Pan-Humanism

"We stand at the precipice of a new dawn for Mankind; the next great leap for our species. A moment in the making since the first time our hunter-gatherer ancestors banded together in a prehistoric savanna. From tribes to city-states to nations to international unions, it has been the way of our species to band together with our fellow man, for deep down we have always known that way lay companionship, prosperity and strength. And try as they might, no force of hatred or disunity has managed to break this inexorable chain of progress. For however great our capacity for prejudice and violence, our capacity for compassion and unity is yet greater still. And so we have arrived at this moment, the first time in human history when Mankind has forsaken old feuds and petty divisions and come together under one flag. We have endured the greatest crucible our species has yet faced and come out stronger. Those who would sow hatred and oppression among us lay beaten, and our children shall inherit a new world, one free from the divisions and bigotries of the old one. And as we set our gaze beyond the ashes and forward unto a new dawn, we shall do so side by side with our fellow man, as one people with one destiny. Today. Tomorrow. Forever."

- Inaugural address of Nevil Kamau, the United Earth Government's first Secretary-General, in 2170

Pan-Humanism, sometimes rendered as PanHumanism or simply panhumanism, is the endorsement of a common political and cultural framework for the entire human species. Over the course of history, the philosophy has taken numerous forms and encompasses various cultural, political and intellectual movements. It acts as the ideological backbone of the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command, and has dominated the human cultural sphere for centuries.

Overview
Pan-Humanism espouses unity among the entire human species as a single community, as opposed to society being atomized to ethnic, national or continental levels. A core concept of Pan-Humanist theory is the idea of the human meta-civilization — the idea that all human cultures and civilizations have always been and will continue to be part of an interconnected civilizational continuity. The philosophy has a strong undercurrent of human equality, dismissing the dividing lines of race, gender, or creed as outdated reasons for conflict or division. Although cultural and social diversity is accepted, this is only within certain limits; it is generally assumed that everyone should subscribe to a certain set of core values, especially regarding human rights. This also contains the assumption that a single overarching polity is the best way to guarantee social, technological and economic equality for all people. Furthermore, it is usually argued that the development of a panhuman state is merely the logical culmination and even historical inevitability of human societal evolution, from hunter-gatherer tribes to city-states to nation-states, empires, international unions and transnational organizations, and finally a single political unit to encompass the entire human civilization. Due to its role, it is further also assumed that the UEG represents all human interests and speaks for all of humanity, a notion that began to fall apart in the Phoenix Initiative era.

Outside a set of central moral and ethical principles, ethnic, national or religious affiliation are not restricted by most Pan-Humanists, though they are regarded as secondary to the cosmopolitan Pan-Human community. Generally, Pan-Humanists accept cultural differences to the point that they are not harmful to any individual within those cultures or prevent self-actualization or social mobility within the greater whole. This typically extends to models of governance, promoting the notion of a single human cultural and political unit as a desirable state of affairs. Pan-Humanists generally accept that there should be a balance of global and local interests, with some matters being decided on a species-wide level while others can be left to provincial decision-making bodies. Humanitarian concerns in particular have frequently been cited to justify the UEG's monopoly on humanity, claiming that it is the government's moral duty to safeguard the commonly-accepted human rights, norms and values even as the species expands further and further. It is argued that, without a strong enough central authority, human subgroups will inevitably develop political or social structures that violate the basic rights of their subjects. The notorious Koslovic and Frieden movements in the 22nd century are often used as cautionary examples to prove this development, along with numerous historical examples of totalitarian states.

