INTERNATIONAL CITY
A lecture given on 24 March 1964

What’s the date?
Audience: 24 March.
Twenty—four March AD 14.
Well, today I’m going to talk to you about something entirely different than ordinarily I talk to you about here at Saint Hill. I want to talk to you about a project having to do with world peace.
Now, you realize that a communication is necessary to stop fights. A communication is also necessary to start fights. What kind of a communication is it? Well, it’s generally a communication that’s a little longer distance than can easily be understood.
And you take these massive terminals sitting around the world, the world’s capitals, various countries, very distant from one another, extremely distant, very much protected about by their populations. They’re quite a distance apart. And when they start talking to each other, they don’t talk very understandably, and the distance between them has a tendency to set up a considerable amount of voltage. They’re too far apart. And they have to talk too loud. And they have to shout too hard. And after a while they begin to figure that they’re mad at each other.
But it is a technical fact that the distance they are apart brings about a difficulty of communication which brings about an imperfect communication. And they’re apparently—in the leaders’ minds—sufficiently far apart that they can destroy or strike at each other with impunity. In other words, one can shoot at Moscow without wiping out Washington. One can shoot at Washington without wiping out Paris, you see? And they have the illusion, then, of security. And that illusion of security actually no longer exists because in any atomic conflict you have things called fallout, and the drifting winds of space, and you have other interesting things. Most of the atomic weapons designed for use today have killing elements put in them such as cobalt 60, and these tend to wipe out tremendous areas of countryside, and the drifting fallout resulting from a war, even if it’s not terribly dangerous in test, would be very, very destructive to the nation who was declaring war.
Well, all of this brings about an interesting fact that these countries, then, are actually situated in such a way that they have the illusion of being able to execute hostile actions against one another with impunity. Now, none of these national governments are themselves able to operate broadly for the benefit of everyone, but they are trying to go out beyond their own borders and influence other areas, and these other areas are being influenced by yet another national government. So they develop all sorts of brushfire wars. And these little brushfire wars will probably keep on going, they’ll be more serious and less serious, but a man is killed just as dead in a skirmish as he is in a major battle. And the activities going on now in Southeast Asia are an example of that.
Here you have Washington unable to strike directly at Moscow, Moscow unable to strike directly at Washington, so they strike at each other in terms of a smaller nationalism in Southeast Asia. So you have a small war going on there, enturbulances going on there, consistently and continually, men getting killed just as dead as in any major conflict.
They have all sorts of odds and ends of battle and upset, and diplomatic coups, and influences of populations and ... You have a bunch of people who really haven’t found out that you really can’t be at war with one another with complete impunity. And what they’re doing is bringing about a dangerous environment. That is actually the whole thing in a—in a sentence.
They’re still bringing about a dangerous environment. The citizen of the United States is being taxed to support fantastic armaments, to a point that it is utterly staggering. He’s worked—this—the Washington government has worked itself into an economic solution by the manufacture of armaments. I think some three—quarters of the scientists and engineers in the United States now, now work for the government and so forth. Pretty soon there’s going to be nobody left to work for the people.
The stores are becoming more empty, inflation is going up, and the reason for inflation is a shortage of goods. Whether or not you want to window—dress it in some other way, inflation takes place in the presence of shortage of goods, and a deflation takes place in the presence of an overabundance of goods. And that’s about all you ever need to know about money.
If money won’t buy things, it inflates. And if money will buy too much, it deflates. And although they tell you, well, there’s plenty of products in the United States, tremendous quantities of products in the United States, nevertheless that currency is inflating. So that currency has gone international in an effort to reach out and do things politically, on a political front, and handle these situations with other capitals.
In other words, there’s too little goods in the world sitting under the United States dollar which is now the basic currency of the world, the most frequent, the most fluid currency of the world.
It isn’t that there’s too little goods in the United States. Get that there’s too little goods everywhere. Now, how does that come about? Well, it comes about through lack of production. There’s too little production elsewhere. People don’t have the facilities to produce. So if the people have no facilities or—to produce, and if they’re being disturbed politically continuously, you get an inflating state of affairs. Some fellow works very hard, in his twenties, and puts aside a great deal of money, and finds out that it will buy a pair of shoelaces in his forties, you see.
China is a marvelous example. The whole country was practically captured by inflation. A friend of mine in Peking sent me an airmail letter just before the iron curtain went down completely. There were two letters, about six months apart, and the first letter had a stamp on it, an airmail stamp, and its value had been overstamped on the stamp with a rubber stamp, so that the airmail stamp which should have cost thirty—five cents or something of that sort cost about thirty—five dollars. And that was fine. And a few months later I received another airmail letter from him, and it was quite interesting, because that was the last one, and the value of the stamp had been raised by the post office by overstamping so that the thirty—five cent stamp was now worth something like seven million dollars.
Now, this brings about conditions of slavery, no more and no less. You eventually have to turn to communism and no money because nobody can keep up with the inflation.
Now, Russia today is busy starving its population. It’s having a wonderful time being the leading nation of the world, in political freedom, and it has never managed the problem of feeding its own people which is such a bad advertisement that not long ago one of the (quote) ”new African states” that’s awful cliché—one of the new African states, in conference duly assembled, was sitting about giving their opinions on what political philosophy they should adopt. And one of their leading lights stood up, and said, ”Well, whatever we adopt, we must not adopt communism, because it finds itself completely incapable of feeding its people.” Well, it took them a few years, but they finally found it out.
Communism tries to tell us that this is political freedom, but it isn’t very much political freedom when nobody can receive a reward for his labors, and the communist worker of course is just on a continuous strike. If nobody’s paying him, and he can’t have anything in return for his labors and so forth, he just goes on strike. I think most of their food comes from the one—acre peasant plots which they are permitted, which the peasant is permitted to sell the produce of. And I think that’s all the food that Russia has.
