Magna Carta of Harmony for an Information Civilization

Project

Magna Carta of Harmony for an Information Civilization:

The path to social justice and global peace

Approved by the Board in the first edition in December 2006

Magna Carta of Harmony for an Information Civilization is also available in the following languages:

Greek: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=357

------------------------------------------------------------

Kamran Mofid, PhD (ECON), Founder, Globalisation for the Common Good kindly published our Magna Carta of Harmony in Journal of Globalization for the Common Good (www.commongoodjournal.com) at address: http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/jgcg/downloads/Magna%20Carta%20of%20Harmony_Full%20book%20English_29%20pages.pdf

October 10, 2007

-----------------------------------------------------------

Magna Carta of Harmony for an Information Civilization:

Toward Social Justice and Global Peace

Dr. Leo Semashko

with 42 international “Peace from Harmony” collaborators from 16 countries:

Ada Aharoni, Lucy Alferova, Talgat Akbashev, Reimon Bachika, Ammar Banni, Harold W. Becker, Renato Corsetti, Guy Crequie, Rosa Dalmiglio, Martha Ross DeWitt, Mona Gamal-El Dine, Stephen Gill, Nina Goncharova, Michael Holmboe, Takis Ioannides, Tatomir Ion-Marius, Dimitry Ivashintsov, Ivan Ivanov, Jan Jacobsen, Abram Jusfin, Vladimir Kavtorin, Maxim Kazakov, Rosa Lord, John McConnell, Charles Mercieca, Terrence Paupp, Susana Roberts, Maitreyee Bardhan Roy, Subir Bardhan Roy, Bernard Scott, Andrei Semashko, Igor Shadkhan, Rudolf Siebert, David Stringer, Grigory Toulchinsky, Tatiana Tselutina, Alexander Verbitsky, Svetlana Vetrova, Claude Veziau, Rene Wadlow, Robert M. Weir, and Jiang Yimin

in 7 languages:

English, Russian, Esperanto, Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish

published on:

http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=3

April 18, 2007

Social harmony begins with each of us

Martha Ross DeWitt

We are ready to build jointly a harmonious

New culture of peace in a world of love

Ada Aharoni

I don’t understand,

Why peace is missing in this era of technology,

Why problems are not replaced by harmony,

… winter, eternal winter ...

But Earth soon will be pacified, I hear the divine sounds,

Voices joining to pray, from all the corners, in all the languages,

Abundance of positive vibrations, and healing energies,

Ideals accomplished, how great is our pride

Light of harmony descendingon all mankind!

Tatomir Ion-Marius

The Law of laws - eternal Harmony

Michael Holmboe

Principles of Individual and Social Harmony

The crisis of modern humankind is the threat of self-destruction as a result of increasing conflict and the production of weapons of mass destruction, which lead to nuclear war, planetary winter, or global warming. This threat can be removed only by our conscious efforts to harmonize the united human family through overcoming of its social traumas, pathologies or extremes on a base of the following eight principles of harmony. These principles are suggested as steps to individual harmony for persons and as strategies to social harmony among societies:

1. Know the four basic conditions for harmony: people, their diversity (individual and social), unity, and consent. Consent must always be mutual. Consent can range from cultural and ideational tolerance, as a minimum, to consensus, which is the ideal maximum. The transition from tolerance to consensus requires respect, understanding, dialogue, and compromise.

2. Understand that the absence of tolerance leads to conflict and enmity, and prevents opportunities for harmony. Without common consent, diverse people polarize and create antagonism, chaos and disharmony.

3. Comprehend that the source of harmony comes from a standard measure of balance that limits human aspirations for wealth, power, and other resources. Harmony is incompatible with extreme desires, though it does not exclude opposites. Consent between opposites transforms their struggle into harmony.

4. Realize that standard measures are established by specific communities in specific times and places in a democratic way. Redefining and reestablishing this standard measure is a constant task in a harmonious society.

5. Recognize that consent is the conscious and mutual acknowledgement of a standard measure for harmony. The measure requires a self-restriction of aspirations to wealth, power, and other resources.

6. Appreciate consent as the key attribute of social harmony that can eliminate conflict and the rationale for war. In order to ensure indestructible peace, a culture of consent must be formed during childhood by means of an education and upbringing based on the values of love, peace, and harmony.

7. Believe that consent requires a harmonious peace culture, brotherly love, solidarity, cooperation, freedom, recognition of the equal dignity of all people, human rights, shared responsibility for the protection of nature, and mutual care for people and the common good. Consent requires to forget the old enmity and to forgive the past insults.

8. Achieve conscious consent and be committed to the value of harmony as a way of life, thought, feelings, conversations, and all social behavior on the basis of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Conversely: “Do not do unto others what you do not want them to do unto you.”

These Principles underlie the Magna Carta of Harmony. They represent a “Noble Eightfold Way to Harmony.” This imitates, but does not copy, the “Noble Eightfold Path” of Buddhist philosophy.

I. Historical Turn toward Social Harmony

1. For the past half-century, global longings for peace have increased significantly. The collective consciousness of communities, worldwide, is aspiring to achieve consensual nonviolence, creating the preconditions for a transition of humanity from a culture of chronic warfare to a culture of sustainable peace, from violence to harmony. Reflecting this global yearning, in October 2006, the People’s Republic of China, which includes almost one-fourth of the world’s population, decided to turn from a dictatorship of the proletariat to “building a society of social harmony.” Humanity is now witnessing an epoch-making resolve to turn from a history of clashes and enmity (ethnic, class, economic, religious, and ideological) to a history of harmony and consent. China’s 180-degree turn to social harmony is not accidental. Rather, it is founded on the harmonious values of Buddhism and Confucianism in the traditions of Chinese culture. Unfortunately, China’s decision lacks clarity of practical and philosophical expression and is limited by the political realities of China’s form of government, which are not adequate to social harmony. At the same time, the value of harmony is not alien for other local civilizations. In time, they may follow China’s example. However, many of these countries allocate enormous wealth to expenditures for weapons to promote their ambitions. Therefore, we are still very far from achieving social harmony. A turn to social harmony, as well as to any other social good, tends to have many meanings and to be contradicted. Thus, it requires painstaking deliberations, anticipation of consequences, and a universal approach.

2. China’s resolve to build a society of harmony constitutes the beginning of a Great Global Turn of humanity toward social harmony and a new culture of peace in the 21^st century. China’s choice removes us from the certainty of a global winter of war and violence toward a summer of global harmony. This terra incognitais gradually occupied by a new global community of harmonious people, which is imperceptibly formed (as William Shakespeare’s modern “mole of history”) by an information civilization already present in many cultures. Their diversity contributes in unique ways to this Global Transformation toward a new, harmonious world community. This community is, as yet, unknown to public consciousness and undetected by scientific research. However, as it moves toward a global culture of harmony, it creates new actors of harmony who will provide knowledge about themselves and their work. At the same time, it is obvious that billions of people are not ready for this vision of harmony, do not want it, or are not capable of being participants in it, which is why a world of harmony is the destiny of the young and for future generations.

3. The beginning of this Global Turn requires an appropriate philosophical and social understanding, for which a first attempt is made in this Magna Carta of Harmony. Just as the English Magna Carta of 1215 marked a historical turn from slavery to freedom for individual citizens, the Magna Carta of Harmony facilitates a historical transition from chronic enmity and war among nations to the creation of conditions for harmony in sharing information, production, communication and trade, and toward abandoning conditions that increase the risk of global self-destruction. A vision of global harmony, glimpsed throughout recorded history, but rejected by hostile nations, surfaced in China at the beginning of the 21^st century as real political phenomenon. But “a society of social harmony” and the transition to it have not yet become subjects for study or questions for social science and philosophy.

