eco-system with the obligation to preserve it. This young new system was able to thrive and grow because it shared the same properties of cohesion and trust that marked the other species on the planet.

But how did we know what to do when we arrived here? It is easier to deal with that question by thinking of the human race in its infancy being in the same position as an infant human being. Cell life is guided by DNA and when a human being is born this DNA guides its physiological and biological development. It is not up to the fetus to decide where its organs will be located within the body or how many body parts it will have. But infants also lack the information necessary to know what to do culturally.

Humans have accomplished so much technologically it is difficult to grasp that compared to non-human species humans in the infant stage were totally clueless. We did not know what to eat; we did not know what to wear. If we did not have the animals to copy from we probably would not have survived the first hundred years.

What we call human intelligence begins to look more like managed ignorance and it is clear we have not managed it quite a well as we would have hoped. None of the non-human species exchanged trust for distrust. Why did we?

Friday, November 13, 2009

Peace: Three Systems serving One System

I hope those who are following this blog are excited about the information that is bubbling to the surface as I am. (This is the second time I have used this metaphor though I don’t recall ever using it before).

The last discussion was not meant to separate the education system from the systems of religion and government. Each of these three systems has played a vital role in the continued development of humanity. As we saw last time, the education system is not selected because it was superior because it is as fragmented as the religion system and the government system. But all three participate in the transfer of information and when information is put to productive use it becomes knowledge that is transformative for the human system. It is this transformation of information into knowledge that we strive for in this blog.

It is unfortunate that some have tried to insert a wedge between these three systems. Whatever their motivation the only result is the fragmentation of the species. Each of these three systems is an expression of human thought. We did not borrow these systems from alien species.

But somewhere in the process of developing these systems the focus was transferred to the interests of subsections of the species instead of on the needs of the system. Why is it so difficult for national governments to come together to advance global development. Why do our religions remain so divided? Why does our educational curriculum not teach the oneness of the species?

The answer is related to the early development of the species. The obvious evolution of the human species points to the growth of the species from an infant stage to a mature stage, in the same way that each individual moves from infancy to maturity. Just as infants are characterized by trust and adults by distrust, in its infancy stage the human race was characterized by cohesion and trust, but now in its intellectually mature stage it is characterized by distrust.

How did this transformation take place, and to what extent were the three systems of education, religion and government involved? The answer to that question may help us in our quest for equality and peace.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Peace: Education and Instruction

Let us take a closer look at the distinction Benson made between education and instruction. To really understand how significant it is for us to make this distinction in our search for world peace consider this. In "A History of Education before the Middle Ages" (1913) Frank Pierrepont Graves, called education "conscious evolution." The seed for that idea was sown by Thomas Davison in "A History of Education," (1901). Graves understood Davison to be saying that "all the development of the universe that had taken place in the stages prior to the advent of man might . . . be considered as the result of a sort of unconscious education."

In every other species, development or evolution has been a reaction to changes in the environment. Only in humans has our development also been a reaction to changes in our knowledge. These changes in our knowledge are the domain of our system of education. As we learned more about our environment we consciously changed our behavior and contributed to the evolution of our species. This is how we made the change from hunters and gatherers to agriculturists, from cave painters to computers. These were conscious stages of development that contributed to the education or the evolution of the species.

Instruction is truly the handmaiden of this education process. The human race is not defined by the collective knowledge of the world's human population. The stage of development that the species has attained determines the domain for individual learning by individual human beings. When humans believed that the earth was flat this is what human beings were taught. But no one human being knows everything that humans know as a species.

But there are also aspects of the species, e.g. biologically and physiologically, that apply to every human being. Since the human race is a system each member of the human race should exhibit the basic characteristics of a system. An educated human being would not threaten the existence of other human beings whether through war and physical violence or damage to vital human institutions, e.g. school and economic systems. Individuals who do such things may be learned but they certainly are not "educated."

Somehow we have managed to mis-educate the species and infected the species with distrust.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Peace: To Clarify a Point

There are two striking reasons why the task of renewing humanity falls first to the education system even though it suffers from the same disqualification as do religion and government. In a future blog I will discuss the fact that “education” is the solution to every human problem. But the education system also gets the nod because it is the only one of the three that is capable of surviving the type of change necessary to accomplish this task.

Let’s take a look at government. Nature appears to abhor the very idea of world government. It is intriguing that even though most animals live in groups out of which a leader always emerges, this leadership always remains local. A pride of lions is led by one lion but there is no lion in any jungle who leads the other lions in the entire jungle. There is not one example of global leadership in the entire animal kingdom. Government works best at the national level.

The current practice of religion could not survive a new paradigm in which all men are accepted as being equal regardless of their philosophy.

But the distinction between education and instruction means that the education system can take on both roles. We will always need a system that delivers specialized instruction in different areas. What we are lacking is a general approach that emphasizes the oneness of humanity so that this thinking is central in human thinking.