In its most prominent form, Pan-Humanism specifically refers to the Terracentric Pan-Humanism or "Blue-flag Pan-Humanism" of the United Earth Government, the notion that, as humanity's cradle world, Earth should be viewed as the baseline to which all human cultures and socio-political systems should conform. While most humans are not specifically proponents of the UEG's brand of Pan-Humanism, it has had a major effect on humanity's cultural character due to its prominence in the cultural consensus since long before the. There have always been movements opposing the UEG's official policies, but the overarching school of thought has been credited with eliminating racial and ethnic prejudice in the traditional sense in most parts of the human sphere, though critics have argued that this has merely been replaced by other, new forms of division, most prominently the divide between SolCore, and the Inner and Outer Colonies. Even then, the universalized Pan-Human values, laws and norms have shifted over even the UEG's rule, though they have not radically changed since the UEG's constitution in 2170.

While the UEG's implicit perspective on Pan-Humanism was the most prominent one, it was not the only one. Various groups have proposed alternate governmental and societal models, some of which may only be made possible through the development of new technologies such as superluminal communications, artificial intelligence or advanced mind-machine interfaces. Such proposed models include systems of direct democracy via technological interfaces, with any and all matters being decided by the entire populace rather than by elected representatives. Others have gone further and proposed post-democratic systems, with governance instituted partially or entirely by AIs, namely posthuman "smart" AIs. A hybrid AI/neural network government in particular was proposed by the Technarchist movement of the late 23rd century, though the excesses of the movement's extremist wing soured the hope of any such radical technological governance solutions being contemplated in the UEG mainstream for centuries to come, along with setting back human technological development in the field of cybernetics and AI for generations.

Criticism
Due to the ideology's association with the UEG, discourse on Pan-Humanism has been heavily politicized since the late 25th century, and it is often difficult to separate criticism of the idea and the actions of the UEG as a polity.

Critics of Pan-Humanism frequently accuse the ideology of being as reductive and idealistic to the point of naivete. Some argue that rather than solving problems, Pan-Humanism is merely an unspoken agreement to sweep said problems under the rug. Academic criticisms often argue that, especially since the Domus Diaspora, the notion of a meta-civilization as spread out as humanity's is too abstract and removed from everyday context for most people to base their identity and political affiliation around, with the alleged "comfort zone" of human tribal groups peaking (depending on the definition) somewhere around the scale of the old nation-states. Furthermore, even should a Pan-Human state be possible for a brief duration of time, long-term expansion and cultural splintering would inevitably make the prospect of a unified species-wide polity non-viable.

Some early critics argued that, even if possible at some undetermined point in the future due to technological advances, a Pan-Human polity would not be sustainable at this point in time as human cognitive evolution had not yet caught up with the comparatively rapid societal evolution. Without a strong enough external force acting on them, such as a common enemy, humans would eventually splinter into smaller tribal groups; such groups would then have to be coerced to work together by the threat of force or a powerful enough common ideological framework. Astrographic isolation would further accelerate this process, especially with immature technology such as a lack of faster-than-light communications, no different from the alienation brought on by geographic isolation in terrestrial empires of old.

Frequent criticisms are also leveled at the ideology's political ties to the UEG, with the Earth government's activities in the colonies being cited as evidence that any one body assuming moral responsibility over an entire species inevitably leads to imperialism and the neglect or outright suppression of local interests. Although presented by its proponents as fostering a cosmopolitan perspective and ensuring the fulfillment of human rights and civil liberties, the UEG is often accused, particularly by colonial critics, of acting as a thinly-veiled justification for Earth's imperialism and hegemony over its colonies. According to such interpretations, the UEG only intervenes in human rights violations when it benefits them, harshly condemning colonist practices seen as diverging from Earther values while turning a blind eye to economic exploitation perpetrated by SolCore-based megacorporations operating in the colonies (or the colonies' lack of true representation within the UEG proper, rather being governed by proxy by the Colonial Administration Authority). This was seen as particularly hypocritical as one of the original functions of the UEG was to regulate the excesses and virtual monopolies of interplanetary corporations, which is widely cited as one of the underlying causes of the Interplanetary Wars.