It’s quite interesting because they’ve gone into tremendous reforms. It isn’t political—it isn’t lack of political cunning, and it isn’t lack of plans that has brought this about. It really isn’t too much in the field of political philosophy. Russia is having to support and maintain a front line which is vastly extended into many other nations, and has to support a tremendous array of armaments, which in fact with that many men under arms, that many of her productive people held into the dedicated service of Mars finds her rather incapable of doing anything mundane like making sure that the kids get enough milk to drink, you see.
So we have the world at large in political turmoil of one kind or another, and these national dedications to self—protection, to this, to that, the other thing. There’s tremendous emphasis today on politics, and politics has entered very deeply into economics, and it makes in effect a rather unstable view in all directions.
It’s not very comfortable for the common citizen filling out forms, forms, forms. It isn’t very comfortable for the young man who just about the time he should learn to be a mechanic or something useful and so forth, has a finger pointed at him, ”We want you,” and he finds himself wearing blue or khaki or something of the sort, and walking around a place he doesn’t want to be. And for a couple of years or so he has to go through this treadmill, and he gets—I’ve talked to these kids, and they’re just in complete apathy in their teens. They don’t plan their future in any way. It’s quite interesting, the—this thing.
But then again, that’s being in a place you don’t want to be. That is not their decision. And when you get a condition where an individual is being forced to do things he doesn’t want to do and being forced to be in a place he doesn’t want to be, he degrades.
If there’s any national degradation in progress, in the United States, it probably—it stems directly and exactly from the draft laws—Conscription laws. Readiness for war, readiness for war. Any one of these people would sit down and have a chin—chin with one another and settle their affairs and compare things. It’s quite interesting that Iowa farmers were quite capable of talking to Russian farmers on their various trips, and they were swapping notes as how you could best raise this and best raise that, and getting all excited with each other because some of their practices were so barbaric and any time they met and talked to one another, they found that they could be very friendly.
Therefore, it really isn’t the individuals of the world that are having difficulty or are causing the dangerous environment which we find here on Earth. The individual would probably be able to work it out rather easily. But impersonalized or depersonalized with a gun in his hands or a push button under his thumb, he of course can go to war with other individuals he’s never even been introduced to, and we have a nice system going here whereby the organizations of Earth, which cannot bleed, which cannot suffer in actual fact, which cannot feel, are at war with one another. All of which adds up to a dangerous environment.
Well, this planet is going to blow itself into political unworkability or hot fission within the next decade or so unless somebody comes up with some workable idea which makes war a difficult thing to wage and which sets aside these economic stresses which are such a drain on the populations of Earth.
It’s very interesting that such an objective would be possible. This is a pretty big plan. This is a pretty big think. Because there have been some big wits at work on this for some time. In fact, I think the first peace movements and so forth are probably discoverable in ancient Egypt. And a lot of fellows have been thinking for a long time on how you brought about peace. But there has been longer think on this than man’s think. The left and right side of the body—let me show you some of the elementary actions on this—the left and right side of the body might very easily be at war with one another. You see, there’s two eyes, and there’s two ears, and so on. But what has happened there is the left side of the body is governed by the right side of the brain, and the right side of the body is governed by the left side of the brain. Maybe you hadn’t realized that.
But this would—this would make a plan something like this—just to show you there’s feasibilities in these things. You put Washington in Moscow. And you put Moscow in Washington, and let them govern their countries from that distance. And of course their tendency to bomb each other out would be reduced to practically nothing.
Now of course, that’s not a practical solution. But I have just given you a little taste of the fact that even though it’s a ludicrous solution, it nevertheless can be stated that if that happened, you see, there then could be no war. You see how nice the Muscovites would have to be to the people of the United States, the people of that capital. You can imagine the Russian diplomat busy governing from the middle of the United States, you know. He’d have to keep very good peace and personal relationships and understanding and so forth, with the American people, and vice versa.
You can see how the United States government would go about it. That’s very easy to see. There would be three press—relations men and public—relations men, you see, for every political diplomat on the embassy and government staff. See, they’d handle that very, very high pressure. They’d make peace.
Well, you see, right now there’s no vested interest whatsoever. That’s of course not the solution I’m forwarding, but I’m just giving it to you. You see, it pays nobody now to advance the cause of peace. Nobody gets paid for it. They only get paid for war. A general only gets promoted if he gets some more troops under him. Well, how does he get some more troops under him? Well, you’d better rattle a few more sabers, you see? And the congressman doesn’t have influence unless he’s appropriating fantastic sums of money and buying tanks and things like that. Then he’s got lots of influence, don’t you see?
And everything is built up so as to go along, that the more trouble there is, the more importance the political figure has. There was a rule, by a woman queen, down in Romania—I think the name was Marie—and for a long period of time she conducted a very, very peaceful government. The country had more prosperity than it’d had for hundreds of years. And she got headlines only when she went over to the United States on a visit. Actually, that was one of the most productive governments that anybody had around for a very long time. They had prosperity during that particular period. But she didn’t have much publicity as a great or very smart ruler.
Apparently man deifies what causes trouble. And it’s—American presidents who don’t have a war during their regime are hardly remembered in the textbooks at all. You remember the war presidents. Those are the boys. The war presidents. But not the peace presidents. See, they’re something else, you see. And similarly things of that character are quite common, so the amount of dissension is sort of an index of their win. But the common citizen, the boy who’s got to keep things rolling and that sort of thing, does not make his personal fortune or his life out of such chaos. The popularity of such people as FDR, a great war president, and so forth, was borne out of the broken homes of practically everybody who fought World War II, see.
You get a slaughter of the individual and his concerns, the aggrandizement and a few more stars on the shoulder of the political boss, but you don’t get—you don’t get any forward progress for the individual.