I cannot help but wonder what it will take to convince us all that the biggest challenge we face today is distrust and that our present systems are incapable of dealing with it.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Peace: Getting to the Heart of it.

Until now you probably gave no consideration to the meaning of the words education and instruction or to the relationship between the two. Like most people the fact you used the two interchangeably, or at a minimum believed that to instruct was to educate. In spite of this general ignorance, the ideas we are discussing here are not really novel; they simply have never been globally applied before. But now that the spotlight has been shone on them it is obvious that instruction is not education and Benson is correct in calling instruction the handmaiden of education.

Education appears to be much more complicated than we have been led to believe by the education community. The education system is actually an instruction system because instruction is what they have been delivering. However, this does not represent a failure on their part; they have been true to their mission. Allow me to explain.

On a local level the goal of instruction is to impart to the young the values that the local community has determined is important for its survival. This is why schools exist for individuals. The instruction that takes place in the schools and universities reflect the identity of the local region. It reflects that region’s level of development. The purpose of the schools is not to bring development to a region but to pass on to the members of that society the development that has already occurred in the region. Our proximity to other regions may blur that fact but it becomes clearer when we consider humanity as an entity. Schools around the world exist to pass on to the world’s inhabitants the existing state of humanity’s development. So, one could say that schools engage in instruction to maintain the education status of the race, not to change it. Strictly speaking, one cannot educate an individual; one can only educate a species. You cannot educate an individual because an individual is a product of his species not a product of his classroom. The “education” we receive in the classroom only determines where our performance ranks relative to other humans in our social group.

Instruction does not only take place among humans. We are the only species that come together in groups solely for the purpose of instruction but, as we saw in Benson’s description of education, instruction takes place in every species. The young learn from the adults around them what identifies the species. This is what is happening when a lioness teaches its young cubs how to hunt. Humans call this informal education.

Two points need to be noted. The first is that the education of other species is complete and stable so that what the young are instructed in today for the survival of the species is relatively the same as it has been for centuries. In America, a wolf from 500 years ago could adequately train a cub born in this century so that it could survive in the wild. The biological, physiological and cultural education or evolution of non-human species is complete and adults in non-human species instruct their young because of that fact.

An American human being from 500 years ago could not adequately train an infant born in America in this century so that it could survive here. This is because humans have changed in a way that other species have not changed. We have changed because our evolution has never been complete. Culturally we have continued to evolve. But our school curriculum makes the assumption that necessary but faulty assumption that our evolution is complete.

Distrust is not a product of poor instruction but of poor education. The current education paradigm does not educate; it only instructs because it does not focus on the needs of the race.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Peace: Understanding why our Education System has failed the species

Benson G. Clough is not a well-known name today, but more than a century ago he made statements about education that have much relevance to our current discussion. They are important enough that I reproduce all three paragraphs that come at the very beginning of his book “A Short History of Education.” Peculiarities in the text reflect the fact that he was an Englishman writing in 1904.
The History of Education is of supreme importance in its reference to the development of individual, industrial and national life. In studying this history many difficulties have arisen from a confusion between the terms Education and Instruction.

Life in all its stages is Education. One writer has gone so far as to say that the first two or three year of a child’s life are of the supremest importance, with regard to the foundation of character and the moulding of the future thought-life of the child. And those who have carefully watched the gradual, nay, almost imperceptible, growth of an infant’s power of appreciation and observation will readily understand the value from an educative point of view of the influence of externals. Like animals and plants, children assimilate themselves to their environment, and will, notwithstanding every endeavour to the contrary, reproduce in themselves the traits and faculties which they see in those about them.

Instruction comes later as a handmaid to Education, and involves the direct imparting of knowledge already accumulated from one who know to one who is at the time ignorant. Geography and History, for example, are largely questions of “instruction.” Mathematics and the allied sciences may be almost purely questions of “education.” In so far, however, as for their more rapid acquisition they involve the statement of facts previously acquired, these sciences approach the modern idea of education.

This is a powerful metaphor that sheds light on the failure of our education systems to effectively meet their goals of producing thoroughly educated humans. A handmaiden is a maid or servant working in the service of a master who holds the authority.

Theoretically, the servant works for the master but if the master does not provide any supervision or input the servant does what he/she thinks is best and the result may be nothing resembling what the master had in mind. For as long as our education systems have been in operation we have assumed they were guided by education when they have only known the acquaintance of the handmaiden of education.

The results are finally in. The handmaiden has done the best she could. Her work has not been entirely useless. We have made great achievements in science, technology, medicine and many other areas. But the ideas of a genuine handmaiden can never match the ideas of the master.

We cannot blame instruction for all our ills but being aware of the difference between education and instruction is important if we expect to solve our most pressing problems. The teachers are human. This means that they can only teach what humans know. There is no such thing as an over-achieving teacher. It is also true that students can only learn what they learn from others.

But our system of instruction is inherently fragmented because it is focused on the needs of groups of humans rather on the needs of the human race. We are not educating individuals to be humans but to serve different groups of humans. Built into that system are the seeds of inequality. The handmaiden has taken over the manor.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Peace: Can We Depend on the Education System?