Proponents of UEG-centric "blue-flag panhumanism" usually argue that while not perfect, the UEG is merely the best option so far of a Pan-Human state, not in the least because it grew out of the first major Pan-Humanist organization in Earth's history. Many UEG-centric Pan-Humanists are also skeptical that a species-wide polity based entirely on mutual association with no centralization or coercion could viably safeguard common values and peace in the long term. Criticism of the UEG specifically has created a distinction between political and cultural Pan-Humanism and has led to the rise of various sub-movements unconnected to the Earth government's policies. Some agree that the idea of Panhumanism itself is noble while condemning specific actions by the UEG, while others would grow disillusioned with the UEG's actions over time, particularly during the Insurrection.

Other criticism has been cultural and moral relativist in nature, calling into question why the UEG's laws should be regarded as the end-all of human values and where exactly the limits of acceptable cultural or religious practices should be drawn. Such critiques have emerged especially on off-world colonies with radically different living conditions to those of Earth, rendering the old ways effectively alien to the material and social reality of the new habitat. Especially early on, some critics decried the UEG's rule as faux cosmopolitanism or Americo-cosmopolitanism, referencing the prominence of North American (or more broadly Western) metaculture in the UEG and the UNSC. In later centuries, such distinctions have become largely antiquated and meaningless, with most critics targeting Earth or Sol specifically rather than any of the ancient nations or cultural-political blocs.

Variants and related ideologies

 * Soft Pan-Humanism: Usually refers to a casual adherence to the core idea of human commonality, encouraging dialogue between cultures while permitting variety in values, norms, and even political systems (albeit usually within limits).
 * Hard Pan-Humanism: The belief in an overriding "human" identity as an end in itself and disregarding any lower-level cultural or ethnic affiliation as outdated or counterproductive. Popular during the mid-22nd and early 25th centuries, experienced a resurgence during and after the Human-Covenant War.
 * Pan-Eartherism / Terracentric Pan-Humanism: The emphasis on the enduring relevance of Earth as humanity's cradle world, even to colonial populations. Usually presupposes that Earth should persist as a center of cultural and political power. Also called Terracentrism or Earth-centrism, usually by its critics. Notably, though the views often overlap, this is not synonymous with Pan-Humanism. Also called Blue-flag Panhumanism.
 * Pan-Solarism: Similar to Pan-Eartherism, but extending similar principles to SolCore and the Solar populations (mainly the Earthers, Lunars, Martians and Jovians) as humanity's staple cultural groups. Often seen as synonymous with Pan-Eartherism.
 * Colonial Pan-Humanism: Brands of Pan-Humanism borne out of colonial philosophy, usually downplaying the importance of Earth or the UEG and favoring more distributed models of governance, while still espousing the core idea of human unity, equality and shared cultural heritage. This version of the ideology has seen a resurgence in the post-Covenant War era, and elements of it can be seen in the Phoenix Initiative.
 * Pan-Colonialism: The belief in the shared exceptionalism of colonial populations contrasted with Earth. Usually connected with Frontierism and variations of the "noble pioneer" narrative, contrasted with the decadent and stagnant institutions and customs of Earth and SolCore.
 * Human nationalism / Anthroponationalism: Sometimes historically used as a synonym for Pan-Humanism, but more specifically referring to the post-Covenant War advocacy for a strictly human polity. Usually connected to anthropocentrism in modern post-Contact contexts.
 * Pansophontism: A proposed alternative to Pan-Humanism to encompass all sapient or sophont entities, rather than grouping political affiliation by cosanguinity. Only entertained as a hypothetical until the Contact era. Began to gain ground among some groups in the post-Covenant War era, but would take time to become mainstream.
 * Tribalism: Often defined as the opposite of Pan-Humanism and leveled as an accusation against groups seen as engendering division or disunity on the basis of "tribal" loyalty to lower-level identity groups. This was also a common justification for military intervention particularly in the Insurrection, as human unity was taken as a given, and coercion was widely seen as preferable to the alternative: a return to the chaos that characterized the pre-UEG era. The Insurrectionists were seen as tribalists concerned only with their own interests, too myopic to see the whole of which they were part.

