Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Chapter 6
Chapter 6: World House
Summary
In the 6th and final chapter of MLK’s last published book, King widens the scope of his discussion to include the many ill’s that society at large faces. He calls leaders of nations to bridge the gulf between scientific and moral progress. He calls on leaders of nations to dismantle the last vestiges of racism still present. He calls on leaders of nations to join forces in eradicating poverty. He calls on leaders of nations to end the cycle of human destruction and war. and finally, we calls on leaders of nations to see the Person before the Thing in its societies. He then challenges the reader to strive towards a true, unconditional love for humanity.
Scientific and technological advances do not translate to a better society
“However deeply American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last home in our homeland of the United States, we cannot ignore the larger world house in which we are also dwellers.”
“Along with the scientific and technological revolution, we have also witnessed a worldwide freedom revolution over the last few decades.”
“The deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is the thunder of disinherited masses, rising from dungeons of oppression to the bright hills of freedom. In one majestic chorus the rising masses are singing, in the words of our freedom song, ‘Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.’ All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history.”
“These developments should not surprise any student of history. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
“The present struggle in the United States is a later chapter in the same Story. Something within has reminded the Negro of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the spirit of the times, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers in Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.”
“Nothing could be more tragic than for men to live in these revolutionary times and fail to achieve the new attitudes and the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands.”
“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change….Today, our survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change….Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”
We must work to bridge the gulf between science and moral progress.
“We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress…the richer we have become materially, the poorer we have becomes morally and spiritually.”
“Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the external of man’s nature subjugates the internal, dark storm clouds begin to form.”
From an Asian writer:
You call your thousand material devices ‘labor-saving machinery’, yet you are forever ‘busy.’ With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have, you want more; and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else….your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business.”
“When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom.”
Dismantling the last vestiges of racism worldwide
“Among the moral imperatives of our time, we are challenged to work all over the world with unshakable determination to wipe out the last vestiges of racism. Racism is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries. In fact, racism and its perennial ally — economic exploitation — provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation.”
“The classic example of organized and institutionalized racism is the Union of South Africa…In country after country we see white men building empires on the sweat and suffering of colored people.”
“Nothing provides communists with a better climate for expansion and infiltration than the continued alliance of our nation with racism and exploitation throughout the world. And if we are not diligent in our determination to root out the last vestiges of racism in our dealings with the rest of the world, we may soon see the sins of our fathers visited upon ours and succeeding generations.”
“There is the convenient temptation to attribute the current turmoil and bitterness throughout the world to the presence of a Communist conspiracy to undermine Europe and America, but the potential explosiveness of our world situation is much more attributable to disillusionment with the promises of Christianity and Technology.”
“Former generations could not conceive of such luxury, but their children now take this vision and demand that it become a reality. And when they look around and see that the only people who do not share in the abudance of Western Technology are colored people, it is an almost inescapable conclusion that their condition and their exploitation are somehow related to their color and the racism of the white Western world.”
“This is a treacherous foundation for a world house. Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.. Arnold Toynbee has said that some twenty-six civilizations have risen upon the face of the earth. Almost all of them have descended into the junk heaps of destruction. The decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynbee, was not caused by external invasions but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impinging upon them. If Western civilization does not now respond constructively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”
Waging war against poverty on an international scale
“Another grave problem that must be solved if we are to live creatively in our world house is that of poverty on an international scale.”
“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it.”
“The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled and feed the unfed.”
“the first step in the worldwide war against poverty is passionate commitment. All the wealthy nations — America, Britain, Russia, Canada, Australia, and those of Western Europe — must see it as a moral obligation to provide capital and technical assistance to the underdeveloped areas.”
“The wealthy nations of the world must promptly initiate a massive, sustained Marshall Plan for Asia, Africa, and South America. If they would allocate just 2 percent of their gross national products annually for a period of ten or twenty years for the development of the underdeveloped nations, mankind would go a long way toward conquering the ancient enemy, poverty.”
“It cannot be forgotten that the Western powers were but yesterday the colonial masters.”
“From time immemorial men have lived by the principle that ‘self-preservation is the first law of life.’ But this is a false assumption. I would say that other-preservation is the first law of life. It is the first law of life precisely because we cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving other selves. The universe is so structured that things go awry if men are not diligent in their cultivation of the other-regarding dimension. ‘I’ cannot reach fulfillment without ‘thou’. The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. Nothing would be more disastrous and out of harmony with our self-interest than for the developed nations to travel a dead-end road of inordinate selfishness.”
The need to outlaw poverty lies in our moral obligation to see men in the Image of God
“But the real reason we must use our resources to outlaw poverty goes beyond material concerns to the quality of our mind and spirit. Deeply woven into the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God, and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value.”
“All men are interdependent. Every nation is an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed. Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives ‘in the red’ We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. Before we leave for our jobs [in the morning] we are already beholden to more than half the world.”
“In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
The need to eradicate war and human destruction.
“A final problem that mankind must solve in order to survive in the world house that we have inherited is finding an alternative to war and human destruction. Recent events have vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology.”
“The large power blocs talk passionately of pursuing peace while expanding defense budgets that already bulge, enlarging already awesome armies and devising ever more devastating weapons.”
“…when I see the unwillingness of our government to create the atmosphere for a negotiated settlement of this awful conflict by halting bombings in the North and agreeing unequivocally to talk with the Vietcong — and all this in the name of pursuing the goal of peace — I tremble for the world.”
“Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.”
“I suggest that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict., by no means excluding the relations between nations.”
“We have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of weapons we have ourselves created, it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice.”
True nonviolence is more than the absence of violence.
“True nonviolence is more than the absence of violence. It is the persistent and determined application of peaceable power to offenses against the community — in this case the world community.”
“I do not minimize the complexity of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But I am convinced that we shall not have the will, the courage, and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual reevaluation, a change in focus to which will enable us to see that the things that seem most real and powerful are indeed now unreal and have come under sentence of death.”
“We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a creative contest to harness man’s genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world.”
The need to shift out of a “thing”-oriented society to a “person”-oriented society.
The stability of the large world house which is ours will involve a revolution of values to accompany the scientific and freedom revolutions engulfing the earth. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing”-oriented society to a “person”-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“This revolution of values must go beyond traditional capitalism and Communism. We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encouraged small-hearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered.”
Neither traditional capitalism nor classical Communism is the answer
“Truth is found neither in traditional capitalism nor in classical Communism. Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal.The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of Communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.”
“An intelligent approach to the problems of poverty and racism will cause us to see that the words of the Psalmist — ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’ — are still a judgement upon our use and abuse of the wealth and resources which which we have been endowed.”
“A true revolution of value will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.”
What does a true revolution of values look like?
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: ‘this is not just.’ It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say to war: ‘The way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”
“This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against Communism. War is not the answer, Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons.”
Communism is a judgement on our failure to make democracy real
“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and our of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born.”
“Communism is a judgement on our failure to make democracy real and to follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
The call for worldwide fellowship is rooted in an unconditional love for all men.
“This call for worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This often misunderstood and misinterpreted concept has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love, I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another: for love is of God:
and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God;
for God is love… if we love one another,
God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Tomorrow is now today, and we still have a choice.
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.”
“We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos or community.”
