Introduction: The Law That Was Meant to Be the Source of Other Just Laws
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated in Article 26(2) that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Decades later, Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) turned this same mission into a binding legal obligation:
“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity.”
States accepted the Covenant, secured parliamentary approval for it, and thereby assumed the obligations it imposed under international law. Sweden also ratified it in 1971 (SÖ 1971:41).
Yet a fundamental question was never raised:
What does “the full development of the human personality” mean?
This question was neither marginal nor purely philosophical. No parliament can responsibly pass a law without knowing its central purpose. Nor can a government guarantee the implementation of a law unless the meaning of its provisions, its objective, and the means by which that objective is to be realised are clear.
Suppose that in 1971, when the Swedish Government submitted a proposal for parliamentary approval of the Covenant, a member of parliament had asked the government representative:
What is meant by the full development of the human personality?
The honest answer would probably have been:
I do not know.
“I do not know” is not a shameful answer. All serious research begins when a person becomes aware of their own ignorance. The problem begins when someone does not know—yet ought to know—and still fails to ask. It deepens when they pass a law without making any effort to clarify its meaning. It becomes more serious still when, even after ratification, they establish no programme for finding answers, testing theories, or implementing the purpose of the law.
Governments did not ask, “What is meant by the full development of the human personality?” and therefore did not arrive, through a sound answer, at the next question:
What kind of education can lead to the full development of the human personality?
There is no evidence that, after the ICESCR was ratified, these two questions were pursued in sequence or treated as a serious subject of educational inquiry. The phrase “the full development of the human personality” remained in the text of the law, but politics simply moved past it, without pursuing its meaning, the responsibilities arising from it, or its consequences.
This essay is about the consequences for humanity of that breach of law.
1. The Beginning of Questioning
In the summer of 1979, I was confronted with another question—the question from which the two previous questions arose:
What is wisdom?
My answer was:
I do not know, but I must know.
This admission marked the beginning of a forty-seven-year process. I asked questions, formulated answers, subjected them to criticism, acknowledged my errors, and began again. Self-criticism(Sui-criticus) has since become part of my daily life.
In the essay A Sui-criticus, I have explained how I subjected my own participation in the Iranian Revolution to critique, despite my good intentions. I did not regard my youth, the fact that I stood alongside millions of others, or my good intentions as sufficient excuses. Without an understanding of wisdom, politics, justice, law, and freedom, I had engaged in political action that affected the lives of millions of people for generations. Consequently, the court of my conscience sentenced me to a lifelong search for wisdom.
My difference from other human beings is not that I was wise from the beginning or that I knew the answers. The difference was that I accepted that I did not know and that I needed to know. It was along this path that I recognised a fundamental flaw in myself: two-thirds of my homeostasis does not function properly. Yet this flaw was not, and is not, unique to me. Every human being is born with the same limitation. [1]
One-third of our homeostasis, which establishes order and balance within the body, usually functions properly. The other two-thirds, however—the ability to establish order and balance in relations among human beings and in humanity’s relationship with the system of life—do not function fully.
I accepted this flaw and sought to remedy it through self-education.[2] Yet many of those entrusted with governing society have neither recognised this weakness in themselves nor sought answers, and remain unwilling to acknowledge that such a flaw exists. As a consequence, justice is either absent or extremely rare in relations among human beings and between humanity and nature.
A fully developed personality means the proper functioning of all three thirds of human homeostasis. Such completeness can be achieved only through Wise Education. This is precisely the form of education required by Article 13 of the ICESCR. The origin of that article lies in Article 26(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
All human beings, especially those who govern human society, ought to know what the full development of the human personality means, but they do not. The issue is not mere ignorance. The issue is each person’s responsibility for their own ignorance—and the price both they and others pay for it.
2. A Hypothesis for Answering the Forgotten Question
Following this long journey, my proposed answer to the question raised by Article 13 is as follows:
The full development of the human personality = the complete functioning of human homeostasis
I do not present this answer as something to be accepted on authority. It is a theory. It must be critiqued, tested, and, if a better theory exists, revised or replaced. This hypothesis is supported by several volumes of my work and dozens of articles, which in turn draw upon the laws of physics and mathematical calculations.
