Planetary Service a Way Into the Third Millenium
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Rosenstock- Huessy Planetary 595 Service A Way Into The Third Millenium 1 / I / I Planetary Service A Way Into The Third Millenium I Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy RJS3&. norwich, Vermont Translated by Mark Huessy and Freya von Moltke Copyright © 1978 by Argo Books, The Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund, Inc. $ Library of Congress / Catalog Card Number: 78-68422 ISBN: 0-912148-09-8 (paper) Printed by Imperial Printers Hartford, Vermont, United States of America This book is being distributed by Argo Books in cooperation with The Norwich Center, a not-for-profit corporation concerned with the future of such volunteer ser vice activities as are described in this book. The Norwich Center was founded in 1977 by a group of former members of Camp William James. Persons interested in this field are invited to write The Norwich Center, Norwich, Vermont 05055. A catalog of the books by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy published by Argo Books may be obtained by writing Argo Books, Norwich, Vermont 05055. A brief listing of available books and a bibliography will be found at the end of this volume. True peace is neither the end nor the opposite of war. — Teilhard de Chardin Works, Vol. IV, p. 205 i / Contents Preface lx Translator’s Introduction xiii Foreword: What Directs Me xv 1 The Tone Which Is Missing 1 2 A World Without War? 5 3 Planet - World - Earth 24 4 Nipped in the Bud 37 5 It Can’t Go Slowly Enough 50 6 The Planetary Household $ 64 7 The Peace of the Pirates / 73 8 David Scott Palmer 92 9 A Pirate’s Esperanto 97 Biography of Rosenstock-Huessy 121 Works by Rosenstock-Huessy Currently Available 123 Selective Rosenstock-Huessy Bibliography 124 Index 125 •*1 IX Preface In an age much given to the vocabulary of individual and na tional rights, it must seem anachronistic to put forward the notion of specific duties - to be institutionalized in a specific service - to the world community. But rights can only be defended in the long run if corresponding obligations are willingly and freely assumed. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy had the merit not only of articulating the philosophy of this viewpoint but of pioneering in its concrete ap plication on two continents. In making available the first translation into English of the last of Rosenstock-Huessy’s works, Argo Books has itself performed a service of no mean import to the future of planetary society. As early as 1912, a bare two years after the appearance of William James’s essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” Rosenstock-Huessy published a plea that the German Army establish units for constructive civil work. A generation plater, the sons of William James joined Professor Rosenstock-Huessy in Ver mont to inaugurate a “new model” camp of the Civilian Conserva tion Corps, “Camp William James,” whose history has been dramatically described in a recent Argo book by Professor Jack Preiss. In 1978 it is clearer than ever before that the lives of people all over the world are, in Jay Forrester’s felicitous phrase, “tightly coupled.” The United Nations’ Stockholm Conference established the extent of the threat of environmental degradation due to in dustrialization, population growth and the absence of effective cor rective measures. Meanwhile, according to the International Peace Research Institute, the world is spending one million dollars per minute on arms and armaments. 4 X Recognition is slowly dawning that there must be limits to in dividual, group and national egotisms, that a new ethos of coopera tion and comprehension should be fostered by all, as a matter of urgent common interest. Such an ethos or outlook can express itself in many ways and on many levels: intellectual, spiritual, manual, artistic and so on. What is proposed in these pages is a kind of “basic training,” open to young people all over the world, in intelligently directed, concrete service to the planetary environ ment. A “Planetary Service,” as the brilliant work service of the Weimar Republic amply demonstrated in the fateful interregnum between World Wars I and II, need not be monolithic, authoritarian or politicized in any manner. What would be required is a simple charter setting forth guidelines and purposes, and defining some simple procedure for support and accreditation. The “international civil service” which manages the agencies associated with the United Nations would be well qualified, under the able guidance of the Secretary-General, to carry out the assessments, administrative chores and support functions essential to bring about a true “Planetary Service” on a scale worthy of the problems and challenges to which the proposal has been addressed. Public servants of impeccable standing have called our atten tion to serious lacunae in humanity’s effort to preserve its essential resources of soil, water and air. To cite but one example: Klaus Lampe, Corneille Jest and Joseph Allen Stein, with the help of UNESCO’s former Deputy Director-General, Dr. John E. Fobes, have documented the threatened de-forestation of mountain en vironments from Nepal to the Andes. Concerted re-forestation is a necessity for future generations. Cannot a worldwide volunteer force, with the official sanction of the world community, make at least a beginning on this matter? Is it not a proper “agenda item” for the United Nations General Assembly, for the Club of Rome and for international scientific associations? From a narrow (but necessary!) legal viewpoint, it is not more difficult to devise a juridical framework that would take into account the domestic procedures and priorities of cooperating nations than it was for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to devise arrangements XI for the Civilian Conservation Corps that met the varying proclivities of the States of the United States of America. What is needed to launch the world enterprise is an aroused and focussed interna tional public opinion. The publication, in the English language, of - Dienst auf dem Planeten may help in a seminal way to bring about the necessary climate of opinion or, to phrase it in a manner which Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy might well have preferred, to arouse the necessary passion for worldwide service to the planetary environ ment. Frank P. Davidson May, 1978 Concord, Massachusetts i / I / xin Translators’ Introduction Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy wrote this small book at the age of 76, after a career of scholarship spanning sixty years. It was his last work. He addresses it explicitly to the Germans who had asked him to write on the subject once more. So the original text is full of special references and allusions to German history and poetry. Rosenstock-Huessy was himself a German before he left that coun try in disgust in 1933. He became an American citizen, living, teaching and writing in the United States thereafter. He died here in 1973. About this little book Rosenstock-Huessy wrote to a would-be American publisher in 1965: “I may have to rewrite “Planetary Ser vice” for the English edition. The German text addresses the Ger man public explicitly. Hence an American translation might leave readers either cold or confused.” He never did write an American version. His friends now feel there is both merit and urgency in a translation after all. “It is not really a good book, one of them said, but it is important.” In translating we have left out some passages and sentences that had too German a context; they can all be found in the German edition. Several chapters of the book were based on lectures, and throughout the book has kept the quality of the spoken word, or that of letters, as did much of the author’s writing. The readers may need patience; they may consider some passages obscure. In all his works Rosenstock-Huessy is out to awaken his readers’ sense of time and timing, to make them aware of the quality of time, human time as opposed to physical time. He has always found it unnecessary to be understood completely at all xiu Translators’ Introduction times. And it is true: passages may become quite clear on re reading them at a different hour. The patience of the reader will be rewarded by the author’s flashes of insight and his vision of genera tions of men and women working together throughout the eras of human history. Mark Huessy Freya von Moltke XU 0 Foreword: What Directs Me This book has a catch. It will try to give its readers direction. It offers a particular path that leads through the areas in which we live. This offer breaks the rules of the academic world, in which the fields of research leave you without direction. Instead, they objec tively project knowledge of the world and its parts onto your inner or outer retina. In the following pages we will be talking about this incidentally at most. Instead, I am presuming that the reader will take the opportunity to become aware of his own age-old destiny: “Truth has long since been discovered, has united hosts of noble spirits, that aged truth — seize it.” (Goethe) You cannot seize objectively. No one can be forced to do so. To be objective the reader may always escape into geography, natural history, philosophy, or statistics. He might think that he can observe the world from without with the help of these sciences. Here is a particularly idiotic example. There exists an expensive edition of a “World Cultural Series” printed in 1964 as part of a group of social science books. One volume is entitled “One World Divided.” It presents us with the regions of world-cultures. There were eleven of them: 1. Europe, 2. the Soviet Union, 3.