Therefore, if man is to make any forward progress at all, these conclusions and many others say that he will make his greatest progress in an atmosphere of peace. The only thing that would make the government back up and knock off on income tax and so forth, if it wasn’t having any great demands on its treasury to build more tanks, don’t you see? It’s quite interesting. I have been in several countries which haven’t been at war for some time, where other countries during the same period had been at war. And it was just the length of time the country hadn’t been at war that gave it an atmosphere of calm and things getting along all right. You can notice this by going around and taking a look at the world, and you’ll find those countries which have most recently been at war or haven’t had time to go along are the most enturbulated and the citizen is the most upset and everybody’s all nerved up about something or other.
Now, if you carried forward a program then of international sanity, the easiest program to carry forward on international sanity would be a cessation of threats of the environment. You would have to reduce the danger in the environment to make people saner. If you wanted things to be better around, then what you would do would be to reduce the amount of strife and dissonance in the communities and so on. If you wanted the individuals of the world to draw saner breaths, why, you would give them less threat. You would involve them less in the dangerous future. Because the individual who has no future has a tendency to act very oddly indeed.
Now, man is tied to the fact that he lives only once, which is an interesting idea, quite novel, I don’t know who invented it. But it was invented by somebody. But it gives him a certain irresponsibility regarding any area he lives in. And it’s very interesting to hear somebody in his fifties, sixties, saying, ”Well, I’m after all out of my prime now, and that sort of thing no longer concerns me,” and to see him again in his seventies, with some dim inkling of the fact that he’s got to come back and pick up a body in this mess, you see—getting very nervous about international affairs. In his sixties, you see, he couldn’t have cared less, but in his seventies, he’s getting very nervous about all of this, you know. He’s trying to solve the problem at a subconscious level, ”Where do I go next? Where do I pick up a body?” and so forth.
But in general, man is practicing a high level of irresponsibility with regard to his affairs, because he thinks he only lives once and he thinks he will not inherit anything that he himself has started or abetted in chain fashion. So you can’t expect, in actual fact, a broad public movement based on the idea that you’re going to come back. Man won’t buy this, it’s asking him to take far too much responsibility broadly. So you have to go into other fields.
Now, the problems that have to be solved in bringing about a world peace—an effective world peace program are then the importance of the politician—you’ve got to salvage his importance or he won’t buy it—you’ve got to furnish a great deal of manufacturing and personal building and activity so as not to bring about a—an immediate collapse of the economy which is all bolstered on a war economy, you see? In other words, there’s got to be a lot of construction. There’s got to be a lot of things going on that require lots of money, you see, and that sort of thing. And—the—amongst the other problems that have to be solved is the shortening of the communication line between the capitals of the world, and therefore bringing about a greater understanding. And then you have to curtail the individual initiative of various nations for the waging of war, so that they no longer have the right to knock the lid off just because they’re mad at somebody. And you have to reduce the amount of danger in the environment while doing something dramatically constructive about it all.
These are just a few of the problems that have to be solved, and you have to offer them some attractive objective which is startling, but which they wouldn’t argue with too much. You have to give them lots of things to build and lots of things to do and it has to be a lot of trouble to bring all this about, you see. It has to be very complicated. And with these various barriers you have to overcome, the political objection and that sort of thing, you have to have in such a plan a sufficient and adequate solution to the situation that war would cease and everybody would understand that it would cease. In other words, the solution to it has to be big enough to make the problem seem solvable.
Well, I put all this together originally as a mental exercise, and nothing more than that, to see what would happen with OTs. This lecture is part of the Class VI materials, oddly enough, because you answer this problem all the time. Some thetan says, ”Well, now what could I do?” Well, let me tell you what a bunch of thetans shouldn’t do. They shouldn’t go off in eighteen different directions, each one banging the gong of his own dislikes. That’s a production of chaos, you see. Now, one of the things, one of the things that we have to remember is that we have a base. And that base is called Earth. And we don’t want the base any more enturbulated than it has to be. Nor do we want the base to be so aware of what is happening to it or that it is being called a base, that it’ll be resentful of being one. See, these are very practical considerations.
Also, there are certain exercises which one should be able to do, in order to improve his skill and so forth, and they should not be of an hostile nature. At least toward this planet.
Now, it takes a lot of time to assemble a body of technology. It is resident in the individuals to whom it has been taught and who have experienced the long run with it and during its developmental period, there is—its communication lines, its suitability to the area in which it is being generated, all of these things are hard—to—win assets. And we have those assets. So our interest, our interest, in a peaceful Earth, is not only altruistic, which it is, because at one time in Science of Survival this was issued as a target, a world without war, without any slightest thought of first dynamic reward, you see? But each one of you now has a first dynamic reward in view. That is to say, you have just the first dynamic reward in view not of money, this has nothing to do with money, it couldn’t mean less. It’s wonderful how we get picked on about money all the time. I mean that’s one of the least important commodities. These fellows are missing the shot rather widely. We’re not interested in money, we’re only interested in the planet!
But we have a vested interest, completely aside from our altruistic motives which, remember, do exist. We have a vested interest in a peaceful planet and the continuance of this planet. Because who knows, this planet may go on being very peaceful for a considerable period of time when other planets around about aren’t being so peaceful at all.
This is a sort of a forgotten backwash in the middle of nowhere, see or at the far edge of nowhere, not even in the middle of nowhere. It’s a rather minor sun, minor planet, out on the rim of a galaxy, rather a lost horseshoe nail, if you want to know the truth of it. If you want to know what the exact situation of Earth is, you would not look at any such point as having great value. But it does have the value of existing. It does have the value of having had a technology cultivated on it. It does have the value of our understanding of it, and it does have the value, of course, of not being immediately and instantly discernible as the center of anything.
