lity
of humankind, members of governing institutions at all levels, persons
serving in agencies of international coordination, scientists and social
thinkers, all those endowed with artistic talents or with access to the
media of communication, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. The
response called for must base itself on an unconditioned recognition of
the oneness of humankind, a commitment to the establishment of justice as
the organizing principle of society, and a determination to exploit to
their utmost the possibilities that a systematic dialogue between the
scientific and religious genius of the race can bring to the building of
human capacity. The enterprise requires a radical rethinking of most of
the concepts and assumptions currently governing social and economic life.
It must be wedded, as well, to a conviction that, however long the process
and whatever setbacks may be encountered, the governance of human affairs
can be conducted along lines that serve humanity's real needs.

Only if humanity's collective childhood has indeed come to an end and the
age of its adulthood is dawning does such a prospect represent more than
another utopian mirage. To imagine that an effort of the magnitude
envisioned here can be summoned up by despondent and mutually antagonistic
peoples and nations runs counter to the whole of received wisdom. Only if,
as Baha'u'llah asserts to be the case, the course of social evolution has
arrived at one of those decisive turning points through which all of the
phenomena of existence are impelled suddenly forward into new stages of
their development, can such a possibility be conceived. A profound
conviction that just so great a transformation in human consciousness is
underway has inspired the views set forth in this statement. To all who
recognize in it familiar promptings from within their own hearts,
Baha'u'llah's words bring assurance that God has, in this matchless day,
endowed humanity with spiritual resources fully equal to the challenge:

O ye that inhabit the heavens and the earth! There hath appeared what hath
never previously appeared.

This is the Day in which God's most excellent favors have been poured out
upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into
all created things.

The turmoil now convulsing human affairs is unprecedented, and many of its
consequences enormously destructive. Dangers unimagined in all history
gather around a distra