Pan-Humanism

Pan-Humanism, sometimes rendered as PanHumanism, is the belief in a commonality amongst the entire human species, usually in the form of solidarity, shared cultural identity and destiny. Over the course of history, it 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. It has a strong undercurrent of human equality, dismissing the dividing lines of race, gender, or creed as outdated reasons for conflict or division.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. 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.

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. This typically extends to models of governance, promoting the notion of a single human cultural and political unit as a desirable state of affairs. 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 cultural structures that violate the basic rights of their subjects. The notorious Koslovic and Frieden movements in the 22nd century are often used as proof of this development, along with numerous historical examples of totalitarian states.

While most humans are not specifically proponents 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 breakaway movements, 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.

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, it is merely an unspoken agreement to sweep said problems under the rug. Other criticisms are leveled at the ideology's political ties to the UEG; though its academic proponents usually point out the UEG is merely the best option so far of a Pan-Human state, most do hold more favorable opinions of the Earth government than not. However, 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. 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.

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. Often criticized as unrealistic but surfaces into the public discourse from time to time.
 * Pan-Eartherism: 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.
 * Pan-Solarism: Similar to Pan-Eartherism, but extending similar principles to SolCore and the Solar populations 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.
 * 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.

History
Pan-Humanism is commonly seen as a descendant of global cosmopolitanism, secular humanism, and the ideals of the United Nations. It first rose to prominence in the 22nd century with the "United Earth project" within the UN. It 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, although this era had also seen the rise of various new cultural groups on the interplanetary colonies. The ideology faced pushback from the start, both from various ideological groups, representing both the old terrestrial nations or ethnic groups and the newer colonies. The formation of the United Earth Government in 2170 has been widely seen as 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.

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.

The Pax Humana era of the first half of the 25th century saw the emergence of the second wave of Pan-Humanist ideology, with the discourse now being increasingly UEG and UNSC-centric, 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. 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 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 known as the, in which he recommended a strong military intervention to the growing unrest in the Outer Colonies. His thesis contained a core assumption later 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 seemingly renounced his prior belief in UEG exceptionalism and came 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.

The third wave of Pan-Humanism came during and especially after the Human-Covenant War. The emergence of an overwhelming external threat in the form of the Covenant recontextualized humanity's place in the cosmos, finally giving the species an alien "other" to mirror themselves against. This paradigm shift in context led to a resurgence of Pan-Humanism; where it had in recent decades been dismissed by many as stale, outdated, or even a tool of oppression, 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 Treaty of Luna 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.

The New Diaspora beginning in the 2580s will likely see the end of Pan-Humanism as a viable ideology, 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.