4. The Magna Carta of Harmony, based on a Law of Sphere Harmony, tries to understand such a transition, to explain and predict the inevitability of a new global reality. This law recognizes social harmony as a necessary and natural consequence of societal spheres and sphere classes. Tetrasociology is a modern social philosophy and theory of harmony based on this law. Tetrasociology was developed by Leo Semashko more than 30 years ago and is submitted in his book: Tetrasociology: Responses to Challenges. Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2002 (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=145). Tetrasociology combines the Western structural functional idea of social spheres with the Eastern value idea of harmony. Tetrasociology provides a structural, four-dimensional theoretical foundation to explain the harmonious potential of a global, information society. Albert Einstein observed: “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Accordingly, the confrontational problems of an Industrial Civilization cannot be solved by a traditional, “winner take all” paradigm. Instead, they require a cooperative, harmonious style of thinking, as defined in tetrasociology, in which sphere classes complement and help to reproduce each other. This idea transitions social theory from a philosophy of inevitable struggle of competing elements of industrial society to a philosophy of harmonious elements of an information society. This thinking/theory does not reject struggle, but limits it to nonviolence, and subordinates it to practices of mutually beneficial, harmonious cooperation.

5. Tetrasociological ideas will be submitted here at length, since they are practically unknown outside an international circle of friends and colleagues. These ideas require a detailed presentation in this Charter, as they give this document social significance, political meaning, explanatory potential and, most of all, cultural value. Charting this new direction for humankind requires a theoretical vision capable of giving birth to a fundamentally new Age of Social Harmony and Era of Sustained Peace. Such a vision requires sufficient allowance for its presentation. Therefore, it constitutes much of the following pages, including a political appeal and a philosophical treatise. Tetrasociological ideas will, thus, require an investment of effort to begin to comprehend the significance of their application.

II. Transformation of Global Civilization:

Evolution from an Industrial-Risk to a Harmonious-Information Civilization

6. Consumerism, profiteering, non-spirituality, enmity, and threat of self-destruction of humanity summarize the multiple crises of a disintegrating Industrial-Risk civilization (IR-civilization). These social ills have developed spontaneously over two centuries and have increased toward the end of the 20^th century to crisis proportions, with a high risk of humanity’s self-destruction (see “risk society,” Ulrich Beck, 1992). Consumerism, profiteering, non-spirituality, and enmity are the cult symbols, moral values, and social priorities of a degraded civilization in the terminal stage. Humanity must either replace them, or be lost, together with this morbidly conflicted civilization, which destructs itself. It kills young by the hands of young methodically. Death of 33 students of Virginia Universityin April 2007 is the next case only.

7. The core of this civilization includes the various industrial empires: hegemonic, economic, market, militaristic, corporate, and other forms of dominance that are incompatible with social harmony. These empires embody the unrestrained growth of political, economic, militaristic (arms race), migratory, and other extremes that strengthen social disharmony and lead to chaos. Industrial empires collapse and fall, as has occurred in 20^th century in Europe, Asia, and Africa.A harmonious global community becomes the possible alternative. The processes of decay are investigated in the works of political analysts, such as Terrence Paupp (2007), Julian Go (2007), David Harvey (2003), Immanuel Wallerstein (2003), and many others. The disharmony and chaos of extremes created by industrial empires are the main obstacles, we believe, to creating global harmony. We regard the collapse of old empires as a corollary to the collapse of Industrial Civilization. We anticipate the emergence of a global community that is capable of developing a Shared Information Civilization, built on a natural order of social harmony. The Magna Carta of Harmony presents a model of a new global order and introduces a positive alternative for wide discussion. This alternative is a global culture of peace built on a natural order of social harmony.

8. Social harmony, as unity and consent of human diversity, is a conscious aspiration to attain balance at the most fundamental, structural level of the spheres of society. Personal harmony, as unity and consent of spheres of individuals, is the conscious aspiration to balance these spheres. The source and key attribute of harmony in both cases is a reasonable measure, as the necessary limitation and balance of spheres of society and the individual. The basic law of dialectics is defined as follows: A law of unity and harmony of coordinated spheres and opposites. The traditional law of unity and struggle of uncoordinated opposites becomes a momentary exception. Harmony does not exclude conflicts, but excludes violent, militaristic decisions that destroy consent of diversity, balanced unity, and sustainable development. Harmony includes social contrasts, but excludes extremes and their antagonisms, which produce disharmony. Harmonious development establishes measures and balances for spheres and restrictions for their extremes. Disharmonious development permits violent struggles of unlimited extremes. Harmony, both social and personal, is a positive alternative to consumerism, profiteering, non-spirituality, enmity, and self-destruction in the chronic militaristic engagements of increasingly degraded Industrial-Risk civilizations. Social harmony is a logical, naturally evolving, humanistic alternative.

9. Social harmony cannot be revolutionary. It cannot be achieved by bloody wars, violent revolutions, coup d’etats, terrorist attacks, and territorial invasions, with which it is entirely incompatible. It can only be evolutionary, achieved through gradual processes of deleting societal extremes and their antagonisms. Each nation will develop its own means of generating a harmonious society, within the framework of gradually becoming part of a global, harmonious, information civilization in the 21^st century. They will have the following in common: the young, harmonious generations of the information civilization, owning the universal information and social science, will make this civilization harmonious, and will make changes in the aggressive generations of the industrial civilization without resorting to violence.

10. The value of harmony was proclaimed in the most ancient civilizations of Egypt, India, Mexico, Africa, China, Greece, and many others. Harmony is an entirely human concept, for which there is evidence in every century of human history. Harmony is accepted by all cultures, but in every one it is expressed distinctly. For example, in Russian Orthodox culture, the harmony equivalent is “sobornost” (this word has no English translation, but its approximate meaning is “consent of diversity in community”). Harmony is multicultural and polymorphic. Harmony is acceptable for all peoples, groups, cultures, and religions. In all religions, God creates the world from chaos, and makes it harmonious. As the great Italian sculptor and poet Michelangelo wrote, “In HIM, chaos was milled into harmony.”

11. The great German philosopher, Gottfried Leibnitz, established the world divine law “harmonia praestabilita” (preset harmony) three centuries ago. However, until now, the value of harmony was not recognized as a universal, global priority. It has now become possible only within the framework of a global, information civilization, developing within and replacing the conflict orientations of industrial civilizations. The history of humanity has been moving toward the goal of social harmony, but only in a global information civilization are the necessary conditions present to create social harmony. China has made a first step and proclaimed it as a national ideal. The United States of America, Russia, and other multicultural, industrial nations could do the same. It would calm their internal divisions and flare-ups of strife. But a national ideal of social harmony would also improve the spirit and culture of smaller nations, regardless of their dependence on political extremes of totalitarian and militaristic regimes. The China experience suggests that the value of harmony is stronger than such regimes.

12. Priorities of information, information production (technologies), and information resources create information societies and, ultimately, a global information civilization. Necessarily, it advances social and personal harmony as priorities, as a sole way to survive and further develop humanity in an information age. The continued existence of humanity at this stage can only be harmonious. Harmony gives to globalization the vectors of justice and sustainable development, serves to overcome ecological crises, and establishes harmonious relations with nature. At the same time, social harmony at the stage of universal information can only be global. All this creates a new, harmonious, globalization and a global Harmonious-Information civilization (HI-civilization).

13. The double significance of having a global value priority of social harmony: it is a consequence of adequate levels of social understanding and societal knowledge; and it provides for this new civilization a sustainable development, which becomes synonymous with harmonious development, and functions as a determining cultural factor, i.e., as an indicator of natural viability.

14. A global information civilization, on the basis of its social harmony priority, creates a global, multipolar, harmonious order as the sole possible way for the further existence of humanity, and the only positive alternative for degenerating Industrial-Risk societies. This global civilization prevents “clashes” (Samuel Huntington) of local civilizations by harmonious means and generates cultural “healing” for them (Terrence Paupp).

III. Natural Order of Harmony of Societal Spheres and Sphere Classes

15. Social harmony has a colossal, multidimensional, hidden potential. It consists of a natural order of four essential spheres of societal reproduction and reproduction of the lives of humankind. The four productive spheres of societal reproduction are the following:

SOCIAL (including humanitarian and social values),
INFORMATIONAL (including cultural and spiritual values),
ORGANIZATIONAL (including political-legal and financial values) and
TECHNICAL or ECONOMIC (including industrial and agricultural values).

They differ as to socially necessary, sufficient, and different-priority of resources, which are constantly reproduced within them:

HUMAN (PEOPLE),
INFORMATION,
ORGANIZATIONS, and
THINGS.