Putting forward a theory for scientific scrutiny is an established practice within the scientific community and one of the foundations of scientific progress. For example, when the observed irregularities in Mercury’s orbit could not be reconciled with the existing calculations, physicists proposed the existence of a planet named Vulcan. At the time, the hypothesis appeared plausible. Simply disliking it or remaining silent could not invalidate it. It could be displaced only by another theory capable of refuting it and providing a better explanation. And that is precisely what happened. Einstein’s general theory of relativity did precisely that: it provided a better explanation and displaced the Vulcan hypothesis.
I, too, propose a theory of what “the full development of the human personality” means. Of course, I continually subject it to criticism in the hope of developing a better theory that might replace it, but I have not yet been able to falsify it.
Now, anyone who does not accept this theory must identify its flaws or put forward a theory with greater explanatory power. “Remaining silent” is neither a scientific nor a philosophical refutation of a theory.
According to this theory, the human personality becomes complete when a person is able to:
- see disorder and imbalance;
- understand the meaning and importance of order and balance;
- recognise how order and balance relate to their own rights and the rights of others;
- assume responsibility;
- criticise and accept criticism (Sui-criticus and Alius-criticus);
- and take action to establish order and balance within themselves, among human beings, and between humanity and nature.
Therefore, the full development of the human personality is not merely an increase in knowledge, professional skills, or eloquence. A person may be highly educated, hold judicial or political office, or even occupy the highest international position, yet still have an incompletely developed personality. This claim can be tested with a single question. One need only ask:
“What is justice?”
If you are met with silence or an irrelevant or confusing answer, you are dealing with a person whose personality remains incomplete.
In such a case, neither a university degree nor an official position can substitute for the complete functioning of homeostasis. Such complete functioning can be achieved only through Wise Education.
3. A Fully Developed Personality Is Like Unimpaired Vision
To understand what a fully developed personality means, we can use human vision as an analogy. When both eyes are healthy and open, a person has a wide field of vision. They can even detect movement occurring on either side of the head, close to the ears. However, if we cover one eye with a cloth, the external world does not change; rather, the person’s field of vision becomes incomplete. Not only does the person fail to see what is happening near the ear on that side, but they also miss some movements directly in front of the covered eye.
An incomplete personality functions in much the same way. Injustice exists right before a person, but a portion of their moral field of vision is blocked.
For example, Swedish authorities are able to see children being deliberately kept hungry when those responsible are the children’s parents. In such cases, the child protection system steps in. Yet when a company operating a preschool deprives children of sufficient food for years, that same suffering falls outside their field of vision or is reduced to an administrative and organisational matter.
Only the company’s name has changed over the years; its owners and conduct have remained the same, as have the hunger, the suffering, and the continuing violation of the children’s rights.
Why does an action get recognised as child abuse in one context, yet in another context—despite its long duration and public awareness—fail to provoke the necessary response?
The answer lies in people whose personalities remain incompletely developed and who cannot recognise the same underlying principle beneath different outward forms. They react when a parent violates a child’s rights, yet the same act, when committed by a company, elicits no response.
This failure to respond is not merely a legal deficiency. It reveals a defect in the moral field of vision arising from the incomplete functioning of homeostasis—in other words, from an incompletely developed personality.
4. When the Eye Sees but the Body Cannot Move
However, in the case of many officials, it cannot be said that they simply failed to see.
On two separate occasions, Swedish journalists brought the deliberate underfeeding of children to public attention, including to the attention of politicians. Parents lodged complaints. The situation continued for years. Therefore, all this inaction cannot be attributed to a failure to see or a lack of awareness.
Märta Stenevi also recounts in her book that she repeatedly asked for help and openly said that she was unwell, yet received none of the support she needed.
At the international level, questions and definitions concerning peace, justice, law, the rule of law, and Wise Education were repeatedly posted in public replies to messages from the UN Secretary-General. The page “The Silence of the UN Secretary-General” has documented these instances and the repeated response: silence.
It cannot be said with certainty that the Secretary-General personally saw every message; but an institution with an extensive communications operation and numerous advisers cannot evade responsibility by relying on the possibility that its head did not personally see them. Someone within the United Nations must have seen the definitions of peace and justice and recognised their importance to the organisation’s mission. How can an organisation whose founding Charter entrusts it with maintaining peace remain indifferent to the meaning of peace?
Here, the issue is no longer merely blindness. It goes beyond failing to see and points to a paralysis that extends from the moral nerves, which carry the impulse from recognition to response, to the moral muscles required for action.
