Trying for Peace: Self-Actualization and World Federalism

By Joseph Sassoon

Trying for Peace: Self-Actualization and World Federalism is the third book in a trilogy on what the world needs to do to save a political system that could collapse at any moment.

The first book, Self-Actualization: Theory and Technology, contained an entirely new discovery to explain how self-actualization is achieved. The second book, The Humanist Society, dealt with the social demands that are required to achieve self-actualization for the greatest number of people.

This final book explains how to spread self-actualization worldwide by creating a new system derived from human nature and suited to it—one defined by the virtues of a humanist democracy, peace, and permanence.

Taken as a whole, the trilogy contains a new theory of motivation in line with the work of Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) and a new value system called the humanist code, which relies on the new theory of self-actualization by Goldstein.

If you’d like to see a democratic world federalism that relies on a new theory of human motivation that includes the world as a whole—both human and nonhuman—then you’ll treasure the insights in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532039416

Book preview

TRYING FOR PEACE:

SELF-ACTUALIZATION

AND WORLD

FEDERALISM

JOSEPH SASSOON

26362.png

TRYING FOR PEACE:

SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND WORLD FEDERALISM

Copyright © 2018 Joseph Sassoon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-3942-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3941-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900563

iUniverse rev. date: 10/24/2018

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1.   Why World Federalism? Why Now?

Chapter 2.   Democracy as Function of Self-Actualization

Chapter 3.   Who Qualifies?

Chapter 4.   Client-Country System

Chapter 5.   The Commercial Administration

Chapter 6.   The Authoritarian System: A Common Threat

Chapter 7.   The Two Faces of Colonialism

Chapter 8.   Self-Actualization as the Matrix of Human Behavior and Institutions

Chapter 9.   O for One World

Afterwards

Appendix A.   The Unified Theory of Motivation

Appendix B.   The Humanist Code

Appendix C.   Self-Actualization and the Matrix of all Human Sciences

Glossary

To the memory of my parents

Preface

This is the third book in a trilogy on self-actualization and world federalism. My interest in that subject dates back to my college years, when I got hooked on the idea of world federalism after attending a lecture by a renowned world federalist. Although I agreed with his aims, I did not think that there could be a world federalist government without a common value system. Union can occur only among nations with a common value system that guides their lives. This value system must come from nature, moreover, and not human volition. At that time, following WWII, there was an ideological struggle between the democratic countries on the one hand and communist countries on the other. This amounted to a struggle between classical democracy and arbitrary autocracy. I did not think that the two were reconcilable. In fact, I had no use for either, since there was no way to prove scientifically which one was right. Both were a question of inclination or human volition and not human nature.

This led me to search for knowledge of human nature, beginning with human motivation. The knowledge of human motivation, at that time, ended with Kurt Goldstein and Abraham Maslow. They postulated that human motivation is synonymous with the overall desire for self-actualization. Everyone needs to survive and grow, to strive for pleasure and avoid pain, to satisfy the hunger for food, sex, and other activities. All were part of the overall need for self-actualization. However, neither Goldstein nor Maslow showed how self-actualization could be achieved, let alone how to create a system of values that would guide people toward that goal. I made this task my own. I wanted to find out how self-actualization can be achieved and the value system that it requires. Only that kind of value system can guide all peoples toward world federalism.

My research into how self-actualizing works, unbeknownst to me at that time, became a lifetime research project that has involved decades of observing self-actualizers, both contemporary and historical. One of the most important results of my work was to bring about and unite all human sciences. So far, said sciences were mostly descriptive. The new hard sciences are predictive and encompass the whole range of human actions and thought. In this case, only those ideas that are grounded in the self-actualization for the greatest number of people within the context of the humanist code have any creditability, while all the others who lack this connection are confusing and unscientific. The first book of this trilogy, Self-Actualization: Theory and Technology, contained a new theory of motivation (see appendix A), and an entirely new discovery to explain how self-actualization is achieved. The second book, The Humanist Society, dealt with the social demands