Among these, humans have top priority, as the sole universal resource that reproduces all other social resources, including themselves. Other resources and spheres have other priorities. Therefore, spheres have DIFFERENT PRIORITIES and HIERARCHY. But this hierarchy aspires to be harmonious, so its top priority is with the social sphere, reproducing people as the universal resource, which then defines the values and measures of other resources, depends upon them, and simultaneously is able to create harmony among them.

16. The aspiration of spheres to establish harmonious and coordinated interdependence makes an objective basis and unshakable social law of social development for human communities. The hierarchy of spheres does not separate and divide them. They do not exist independently of one another, and they do not exclude each other. They are indissolubly interconnected by a system of sphere social needs, abilities (labor), and exchanges/markets. The spheres can exist only in mutual inclusion, which defines that feature of interdependence that they, as opposed to competitive enterprises and branches, are equally necessary and equally productive in the reproduction of humankind. Yet, simultaneously, they have different priorities in their dialectics. Destruction of one sphere leads to destruction of all other spheres, whereas destruction of one enterprise or branch does not lead to the destruction of others. As a consequence, it is not in the nature of societal spheres to be hostile and antagonistic, even with, and in spite of, the conflicts of branches and enterprises within them.

17. only spheres can be harmonious. During all of human history, their hidden, natural order aspired to harmonious cooperation, overcoming the disharmony of societal extremes: enmities and antagonisms of private interests, enterprises, ethnicities, groups, classes, religions, territories, etc. If a private interest aspired to disharmony and chaos, the underlying social order of spheres aspired to harmony. (For more information about spheres, see http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=179.) The concept of spheres developed in Western philosophy and social science with Pythagoras and Plato, in its different forms by such thinkers as Charles de Montesquieu, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber, Robert Park, Karl Jaspers, Pitirim Sorokin, Talcott Parsons, Fernand Braudel, Alvin Toffler, Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Piotr Sztompka, Manuel Castells, Richard Sklar, Roland Robertson, Ulrich Beck, Goran Therborn, Arjun Appadurai, Jeffrey Alexander and many others. (For more about these formulations, see http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=169.)

18. Harmonious spheres of society determine the nature of productive employment of SPHERE CLASSES of the population, based on one’s primary employment in reproducing the resources of a given societal sphere. Each of the four societal spheres employs a corresponding sphere class:

SOCIOCLASS, consists of people employed in the sociosphere: workers in education, healthcare, childcare, welfare, sports, and non-wage earning populations: home-makers, children, students, unemployed, retired, and disabled;
INFOCLASS, consists of people employed in the infosphere: workers in science, culture, communication, and information services;
ORGCLASS, consists of people employed in the orgsphere: workers in management, politics, law, finance, defense, police, and security;
TECHNOCLASS, consists of people employed in the technosphere: workers in industry, agriculture, transportation, food, cleaning, and related services.

Sphere classes of reproductive employment are more fundamental than class distinctions based on property. Property ownership is temporary, partial, and inherently unequal, whereas reproductive (sphere) employment is constant, universal, and equally inherent in all human activity, although qualitatively different (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=180).

19. Sphere classes differ not in relationship to property and other financial assets, but in sphere employment, which distinguishes them from traditional upper/lower classes differentiated by ownership/non-ownership of property and access/non-access to material wealth. Spheres are equally essential, and employment in them equally necessary, therefore, the social nature of sphere classes is essentially harmonious, requiring cooperation and partnership, while avoiding extremes of antagonism and class hatred. Auguste Comte dreamed of harmony and love between bourgeoisie and proletariat, but it was an impossible Utopia, since owners and workers of his day were too dissimilar. Sphere classes are interdependent, with the potential to be harmonious. They provide mutual help, support, care, and class love.

19a. The emergence of a middle class has acted as a bridge between the antagonistic social classes of a vanishing Industrial-Risk civilization, providing a foundation for sustainable, harmonious societal growth, and creating a potential for transition from the old, Industrial-Risk civilization to a community of sphere classes in a Harmonious-Information civilization. However, the middle class consists of only about half of humankind, with the other half reduced to economic slavery, resulting from the combined effects of industrial civilization and globalization. The global middle class as a harmonious community grows through the transformation of the poorest population into the middle class on the basis of the new technologies of the information civilization (see below, articles 34-36). (For the correspondence of middle and sphere classes, see http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=283 (in Russian).)

20. In addition to spheres and sphere classes aspiring to harmony, each of the four sphere classes has its own social needs, abilities, labor, employment, property, money, distribution, and exchange/markets, which also aspire to harmony (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=180).

21. Equality of sphere classes does not rule out a hierarchical social structure with priority given to the socioclass. The sociosphere gives its priority to the socioclass. At the same time, the socioclass gives its priority to the needs of children and those social groups directly responsible for them: parents, daycare workers, teachers and healthcare professionals. on the other hand, legislative priority for children and those connected with them organizationally guarantees a priority of the socioclass in society. Priority for children in society and for the socioclass responsible for them is due to the incontestable fact that the qualities and integrity of all people, nations, classes, and occupations originate in childhood.

22. Society and the individual coincide in their most fundamental, sphere structure. The four social spheres of reproduction of humankind in the sociosphere, infosphere, orgsphere and technosphere correspond to the four spheres of reproduction/life of the individual human:

CHARACTER (including orientation, values and morals),
CONSCIOUSNESS (including information and spiritual culture),
WILL (including purposefulness and individual order), and
BODY (including temperament, subconscious and physiology).

The four spheres of an individual correspond with the four spheres of his individual needs, abilities, labor, employment, property, distribution and exchange relations. The spheres of the individual are interconnected by the system of sphere needs, abilities, communications and exchanges. The individual’s harmonious development is harmonious with the development of his spheres. It consists in proportional and balanced distribution of time in an individual’s life (his vital employment) among the four spheres and in overcoming the extremes (narrowness, one-sidedness) of his employment. The harmony of spheres of the individual (individual harmony) corresponds to social harmony and vice versa. Health, quality, and intervals of human life, as well as the quality of social existence, are derived from the degree of harmonization of individual spheres as well as societal spheres. (For more information see: http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=178.)

22a. A harmonious individual is distinguished by proportional distribution not only of time, but also of money, not only of consumption and accumulation, but also of harmonious development of self and other people, through charity and consistent donation of a share of one’s own riches and income for other people, first of all for children and young parents.

22b. An example of harmonious sphere development of the individual is the youth worker-student’s club “Demiurge” (1976-1980) in St. Petersburg, Russia (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=305, in Russian).

22c. An example of harmonious sphere development of children age 3 years and older is the “Studio for All-around Development of Children” (1985-1986) in St. Petersburg, Russia (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=295, in Russian).

23. Through sphere of employment, the individual is included in the corresponding social sphere and sphere class of the population. The life of an individual is a continuous change between social spheres of employment and corresponding class locations, i.e., between sphere classes. It deprives sphere classes of caste rigidity; hence, it releases the individual from rigid class/caste binding and the antagonisms of traditional industrial classes. Sphere classes provide social mobility for the individual, freedom to change spheres and their classes, making classes flexible through which the individual becomes a universal class actor. only his primary time and importance of employment in one sphere defines his main belonging to one sphere class. By this criterion, the individual himself defines his/her own sphere-class belonging. Harmony of social spheres and sphere classes provides harmony of the individual spheres, and vice versa, creating strong social and individual foundations for a new, Harmonious-Information civilization. The potential for social harmony of spheres on a global scale and on a personal level begins to bring forth, in the 21^st century, a Harmonious-Information global civilization.