Suppose a person sees a child hanging from the edge of a balcony on the third floor. They perceive the danger, but under the influence of a narcotic, they are unable to move, shout, or take any action to save the child.
Power can have much the same effect.
In the essay Power, Corruption and Crackdown, I have explained how power can mask the anxiety born of ignorance with false self-confidence, deter a person from questioning, and break the link between recognising injustice and responding to it. When the questions raised by a serious questioner can no longer be contained or ignored, silence, threats, or repression take the place of dialogue.
Therefore, a person with an incompletely developed personality who holds power may suffer from two simultaneous impairments:
First, they keep one eye closed, seeing only some breaches of the law.
Second, even in relation to what they do see, the narcotic of power has paralysed the moral nerves that drive action. When the limbs are paralysed under the influence of the narcotic of power, the only muscles that remain overactive are those of the mouth and tongue. The words “justice”, “peace”, “democracy”, “law”, and “the rule of law” constantly flow from the mouths of those in power. Yet they remain empty slogans; they never become action.
Realpolitik is like a record whose gramophone needle is stuck in a groove. The words are repeated, but thought never advances towards their meaning:
Justice, justice, justice;
Peace, peace, peace;
Democracy, democracy, democracy;
Law, law, law.
5. What Is Justice?
Justice means:
Establishing balance among rights.
This definition is the second part of the definition of morality in True Philosophy:
“Morality is accepting and respecting the Rights of others and exercising the balance between Rights” (from V3, page 3).
This definition turns justice from a vague word into a specific function.
In different circumstances, one person’s rights may intersect with those of another. Justice exists when a proper balance is maintained among those rights. Injustice arises when that balance is disturbed.
However, justice does not come into play only after harm has occurred. Its most complete and truest form is Preventive Justice.
In Volumes Five and Six of the works of True Philosophy, three forms are distinguished:
5.1 Preventive Justice:
Preventive Justice does not allow an imbalance among rights to arise in the first place. Just as a tightrope walker must continually maintain their balance, society must preserve the balance among rights before a fall occurs.
5.2 Compensatory Justice:
When balance has been lost and harm has been done, Compensatory Justice seeks to repair the damage and make it possible to restore balance. Compensatory Justice is like the safety net beneath the rope. It does not prevent the fall, but it can prevent total destruction and provide an opportunity to begin anew.
5.3 Legal Revenge:
Beyond the realm of remedy lies what I call Legal Revenge. Legal Revenge may claim the name of justice, but its primary purpose is to establish or preserve order through punishment. It does not necessarily establish balance among rights.
A true system of justice consists of Preventive Justice and Compensatory Justice. Realpolitik, however, is stuck at the level of Compensatory Justice and Legal Revenge. Realpolitik knows no Preventive Justice. It waits until injustice occurs, the victim is harmed, the family and society suffer, and only then, at best, does it decide whether compensation or punishment should follow.
This is the needle stuck in the groove. Realpolitik repeats the word “justice”, but never reaches its essence: preventing imbalance among rights from arising in the first place and maintaining balance among them.
6. Why Is Preventive Justice Absent?
Preventive Justice requires the ability to foresee, sensitivity to imbalance, self-criticism (Sui-criticus), the ability to accept criticism from others (Alius-criticus), and action before catastrophe strikes.
Understanding justice requires wisdom, which is itself the product of Wise Education.
A person who does not understand the concept of justice cannot build Preventive Justice. They may set up a system of laws, courts, punishments, and regulatory bodies, but such a system will operate mainly after harm has already occurred.
Consider Medicine:
Medicine does not exist solely to treat those who are already ill. Preventive healthcare seeks to prevent disease and disorder from arising in the first place. To develop such preventive healthcare, one must first understand illness, health, and risk factors. This understanding is then transmitted to doctors through medical education and to society through public education.
The chain of medicine is as follows:
A proper understanding of disease and health
← Education
← Preventive healthcare
← Prevention of disease
The chain of justice must likewise be:
A proper understanding of justice and injustice
← Wise Education
← Preventive Justice
← Prevention of injustice
Yet the Wise Education that should have conveyed this understanding was not implemented. Article 26(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the ICESCR could have provided the legal foundation for such education.
The consequences of this breach by states went far beyond the failure to implement an educational programme. Society was deprived of people capable of understanding justice and preventing injustice before it occurred.
