Open Letter to the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council
Open Letter to the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council
President Joseph Biden Jr, President Vladimir Putin, President Emmanuel Macron, President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and His Royal Majesty King Charles III. Your Excellencies and leaders of the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council, charged with ensuring international peace and security.
To those who hold the world’s future in fragile balance, dancing precariously on the head of a spinning sphere of land and water filled with unique and precious lifeforms. To those with ineffable responsibilities which influence all the nations of this great green and blue world. To those of ardent spirit, unaware of the somnambulist direction in which you walk our species towards potential extinction, a direction from which if you do not change you may end up where you are heading. Is it not our mutual desire to see the plague of mankind, war, banished from the good Earth?
Your countries are great, long and rich in legendary history. They have many achievements to their name; you have much to be proud of in all that your people have accomplished in getting this far. The music and literature that you created, the science and technology, the art and poetry, the architecture and the cultures in all their myriad forms. I imbue you to find a moment of solitude and seek out a state of greater wisdom where your mind is still and the whole universe surrenders to your thoughts. The time is always right to do what is right. No one nation has a panacea towards all problems, and it is only by working in unison that a new horizon of hopeful optimism may be found.
Yet it is you who are alive now, at this time, leading your nations in profound matters of world affairs and with the authority empowered upon your position. It is you that determines the prosperity of millions of your people and the billions of those of your neighbours. For you this doesn’t have to be a moment of tragedy, but one of serendipitous opportunities for change. It is your five great nations that are presented with a moment of syzygy from which all others may follow in orbit. What role are you playing in helping to create a peaceful and prosperous world? What attempts are you making to meet with the leaders of other nations and find the better road of compromise?
Is war and conflict your only interest? Have we not learned that although history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme? Are the people who live in those other lands drawn up by an imaginary pen really your enemy? What is the catastrophic crescendo you wish to take us towards at the moment where all interests collide in total destruction caused by the emotion of incandescent rage? Do not be a leader who leads others to a bad path.
Do you believe in a world where human beings can live together as a part of a diverse community where our differences define our richness rather than set us apart and we recognise the sonder within each other? Though separated geographically, are we not truly one people of a common ancestry that can learn to live together? If our origin is the same, surely then so is our destination since all rivers lead to the sea and our fates are entwined. As the head of your great nation, you reserve the love for yourself and your citizens only. Yet, if you truly loved that within your kingdom you would never hurt those who abide in the kingdom of another. For within each of us, a mirror reflects who we truly are.
To throw off our habitual paths does not mean we will be lost but this is the place where the good begins, as we discard the bonds of our animalistic nature. In the eyes of each other, none of the other nations are perfect, but it is better to have a set of diamonds with flaws than a group of pebbles without. All people have beauty even if you cannot see it yet, and although in this life we all suffer, that burden is lessened by the finding of a shared meaning together. This is also why we must be a unified species whilst we inhabit this magnificent Starship Earth.
You have governance over the domain of your respective kingdoms. But this world does not belong to you. It was here long before humanity came into being and it will be here long after we are gone. You are merely its caretakers in the here and now and like all great empires time devours all things.
What care are you taking of this planet and its citizens of life that wait for your next great game aquiver? Have you been surreptitious? What good did you do today on this Earth? What actions did you take to eschew the bad intentions of others? Were your decisions fugacious towards the responsibilities placed upon you? What nefarious and illicit plans are your advisors dreaming of next? What forms of violence and dehumanizing conduct do they adore? What evil do we seek to create in our own image and likeness? If you do not find a pathway to peace and forgive those of the other nations, you risk breaking the bridge over which you yourself must some day pass; for is it not true that every person is guilty of all the good they didn’t do.
If you act as peacemakers, you will surely be rewarded in the love you will receive from the people of this world and mellifluous songs of time will forever remember the good deeds you did. But if you continue to preside over a global system of chaos where the innocent is slain to the dissipating winds of nothingness, history will remember your actions this day and will not forgive the role you played. What you did to prevent the loss of life and what you didn’t do to prevent the persistent demise of humanity towards oblivion.
We live in a vast and unfathomable Cosmos with so many stars to light up the sky more so than any grains of sand you can count in a desert. Those stars have a plethora of other planets, magical and brilliant in form. Among those planets are life forms that have existed millions of years before our species was but a thought. Do we wish to join those collective civilisations of infinite knowledge or forever be faced with the calamity of stellar containment until we put out the fire on our own candles ephemeral light?
In a moderate tone of adumbrate whisper, those that have wisdom let them understand. I urge you to comprehend and not assume that you are not being observed. Do not assume your actions are not being judged by powers far greater than you could ever imagine. For the hour is late and many minds are already turned upon this world. Find the path of peace. Blessed are the peacemakers, for the Earth and all its fruits will be yours eternal. Do not permit our species to exist purely as a mediocre and temporary instant of the infinite.
There are two lights to guide us, that of our community of humans living out our existence on this tiny dot of a sphere barely a marble from afar, and that of the stars that shine deep across the reaches of space and time. To bring those two lights into union, is one of the greatest callings and the ultimate test of our ambitions. Instead of dropping bombs on one corner of this world in favour of another, we should be combining our assiduous energies towards the elucidation of the unknown. Where our combined nations can explore the Moon, Venus and Mars, and further still to the planets yet to be surveyed by the small steps of our mighty leaps. Then beyond this, to the worlds of other stars where nature finally gives up her secrets. It is only here that we will find some lucidity in the darkness that so engulfs the spirit of our light.
Your Excellencies, I plead with you to find the goodness in your heart, the wisdom in your mentalities, to strike upon an epiphany in this moment, so that the good Earth may breathe once again, and all children can look towards a positive future as one humanity on a common journey. We must widen our circles of compassion to embrace all the people of our great civilisations in a vision of solid unity. On the next day of a gorgeous luminescence dawn, it will be you that are the ones to take us into a new epoch towards an incredible future where we may reach a destiny of efflorescence beauty. For it is only beauty that will save the world and with each new day we have an opportunity to begin again. With humility, I bow down. I beseech you in all your greatness so that serenity may exist. I implore you towards a path of greater co-operation and peace towards your fellow nations, before the storm that yet may come.
Yours Faithfully
Kelvin F Long
BEng Msc PhD FBIS CPhys
Aerospace Engineer, Astrophysicist, Author
03/10/2024