First Wave
Modern Pan-Humanism is commonly seen as a descendant of classical cosmopolitanism, Renaissance secular humanism, post-nationalism and is seen as a direct continuity of the ideals of the United Nations. It first rose to prominence in the late 21st and early-to-mid 22nd centuries. This upwelling of post-national sentiment strongly reflected the cultural zeitgeist of the later phases of the Golden Age of Space Exploration, which had seen the diminishing of many old national identities. Part of this was also for pragmatic reasons, as around that time Earth's ecological conditions began to worsen due to both out-of-control anthropogenic climate change and other exacerbating issues, leading to numerous secondary problems that could no longer be solved on the national level. This led to many nations campaigning for increased UN power, though this so-called "United Earth Project" also polarized Earth's political discourse and even led to armed conflict. Even so, by the early 22nd century the UN had been granted far more power on Earth than before, though by the mid-26th century their space presence remained in its infancy.

At the time, the UN's "blue-flag panhumanism" was opposed by various parties. Many ideological groups and terrestrial national actors disagreed with the goals and methods of the United Earth Project, and many dreaded the coming of a sinister "New World Order". Various new cultural and ideological groups born on the interplanetary colonies opposed it, as they no longer felt direct kinship to Earth and its old institutions. But by and large, the United Earth Project gained more and more momentum as crises mounted one after the next, and the formation of the United Earth Government in 2170 represented the culmination of this development. As the government grew in its influence in the late 22nd and early-to-mid 23rd centuries, various groups including the Communitals, Cometarians, Neo-Locals and Neo-Nationalists as well as the Vue Futur school arose as counter-forces to it, rebelling against the notion of Pan-Human cultural conformity. Others, such as the late-23rd century Technarchists, were aligned with the concept of Panhumanism but believed the UEG's institutions and practices were archaic and more technological advances should be incorporated to political processes in order to suit the new reality of space travel. However, the UEG had too much mainstream momentum by that point for any of these splinter movements to permanently challenge it.

In a 2184 paper, political theorist Noah Ghurani presented a famous argument known later known as Ghurani's Dilemma. He postulated that the mere ideal of human commonality alone was too abstract for most humans to relate to, and a panhuman state without an external enemy would either have to periodically contend with, and subsequently curb, rebellions by splinter elements of itself, or commit itself to engaging in persistent and species-wide socio-cultural and ideological engineering to ensure compliance. Therefore, a panhuman state that wished to sustain itself in the long term would have to choose between cultural hegemony or military domination. Ghurani also argued that religions have historically had greater success in maintaining the fabric of civilizations than purely secular ideologies. With the horrors of the totalitarian regimes of the Koslovic and Frieden movements and various preceding upwellings of ideological extremism fresh in humanity's collective memory, the United Nations would obviously not choose the latter nor openly commit itself to the former, instead leaving the dilemma unresolved. At the time, Ghurani was largely dismissed as a cynic and would frequently be accused of advocating for both cultural and military hegemony. However, he would repeatedly clarify that he had never argued for either, and was merely presenting the two options a panhuman polity (or any large empire) had (rather like Dr. Carver centuries later).

While the UEG did embrace and adopt a number of cultural institutions of the United Nations and other international organizations to promote unity (one of these being Earth Day), early efforts to foster a "panhuman" culture largely limited to such gestures and grand speeches. In practice, the UEG's role was a political and military one, and what could be said to be UEG meta-culture would only arise with time, until it started being artificially built up in the 25th century. However, the continued predominance of the UEG and its gradual encroaching on the old nations' territory over the late 22nd and throughout the 23rd and 24th centuries automatically led to the national identities waning and many of the nations themselves becoming little more than cultural units within the overarching political framework of the UEG's regional protectorates. By the 25th century, cultural or political differences between Earth's individual regions were minute and surface-level at best, and the notion of national borders had become virtually meaningless after the UEG's resettlement and reforestation initiatives from the 22nd to the 24th centuries. The gradual loosening of the UEG's draconian policies as Earth's ecology recovered and its population growth stabilized also led to the resurgence of national sentiments in some of the regional protectorates, which subsequently sought to re-nationalize various industries over the course of the 25th century. But even then, the old nations — where they had any relevance at all — were merely interchangeable clubs for the decently well-off segments of the population. More often than identifying as "Chinese", "Russian" or "American", most Earthers would merely regard themselves as citizens of Earth — even as regional exceptions emerged from time to time.

