2284 World Society

← xii | xiii →INTRODUCTORY BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Iaian Vernier was born in 2204 in what was once called Belgium. His parents were of international heritage and worked in various civil service positions in Europe, Africa and in South America. His studies in Louvain, Wallonia; Cambridge, England; and Heidelberg, Germany were in political theory and philosophy, with a mathematical and legal sub-specialization. Early on, he joined the Secretariat of the World Society shortly after its move to Africa and rose up in its ranks and responsibilities as a very prescient and tough evaluator of plans and process.

Iaian Vernier died in 2294, about one hundred years ago. His final retirement from the World Society Secretariat took place in 2282. His normal retirement at age 70 occurred in 2274. But, because of a serious dispute between medical scientists in Johannesburg, Transvaal Nationality and Nanjing, East Yangtze Nationality, which had enormous potential for increasing human health and life span involving autoimmune therapies, he was called back to service to help adjudicate the dispute for presentation to the Congress. Each of the contesting national entities if confirmed would have been open to special dispensations in population and productivity increases for their achievements. The issue was peacefully resolved, as we all know, and the world is the beneficiary. After four years of additional service on other matters of international concern, Dr. Vernier resumed his well-earned retirement.

← xiii | xiv →Our belief is that we learn from our achievements but even more from our errors of perspective, planning, and applications to the life and destiny of our human cohort. This also applies to the larger tree of life once and today to have existed on this planet. This memoir does not necessarily reflect our current planning perspectives, but does throw light onto our thinking at the time of his writing. Dr. Vernier, in his forty-three years of service, taught us much. To the extent that the changes we have made in the structure of law in these subsequent decades have been successful, to the extent of our past skepticism about our ultimate destiny, we are indebted to Dr. Vernier’s probing intellect.

Secretariat, World Society, Nairobi Enclave, 2394

← xiv | xv →PERSONAL NOTE FROM IAIAN VERNIER

To help the reader understand where I come from, I must set down a few biographical details of my life and work. I am a civil servant, and the child of civil servants. While born and raised mostly on the European continent, my heritage and that of my parents are transnational. Racially and ethnically I represent several continents as does my wife. My heritage is European, Asian and African. My wife comes from an ancient line of North Americans with European origins as well as what has been called Latino.

Our two children have married Asiatic heritage individuals, and our grandchildren have also married individuals with Asiatic and African roots. With our encouragement, I think, we now have great grandchildren on the way. Our family represents our new world citizenry wherein old racial and ethnic origins are rapidly being displaced by new and very different identities. Although our children have adopted our civil service traditions of professional commitment, I believe our grandchildren, having been given wide educational choices, are poised to take on roles in independent artistic and technological institutions.

My one great regret is not having had the perspective of those who live, work, and think outside of governmental domains. I served World Society institutions for forty-three years. Especially gratifying was the opportunity ← xv | xvi →to experience at an early stage in the move of this important institution for peace and prosperity to Nairobi in Africa. For well over a century now the alteration of the human landscape in that continent has been one of our most gratifying experiences, testimony to the wisdom of our predecessors in world government.

After our retirement in 2274, after thirty-nine years of service, my wife and I flounced around the world for four years following the lives and careers of our children and the development of our grandchildren. Then came a new crisis, and I went back to Nairobi trying to help, staying on to give some perspective to my replacements. My devoted spouse, a few years younger than I, wanted to settle down in one place. I especially needed to gain some perspective on what I had inherited in terms of my professional commitments and what our cohort had initiated as a task for long-term world stability.

We decided to look for a new and quiet ecology and nationality for our final years. Having just experienced four years of travel we decided on what has been called northern New England/New Hampshire. We found a relatively small private country residence on which we did some minor renovations. It is surrounded by maples and pines and lies beyond a lake where people for hundreds of years have sailed their boats quietly and in harmony with nature and humanity.

I need to comment on our economic position for it reflects on the power and privilege of those of us who have been responsible for furthering this great revolutionary experiment in worldwide peace and stability. At the least we are economically ‘comfortable’ in our retirement. Our salaries were always decent; my retirement income is sufficient, but we are not wealthy. In past centuries too many governmental employees have used their latent powers and notoriety to fatten their purse by lobbying and speechifying, garnering enormous emoluments. The services to the constituencies they supposedly represented were essentially covers for obtaining personal wealth and power.

The basis for this new political/economic structure of governance that we are attempting to establish is that public service means just that. An individual should leave public service no more enriched or powerful than when he or she entered such service. Our international laws now require such moral commitments. And, of course we have had to take legal actions against those who have given way to temptation. Such malfeasance is now being paid for behind bars.

As for the weather in this part of ‘New England’ it has fulfilled the prediction as being bracing; the citizenry are disciplined and not highly charged. But ← xvi | xvii →then again, the rate of social change we are attempting to establish worldwide is much slower as compared with earlier eras, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, for example. It is a bonus that the Secretariat has established for responsibly positioned civil servants that they can remain anonymous. We are able to use a pseudonym to protect our own and our family’s privacy. Our way of life, our standard of living, supports this modest quietism that we seek for our ‘golden years.’

At age eighty and seventy-six, respectively, and in good health, the two of us would hope to live out the century that is legally permitted. If we live longer than the legal limit, we must appeal to the courts, giving a good argument for this dispensation. I hope that I can set down these thoughts coherently while our health continues to be stable.

Finally, I plan to send a copy of this memoir to the chair of the judicial committee of the Secretariat. It should be seen and read not only as a reflection of the efforts by my colleagues and myself to put into place this new system of life but also to set forth the arguments of the adventurous thinkers and doers who attempted to lift the world community out of its torpor, out of the paralyzing malaise that overcame our planet after the horrors of the preceding century and beyond.

The Secretariat can then store it away, destroy it, even publish it at a time that seems appropriate. Perhaps it will generate further thought, humorous parody, or as I hope, historical perspective.

Chronology of the Revolution

2025–2050—Beginning of fossil energy crisis; attempts to save international economic, political, military alignments, treaties; UN irreconcilable ideological divisions

2050–2070—Struggle to obtain secure fossil energy resources; beginning of emergency national investment in nuclear type electrical power; crisis of the welfare state, fall of dollar and euro, worldwide inflation; new international alignments solidified. International economic failure