23а. Final definitions. Harmony is the natural and most powerful creative energy of the universe, society and humans. Social harmony is the most powerful creative energy of society and humans because it is based on conscious concerted decisions and actions, i.e. on CO-actions, CO-activity, СО-creation, CO-efforts, CO-operation, and CO-participation of the fundamental spheres of society and of humans. (“CO” expresses a conscious coordination of the sphere processes in society and human.) The spheres make the most important and fundamental diversity for society and human, therefore a conscious consent of the sphere classes in society and the sphere needs and abilities in the humans is the single fundamental source of their harmonious energy and force. Mutual love is the highest form of CO-creative and harmonious energy. Love exemplifies ideal harmony, and harmony exemplifies love. Harmony is akin to mutual love, care and help. Harmonious energy of the spheres of society and humans heals them from social traumas, extremes and pathologies; establishes the indestructible global peace; and ensures co-creation, mutual care, help and prosperity for all people. Harmonious energy is the highest humanistic dignity. Harmonious energy is an imperishable driving force that qualitatively surpasses all forms of human competition. Harmonious energy within society and humans (energy of their internal spheres) overcomes the disharmonious forces and COUNTERactions – expressed in war, enmity, violence, divisiveness, intolerance, disrespect, humiliation, injustice, pauperization, alienation and so on – that ultimately create chaos, reduce humankind’s creative capacity, dissipate actions of mutual resistance, exhaust humanity’s and society’s positive forces, and senselessly destroy a significant portion of all human, natural and manufactured resources. Harmonious energy exists naturally in all humans and in all segments of society, but it was used partially and inefficiently. People up to now do not know, and therefore do not use, its fundamental source, which consists in the spheres of society and humans. This source is opened first in tetrasociology and the Magna Carta of Harmony. Awareness, knowledge and use of harmonious energy of the spheres of society and humans are the historical mission of humankind at this new stage of its evolution.

IV. The Technologies of Sphere Harmony

24. With the Chinese turn toward the goal of a harmonious society in October, 2006, humanity enters into a new epoch of comprehensive knowledge (research) and conscious use (adaptation) of the harmonious potential of all four spheres of social reproduction and individual life.

24a. The year 2006 marks the beginning of a conscious, transitional period from Industrial-Risk to a Harmonious-Information civilization. However, it is difficult to tell at what moment the transition from one civilization to another begins: it may have started with the first computer, on June 21, 1948 (http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/fcomp.shtml), or with the first Internet prototype—Arpanet—on October 29, 1969 (http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_arpanet.htm), or with the creation of the first personal computer, Apple II, in 1977, or with the IBM PC in 1981 (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/personal_computer.html)? It also is not known how much additional time this transitional period will require since it first became noticeable in 2006. It can take two or three generations (40-60 years), not only for change in quality of the population majority, harmonization of spheres and organizations, but also for creation of new informational, political, economic, and sociocultural technologies of sphere harmony.

25. Sphere or tetra macro-statistics have been developed for quantitative analysis of the dynamics of social and individual spheres, for quantitative expression of their harmonious development, and for calculation of their harmonization. These statistics establish sphere indices to measure potentials for harmony. These are statistics of harmony, not of profit (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=176). Indices of sphere classes have been created for Russia. While requiring much labor, they can be created for any country and for the world as a whole with adequate funding.

26. On the basis of sphere macro-statistics, essentially new information technologies for all spheres of society and for all sphere classes can be created. This is especially important for creating humanitarian, developmental, and educational technologies for individual harmonious development and personal growth, beginning at 10 years of age (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=177).

27. Harmonious education is a way to diminish the negative aspects of individual extremes. Harmonious education of the individual includes balanced information and training concerning all four spheres of society and their significance for the individual. The structure of educational processes and plans for each institution of harmonious education, from children’s pre-schools to finishing universities and academies, corresponds to the four natural spheres of society and the individual. The harmonious education of children within the family has a comparable structure. The organization of harmonious educational institutions includes the four, sphere-balanced complexes/blocks/clusters of the educational disciplines, corresponding to the four spheres of society and the individual (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=53). The global unity of structure and organization of harmonious educational institutions does not exclude, but, ideally, requires content diversity appropriate to the different cultures and local civilizations. Through a globally instituted, harmonious education and, concurrently, the creation of children’s priority, critical numbers (more than 50%) of harmonious people are possible within two to three generations (40-60 years). Achievement of critical numbers of harmonious people will certify the affirmation of a Harmonious-Information civilization.

28. The need for cognition, creation and development of harmony requires qualitative transformation within all four spheres of reproduction/life of humankind. It affects, first of all, the organizational sphere, ensuring political/legal integration of efforts of humankind in this direction, with sufficient funding.

29. Pure (two-class) capitalism and uncompromised (classless) socialism, as modern organizational forms of societal reproduction, are incompatible with the social harmony of a natural order of spheres and sphere classes. Capitalism, socialism, and their various modifications continue to be products of an Industrial-Risk civilization. Social harmony cannot reach its potential within either capitalism or socialism. Both of these politico-social systems are based on property relations, though through different means. They rely on branch (competitive) social classes and/or political (bureaucratic) divisions that are antagonistic by nature, since they are focused on redistribution of property rather than on creation of social harmony. However, both from capitalism and from socialism, there are peaceful ways of transforming, to maximize social harmony in a globally manifested, Harmonious-Informational civilization. China is preparing to pave the way to harmony from socialism. one way of transition from socialism to social harmony can be the Communist Multi-Party (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=262). Likewise, the Scandinavian countries, minimizing extremes between poverty and riches, are showing the way to harmony from capitalism. Sometime in the future, these and other effective ways will be incorporated by other nations, leading to a global, Harmonious-Information civilization, synthesizing the most progressive aspects of both capitalism and socialism into social harmony.

30. A necessary first step, in an organizational/political direction, is the creation of Parties of Social Harmony, expressing the interests of each of the sphere classes, worldwide. This four-party political system of sphere parties will demonstrate the social harmony of the sphere classes. It establishes sphere democracy. The creation of a Global Movement for Social Harmony, with the sphere structure, and with regional divisions, worldwide, is also necessary. All Institutes of Social Harmony will repeat the four-sphere structure, and they will coordinate the “equal rights of sphere communications” to express the equal interests of the sphere classes at all levels.

30a. The first prototype of the Party of Sphere Democracy was the “Sphere Democracy Group” in the St. Petersburg Parliament, created in 1993 (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=282 (in Russian)). It put forward the projects of a sphere organization for the legislative and executive power of St. Petersburg (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=310 (in Russian)). These projects are very important for the transition period from an Industrial-Risk society to a Harmonious-Information civilization.

31. The sphere structure and organization of Social Harmony Institutes, including at the state level, create a sphere democracy (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=13). A sphere democracy’s first feature is completeness in which everyone in the population is represented in elections, including children. Children, accounting for 20% to 50% of the population in different countries, receive political representation through their parents, which is the first step to sphere democracy. The second feature is the harmoniously equal distribution of political, economic, and other power among the sphere classes and their representatives, in all structures of authority, first of all in the state, which will include a four-sphere parliament and four-sphere government. Such a state is a sphere state. The third feature is nonviolence. Traditional societies are structured to recognize the competitive interests of antagonistic classes, for the restraint of which the state is prepared to use violence. But sphere democracy does not rely on violence since it does not have antagonisms. When society is structured on sphere harmonious classes, which by nature are non-antagonistic, it need not resort to the use of violence, but to tools for harmony, to which the state turns in time, through decades of transition. The fourth feature is the sphere four-party political system.

31a. The global sphere structure of states, in different countries, helps to diminish interstate borders and to create a worldwide Global Village, but the state is necessary for local regulation. The beginning of this process, in Europe, is in the creation of the European Union, which already has united 27 states.

32. The main tasks of the sphere state consist of creating and updating norms and measures of harmony as conditions for partnership, consent, and mutual aid, ensuring social harmony among the sphere classes. Therefore, the sphere democracy transforms the state from an apparatus for violence into a tool for harmony. The main support of the sphere state is harmonious individuals and harmonious sphere classes, excluding antagonism, therefore the state will not require violence for observing established norms and measures of harmony. Although violence is not required for harmonious individuals, state violence (police, prisons, etc.) will be kept in reserve for resistance to any unforeseen violence of people and groups. The sphere state acts as the primary political institution for achievement and maintenance of social harmony among sphere classes. A four-party political system, with a four-sphere parliament and a four-sphere administration, is adequate for a harmonious civilization. Sphere democracy is a simultaneous development and an alternative to traditional, industrial democracy, which is “increasingly becoming extinct,” as it turns into “democratic despotism … and inverted totalitarianism” (Terrence Paupp).