Now, I’m not necessarily telling you they have vast, wide—reaching plans that are going to waf—waf, and then we are going to—and so forth. These are merely the practical considerations. Practical considerations of what happens. Once you recognize which direction you are going, you’re a fool not to recognize the ramifications of what you are doing, and realize that you have to take some responsibility for the effect it’s going to have around and about. Well, it’s going to have an effect on this planet, it’s going to have an effect on the surrounding areas here, without even going space opera about it. And all that’s very vague, purposely so. And—but I think you understand me. We need, then, a peaceful planet.
So I worked this out originally as what project—was it possible for a bunch of thetans to consistently hammer and pound along the way at a certain objective or project that would bring about something constructive? And it’s not—it doesn’t have much to do with international peace, you see, it’s just could they go ahead, and so forth, and was it possible to direct their own energies toward such a goal. And I worked it out, worked it out, that it was possible for this to happen without too much coordination and planning. And the name of the activity in the exercise, originally, was not what it is now, but became an international—International City, International City. That’s what became the name of the project. International City Project.
Well, I studied this for quite a while. Was there anything one could do about destimulating the planet and consolidating the circumstances of war and so forth? And finally came to the conclusion that if all the capitals of the world were located inside one city that they were not likely to bomb each other out, that they, in effect, would be very careful of declaring war. They would be close cheek by jowl enough to discuss most of their problems. They would have no great difficulties of interchange, you wouldn’t have a vast whiplash of going to Moscow and the ambassador there talking to somebody there. You wouldn’t also have the illusion of security involved with the distance. It’d be a matter of driving a couple of blocks, you see, to see the head of the other state. You’d be meeting him at dinner parties all the time and everybody knows that it’s nice to keep an atmosphere so that you have a socially acceptable personality and that sort of thing and that might as well be introduced to international affairs.
You very seldom see blokes like this declaring war on each other across a banquet table, you see. But they sure get awful loud and very discourteous, you see, a few thousand miles apart. So if these capitals ceased to be located on the native soil of the countries they governed and became located, all of them, within one perimeter, the bombing of that capital would become a rather remote possibility, particularly if you never let people who seemed to be angry at each other leave the capital at the same time.
Now this gives them a new problem. It gives them the problem of the long communication line to their country. And gives a communication line that might possibly wind up entirely and completely in a new capital in their country. Well of course, that mustn’t happen. So the communication line may only go to centers of states within the nation so that you have a nation and then say that it is composed of states or counties. So the communication line does not go from International City to another city inside the country and then go out—you see, a communication relay center. That doesn’t exist. No, I’m afraid the message from International City would have to go directly to Helena, Montana, not via Washington. And there might very well be an assembly or a legislature of that state. Another one would have to go to Sacramento. Another one would have to go to Houston or San Antonio. You see? So you’d get a—you get a communication line from International City to each county or state head without any relay point in it.
Now, they would be the first ones to insist there was no relay point once they got the—even though they aren’t processed and they’re pretty stupid—they would recognize they were setting themselves up for a marvelous fall on their head if they put a central communication center. Because it would simply become a second capital and therefore a control point by which the country could be wrested from their control in International City with the greatest of ease. So their best prevention of revolution, of course, would never have a second capital form inside their nation; that their messages went immediately and directly to the governors who are the heads of states who were under their control.
This would be—they would insist on this. Which gives you the most fantastic communication network anybody ever heard of. That’s a lot of building with that. Now, look at the amount of building in International City. Just look at the amount of structure involved here. And we find out that a duplication of the mall in Washington, complete, alongside of a duplication of Red Square, complete, all of it fanned out—even drew this out in sketches exactly how this would work, you see. Their suburbs stream out behind them, you see, in each one of these things. You make these things stand in a fan. And you have a fanned—out city which is going out with tremendous Transport and underground and so forth. There’s enough undergrounds in there to go around in circles and out to the furthest reaches of the suburbs so that you get any place in it. But it’d make a rather large town.
Now, you take every capital of the world and treat it accordingly and then treat it in such a way that Transport within the capital is very fast and so that each and every section and center of the capital has some of its own atmosphere rather easily planned up, by the way. It isn’t just a sprawling mess where—you—by have a bunch of capitals sitting side by side and they are very definitely worked in such a way that everybody’d be quite happy with it all. And they’re all built around a central capital of its own which is very bombproof Built under a mountain. Artificial mountain which you could never destroy. This would throw everybody into apathy. And a bunker of huge proportions and that of course would be an international parliament of Earth, which then had certain powers and so forth, over various nations.
Not unlike the United Nations today but with a different composition, a more British—American type of a composition so that you don’t get four or five favored nations who can overthrow everything else and you don’t get unequal stuff so that there’s some country that has twenty people in its population and it has a member in the United Nations who has as much say, you see, as somebody who has a billion population. I mean, that’s the way they’ve got it rigged now.
But you get an equalization of population. Well, you have to figure out how can you get a very equalized population. You have to invent a new method in the United Nations that you would put together. You have to get a brand—new method of representation. You have to represent by the square mile and the person in a formula. In other words, how much square mileage is this person representing and how much population and these two are put together in a formula and that country has that many representatives in the United Nations, you see. Which is rather fair. And then, of course, you’d run some kind of a two—house system and so on.
Well, of course these fellows would love to be right up against every capital that they were dealing with. These fellows that were elected to the United Nations and that sort of thing, if they were up against every capital they were dealing with, they wouldn’t have great difficulties and big misunderstandings and if all of these nations that had their capitals there work cheek by jowl with the assembly which was doing all this, I don’t think they’d get into too much trouble either. There’d be enough politicking going on. It would be sufficiently involved to please almost anybody. Particularly if it was based on a good, sound system.