The Plenarian movement was a prominent Pan-Humanist group active in the 23rd century, mostly prior to the advent of slipspace travel. They cautioned against interstellar expansion, believing it would shatter humanity's civilizational unity and lead to islands of post-human civilization incapable of effectively communicating with one another. The cultures and values of such neo-civilizations, the Plenarians argued, would distort to become completely unrecognizable over time, undoing the work the UN and the UEG had done to unify the populations of Earth and the Sol system. Instead, the Plenarians proposed that human civilization concentrate itself in a swarm of habitats around Sol, within no more than an hour or two of light-lag between them, as a way of preserving the species' cultural unity. While it enjoyed some popularity among scientists and even politicians, the Plenarian movement died out in the decades after the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive in 2291.

Second Wave
"Ex Terra, Pro Terra."

- Common slogan among second-wave Panhumanist groups, particularly in the academia. The Standard English equivalent From Earth, For Earth is also common.

Ideological Panhumanism was not particularly prominent over the later 23rd and throughout the 25th century, but the outbreak of the Inner Colony Wars revitalized the concept of the UEG as the sole political and moral authority over humanity. This led to the second wave of pan-humanist ideology in the Pax Humana era of the first half of the 25th century. The discourse of this period was increasingly UEG and UNSC-centric, even militant in its rhetoric, attributing the peace and progress that followed the Inner Colony Wars specifically to the efforts of the UEG and giving rise to various organizations and movements espousing Pan-Humanism as an end in itself, including Terra's Children and Ex Terra. This was convenient for the UEG, because it provided an idealistic explanation for the Earth government's refusal to let its far-flung colonies secede, compared to the much less justifiable economic reasons. Many UEG loyalists raised and educated in Earth institutions certainly believed in the UEG's role as the "shepherds" of humanity, and the lofty ideals upon which it was founded. But this only inflamed Earth's alienation with the far-flung colonies, coupled with ideological Earth loyalists' dismissal of the colonies' interests. And further still, excesses such as Far Isle by hardline Earth loyalists — isolated and spur-of-the-moment as they may have been — cemented the battle-lines between the UEG and the Outer Colonies.

However, the most concerted and widespread critiques of Pan-Humanism would soon follow, in the later half of the 25th century as the Insurrection began gaining traction on Outer Colonies. Many of the interstellar colonists had long ceased feeling any particular kinship for people dozens of light-years away inhabiting a socio-cultural reality very different from their own. By the early 26th century, Pan-Humanism largely lived on in portions of the the Earther and Inner Colony academia along with UEG-sponsored youth organizations, as well as other UEG ideological hotbeds like the, where it continued to thrive.

The computational sociologist was a noted Pan-Humanist and Terracentrist, though in his later years he became disillusioned with his earlier views. A controversial figure, Carver is remembered for the paper popularly known as the, in which he presented the thesis that a strong military intervention was the only solution to the growing unrest in the Outer Colonies. However, Carver would later maintain that the UNSC admiralty took this out of context, fixating on a small part of his paper which he, as he claimed, was merely there to make a point about the available options. Carver would highlight the core assumption of his paper, later famously dubbed Carver's Maxim, stating that any interstellar civilization would eventually expand beyond political and socio-cultural cohesion. Carver was far from the first to declare such a belief, but he was the most notable figure to do so in the post-Pax Humana era. As the Insurrection escalated, Carver grew increasingly disillusioned with the UEG and their handling of the Insurrection, along with wrestling with his own guilt in having contributed to the UNSC's interventionism. By his later years, Carver had come to regard the splintering and diversification of humanity's interstellar civilization as an inevitability to be embraced, rather than a problem to be solved. It is widely believed that Carver's cognitive dissonance wrestling with the fundamental contradictions in his views, along with his role in further inflaming the Insurrection led to his eventual suicide.

