Humanity Is One Reality
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 9 Mar 2026
Glen T. Martin, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
The Key to Human Survival and Flourishing
4 Mar 2026 – Humanity is one reality. The transcendental unity of consciousness is the same in all of us. We are gifted with language, and the universal intelligibility of languages makes them all translatable into one another. The ongoing process of human development in thousands of locations, cultures, and traditions around the world gives us a cultural diversity that is comprehensible precisely because we all share this transcendental unity. The universe, embracing this multiplicity, is intelligible precisely because the human mind is a manifestation of the whole.
Over the millennia we have elaborated great religious traditions, and within each of these traditions there are hundreds of sub-perspectives engendered by creative persons. For example, there are more than 600 sects of Protestantism and likewise hundreds of sub-perspectives within the Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions. Nevertheless, any of these perspectives can be categorized and unified within ever larger categories. Christianity, for example, can be divided between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant categories. But even these share fundamental qualities in common making them all “Christian.” And ultimately, each great religion is part of the whole of humanity.
All of these religious perspectives from around the world have something else in common: they all speak of the whole of humankind in relation to Divinity or the Cosmos as a whole. That is because all people share the transcendental unity of consciousness that makes us human, sharing a common humanity, a unity of consciousness that inhabits one holistic world system. The human mind can discern the whole precisely because it is a manifestation of the whole. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas also pointed out that we all possess the capacity to engage in “dialogue directed toward mutual understanding.” This capacity overcomes differences of perspective, religion, or culture, and allows for real mutual understanding to occur.
Yet, Habermas also observed that real authentic dialogue is rare because there are often barriers within which we fail to comprehend one another. We do not allow ourselves to entertain the perspective of our dialogue partner in good faith, but, rather, we objectify and alienate one another in the service of our own egoisms. One major barrier to communication is our identification with the “empirical self,” sometimes referred to as the “egoistic” self. This empirical self can also participate in various forms of collective identity: “my nation, my race, my religion,” etc. It takes these contingent phenomena as if they were substantial realities.
The world lives as a chaos of conflicting voices because the world confuses the transcendental dimension of our consciousness with the empirical self. The empirical self is conditioned and is influenced by a finite number of life experiences, making each self both unique and to some extent incommensurate with other selves. However, this is not so with the transcendental ego (or self). This is the principle in us from which our capacity for reasoning, discerning, and organizing experience emanates.
It is the principle of self-awareness, the principle that makes knowledge, freedom, and communication possible. As philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein expresses this, the transcendental self is “a contentless point at the limit of the world and not part of it.” Precisely because it is the presupposition of the very possibility of awareness, the transcendental self (the unity of consciousness) is invisible. It is not a discernable structure within the world (which would put it in opposition with different structures). It is the presupposition of the possibility of any and all structures. Hence, just as the human eye cannot see itself within the field of vision, so the transcendental self is necessarily “invisible.” It cannot see itself within the field of consciousness.
Here is where the unity of humankind lives. Japanese Zen Buddhist thinker Masao Abe observes that “the present crisis of the world arises” because of “sovereign nations which do not know self-negation.” Self-negation entails an understanding of the contingent and non-substantial character of our thoughts and ideas vis-à-vis the transcendental unity that makes them possible. Abe continues: “Rather, it must be a world of mankind wherein sovereignty rests precisely with mankind in the sense of one self-aware entity which has become profoundly aware of itself as ‘mankind’.” This “one self-aware entity” is our transcendental ego, common to us all, and universal: prior to all differentiation.
The Constitution for the Federation of Earth declares that “ultimate sovereignty resides with all the people who live on Earth.” In democratic theory, the people are sovereign and government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. That is because the people on Earth are free and equal. In the face of the immense conditioning effects of local cultures, religions, and societies worldwide, how can all people be considered free and equal? The answer is because they all share “transcendental selfhood”—the one consciousness, beyond division, that makes possible all our self-awareness, our temporality, and our ability to achieve mutual understanding.
Philosopher Nolan Pliny Jacobson speaks of obstacles to peace in the face of the endless wars and destruction promulgated by the system of sovereign nation-states. He declares: “the major obstacle is the kind of selfhood in which the terrors of the modern world are rooted. It is the archaic legacy of a self-substance, mutually independent of all others, which supports the entire superstructure of Western nations.” The people of Earth take the concept of “nation-state” as if it were a substantial reality rather than a contingent structure that might well be developed into a better structure in the future.