So Wendell Willkie came out with something he called One World, and practically everybody shot him down in his tracks. He was a pioneer in this particular field. But nevertheless this idea has become more and more popular and it’s actually sweeping in that direction. And you’ll find out that togetherness is the watchword of all movements on Earth. It’s togetherness, more togetherness. So soundly, technically, speaking just Scientological technical aspects of it, a proposal like this is far more acceptable than you would readily believe. Because it says immediately ”togetherness,” you see. Let’s put them all together, see. Well, anybody can understand that, see? And they think that’s a good idea.
Now, what does this—what does this immediately entail in the way of propaganda or action or something of that sort? Well, that’s hardly even important. As long as some of the elementary steps are taken, why, the rest might very well follow through rather easily.
And you’d have to take a program by these steps: The first step would have to be you’d have to persuade all governments to turn over all atomic weapons, stocks, control of atomic manufacturers to the United Nations at once, you see.
Second step is persuade the United Nations and all governments to select a site for and construct an International City, preferably in North Africa on the Mediterranean coast where land reclamation can expand its area and where its communication lines can be easily centered for Earth.
Third step: Persuade all governments to remove their capitals to International City complete with heads of government, congresses and parliaments. Prohibit a secondary capital or even a communication relay center within the country itself.
Fourth step is secure communication lines and command lines from each country’s head of government in International City to the government of each internal county or state in that country. And regard each county or state within a country as an autonomous unit under the control of the head of a nation in International City.
The fifth step would be to bring about a recomposition of the United Nations basing its member—delegates, on a formula comprised of land value—land area and value, production and construction value and population figures, a more complicated formula I just gave you, the most important one is what I gave you, but you could even make a more complicated formula for representation which had to do with its potential construction and production values as a nation.
Remove all special privilege categories for favored nations and the exercise of veto by a few. And form the United Nations into a judiciary division, two houses, an executive branch, the key officials to be popularly elected or selected within the nations they represent and by voting by both upper and lower United Nations houses for the head of the United Nations. And reform the United Nations charter into an instrument specifically engaged in governing the heads of nations and international affairs and forbid in the charter all interference with individuals or smaller communities.
Sixth step would be forbid treaties of mutual assistance—warlike assistance.
Seventh, bring about the creation of a small, effective armed force for the United Nations, dismantling or abolishment of all other war facilities. Well, naturally, if they were the only ones that got atomic bombs then their main police action would be devoted to whether or not anybody else was manufacturing atomic bombs. And they just make sure that that wouldn’t happen and they wouldn’t make—require a tremendous force involved in it.
Persuade stable and real international economic measures. In other words, do something to keep money in balance, like the World International Bank, that tries to keep the lid on.
Persuade the United Nations and national governments that the activities of the United Nations and national governments should be limited to ... And then we limit what a national government should be up to.
And we go ahead with this plan and it has all been written up here, in considerable detail, which will—we go ahead with this plan on the basis, on the basis, that such a general agreement amongst Scientologists would push what efforts an individual was engaged in into a coordinated activity so that it would count. And here is a big plan that is sufficiently sloppy with a central executive, you see, a sufficient—and when I say ”sloppy” I mean—I mean that—it’s a—it’s a plan which is centralized and it could be done very sloppily. You’d still get someplace, you see. There’s no great damage would result if it went far awry, don’t you see? So if everybody was moving more or less in that direction, you’d have some possibility of the attainment of the final objective.
Furthermore, it’s a sufficiently interesting plan, I think you will agree, that it would cause a lot of conversation and I frankly don’t think anybody else is doing anything for world peace at all. So that gives it a peculiar, lonely individuality. But it’s a good conversation piece. It’s a good thing to talk about, it’s a good thing to speculate about, good thing to figure on. And it gives a cohesive action to what might be a great many individual actions.
If you’re going to persuade some head of state in some particular line to do something or other there’s many things which you could think of, I’m sure. But if you were in a position to do that, and any one of you were in a position to do that, in different areas or parts and you were all insisting on one objective, it’d be very likely to take place, you see, without any creation of chaos at all.
You’d have a situation here of—well, everybody sort of is insisting that this happen and if there was any persuasion being used, why, you wanted to know how to line up one’s efforts with anybody else’s efforts. Well, if you’ve got a plan of this particular character, your own imagination can fill in an awful lot of blanks and details and you still wouldn’t go awry and the plan still wouldn’t be wrecked. That’s the basic virtue of this plan. The possibility of its effectiveness, the fact that something like this should be done are compared to another datum. Is this—would there be any feasibility in it ever happening at all?
You would be surprised how many ideas that a—of Scientology have materialized in the world in the last few years. It’s interesting. They very often get warped and twisted around in numerous ways but it’s very peculiar how often this can occur. How often these things have been actually adopted.
So here’s a plan, An International Objective is the name of the plan at large and the plan itself is the International City, which merely says a government of Earth.
Now, what does a Scientologist get out of this? Well, on its original release, of course the plan doesn’t pay too much attention to what a Scientologist would do or not do or how you would get out of it or what he would get out of it or something like that. But let me assure you, if the Scientologist was instrumental in bringing about what amounts to a complete political revolution of this planet, he—nobody would be sitting around wondering what he would get out of it. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. If anybody starts getting into agreement with this plan, all you have to do is just keep the word Scientology parked someplace around the fringes of the plan and you’ll get all sorts of credit in this particular direction. So there’s good dissemination in this line.
And then of course having brought it about you eventually would find that they wouldn’t want psychiatrists in International City. They have political use. And we could slip that one in. You wouldn’t want any psychiatrist there, you see, because you could see—you could kidnap the head of another nation and brainwash him. This has got to be calm. We’ve got to have trustworthy people in charge of that branch of things. And about all I would ask would simply be a monopoly on all mental healing done inside the boundaries of International City. I think that would be about the end product of it.