7. A Breach of Law That Generates Further Breaches
Not all laws play the same role.
Some laws prohibit or mandate specific behaviour. For example, a law may prohibit littering in the street. Violating such a law normally has consequences limited to that specific matter.
However, Article 13 of the ICESCR was a legal provision whose implementation was intended to develop people capable of understanding other laws, taking them seriously, and applying them justly so that human society might achieve peace.
For this reason, its violation is not an ordinary breach of law like smoking on a public bus. This breach perpetuates and multiplies injustice by creating the conditions for further breaches of law. In other words, even laws that appear just on paper, such as child protection laws, cannot in practice prevent the violation of children’s rights. For example, Sweden incorporated the Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law. The mistreatment and abuse of children are treated as criminal offences. If parents deliberately keep their child hungry, authorities can intervene and rescue the child.
Yet when a company engages in similar behaviour for years, the authorities not only fail to intervene effectively, but the parents also face barriers to bringing their case before an independent court. As a consequence, the children’s suffering continues.
There is a just law protecting children’s rights: the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There are institutions. There are responsible officials. The necessary information is also available. Yet the necessary sensitivity to injustice is absent.
This double standard reflects the presence of people whose personalities remain incompletely developed.
They may know legal provisions by heart, write reports, pass cases from one institution to another, and speak of “children’s rights”, yet fail to perceive an imbalance among rights as an immediate and intolerable danger because the moral nerves that drive action have been paralysed.
Therefore, the incomplete implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child cannot be examined separately from the non-implementation of Article 13.
The chain is as follows:
Non-implementation of Wise Education
→ Persistence of incompletely developed personalities
→ Inability to recognise and feel injustice
→ Absence of Preventive Justice
→ Selective and merely formal enforcement of laws
→ Continued suffering of victims
Through the initial breach of law, states have allowed people to remain in positions of power who apply subsequent laws without understanding their moral purpose—or fail to apply them at all.
8. Private Ignorance and Ignorance in Power
Ignorance of justice is common to all human beings because two-thirds of humanity’s homeostasis does not function fully, but the consequences of this ignorance are not the same for everyone.
If I, as the owner of a commercial company, did not understand the meaning of justice, that ignorance would still be a serious shortcoming, but it would not necessarily result in a public catastrophe.
However, a judge who does not understand justice makes decisions affecting the rights, freedom, property, and future of others.
A member of parliament who does not know the function of law and the role of justice in it passes laws that millions of people must obey.
A politician who enters the corrupting world of Realpolitik without the understanding that wisdom provides may harm themselves, their family, their colleagues, their party, and society.
The UN Secretary-General, who has neither defined peace nor understood its relationship to justice, nevertheless bears a global responsibility to help prevent war. When the institution of the Secretary-General, established after 1945, remains silent when asked what peace means, it unintentionally assumes a share of responsibility for the continuation of wars. For how can peace be built if one does not know what it is?
Therefore, the problem is not ignorance alone:
Ignorance becomes catastrophic when it is joined to power and remains closed to criticism.
A person who holds power must ask more questions than others, not fewer. They must admit “I do not know” more quickly, rather than using their position as a shield against questions. They must welcome criticism, because others pay the price for their errors.
Realpolitik, however, does precisely the opposite. It treats office as proof of competence and regards questions as a threat to authority.
9. Justice, Law, and Peace
Justice is not a decorative term to be placed alongside law. Justice is one of the constitutive elements of True Law:
True Law = Justice + Order
Law without Justice may impose order, but it cannot create True Order. It can be the order of a prison, the order of tyranny, or the order of an apparatus that silences the victim and preserves the structure of power.
Justice is also the engine of peace.
In True Philosophy, peace is defined as follows:
Peace is the prevention of disorder and injustice by maintaining Order and Balance among human rights.
Just as the proper functioning of homeostasis in the body is called Health, the establishment of order and balance among human beings and between humanity and the system of life is called Peace. Within the vast body of humanity, Peace is equivalent to Health.
Peace is not merely the absence of war, just as Health is not merely the absence of the outward signs of disease. Peace is an active state that must be built and continuously maintained.
Within this structure, Preventive Justice plays the same role that preventive healthcare plays in medicine. It prevents an imbalance among rights from turning into violence, repression, rebellion, and war.
