Sixth Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

1. The term, Aworld Community, suggests that people can join together in communal relationships that transcend ethnicity, culture, and nationalism. Is this realistic?

• Ethnicity and culture are important parts of people=s identities. People often feel lost without this sense of rootedness. Yet, they are frequently the source of intolerance and hatred.
• Many actors on the world stage seek to dominate and control others, not join in community with them, and they are often willing to use violence to achieve this control.
• As growing populations and economic expectations put increasing pressure on scarce natural resources, conflicts may intensify.
• The world exists in a state of international anarchy - not in the sense of total chaos, but an absence of any central authority to enforce international law. This creates a need for personal and / or national protection from others who wish us ill. Often, acts of domination are justified in the name of protecting our nation. How do we distinguish between genuine protection and domination?
• Economic globalization has created multiple links of interdependence which could form the basis for world community, but the terms under which globalization is taking place disproportionately benefit a few economically powerful actors while imposing heavy costs on others.

2. Do the terms Aliberty@ and Ajustice@ have truly universal meanings that transcend the particular cultures in which they are defined and used?

• We encounter cultures in which, from our western point of view, individual freedom is severely curtailed in deference to collective order. Women, in particular, are the targets of strict control and domination.
• Are there emerging universal standards by which these practices can be judged or are we merely imposing our own values?
• For these cultures, western notions of individual liberty are seen as corroding their very cultural fabric, as subsuming their unique identity under global commercialism and individual license. Can these concerns be respected while real oppression is opposed?

3. How can we establish world community under these circumstances?

• View other cultures without immediate judgment as to their inferiority.
• Recognize that no culture is uniform in its perspectives. Cultural values that we find objectionable are often challenged from within the culture as well, especially by those who are not privileged by existing arrangements.
• International standards of dignity and justice are evolving, standards that can be genuinely shared by different cultures rather than imposed by the West. Our task is to promote this evolutionary process.
• Promote the international rule of law, as a substitute for domination by the stronger.