Each nation thinks of itself as “a self-substance, mutually independent of all others.” People in these nations, and their leaders, live from the empirical self that takes the phenomena it encounters as if these were “substantial realities.” Hence they will fight and die for their nation-state, and those who do fight and die are considered heroes. They have sacrificed themselves from some greater good. But the true greater good is human welfare mediated through the transcendental self—that which makes us universally human. This true, greater good, can only come about if human beings unite within a democratic earth federation. As philosopher Errol E. Harris concludes: “National sovereignty is no longer competent to serve the common good of the people over whom it rules, and the ethical justification of its power has withered away.”
In the 18th century Immanuel Kant pointed out that this kind of loyalty to a militarized nation-state is immoral. That is because war is immoral. War is the organized attempt to destroy some perceived enemy. Morality reveals this activity to be “barbaric.” Morality declares: “Treat every person as an end in themselves and never merely as a means.” If we act on this fundamental principle of all morality, then killing other people in some war would be immoral and impossible. For Kant, legitimate government is what protects and promotes “peace, freedom, and equality” among the persons living within its sphere of authority.
Hence, legitimate government is what makes moral living possible—since moral living is possible when there is governmental authority protecting peace, freedom, and equality before the law. And yet, Kant pointed out, the world is divided into a plurality of “sovereign” militarized nation-states that recognize no binding laws above themselves, laws that should be protecting peace, freedom, and equality. This system, he says, is a war-system even if they are not fighting with one another at any particular time. Kant also articulated the transcendental unity of the self, the singular awareness that makes us all human, which is the ultimate source of our moral obligations, including our obligations for peace, freedom, and equality.
For Kant, ultimately, the only truly legitimate government involves a single constitution for the Earth, a federation of nations under binding enforceable laws. The Constitution for the Federation of Earth provides exactly that. Therefore, it makes truly moral living possible for the people of Earth, whereas under the international war system of sovereign states acting from a consistent moral foundation is impossible. As Emery Reves put it in 1945: “War takes place wherever and whenever non-integrated units of equal sovereignty come into contact.”
The “Westphalian” nation-state system that has been in place in 1648 is intrinsically a war-system, and it is immoral for people to live within such a system. It is not that nation-states must be abolished. Rather, as Masao Abe puts it, they must be “negated” whenever they are identified by the empirical self as substantial “realities.” Whereas, in truth they are simply contingent ideas that must be understood in the light of the transcendental consciousness that generates both the unity and plurality of the world in the first place. Humankind is animated by one transcendental consciousness from which we must be living our lives. To live from the empirical self, unaware of the transcendental consciousness that animates both this self and the selves of all others, is to live in ignorance, war, injustice, and unfreedom.
We become free when we identify with the transcendental consciousness, including a freedom from the slavery of thinking these cultural and institutionalized structures are somehow ultimate realities. In truth they are merely historical forms that must be creatively engaged in the light of the transcendental unity that embraces us all. Such creative engagement will bring us to the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. The Constitution is itself, of course, a contingent construction that will evolve as humankind continues to grow in awareness. However, it is a necessary step on the way to an awakened humanity living in peace, freedom, and justice on our precious planet Earth.
The Constitution will help generate a morally grounded Noosphere (mind-sphere), to use the term of Teilhard de Chardin. It will help generate the consciousness of humanity as one human reality. Diversity will not disappear; rather, true diversity will be able to emerge for the first time since it is now embraced by true unity. The parts remain clearly differentiated, but transcend their antagonistic character through uniting under the principle of unity in diversity. The Constitution provides political, social, and economic unity for humanity, all of which derive from and point to, the transcendental unity of consciousness.
Today, national egoisms affect all the world’s nations, since the structure of today’s world politics and economics appears to make egoistic self-interest mandatory for survival. If we change the structure of world politics and economics under the Earth Constitution, then national egoisms will diminish as people begin to see that the good of one and the good of all are interrelated and mutually commensurable goods. If it is “one for all and all for one,” then the world will flourish and be able to deal with today’s apparently intractable problems—such as the existence of nuclear weapons and on-going climate collapse.
The solution to our most fundamental human problems is not all that difficult, precisely because it simply involves an awakening to the transcendental unity of consciousness that makes us all human and all “the same.” Ratification of the Earth Constitution will constitute a major step in this direction. As global thinker Ervin Laszlo declared: “The achievement of the Earth Constitution Solution would mark a milestone in humankind’s evolution into a true planetary species.”
______________________________________
Dr. Glen T. Martin:
– Member, TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment
– Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
– Founder/Chairperson Emeritus, Program in Peace Studies, Radford University
– President, World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA);
– President, Earth Constitution Institute (ECI)
– Author of twelve books and hundreds of articles concerning global issues, human spirituality, and democratic world government; a recipient of many peace awards.
www.earthconstitution.world – Email: gmartin@radford.edu
Tags: Consciousness, Democratic World Federalists-DWF, Earth Constitution, Humanity, Languages, United Nations
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Mar 2026.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Humanity Is One Reality, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.