Now, now you’ve got these people together, where maybe you could put some shoes on them. See? If you—if you had the popularity of having pushed this plan across, people would listen. People would listen to you as a Scientologist. And if you kept saying, well, you shouldn’t have bad—bad healing facilities and so forth in International City, you see, and it shouldn’t be all messed up, that sort of thing, and we ought to be taking care at least of that branch of things, why, I’m not now talking about doing any coercion or influence of any kind whatsoever. Political figures are always falling on their heads and their wives are always having snits and fits. In very, very short order if you merely were pushing on this particular point, why, they’d all swear by you. They’d say, ”Oh, well...” They’d start listening to you. And the next thing you know, why, they’re all members of a PE Course and you got the planet.
But that point we won’t go into in the original releases. It’s nothing hidden, it simply makes it somewhat incredible. The point is the main virtue that it has, the main virtue that it has—it is doing something and is proposing something where there is at the moment notably a complete void. I haven’t heard a world peace plan for literally ages. Those that have existed have all folded up. This is something nobody’s thinking about. This is long gone. And that one emerged on the stage of the world, which had any idea of workability or talkability, that in itself has some value. It gives a coordinated direction and one of the targets and objectives, I’m sure, of every one of you, is you wished to God that things would calm down and wouldn’t be blowing its head off every fifteen seconds and the environment’s dangerousness would just subside, just a little bit, so you could get on with your business. Well, this is of course one method of bringing about on an international level.
Now, you notice I’m not particularly trying to sell you this plan, I’m merely informing you of the plan, informing you of what value it might have. Now, there are other—undoubtedly there are liabilities to such a plan. Undoubtedly there are liabilities to such a plan. But I don’t think the liabilities are such that they outweigh the values of the plan. You say, well, some bloke could come along and make himself a dictator of Earth in this particular fashion. Here is everybody all sitting there together ready to be gunned down, and so forth. Well, I don’t know. Pretty hard to do today. Pretty hard to do. Communication lines and so forth.
We had a bloke tried it, fellow named Hitler, not too long ago, and he didn’t make it. And nobody’s made this target recently. In fact nobody’s ever really made it. Yes, it’s true that it puts all the political control of Earth in one particular area. But it also puts into that area an awful lot of wily guys, see. These guys are of a different nature than what you might expect of just legislators coming to a capital, don’t you see. They are—they have their own vested interest. They want to walk their own way through all this. They want—they see that they cannot attain their objectives by war, and man will always try to attain an objective. So if they can’t attain their political objectives by war, they will try to attain them by diplomacy. And they would welcome the proximity of other capitals, and a large legislature to lobby in, and that sort of thing. And they’re not about to give this up into a dictatorship. They would not even think in that particular direction. They’d never cooperate with one, that’s what that amounts to.
Now, another liability is this might leave countries wide—open to—wide—open to revolt or revolution or something of this sort or they might revolt against their internationally located government, which is quite absent, and things might be very upset in that particular direction. Well, I think that—I think that that possibility would be equally apparent to the head of every state in International City. And I think it would tend to govern in such a way that it wouldn’t happen. Absentee government has not recently been posing too much of a problem. Britain, for instance, has no real trouble, and has had no real trouble, governing absently, unless she was so distracted or no longer cared. And what people think about the British Empire and its particular breakup seldom take into effect, well, maybe they got tired of the wogs, you see? And that I think is the real explanation for it. I think they just got tired of it.
When you recognize that one small rock down in the—the Caribbean and so forth drains directly out of the British treasury every year about a million and a half pounds just to pay for its government, and it furnishes nothing back to anybody for anything, after a while a fellow, even a tax collector who’s sweating to get the money in, says, ”Well, why should we be spending a million and a half pounds so that island down there can have its own government, and what use is it?”
The truth of the matter is when you had sailing ships, out—flung and far—flung bases were of great use. But when you can get three hundred marines there in Transport planes in a matter of a few hours, there is no need of that base. So it’s an archaic method of control and it’s been dropped.
No, I don’t think that this—I don’t think this would bring about any vast upset. You say, well, that government, of course, would maintain a standing army of some kind or another. Yes, yes, it’d maintain a standing army of some kind or another, they always do. Probably maintain a bodyguard within International City. Well, that puts quite a few troops in International City, of very dissonant lots and that sort of thing. Yeah, that also puts quite—that also puts quite a force of control under International City government.
Well, there’s a solution to the overthrow of the capital by force by putting the political control of the capital out from underneath the United Nations. So that the political control of International City should consistently be independent of any government. It merely has to do with the safety and security of the individuals inside the boundaries of International City, and that would be their end product. That would be everything that they would be interested in. And they would have a sufficient force there to do that and that force would have to be sufficient to outnumber any even summed—up bodyguards inside the City. In other words, the political control of International City ought to be itself.
Well, how do you keep it itself? Well, you make it terribly profitable. See, you don’t make it political, you make it profitable. So how do you finance International City? Well, you finance it originally in such a way that it itself becomes a property which becomes very profitable to some people. We don’t care anything about who these people are, we only care that they consider it profitable, see, to have International City, and that they go on having International City, and that they consider it a governmental responsibility because it’s profitable.
Now, the Russian would scream over that logic, but there’s where he falls on his head all the time. The way to have a calm International City is to make sure that the ownership of the land and property of the International City brings in money to a small group who sit as a council in International City and make sure that things remain nice and peaceful and profitable. Just cut the whole thing sideways from political control whatsoever. You figure out then that there’s a member of the International City government, a member of that government. Had nothing to do with a nation, has nothing to do with the United Nations. He has only to do with the physical construction and property of the International City.