33. The basic task of the sphere political system (sphere democracy) is to gradually and peacefully overcome traditional extremes (disharmonies) in all spheres: in the economic sphere, extremes of poverty and riches lead to economic enmity; in the political sphere, extremes of power and non-power lead to political enmity; in the information sphere, extremes of culture and non-culture as well as education and non-education lead to cultural enmity; in the social sphere, extremes of egoism and altruism as well as rigid morality and immorality lead to social enmity. Harmony is incompatible with such extremes, and will gradually discover innovative state and educational technologies for peaceful restriction and regulation. Each sphere will develop and adopt necessary ways and means to overcome its disharmonious extremes.

34. To develop a strategy of economic harmonization, that is, a way to overcome extremes of wealth and poverty and abate economic enmity, sphere states must establish ratios: permissible increases in wealth of the richest in proportion to increases in wealth of the poorest. This dependence will require the richest populations to promote the growth and well being of the poorest populations. Similarly: the profits of global corporations in each country will be limited, depending on changes in the level of each country’s poverty. Criteria for these proportions cannot be rigid and constant. They should vary from minimum increases to maximum increases and be linked to actual, demonstrated increases in the well being of the poor. (This will discourage bribe-taking by local officials and census takers.) Gradual transitions out of poverty, with the active, motivated participation of the richest members of local and global societies, will take longer in some countries and regions than in others, depending on resources at different levels.

35. Each state will develop a political strategy of economic harmonization. A legislated responsibility for the richest to relieve poverty will give them a worthy investment (and meaning) in social harmony, an investment that the wealthy have not previously had, except through voluntary contributions and progressive taxation. However, the unequal advantages of wealth are ineradicable. It is a powerful economic stimulus; therefore, harmony aspires only to a reasonable measure, rather than an economic wage-leveling. The disadvantages of poverty and wealth cannot be abolished by legislation, but merely reduced by an optimal measure, which will be simultaneously the least evil, the greatest boon, and the best justice for all. This measure will develop a history of legitimacy. It will vary in each country, and be constantly changing by month, quarter, and year. Determination of this measure will thus be an on-going concern of sphere parliaments and sphere administrations, at all levels, and subject to public examination, discussion, and consent.

35a. Absolute (unlimited) and inherited powers are limited in a democracy. Absolute (unlimited) and inherited riches are limited in a society committed to social harmony. Just as absolute (unlimited) power makes people into political slaves, so manipulation of absolute (unlimited) riches makes people into economic slaves. Political freedom controlled by political elites and “free market” economies manipulated by economic elites have entrapped almost three billion people in poverty (nearly half of the world’s population, living on less than two dollars a day). Extreme poverty of the working poor, an indicator of economic slavery, has continued to intensify during economic globalization. Thus, globalization has helped to entrap nearly half of humankind in economic slavery. Thus, political freedom and industrial market economies have not provided economic liberation. Production from industrial era economic slavery is replaced in the new information civilization by means of restrictions on economic riches and consensual establishment of harmonious interdependence on the basis of economic harmony of spheres. It establishes a market economy of harmony (or harmonious market economy) of a new civilization to replace the economy of disharmony (or disharmonious economy) of the old civilization. A harmonious economy is created in the framework of a tetrasociological interactive variant of an institutional economy to include social factors and values as, for example, in the writings ofF. Fukuyama (1995), A. Seligman (1997), N. Lumann (1998), P. Zstompka (1999), and J. Veselov (2004) (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=60, in Russian).

36. A strategy of political harmonization is to overcome extremes of power and non-power of various social groups and to abate political enmity through creation of sphere states. The creation of sphere power structures from the level of local self-management up to national and global levels, including the United Nations and other international organizations, such as the World Bank, WTO, IMF, UNESCO, UNICEF, and others, serves the purpose of political harmonization. Sphere re-structuring of these organizations, and equal representation in them of sphere class interests, will ensure their transformation into institutions of the global politics of social harmony. In the UN, for example, this will require creation of a Public Representatives Chamber (from 800 to 1600 individuals) with equal representation (of 200 to 400 individuals) from each of the global sphere classes, but also with proportional representation from member states. The UN Public Representatives Chamber, formed from the most outstanding public (nongovernmental) figures, might meet two times per year, for two months, to agree on the most important directives from institutions of global politics for social harmony for the UN General Assembly to consider and embody in political documents of international law.

36a. A transition period from industrial to harmonious societies requires qualitatively reforming the missions of international organizations, such as the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, and others. The Magna Carta of Harmony suggests the following new mission statements for these organizations, to help establish societies of social harmony:

UN Mission: acceptance, by UN member states, of the special Convention for Annual Reduction of Armies’ Size and Arms Expenditures of 2-2.5% and Achievement of Their Zero Level in 40 to 50 years. This allows enough time to re-structure military/industrial complexes and redirect their productive capacities to develop education, health services, science, space assimilation, and preservation of the environment. Liberated funds must be also directed to liquidate extreme poverty, and to create universities and academies to study social harmony, to institute children’s priorities, and to promote the harmonious development of children, youth, and young families. Control of reduction of armies’ size and arms expenditures, as well as new target directions, are carried out by the Ministries/Departments of Peace, the creation of which is presupposed by the government of each country and the UN in the same UN Convention. The UN army’s number, in connection with reduction of national armies, should be supported at a level necessary for maintenance of international order and prevention of military conflicts during the transition period. At its end, the UN should retain its army in case of an armed attack or violent threat from space and also for mitigation of the consequences of man-caused and natural catastrophes. The wars always were rich and bathed in gold, and peace always was and remains as a beggar. The system of global disarmament under aegis of the UN will turn this situation for 40-50 years.

UNESCO Mission: promotion of the harmonious development and education of children and youth, the formation of a culture of harmonious peace, and the culture of a harmonious civilization. Of great importance for distribution of harmonious peace culture will be the creation of appropriate International Satellite Round-the-Clock Television under aegis of UNESCO. This idea is offered by Dr Mohammad Shbayta and Dr Ada Aharoni, IFLAC President.

UNICEF Mission: inclusion of children’s suffrage, executed by parents, in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; promotion of this right, to ensure children’s priority in every society, in every state, and in the national legislation of every country.

36b. A strategy of the world/global politics of social harmony is to overcome the imperial ambitions of some states, liquidate extreme poverty, reduce armies and arms expenditures, prevent wars and violence, and prioritize the needs of children as they prepare to live in harmonious societies, together with formation of an immunity to terrorist and other violent activity (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=159 (in Russian)), thus removing the groundwork for world terrorism as a social phenomenon and leaving in the past a world politics of endless “wars on terror.”

37. A strategy of information (cultural) harmonization is to overcome the extremes of culture and non-culture and of education and non-education, as well as to abate cultural, linguistic, and religious enmity, by introducing universal values of harmony, faith, culture, and language, global standards of education, and various projects of harmonious peace culture and harmonious worldview. The first example of harmonious worldview is tetra-worldview (tetrism) (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=86 (in Russian)). The first example of a culture of harmonious peace is the Harmonious Era Calendar (below). Cultural harmonization results in a culture of harmony, based on the sphere classes and children’s priority. In a new society, culture and enlightenment of harmony will penetrate all of the mass media, providing for them a worldwide circulation. Religions will be harmonized when every denomination recognizes its temples not only as houses of faith, but also as places for human harmony with God and between people. In spirit, all people could be united in one temple. The doors would be open, bridging believers of different confessions.

38. A strategy of social harmonization is to overcome disharmonious extremes of egoism (individualism) and altruism (collectivism) and of rigid morality and immorality, and to abate social enmity, with social recognition and legislative establishment of children’s priority. This priority will reorient all social groups to the highest and, equally important for all, common interest in the well being of children, which will reasonably unite all population groups. Priority for children will overcome their marginal status and constantly worsening circumstances in industrial civilization. As shown in recent sociological research, the growth of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and riches of the developed countries is accompanied by growth of poverty and deterioration of health of children (Dr. Jianghong Li, 2006, Western Australia), which is just one of the important indicators of societal degeneration and pathology in a global, industrial civilization. The social traumas of immigration can also be overcome by the children's priority. Before migrants begin to work, they should first learn language, culture, peace and harmony, free-of-charge. First of all, their children should be embraced. When immigrant children and teenagers are cared for as natives, then they will be integrated into the peace and harmony of the society and will not be smash cars, shops, etc.