Third Wave
The third wave of Panhumanism, or Post-Contact Panhumanism, came during and especially after the Human-Covenant War. The emergence of extraterrestrial intelligent life in the form of the Covenant was a paradigm shift that that had long been theoretically contemplated but never realized. Not only that, but the overwhelming and total existential threat posed by the Covenant recontextualized humanity's place in the cosmos, finally giving the species an alien "other" to mirror themselves against. This led to an enormous upwelling of Pan-Human sentiment among the human population. Social and political theorists had long predicted that true human unity would only come if the species were to be threatened by an outside force, and with the Covenant, this hypothetical became a horrific reality. This paradigm shift also sharply distinguishes post-Contact Panhumanism from its predecessors; where the ideology had in recent decades been dismissed by many as stale, outdated, or a way to sugar-coat imperialism, it now represented the noble struggle of an underdog against an overwhelming foe. Not all humans agreed, of course, and for most this newfound conformity was more of a general sentiment than a strict adherence to the Pan-Humanist ideology per se. But it did nonetheless breathe new life into a movement thought long antiquated.

The human-on-human violence of the Insurrection was rendered obsolete overnight to populations who experienced the Covenant threat firsthand. However, the totality of the Covenant threat still took some time to sink in among the disparate human populations. Many insurgent groups outside the frontlines of the war continued to wage their war against the UNSC, often believing the Covenant threat had been exaggerated for propaganda reasons or that the aliens opposed the UNSC in particular, rather than the entire human species. Others simply worked toward their own interests, and sought to weather out the war in hiding. Still, by the later half of the war, few insurgent groups remained, either having been wiped out by the Covenant or joined their efforts with the UNSC. Some did exist, however, and continued to be a thorn on the UNSC's side as late as 2552.

The Treaty of Arusha and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UNSC and an alien power, along with the rise of various forms of informal integration or mingling between human and ex-Covenant groups changed the pressures that led to the third wave of Pan-Humanism, but it did not remove them. On the contrary, many humans now felt humanity was under siege on a level less overt than in the prior decades, but no less destructive. Concerns were raised over the loss of "human culture" to alien influences, along with the perceived injustice of the ex-Covenant (particularly the Sangheili) not being brought to justice for their crimes. Further complicating the ideological basis of these anti-alien sentiments was the UEG's generally favorable stance on the aliens. This led to the formation of hardliner political groups based on the original principles of Pan-Humanism but opposed to the current policies of the UEG, the UNSC and the nascent Phoenix Initiative.

While it saw a resurgence of anthroponationalism and human exceptionalism, the post-Covenant War era also created an upwelling of the previously-hypothetical pansophontism among some groups; this being the notion of extending the principles of panhumanism (i.e. the inevitability of humans banding together into increasingly large societal units, culminating with a single all-encompassing political framework) to other sapient beings, which were no longer a theoretical fancy. Parallels were also drawn between pansophontism and the religious basis for the Covenant's Doctrine of Universal Conversion, which is essentially built on the notion of commonality between sapients, even if the Covenant's implementation of that commonality was tarnished by the hegemony's institutionalized oppression and their misguided goals. While this faced much pushback in the mainstream due to the fresh scars of the war, later generations would see pansophont sentiments becoming increasingly popular on worlds and in polities where humans lived in close proximity to non-humans.

The New Diaspora beginning in the 2580s will likely see the end of Pan-Humanism as a viable political model, with the scattering of disparate human populations across hundreds of light-years while diversifying culturally and societally far beyond the divergence seen in prior centuries.