If you listen to the great hopes people have for the future of humanity, achieving world peace must top the list. The goal seems so elusive that wishing for it is like wishing for the impossible. How could we ever rid the planet from selfishness, greed, anger, revenge, aggression and all the other impulses that drive people to take up arms? Isn’t war just an intrinsic part of human nature?

We believe world peace is achievable.

It is important to recognize, however, that peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is a place where all major underlying conflicts, tensions and problems have been solved; a place where fairness and justice reign. Only when all major societal illnesses have been cured can we hope to see genuine, lasting peace.

At the time of writing this in February 2024, the world is teetering on the edge of World War III. The war in Ukraine has been raging for two years and the war in Gaza might escalate into a regional conflict. Only in retrospect will we know if a world war has already started. So as much as I hope that we find a way out of these conflicts, there is nothing in this book that can help us do that.

But once implemented, the policies prescribed herein could prevent new wars from materializing. That is the hope at least. This is because we consciously address most of the underlying problems that prevent our peaceful coexistence.

In this book, we have created a framework for a genuinely free and fair society. Our economy is optimized to produce abundance that can create physical well-being and safety on an unprecedented scale. Distributive justice addresses the underlying causes of poverty and crime while relieving people from cut-throat resource competition. This helps address the causes underlying the hate of, and discrimination against, out-groups. By addressing these issues at a systemic level, we lay the groundwork for lasting social well-being.

By reinventing how our democracy functions, we increase collective intelligence and give people control over their own lives and the issues that concern their communities. The UBI increases positive liberty and gives people genuine agency over their own lives. By giving people the practical tools that allow them to pursue self-actualization–whatever form it may take–we create the conditions for psychological well-being on a mass scale.

This book can’t be an exhaustive account of all the things we need to change in order to achieve peace, but we have managed to take on many of the key obstacles that underlie our conflicts. By maximizing human well-being without taking anything from anybody, we create the conditions that allow peace to take hold and prevent new conflicts from igniting. The maximin solution we propose is the first draft of our peace treaty.

But these are only the preconditions to peace. We also need tangible mechanisms that allow us to bring about and maintain the peace once it is achieved. Perhaps the best tools in our arsenal are the principles behind the multicellular society. By building up a society out of cells that are no bigger than 100 individuals, we can create a functioning immune system against any tyrannical individual or oppressive organization.

Malicious people are best detected and contained in small teams. They can be relegated to the bench or exiled altogether as soon as they are detected. If a team is taken over by a bully, its ability to compete against teams that are genuinely cooperative is likely to be impaired. A cell like this is more likely to lose a head-to-head competition and be forced to compete on price. Either way, their access to money, the life force in society, will be curtailed, as will be their ambitions.

When a cell is too aggressive, its reputation will reflect that. People will divert their subscription to cells with better reputations. This withdraws critical funding from these cells and their ability to grow is impaired. Small malicious cells are easy to disband when they don’t yet pose a threat to others. Early detection plays a key role in preventing aggressive cells from metastasizing or joining other malicious cells.

By strictly enforcing the unit size, our societal immune system can eventually disarm and disband not just all monopolies, but also all the armies of the world. When we don’t allow any consolidations of power, size itself becomes a warning signal of outsized ambitions. When a cell grows too large, it is seen as being in breach of the multicellular society’s ethos, and will be dealt with like a cancerous tumor.

Structurally, the multicellular society thus offers an extraordinary defense against war and warmongers. But for it to be effective, we also must solve the underlying problems, which we also addressed. Together, these create the right conditions to enable peace to take hold.

But what will ultimately end all wars and create world peace? I believe it’s the implementation of the one true law, the Golden Rule:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.