39. Children’s priority will also overcome other sources of social enmity, extremes of egoism and altruism, rigid morality and immorality. Children’s priority, leveling and lifting the well being and conditions of life and development for all children, creates a necessary base for social harmonization. It recognizes parental labour, first of all the mother’s labour, as productive and paid labour. It provides an economic and political base for legislatively prohibiting abortions, a “war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself,” and the “greatest destroyer of peace and love in the world,” in the words of Mother Teresa. Abortion and harmony are incompatible (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=241). Children’s priority in society creates an environment in which all children will be conceived and born into love and safety. This can only be ensured by Children’s Suffrage Executed by Parents. A proposal for this law was developed in 2004 for Russia (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=211).

39a. Children’s suffrage, executed by parents, can be a tool for both the increase and the decrease of fertility in any one region/country, but in any case it necessarily raises the quality of life for children, their level of future well being, and their potential value as social capital for maintaining a harmonious society.

40. The tool of public advance for the law of Children’s Suffrage Executed by Parents in the different countries and at a global level is the civil Global Movement: Making Children a Priority in the World, with divisions in each country. The beginning to this movement was established in 2005 (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=116). The organized movement for social harmony began with a movement to create children’s priority, i.e., for children’s suffrage executed by parents. From this movement to create children’s priority, as from a seed, will grow the tree of social harmony. It will not grow from the traditional (industrial) attitude toward children as non-contributors to society. only children’s suffrage, and the recognition of their productive contributions to society, within the context of a sphere state and sphere classes will fulfill and transform the declarative and most remarkable documents of industrial civilization—The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)—into real institutions of harmonious civilization, recognizing as inalienable rights the human rights of both adults and children.

V. From a Culture of Militarily Enforced Peace to a Harmonious Peace Culture

41. A global, Harmonious-Information Civilization can be created only by harmonious sphere classes of world population. These classes, after creating an appropriate civilization with a multi-polar order, will be able to create a new culture of harmonious peace constructed not on a traditional militarist principle, “if you want peace, prepare for war,” but on a truly peaceful principle, “if you want peace, create harmony,” which prevents wars, reduces poverty and enmity, and establishes an eternal, inevitable, and universal peace. This peace can be defined more precisely as a “harmonious peace.” Humanity’s dream of such a peace was expressed in the works of Erasmus from Rotterdam, Jan Komensky, William Penn, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Saint-Simon, Johann Fichte, Johann Herder, Vasily Malinovsky, Leo Tolstoy, Buddhism and Confucianism, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela, and other great thinkers. only a harmonious peace provides the real right of humans for peace. Pope John Paul II said that world peace would eventually come only after two of the greatest evils of the 20th century are gone. He added saying that these were Communism and Capitalism, because both advance their causes through the exploitation of people. The alternative is social harmony and indestructible harmonious peace, created by it.

42. only spheres can be harmonious. Only sphere classes can be the harmonious social actors capable of transforming industrial militarist culture into the reality of a Harmonious Peace Culture. Wars are necessary to elites. Peace is necessary to the population. But the population can ensure harmonious peace only through sphere harmony classes, a sphere state, and a culture of harmonious peace. Professor Ada Aharoni (2001) pioneered the idea of a harmonious peace culture, became a peace researcher, world famous poet, and Founder and President of the International Forum for Literature and Culture of Peace (IFLAC). The Harmonious Era Calendar is the first international project of this culture (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=190). It was published in 2006 by 27 authors from 12 countries in 12 languages, all in one book, which is already in libraries in approximately 100 universities and cities on every continent. This Calendar begins a chronology of significant dates commemorating positive events and achievements of a new, global, Harmonious-Information civilization, beginning with June 21, 2006, as the first celebration of Global Harmony Day (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=225).

43. The harmonious peace of sphere classes essentially differs from the military peace of antagonistic (social) classes, competing ideologies, and conflicting religions of industrial and earlier civilizations. Peace was assured with a promise, “want peace, prepare for war” (si vis pacem, para bellum), shoring up times of peace with continuous preparations for war. Such a peace, in history, has always been a military peace, i.e., a peace supported by and subordinated to war, characterized by expectations, acceptance, and predispositions to go to war. This war-stained peace has resisted tendencies to long for eternal peace, which hopes and dreams were consigned to religious anticipation and spiritual fantasies of an afterlife. Therefore, peace developed for thousands of years, in many cultures, as something to be fought for and to die for. only in recent decades is peace being thought of as a basic human right, to be obtained by peaceful means. Presently it is embodied in international movements to harmonize world religions (http://www.cpwr.org/), to create Ministries/Departments of Peace (www.thepeacealliance.org, www.peoplesinitiativefordepartmentsofpeace.org, http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=229, http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=239), to promote the International Bilingualism of English and Esperanto (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=52);and also in the World Harmony Foundation and the Harmony Bell, supported by the UN (http://www.world-harmony-foundation.org, and http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=230). These and others sprouts of modern culture of harmonious peace are submitted on the “Peace from Harmony” website (http://www.peacefromharmony.org).Every continent has from tens to thousands of various groups and organizations of harmony: educational, healing, psychological, cosmetic, leisure, children, youth, etc.

43а. A culture of peace, as established by the UN (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=4), unfortunately, is not capable of ensuring true peace for modern times.A culture of harmonious peace includes the UN eight aspects, but it must be supplemented by their fundamental unification on the social basis of sphere classes of the population. These social actors are at peace with Nature and exclude any wars. They are the only source and eternal guarantor for indestructible, harmonious peace.

44. The year 2006 marks a turning point in the history of humankind. It represents the beginning of a new, harmonious era, in which reasons for war, violence, poverty, terror, and other social pathologies are being challenged as unnatural and unnecessary. This era began with two great events in 2006 that are independent of each other. The coincidence of these events signals a cultural convergence of preparations for a new era of peace based on harmony. one event is cultural: creating for this new era the Harmonious Era Calendar. The other event is political: the decision of China to turn toward social harmony as a national ideal, which opened this era to the possibility of harmony in practice. The coincidence of these two events—in the cultural and political spheres—is nonrandom because they have but one source: the inevitable emergence of a natural order of social harmony from which to build a global culture of peace. The year 2006 has opened a new chapter in the history of humankind, a turning point toward an era of harmony from which there is no turning back.

44a. Basic attributes of a harmonious information civilization:

Harmonious development of individuals as the highest aim of a harmonious civilization;
Harmonious ideology and harmonious worldview;
The central place of a value of harmony in culture and religion;
Harmonious education and development of children in family, school, university, and society;
The harmonious democratic state: equal distribution of the power and resources between harmonious classes. The state turns from the device of violence in a tool of harmony, and democracy turns from the device of the majority domination and enrichment of minority to consent and mutual care for all groups of the population, ending extremes of poverty and excessive riches;
Harmonious multiparty political system for the coordination of interests of harmonious classes;
Social priority of children provided through the institution of children’s suffrage executed by parents;
Harmonious global market and economy, ending extremes of poverty and excessive riches, that is unbalanced with minimal well being;
Total disarmament of nations, except for some weaponry and armed forces of the UN in case of threat from the cosmos or from natural or man-caused catastrophes;
A sustainableand indestructible harmonious peace on Earth;
Constant care about our Planet for preservation of all of its spheres and realms;
Transformation of humankind into one global harmonious community of people of different races, nations, religions, and cultures;
Globalization of harmony and harmony of globalization: the process of globalization becomes harmonious and just, ensuring the Common Good;
The sustainable and peaceful development of humankind gets a harmonious and irreversible character.

VI. New Perspectives from the Magna Carta of Harmony

45. The Magna Carta of Harmony is a political document that challenges all people, parties, and nations of the world to make a political commitment, first, like the People’s Republic of China, to choose social harmony as a national priority and directive, and second, and more importantly for global harmony, to choose social harmony as the basis of their global strategy to promote socioeconomic development and sustainability for all nations.

46. The Magna Carta of Harmony is not only political, but also an educational document that reveals to people, primarily youth, the new values, priorities, and knowledge necessary to make a personal commitment to social and individual harmony.

47. The Magna Carta of Harmony is not only political and educational, but also a humanistic document that creates the foundation for a new humaneness. It proclaims the birth of a new, harmonious human: homo harmonis. Harmony becomes spirituality, humaneness, mode of life, and the measure of this individual both for himself and for the environmental world. The transition of homo sapiens from an economic human (homo faber) to a harmonious human (homo harmonis) is historically necessary and natural. It has begun now, in the 21^st century.

