: Beneficence is the new philosophy and practice which provides a common basis for all mankind to manage their individual and collective affairs in a progressive, harmonious manner in the 21st century and beyond. It will solve many of our problems in a practical manner. The prime objective and thrust of this philosophy is to evolve and practice a way of life in the most beneficial manner of collective and individual benefit for all humans irrespective of nation, language, caste, color or creed; to benefit all creatures in harmony and resonance with nature and the environment.
Requirement: The system of beneficence requires seven types of human qualities.
1) Mercy and Patience
2) Natural Wisdom and Fairness
3) Sincerity and Goodwill
4) Sacrifice and Acceptance
5) Willingness and Hard work
6) Universal Attitude and ‘Collective Individualism’
7) Truthfulness and Trust worthiness
8) Cleanliness, Discipline and Order
Beginning: All well said, the first natural question that comes to mind is how to start?
The start will be to find the common values and features in the kaleidoscope of human diversity. These will have to be exhaustively, carefully and minutely studied by well-formed and well balanced, wise, broadminded groups of several trained pioneer teams which will thrash out a wide spectrum of matters concerning economy, politics, rights, duties, education, culture, media, science, technology, management, environment, health, nutrition, housing, natural resources, law, international and inter-racial relations, religion; to name a few major categories. Then an initial consensus of common values on the basis of which a proposed ‘Charter of Common Values’ will be put before the people of the world (the ‘global village’ of today!) for views and suggestions.
Assessment of Beneficence Repetitive, Adaptive Adaption with constant Feedback Correction:
Who and How will the Beneficence Criteria be assessed - It cannot be rhetoric; or based on insufficient number of sources of information. It has to be a detailed, continuous study using scientific methods involving the common man as well as experts in micro, macro and interdisciplinary science, both in time and space domains; using state of the art statistical weightage, Information; Multilingual technology in collaboration with men of affairs. Greater number of sources will eliminate error to a negligible extent. Naturally the importance of merit, truth and non–prejudicial approach cannot be over emphasized. We may remind the reader that the UOB will be characterized by the participation of the main stream and I would again quote the phrases MULTILINGUAL and MAINSTREAM in bold and capital letters to give them the emphasis they deserve.
We should never forget that knowledge, wisdom, purity of intent, with balance and insight are the crowning glory of man’s nature and deeds leading the world to salvation; where long and short term considerations viewed from different angles, areas, fields and groups will minimize damage and maximize benefit.
Let us remove our prejudices and forget our enemies and come to the commonalities. Let us also develop commonalities on the basis of merit, truth and beneficence.
We talk of a New World Order; fight for democracy and against ignorance, disease, hunger and poverty. How can we do that without adopting an open minded approach based on mercy, love and fair play? How can we achieve it when we can’t travel safely, speak safely, express openly. Let not the diversity of languages, races, cultures etc. be to kill and damage each other, but to know and benefit each other. Let us honor the life, property and honor of all. I ask - can mankind not pool the resources for supplementing mutual good. Let us go for Disarmament Armament. Let us go for using oil to make plastic homes and clothing instead of burning the ozone layer. Let us join hands and minds for common goodness. Let us use technology not for killing each other and fulfillment of desires and greed. Let us remove the bans and restrictions of our thoughts and institutions. Salvation is possible if and only if we can do this.
Jointly the human race has enough men, money, material, management and technology to give everybody a good life - only if we put them together for a win-win solution. Let us not be pessimistic. Let us try or face destruction and anarchy. Let everybody participate with what he has. Change will not come till we change ourselves, clean our hearts change our thinking. Whatever may be said the world cannot go through a reform without;
a) Removing prejudices of all kinds, and adopting merit, truth and beneficence,
b) Education,
c) Communication which includes facilities for translation, clean and safe journeys and stays and ease in visa regulations and perhaps cheaper fares with new technologies.
About education there are many principles which have been discussed in detail elsewhere but knowledge should be acquired in pristine purity of intention as well as presentation. After this let the better things be developed and adopted. Let us for example study all great civilizations. Let us ignore the conquest of others, the pomp and show. Let us concentrate on finding what qualities made the great societies. What values, ways and means adorned their society. What made them decay and fall. Let us learn from History (the accumulated experiences of the people, the society and leaders in all fields).
Let us evaluate what science and technology have done for us. With the resources at our command it should be possible to carry out a new study with all the vigor it deserves for the awareness of a better path to the future.
Dear Reader! The level of variety and diversity and interactivity will be of such stupendous dimensions which mankind has never seen and this will be possible with computer and IT. The number of inputs will be millions and inter and intra human communications will be of a magnitude never witnessed in the annals of the history before. This is why the reader will be surprised to know that the new system of beneficence will be led by Electrical Engineers. They will form the elite service of UOB and will be of unquestionable honor and repute. Just as the Aristotle predicted a Philosopher King, we predict an Engineer King (Democratic King) as in today’s world which seems to be frustrating before the idea of Democracy and to use the words King and Queen in today’s world is considered blasphemy which seems ridiculous to me because we should not be following slogans which perhaps we even do not understand. Although I have mentioned Engineers but the thrust of UOB is very much on the interdisciplinary multilingual philosophy. The reader will be really interested to know that what this inter-disciplinary multi-lingual philosophy is. The society will function at a level which we might call as the META LEVEL and this will be a quantum level never seen in the annals of history.