On Constitutions and the Rule of Law
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Fifty million or more people are estimated to have died due to the 2nd World War; untold many millions more bore scars of every kind: Catastrophe enough. The weapons of war had by the end of the war begun to reach a destructive capability that made another world war likely to be very much worse. A primary motive for the formation of the United Nations, at the end of the war, was to suppress the seemingly metastasizing “scourge of war”.
Since World War 2 much has changed: there has been a massive increase in human population and many notable technological innovations, including further development of nuclear weapons, the construction of hundreds of nuclear electricity production facilities, and a plethora of new knowledge, new tools and machines.
There has also been expanding awareness of planet Earth as wondrous biosphere, shared by an amazing variety of life forms forming the web of life. And the human part is now obviously significantly influential, and portentous, conferring great responsibility, calling for wise stewardship.
But since the 2nd WW, the new context, the cornucopia of new tools and new capabilities, a burgeoning human population with increased access to useful knowledge, and a United Nations with a nominal primary agenda of preventing war, has resulted in neither an era of peace on Earth, nor a general movement towards an ecologically sound human presence on Earth. There have been many wars of aggression – the supreme crime. The dangers associated with nuclear weapons and technology are now if anything worse than ever. And also there has been the continuation, in some respects accelerated, of a centuries-long human-related degradation of the biosphere, including loss or reduction in numbers of many life forms. What went wrong?
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