48. The Magna Carta of Harmony is not only political, educational, and humanistic, but also an ethical, cultural, and spiritual document. From the harmony of global spheres of humankind and individuals, from children’s priority in the world, new global ethics are born, an ethics of harmony based on the Golden Rule or Moral Imperative, known to all world religions. The sphere social structure creates the necessary social and individual preconditions to transform this moral imperative into a reality of daily attitudes, of which, in the past, one could only dream. For a global, Harmonious-Information civilization, harmony is the cultural symbol, the highest morally integrated value, which includes all other positive values: peace, love, faith, hope, justice, freedom, equality, dignity brotherhood, and respect and compassion for all of humankind. Harmony is also happiness, and happiness is harmony in all forms: harmony of soul and body, harmony of four spheres of the individual and society, harmony of the individual with nature, man with woman, parents with children, science with art, etc.

49. Social harmony is inseparable from the values of respect and understanding of one another, benevolence and gratitude toward one another, tolerance, goodwill, compromise, forgiveness, reconciliation and dialogue. only within the frameworks of the sphere classes is it possible for humans to love one another as oneself, and only within these frameworks are people equal and necessary to each other as brothers. The harmony of the sphere classes transforms their love of children into love of each other, as a political force for nonviolent achievement of consent. This transformation was proclaimed by Mahatma Gandhi and by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Love of children mediates love among the sphere classes, and vice versa. Respect and consent are reproduced lovingly within these classes. This love becomes unconditional and fundamental, based on the most powerful social foundation of the sphere classes within the population. The harmony of spheres and sphere classes, from which unconditional love and eternal peace follow creates a qualitatively new global ethos of harmony, love, and peace. The principle harmony ethos is the Golden Rule, including “love your neighbor as yourself,” and “by enmity do not desecrate yourself,” (Abdurrahman Jami) in all its sinful forms, such as murder, larceny, lies, and envy. Social harmony is the best way for enemies to become friends and for enmity to transform into consent.

VII. Multicultural Website “Peace from Harmony” as the

Smelting Furnace for the Magna Carta of Harmony

50. The Magna Carta of Harmony could be born only on the international and multicultural site: A New Culture of Peace from Social Harmony and Children’s Priority (briefly: Peace from Harmony). For two years, it has united about 200 authors from 33 countries of the world and is now published in 15 languages. It collects ideas from humans of harmony throughout the world. The site has become a smelting furnace of their spiritual contributions, from which new projects of harmony, including the Magna Carta of Harmony, are smelted. In it, the new global and harmonious community is born. The site has collected a set of harmony achievements. on the site are crystallized and synthesized new ideas of social harmony and children’s priority. It has become a multicultural source for the birth of new, brilliant achievements and for introducing outstanding persons and leaders of social harmony. All of them cannot be named. I shall name only 60 authors of the site from 20 countries:

Prof. Ada Aharoni (Israel and France): pioneer of the idea of a Harmonious Peace Culture.

Talgat Akbashev (Russia): planetary system of harmonious education for all citizens of the world.

Lucy Alferova (Russia): Peace and Harmony Museum in the Chelyabinsk gymnasium.

Dr. Maria Cristina Azcona (Argentina): bilingualism as the most direct way to peace.

Prof. Reimon Bachika (Japan): religious harmony is unity in diversity: common values linked to unique symbolic representations.

Prof. Ammar Banni (Algeria): harmony will serve for a rise and blooming of children in the world.

Diana Basterfield (UK), Yumi Kikuchi (Japan), Saul Arbess (Canada), Peter P. Lukwiya (Uganda), Dot Maver (USA), Biannca Pace (Australia): Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace.

Harold W. Becker (USA): the idea of global unity through unconditional love.

Dr. T. Ashok Chakravarthy (India): Universal Brotherhood and Global Peace.

Dr. Renato Corsetti (Italy): Esperanto as a neutral international language, equal for all peoples.

Guy Crequie (France): UN reform and creative values training for the new generations.

Rosa Dalmiglio (Italy): conductor of the Chinese harmony ideas in the West.

Dr. Martha Ross DeWitt (USA): theories of social and societal transition and transformation.

Dr. Mona Gamal-El Dina (France): art and poetry for harmonious peace

Prof. Lia Diskin (Brazil): Federal Parliamentary Council of Peace Culture in Brazil.

Dr. Stephen Gill (Canada): Peace is the legitimate child of peaceful means.

Mitch Gold (USA): the Earth as our general home.

Nina Goncharova (Russia): celebration as a source of harmony.

Carol Hiltner (USA): Golden Altai Mountains, source of light for the world.

Michael Holmboe (Norway): “One can always win a war, but how does one conquer peace?” The Law of laws—eternal Harmony.

Takis Ioannides (Greece): only harmony of soul and education can solve our problems.

Tatomir Ion-Marius (Romania): light of harmony illuminates all mankind.

Student Ivan Ivanov (Russia): social harmony as alternative to Industrial-Risk civilization.

Prof. Dimity Ivashintsov (Russia): creativity and diversity of cultures as necessary for harmony.

Jan Jacobsen (Norway): Global Disarmament Day and Global Disarmament Call.

Prof. Abram Jusfin (Russia): interaction of harmony and disharmony.

Vladimir Kavtorin (Russia): children’s suffrage and priority.

Student Maxim Kazakov (Russia): necessity of planetary harmonious thinking.

Kostas Konstantinidis (Greece): globalization of disharmony in an industrial society.

Mikhail Lebedinsky (Russia): the four-dimensional philosophy “Tetrarum.”

Dr. Evelin Lindner (World citizen): equal dignity and overcoming of humiliation.

Dr. Rose Lord (USA): the mothers as peacemakers.

John McConnell (USA): global care and trustee for the Earth.

Prof. Charles Mercieca (USA): analysis of many ideas of culture of peace and harmony.

Trevor Osborn (Australia): world harmony network.

Prof. Terrence Paupp (USA): fall of empires and birth of a new global community.

Dr. Bernard Phillips (USA): toward universal harmony through an interactive worldview.

Susana Roberts (Argentina): the rights of children to all children.

Dr. Maitreyee Bardhan Roy (India): care for the disabled children.

Dr. Subir Bardhan Roy (India): problem of the foodstuffs and peace.

Dr. Bernard Scott (England): Sociocybernetics of spheres of social harmony.

Dr. Leo Semashko (Russia): children’s priority in the world as a precondition for harmony.

Andrei Semashko (Russia): harmony is happiness and happiness is harmony.

Igor Shadkhan (Russia): grandmothers and grandfathers for children and harmony.

Prof. Rudolf Siebert (USA): harmonization of religions on the Golden Rule basis.

Dr. Yehuda Stolov (Israel): sprouts of the Arab-Israeli harmony through culture and education.

David Stringer (England): universal world of harmony and peace.

Tatiana Tselutina (Russia): global communication of children of the world.

Prof. Grigory Toulchinsky (Russia): children’s suffrage as a condition for social harmony.

Alexander Verbitsky(Ukraine):children are the sources of harmony and peace on the Earth.

Svetlana Vetrova (Russia): harmonious development for preschool children.

Claude Veziau (Canada): creation of harmony through music.

Prof. Rene Wadlow (France): human rights; liquidation of famine and extreme poverty.

Robert M. Weir (USA): participant in the campaign to establish a US Department of Peace and Nonviolence

Professor Jiang Yimin (China): Harmony is a nucleus of many millenial Chinese Culture.

51. These and many other ideas about social harmony are submitted on our website (www.peacefromharmony.org), many of them in debatable form. In the first half of 2006, from the positive intellectual fuel in its smelting furnace was smelted the first global, unique project of harmonious peace culture: Harmonious Era Calendar. At the end of 2006, from its information fuel is smelted the Magna Carta of Harmony, synthesizing ideas of highest spiritual integrity. The multicultural diversity of the site finds in this document a harmonious unity through tetrasociological theory, its strongest cultural statement and most complete ideological rationale.

