EMPOWERING UNITY FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

We have to show the governments, all our governments, that through our own non- governmental organizations, through organizations such as this, that we hold out the hand of brotherhood and sisterhood to those of us who have the impulse, motivation of reason and compassion to work for a better world and know that this is the only answer to survival in a state of mood which otherwise would be one of despondency and permanent apocalypse.

This is what we have faced now, a growing mood of permanent apocalypse. All I can say is that the world has faced this before. We faced it in World War One, we faced it in World War Two. We left it to governments at those times to resolve the issues. They said that they were attending to it. They said that they had to arm to remain safe and then they said that they couldn’t avoid a war because they’d armed. And that’s the kind of nonsense that we must avoid this time, because the next war will not be like the last two wars; the last two wars killed millions.

Mention was made that I’m going to the Soviet Union. I am going to the Soviet Union, and its well to remember that they lost 20 million killed in the last war. And the idea that they are dying to kill us is one of the falsehoods which is constantly promulgated for the express purpose of getting our taxes to pay for more arms. The real problem, ladies and gentlemen, which was brought out in the hearings on unemployment, which is constantly brought out by all our scientific advisers, is we’re going through a period of transition from the old industrial system of mass production and the exploitation of natural resources into the great information revolution based on microchip and computer technology. 

And this requires an adjustment and adaptation by everyone of us. Every one of us, which requires a change in education systems at a school level, at the university level, at the adult and the child basis, and indeed the children adapt more easily, as I discovered playing the Star Wars and Mr. Reagan. But we have to do this cooperatively with understanding of what the issues are and not simply saying that the only resolution of the problem is to have a bigger and better war made automatic and indeed rendered automatic by the fact that once the decision is taken, the actual firing of nuclear weapons to be turned over to computers. 

We cannot and must not leave it to governments alone to decide our destiny. We must hold them accountable. And working through non-governmental organizations, through social community organizations, press for more information, for more responses and respond to the pressures to, if we are to avoid the chaos which threatens to engulf us. And it is for each one of us to assume the responsibility which I understand this conference has been called and I wish you every success. Thank you.