Now that we have shown that the education system is best equipped to return humanity to a state of cohesion this project has just taken on a very interesting twist. I want to be certain I don’t lose anyone in the ride that is up ahead. Let us review how we got here.

This began with the second requirement of the Nobel Peace Prize – the eradication of standing armies. The only way to effectively eradicate standing armies is to get rid of the distrust that makes them necessary. We then discovered that distrust is founded in a false sense of inequality or fragmentation within the human system. This led us to conclude that our primary goal is to eradicate the prevailing sense of fragmentation that humans experience. In attempting to determine who which of our institutions is best equipped to lead this re-education effort charge we concluded that both religion and government are not qualified because they are inherently fragmented.

This leads to another problem. The fragmentation that we find in humanity is a sign of a species that is not well-educated; the education of this species has clearly gone awry. In recent times several people, including Vartas Gregorian, the President of the Carnegie Corporation, have complained of the fragmentation in our educational curricula. If the fragmented nature of religion and religion disqualifies them from eliminated fragmentation from humanity how wise could it be to expect the education system to solve a problem that they seem to have caused? Thankfully, there is a plausible explanation and it involves the interesting twist we spoke about.

There are really two parts to education. The part we are more familiar with is what we call formal education and it really should be called Instruction. This is what goes on in classrooms around the globe. Instruction is based on the fiction that everything that should be known is known. In theory, teachers teach their students established truth. But there is another aspect of education that does not get much attention in the education community even though it may be more important. It is this part of education that we are interested in; the part that says we continue to develop and change as a species.

Everyone knows about the difference between instinct and intelligence. Animals function on instinct but humans have to use their intelligence to figure what they need to do in order to survive. This is because animals had a complete evolution. They know everything they needed to know in order to survive. This also has its limitations as we can see when the food source of certain species is threatened. They lack the ability to come up with a new food source. Humans are better off because we are less informed. Because our DNA does not tell us exactly what to do in each situation we have the privilege to figure those things out. What we should eat, how we should dress, how we should move about. Those issues are settled for non-human species. Humans can come up with a variety of options, and sometimes we can be wrong.

In this attempt to figure things out that we are attempting to complete our evolution or development. Fragmentation is one place where we got it wrong. We need to correct it. The future of the species is at stake.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Peace: Why the Education System Gets the Nod

Because of my Christian upbringing I always expected that the attainment of peace on earth would have a religious connection. You can well imagine my surprise when I realized that the solution that was bubbling to the surface makes no reference to religion. That’s not how the story was supposed to end.

In order to understand why the burden, or privilege, of re-educating the species should fall to the educational community rather than to religion or government, we need to review an aspect of standing armies and distrust that we have not emphasized to this point.

We have already established that standing armies, even though they serve a useful purpose in contemporary society as a deterrent to war and violence, are both a drain on the public purse and a reflection of the distrust that exists in the human psyche. We have not said much about the fact that distrust only exists in the presence of fragmentation. We distrust those who are different from us -- those we perceive not to be complementary to us.

There is no distrust in a wholesome system; each component of the system works cooperatively with other components of the system. Difference does not always indicate fragmentation.

Consequently, in our efforts to eradicate standing armies we can say that our goal is to abolish the perception of fragmentation that now infects the human mind. I call it a perception because, as we shall discuss further later, the human race is only one of the trillions of natural systems that make up the larger system we call the Universe. It is on the basis of this understanding that it becomes clear why it is academia that features in our proposed solution instead of religion or government.

A process that is based on the idea of equality instead of fragmentation is best served by an institution that is not fragmented. Even though world leaders and religious leaders alike speak of world peace, both religion and government are inherently fragmented. Government is the essence of life but human government is also a political system. To maintain their power political leaders have to meet the needs of the fragmented people they represent. Political peace talks always aim for compromise because those who come to the table represent their geographic blocks. Even at the level of the UN the parties are not driven by the global needs of the human race. In the presence of distrust the best they can hope for is a compromise solution.

Most religions advocate peace but there also compromise is the best they can hope for. After thousands of years in which religion has dominated our lives we still find ourselves divided along religious lines. Speaking from my Christian upbringing I know that Christianity envisions a world of peace, yet it is not a world for everyone. In the minds of most Christians, including their leaders, the peace of Christianity is restricted to those who accept the tenets of Christianity. I doubt that Christianity is alone in this perspective but the idea is a non-starter in a pluralistic world.

This is why I think it is notable that the education-based solution makes no judgment about our partisan perspective. It treats the human race as a unit of parts.

While religious and political leaders advocate for a world where the outliers are excluded only the educational/scientific community consistently works for benefits that accrue not only to those who share their views. The mathematician creates his formulas to benefit all. The medical researcher keeps searching or cures that he may never need for himself. It is obvious that education, along with the science that feeds it, is the only human institution with the credentials necessary to advocate for a world where oneness is the ruling principle.