VIII. Epilogue

52. Living in social harmony does not mean consenting to everything that exists in the world today. Social harmony is a positive alternative to social disharmony. Harmony is incompatible with empires, violence, totalitarianism, stockpiling of weapons, and other means of intimidation, which are disharmonious with nature. In this connection, the Magna Carta of Harmony is addressed not to each human on the Earth but only to those who are focused on positive alternatives to the destructive tendencies of modern industrial civilization. But it does not attempt to divide people into two hostile camps. Parties of harmony cannot be hostile, by definition, or they will not be parties of harmony. The conscious association of people in the sphere classes and parties allows opposite interests and groups to find harmonious, coordinated, and peaceful discussions. The Magna Carta of Harmony shows how, inside a dying civilization, the framework for a new, harmonious civilization can evolve and become peacefully affirmed. Therefore, the Magna Carta of Harmony has, despite its limited circulation, a universal and global relevance from the point of view of a future civilization and future generations, which today make up only a small part of humankind.

53. The Magna Carta of Harmony does not contradict, but supplements, the known Earth Charter 2000 (www.earthcharter.org), which is mainly ecological in character. The Magna Carta of Harmony does not contradict, but supplements and essentially develops, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and other international humanitarian documents. For mutual development and assessment of these documents and the Magna Carta of Harmony, it is expedient to compare them.

54. Social harmony and its culture require colossal investments and resources. First of all, they are necessary for the elimination of poverty and also for the creation of an International and Interconfessional University or Academy of Social Harmony and Harmonious Peace Culture (briefly: Harmony Academy) in all countries of the world. This Academy will prepare the necessary staff of teachers, doctors, social workers, lawyers, sociologists, managers, and diplomats for two global movements: Making Children a Priority and Creating Social Harmony, and also to promote a harmonious peace culture in the schools and universities of all countries. The first Harmony Academy can be created, for example, in St. Petersburg, Russia; or in Beijing, China; or in Geneva, Switzerland, or in any other place where it will be supported by authorities.

55. The Magna Carta of Harmony is addressed to a wide public, to governments, to the mass media, to political, religious, cultural, and business circles in all countries so they may support it, distribute it worldwide, and sponsor the organization of Harmony Academies in every country.

56. The Magna Carta of Harmonyis open to additions from like-minded authors, for dialogue among authors, for further scientific development and amendment. It will be updated and republished regularly to ensure a creative character, free from dogmatization. It does not pretend to be complete or absolutely valid in its present form.

57. The 21^st century can be a century of evolutionary transformation of human society to a global harmonious information civilization. The present Magna Carta of Harmony is a unique philosophy, universal ideology, and the first expression of social harmony as a natural order of sphere classes in social science.

Leo M. Semashko, Ph.D.

Social Philosopher and Sociologist; ISA member;

Director, Public Institute of Strategic Sphere (Tetrasociological) Researches “Tetrasphere”;

Director, Russia IFLAC;

Founder and President, International site “Peace from Harmony” (www.peacefromharmony.org)

Author of more 150 scientific works, including 11 books;

Address: 7/4-42 Ho-Shi-Min Street, St. Petersburg 194356, Russia.

Tel: 7 (812) 513-3863

Email: leo44442006@yandex.ru

December 21, 2006, is a date of the first publication of the Charter.

April, 2007 edition

==================================================================

Abstract

The Magna Carta of Harmony is the first theoretical, social/philosophical vision of a globally harmonious information civilization of the 21^st century that develops within an Industrial-Risk civilization and attempt to replace it. The Magna Carta scientifically explains a global transition from one civilization to another, begun by China in 2006 with its decision toward “building a society of social harmony.” It is a radical turn in the history of humankind from the epochs of continuous wars to a mature stage of inviolable global peace as a new history. The Magna Carta of Harmony shows the necessity for this transition, the inevitability of a harmonious civilization, and the ways to achieve it for the different, modern socioeconomic systems: capitalism, socialism, and their combined forms. The harmonious society of a new civilization is a constructive alternative to capitalism and socialism, which are forms of failing industrial societies. The Magna Carta of Harmony is intended, primarily, for children and youth. Yet, all people will be able to accept and to embody it as a practical, everyday way of life and in our long-term social reorganization.

-----------------------------

Gratitude

I express deep gratitude to Professor Ada Aharoni, Israel and France; Professor Reimon Bachika of Japan; Professor Terrence Paupp and Harold W. Becker of USA; Dr. Bernard Scott of England; artist Claude Veziau of Canada; Professor Abram Jusfin, artist Nina Goncharova and writer Vladimir Kavtorin of Russia for preliminary viewing and valuable remarks, and also Professor Charles Mercieca, writer Robert Weir, and editor Carol Hiltner of USA, Professor Rene Wadlow ofFrance, and especially Dr. Martha Ross DeWitt of USA for careful editing of the Charter’s English text. I also express deep gratitude to all editors and the Charter’s translators into other languages. I also express deep gratitude to all authors of our site, each of whom has brought his/her contribution to our Charter.

Leo Semashko

---------------------------

Two Responses

Dear Leo and Lucy,

I congratulate you both on the completion of a long, arduous effort to produce a historical document (Magna Carta of Harmony) that will be treasured by a grateful global community long after all of us are gone. The sacrifices that both of you have made have been painful, to say the least. I will not copy all of your messages to me, but only two (49 and 50) paragraphs from the document, itself, that reflect the work that has gone into the Magna Carta as a whole. I know that there will be further editions of this document, but none can compare with the stunning effect that this edition is destined to have on philosophers and statesmen, world-wide. Minor errors persist: an extra word here, a missing word there (in the English version). These will be overlooked by serious readers. This work is sure to inspire and motivate others to perform miracles of human achievement.

With love and gratitude from

Martha Ross DeWitt,

Dr of Sociology, Editor of the Magna Carta English translation, USA,

April 13, 2007

Dear Leo,

I’m grateful to you, you have trust in me the translation into Spanish of Magna Carta of Harmony for an Information Civilization. A powerful document It will remain in the history. I hope you like the translation, I did all my best, day and night, and I made a careful revision of it... All I have read here is a wonderful theory how our civilization could start doing the turn to the good ideals for the next generation. It was amazing to share your ideal of Tetrasociology. I hope so many people, the highest level read it and starts taking notice that if all of us don’t change all around, will be a real chaos... I admire your work so much!!! And I send you so many prayers and blessing, you are doing a noble big job for this and new generations. I send you all my support from my soul!!!!

With love and respect!!

Susana Roberts,

Poet, Argentina,

April 13, 2007

-------------------------------

Blurbs:

“This Magna Carta of Harmony is the first international theoretical expression of the concept of a culture of harmonious peace, which I formulated in 1999, at the foundation of World IFLAC.”

Professor Ada Aharoni, Founder and President of IFLAC: The International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace, Israel

“Harmony in and among societies is the great concern of this Magna Carta. Harmony among religions would be a giant step toward that lofty goal.”

Reimon Bachika, Professor, Dept of Sociology, Bukkyo University, Kyoto, Japan

"The Magna Carta forces to think about an alternative way of development and Russia, and social science."Writer Vladimir Kavtorin, Russia

"This is one of the best documents that ever appeared in the history of our earthly civilization. It will definitely serve as a guide for many to help make this world a better place of habitation. It may be viewed as a source of inspiration for world peace, environmental protection, human rights and disarmament."

Charles Mercieca, Ph.D. President, IAEWP UN-NGO, Professor Emeritus, Alabama A&M University, USA

"The modern world aspires to a fair and just globalization which will exclude poverty. This tendency finds a deep theoretical explanation in this Magna Carta of Harmony."

Professor Rene Wadlow, France

"Strategies for harmonious and peaceful relations among the world religions and nations on the basis of the Golden Rule are offered by the Magna Carta ".

Professor Rudolf Siebert, Western Michigan University, USA

"The new world aspires to the establishment of Esperanto and bilingual culture, as reflected in the Magna Carta and in its publication on Esperanto."

Professor Renato Corsetti, President Universal Esperanto Association, Italy

“Sociocybernetics is concerned with self and other steering in social systems. The Magna Carta represents worthy goals towards which to aim.”

Dr. Bernard Scott, ISA RC51 Sociocybernetics President, England

--------------------------------------------------------

Greek: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=357------------------------------------------------------------

Greek: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=357

------------------------------------------------------------