e transformation in
the way that great numbers of ordinary people are coming to see
themselves--a change that is dramatically abrupt in the perspective of the
history of civilization--raises fundamental questions about the role
assigned to the general body of humanity in the planning of our planet's
future.

I

The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world's population in
assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the
consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular
discourse, the concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents
fundamental challenges to the way that most of the institutions of
contemporary society carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the
adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle
informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between
classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so
much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human
interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization
of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively
consolidated itself over the past two centuries.

In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria over a century ago, and employing
an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the
organization of a planetary society, Baha'u'llah compared the world to the
human body. There is, indeed, no other model in phenomenal existence to
which we can reasonably look. Human society is composed not of a mass of
merely differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one
of whom is endowed with intelligence and will; nevertheless, the modes of
operation that characterize man's biological nature illustrate fundamental
principles of existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity.
Paradoxically, it is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order
constituting the human body--and the perfect integration into it of the
body's cells--that permit the full realization of the distinctive
capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives
apart from the body, whether in contributing to its functioning or in
deriving its share from the well-being of the whole. The physical
well-being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the
expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of
biological development transcends t