By Cedric Mayson
Humanity is committing suicide in this generation. This unique planetic human experiment is nearly over. My youngest grandchild will expire with any children he has, and the rest of humanity, probably by 2050.
We are committing suicide by over-population. Our sexual irresponsibility is producing more human beings than Earth can support. Our own population has increased from 32m to 46m in ten years since liberation and we cannot feed, house, clothe, heal or educate them.
We are committing environmental suicide. The power stations of Mpumalanga which produce South Africa’s electricity pollute that rural atmosphere as much as the industrial areas of the Ruhr, the US, the UK, China or Japan. The jet engines thundering through Earth’s atmosphere breathing matter every second make it too hot and too corrupt to support life much longer.
We are committing economic suicide. Those who possess the wealth of the world promote a system structured to insist that most of the population have neither work nor income and will die of hunger, disease and ignorance.
We are committing political suicide. The pursuit of medieval nation states condemns humanity to conflict rather than cooperation, and competitive destruction that denies development. There is no hope for humanity obsessed by being French, or British, or American, or Zimbabwean, or pursing the dominance of the Kingdom of Kwa-Zulu.
We are committed to suicide by violence. The focus of human leadership in industry, politics, finance, whether in the US, Russia, or the East, is the ability to destroy, by hand guns or nuclear missiles, and they will do so.
We are committing intellectual suicide by our obeisance to a media which has turned from editors serving humanity, to business managers corrupting humanity by serving commercial gain through promoting anti-human values, which will destroy us utterly.
We are committing spiritual suicide by promoting institutions focused on fundamentalist superstitions for individuals in an after life, instead of proclaiming the Good News for society in this life. Conservative traditional Catholics, Protestants, Reformed and Evangelicals are as guilty as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, or His People or the Moonies; the conservatives of Islam, Hinduism and Judaism can be as culpable as their extremists; and so called believers can be as anti-human as so-called atheists, in undermining the capacity of the human community to live by transforming values.
Humanity can be born again.
Birth is not an instantaneous transition from conception to delivery, but a process of pregnancy, a movement of growth, and change, and development. South Africa was not reborn by a single Liberation Organization which changed everything overnight, but by a Liberation Movement which caught a vision and spread praxis in the pregnancy until the moment of delivery. The rebirth of humanity is not from an Organization imposing instant change from the top, but from a Movement toward new life within every part. It is a movement which is happening and needs to be recognized and grown.
It is a rebirth in religion and culture, a movement to spell out and practice a united inter-faith spiritual experience committed to the values of compassion and cooperation within humanity, for we all share a common ground of being. Jews, Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and the Eastern Religions, agnostics and unbelievers throughout the world respond to the wisdom of the prophets. It is a movement to liberate us from the oppressions of colonial religions. It spells out and experiments in a new Way of life. Rebirth is a vast endeavour requiring movements in every sector.
Rebirth is a movement in the media, a movement to serve the people, in print, radio, TV, video, and the alternative media of inter-net and e mails; a new look at the Freedom Charter, the Kairos Document, and the Code of Conduct.
Rebirth is a movement away from violence to peace, uniting many organizations already active in this field.
Rebirth is a movement away from nation states to human solidarity, region by region, continent by continent. Our focus is on Africa where homo sapiens began, a movement which anticipates the collapse of the western Empire and the remaking of humanity.
Rebirth is a movement building an economic system for all, developing from the insights of the poor as well as the rich, an economic revolution based on compassion and cooperation, on grace and sharing, not the growth of greed.
Rebirth is a movement of global environmental renewal. It seeks cities which are people places, engines which run on clean and limitless hydrogen, the sun, the tides, the wind, nuclear power and a mind set liberated from oil companies.
Rebirth is a movement to responsible reproduction and happy sex, to the spiritual revolution of love not lust, to compassion and commitment, to happy humans.
But how does a movement for the rebirth of humanity work?
It is working already: there are movements in every sector all over the world. They follow the pattern we knew in the Liberation Movement. It begins with proclaiming the belief that rebirth is happening, an alternative to suicide is here, and there is a faith–energy that this unique human development on Earth can be transformed. It recognizes it will be a struggle, and is committed to that struggle. It knows it will need all the old techniques from Charters and Kairos Documents to sanctions and sacrifice. It anticipates the growth of movements that will need all the courage and all the sense they can to infiltrate and transform the structures of the present oppressive systems on Earth.
And it begins with the proclamation of the Good News that there is salvation from suicide, we can be reborn as the human community on this Planet.