Well, you hold out this sort of bait to some construction company that after it built its buildings it’s going to draw rent on these buildings from here on out and that a member of that construction company is going to sit on the governing board of that city with no government over its head. And all it has to do is sit there and keep the peace in International City, you have then whipped the government of International City sideways from underneath the political ramifications of otherwise, and you put a very hard core, of very hardheaded guys who want to make awful sure that they keep dragging down the rent, you see, from the White House. And this is profitable. And you make it profitable and you make it rather terrific to have a seat, you see, on that council that governs International City. And it’s not governed by the United Nations.
Now, that splits up political control so much it puts another interest into the area which upsets of course any effort to upset International City. Now, these boys would always be eager beaver. They’ve already got troops, haven’t they? They’ve got lots of troops, they got police of one kind or another who are used to dealing with the citizens of this city, where they always would have their ear to the ground making sure nobody got assassinated, making sure that no parades got interrupted, making sure that there were no demonstrations messing up their buildings, see? Making sure that there was no sudden coup going to take place and overset their this and that, and they would sit there and keep the thing on an even keel.
In other words, it would only be to one person’s interest. If you want to see a lousy capital, take a look at a capital which is owned by the government. Governments take very bad care of the capitals. Do you know that the Washington Monument sat I don’t know for how many years, some disgraceful number of years, as blocks of stone out in the middle of a little meadow because of, by private subscription, was being put together one way or the other, and the government wouldn’t help them out and it just sat there. It just sat there, blocks of stone scattered around. And somebody finally put it together after I don’t know how many years, twenty or thirty.
If you want to look at a capital which is having a hard time, it’s a capital that only depends totally on the—a government for its maintenance, and which is of no great profit to anybody. And the governments come and the governments go and nobody really takes care of the place.
So the way to get International City built, of course, is to hold out the persuasive fact that those who build International City, govern International City as part of the International City council. They do not govern Earth but they govern International City. And you all of a sudden throw the main capital of Earth in the Western World, which is construction capital, immediately and directly behind the project with a crash.
Now, somebody is going to have to operate and act as a clearinghouse. Somebody’s going to have to operate as a clearinghouse as to who is a member of that council. And that is not particularly provided for and we’d probably get forced into it sooner or later. Somebody’d take the bit in his teeth, the way I figured, and so forth. We’d be perfectly happy to operate or act as a central which exchanged information concerning International City, the books and pamphlets and wrote letters about it and that sort of thing.
But that’s about the extent of our direct interest in it, of our direct public interest in it. That’s the extent of it. Something to be interested in, something to bring about world peace and that sort of thing.
Now, on the other side of the fence, you consider this a training ground for the budding OT. And it becomes very fruitful. It’s a nice school exercise. And it’s all very, very constructive and he doesn’t—isn’t left standing around with his hands in his ex—engrams wondering what he should do with himself.
The upshot of the thing is then that there is—this was my conclusion on the original—that it was possible to put together a piece of planning which had some possibility of bringing about world peace. That was the first thing that I was assembling on this, that it was possible to do this. My next conclusion was that it wasn’t being done. My next conclusion was that togetherness was the main forward dynamic thrust of most of these societies. And that then—that this then formed also a way of exercising the talents of people in Scientology and it seemed to me that it became a feasibility. But more important, perhaps, even than this, it holds forth a bit of hope that there is something can be done about it.
I think people have gotten to a point where they have no recognition that anything could be done about it at all. And it holds a bit of hope forward in that particular direction. Now, it gives the Scientologist something else. It gives him a town. It gives him an area of interest and town that could be put together and straightened up. It gives a piece of planet into their hands, no matter how mythical it is at the moment.
There’s a tremendous amount of desert down there. I haven’t been down and taken a look around there recently, but somewhere between Carthage—I’ll come up to present time, excuse me—Tunis, and—modern name Tripoli—along this line of coast and so forth, there’s a tremendous amount of back country. Old communication lines have also gone into there. It’s time immemorial this place has been operative. It was knocked around pretty badly in World War II, but there’s possibilities open up of tremendous scope, so that you’re not building on top of a—or around an already existing situation. That looks to me like a fairly good view, but of course it—I’ve merely picked the oldest natural communication lines of the planet, and they went into that particular zone and area.
And looking over—looking over a—possibilities, feasibilities and that sort of thing, I saw that there—a lot of Scientologists might be able to have some fun with it one way or the other. They might be able to do something. And I wasn’t thinking now in terms of OTs. I was just thinking of somebody or other; he knows somebody in the construction business, you know and, why, he can get him all smoked up like mad, you see, so on, with—very legitimately so, you see.
Because in actual fact it creates a fantastic amount of new wealth. See, there’s new wealth created when you start to take a large area of the world that’s completely arid and throw it into a usable state, and you get a lot of fellows interested in putting construction together on the spot and harbor facilities and this, that and the other and airfields and buildings and wa—wap and more and wow, you know! It’s a creation of wealth.
And then you start figuring out your communication lines and that sort of thing and where they all go and the remodernization of various county and state capitals. In England here, they practically had to build another half a dozen, you know, because it’s gotten very centralized. Here’s stuff going up in all directions, you see. Here’s busyness. You can get awfully involved, you see, in a project like this. You can go beat the drum on something or other.
Now of course, you say, well, it doesn’t have too much to do with Scientology. Yes, it has a great deal to do with Scientology since it’s simply a broad, fourth dynamic method of dedangerizing the environment. That’s as a process. You just—you’re just pushing in that direction. Now if you’re merely saying something could be done about it because a feasible plan does exist, you’ve actually made the environment less dangerous. So it is a method of making the environment less dangerous. It is a fourth dynamic process, technically. It is a method of achieving eventually dissemination to the heads of nations in one small area, all at once. And now, I’ll give you another little secret with regard to this. We have had some trouble with governments recently. And I think they’ve been insolent. They’ve been disrespectful. And I’ve looked this over carefully and I’ve decided that we shouldn’t stand for it.
Now, the way—the way you really upset a government is to move its capital. Now, if you are saying that you have in your power the ability to move all capitals of Earth, you have raised your comparable magnitude to the governments of Earth from a government of Earth, you see?
This is the little odd piece of magic back of it. The fact that you are talking about moving all the capitals of Earth at your discretion to a new situation depowers all of those capitals with regard to Scientology. And I think they ought to be taught a lesson. And that is the innocent threat that is posed back of all that. You see, a terminal has its force in power of being able to maintain and hold its position. You destroy this in a government by merely saying that it would be a good thing to do. This makes them very, very weak and tottery, as far as you’re concerned. And I think everybody would agree that it’d be a very good thing to do. And I even think governments themselves would agree that it would be a very good thing to do. And therein lies a very interesting little piece of magic. Because it upgrades at once the power and magnitude of Scientology, simply that they would say, ”Well, all the governments ought to move down to International City,” see?
And that leaves those governments with a odd feeling, not knowing our technology they would not be able to explain it. But they have been threatened with inability to hold their position. They—now, of course, they don’t even kind of want to hold their position because they don’t even come up scale to a point of realizing that’s very important. But it is very important. It is very important and I frankly don’t think you’d have anywhere near as much trouble with them if you were espousing such a plan. I think you’d have far less trouble with them. They’d feel shaky talking to you. Because they’d feel they couldn’t hold their position while confronting you. They’d feel they’re kind of slipping off to North Africa already.
This is not trickery, this is just technology put to a good use. Two—terminal situation. All right, they’re holding their terminal lines stretched out, so as to hold the whole world in threat. Well, let’s just spoil the power to do so by shifting those terminals or proposing to shift those terminals.
Now, I will write, a lot of, oh, not a lot of stuff, but I will write some more on this. We’ll put this together into a pamphlet of some kind or another. It’s been written, in actual fact, for some time and I was just waiting until I had Class VI pretty well settled. And we will put this into a bit of a pamphlet that can be distributed around and maybe I’ll write up some more material on it, if I get around to it. This is quite interesting as itself, but I should imagine there should be better agreement on this.
It’s a very funny thing is, although people will have a lot of different opinions, if we hold to a central agreement line, and so forth, they will eventually accept the central agreement line. This, if it takes care of most objections, would then come about as the materialized plan even though a lot of people were trying to change it, don’t you see? And it looks to me, it looks to me, like it is an interesting answer. It is nothing where somebody would take off the week he was going to give an intensive in, don’t you see, and spend that whole week pounding the desk about it or something like this, but it would certainly be something that would be interesting to do over the weekend, don’t you see, or something like this, you know. And it’s interesting to mention and hand out to PE Courses, and they might not be able to understand how they’re thinking, but they might be able to understand that you could have an international government of one kind or another.
Now, somebody’s going to ask Scientologists, ”Well, who is back of this? Who is back of this?” And the only thing you want to tell them, ”Well, just we are,” you see, or ”Ron is.” I don’t care what you say, you see. But there—frankly, there is no moneyed group or no moneyed individual of any kind back of this. You see, there is nobody back of this. But there’s a huge vacuum provided here that would pick up such people and put them into it. Only remember, they’re not now in back of it. They’re in it. See?
So we in actual fact are in back of it. But we are not being paid in any way shape or form to beat the drum one way or the other. We merely figure it’d be very good for the population of Earth if they were just a little less restimulated. And it was—originally took place of, ”Is it possible to do anything about Earth? Would it be possible for an OT to agree upon some project or another? Agree on some project that he might possibly care to push toward? And would there be some constructive project which put—made life a little easier for one and all,” and so forth. These were the considerations which motivated this, all very mild considerations. I think something of this sort depends for its power upon interest.
I remember when I first wrote this up, it was lying there very quietly minding its own business, and I had really last seen it on my desk, over to the side in a huge pile of papers of one kind or another, and it—that’s where I’d last seen it. And here was dear Joan, standing there in the middle of the carpet in my office, saying, ”Can I run this please, in the next issue?” I thought, isn’t that interesting! It has disappeared out of my desk, and it’s mysteriously about to be printed as the British Certainty, because of course, she’s the editor of British Certainty, you see. And it struck me as though it must be considered a somewhat interesting project. Because it’s been quite a while since anybody stole an article out from underneath a pile of paper.
But has no more—it has no more force or vastness to us than that. It’s almost an incidental fourth dynamic project if you can have any fun with it, why, by all means, do so, and I will see that it’s distributed to you. The mimeograph of—the mimeograph write—up of the whole thing, giving all sorts of odd points and so forth, with regard to International City and its formation and what it should be about. And I’ll see that those get handed out to you in the next day or so. It all depends on whether or not they have a stock of them in mimeo.
But anyway, I wanted to talk to you about it, because very often it occurs to you, well, we’re powering up individuals pretty heavily, here. This is getting more and more so. And you’ll find that people around might also become uneasy. What do these people mean to do? We already have one Scientologist up in the—up in the north of England up here who’s so horrified at the idea of making some OTs, he said the atom bomb would be far more preferable. Atom bomb would be far preferable to making some OTs. That’d be absolute chaos and disaster.
Yeah, a very interesting point of view, you see. But they get these odd—they get these odd lines. So what do these people intend? All right, if they’re bringing off anything of this sort or if something spectacular is happening, what do these people intend? What are their intentions toward this planet? I think it’s a nice thing to have some sort of a plan sitting there that explains that your intentions are basically good roads and good weather, and then if you have some time, even give it a little push. And it seems to me like that’s a sensible way of going about it.
Well, what do you think of the project? All right.
Thank you. Thank you very much.