If justice is eliminated:
- Law is reduced to rules and coercion;
- the Rule of Law becomes the rule of unjust regulations;
- Order becomes a cover for imbalance among rights;
- and Peace becomes impossible.
By failing to implement Article 13, states did not merely neglect to teach a concept. They removed Justice—the very engine of Peace—from the body of human society.
10. A Simple Test
The central claim of this essay can be examined through a simple test.
Let us ask three principal institutions of society:
academic philosophy,
the judiciary,
and politics:
What is justice?
The purpose of this question is not to humiliate, shame, or expose the ignorance of judges or politicians. All human beings are born with a shared limitation. What is under examination is the failure of an educational system that has allowed widespread injustice to become a human catastrophe.
Anyone who sits in judgement must understand justice. Anyone who makes laws must understand the function of law and the role that justice plays within it. Anyone entrusted with building peace at the global level must be able to define peace.
If these three institutions respond with silence or irrelevant answers, we are not dealing merely with individual ignorance and private consequences, but with a systemic failure of education that leads to human rights violations on a massive scale.
The silence of academic philosophers, judges, national politicians, and the UN Secretary-General shows that Article 13 has been accepted in principle but not implemented in practice.
Had education truly been directed towards the full development of the human personality, its first result would have been a questioning mind—one that would pause at an expression such as “the full development of the human personality” and ask:
What does this phrase mean?
The second would be the courage to say “I do not know.”
The third would be the formulation of a hypothesis and engagement in critical dialogue.
And the fourth would be the transformation of understanding into action to prevent injustice.
None of these stages can be replaced by the repetition of grand words.
11. Responsibility Today
Governments may argue that, since 1948, no clear answer has been available to the question of what constitutes “the full development of the human personality”. Even if this defence were accepted, it can neither explain nor justify all the years of silence that followed.
Before seeking parliamentary approval for the ICESCR—and thereby assuming the obligations set out in Article 13—governments were obliged to begin the necessary research and not to allow the question to be forgotten. Philosophers, scientists, educators, legal scholars, and members of society should have been invited to put forward their theories. Proposed definitions should have been subjected to criticism, educational programmes developed, and their results evaluated.
Yet what occurred was a repetition of the same pattern of Realpolitik: accepting words without pursuing their logical, moral, and legal implications.
Now a theory has been presented:
The full development of the human personality = the complete functioning of homeostasis
This theory leaves three responsible courses of action—and one irresponsible one.
Responsible courses of action:
- Accept it provisionally and test it;
- Offer reasoned criticism;
- Or present a better theory.
The irresponsible course:
Silence is a continuation of the same breach of law.
Conclusion: The Erasure of Justice from Human Society
The failure to implement Article 13 of the ICESCR was no ordinary breach of law with limited consequences.
This provision was intended to create the conditions for the development of people who would:
- understand justice;
- see injustice;
- be sensitive to the suffering of others;
- take action before catastrophe strikes;
- apply the law on the basis of justice;
- and build peace so that human beings might live together with tolerance and kindness.
Yet governments ignored this obligation.
Consequently, people whose personalities remained incompletely developed came to occupy influential positions within academic philosophy, the judiciary, politics, and international institutions. They keep one eye closed and therefore see only part of reality. Furthermore, the narcotic of power has paralysed the moral nerves that drive action. Only their mouths remain active, repeating the words “justice”, “law”, “democracy”, “peace”, and “human rights” like records with needles stuck in a groove, while no meaningful progress is made in any of these areas.
The consequences of this breach extended far beyond the denial of a particular form of education. The gravest harm it inflicted upon humanity was the absence of justice from human society. The absence of justice has, in turn, subjected humanity to a chain of disasters: the absence of Preventive Justice, the transformation of law into an instrument for preserving an unjust order, the selective invocation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the continued suffering of children, poverty, the continuation of wars, and environmental destruction.
By failing to fulfil their obligation to foster the full development of the human personality, governments deprived society of people capable of seeing injustice, understanding justice, and building it.
They did not merely break a law.
By breaking that law, they deprived us of the possibility of genuinely implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[1] The incomplete functioning of two-thirds of homeostasis is not the only limitation shared by human beings. Human beings are still unable to predict the time and location of earthquakes with the necessary precision, and this inability claims many lives each year. Yet, from antiquity to the present day, it has repeatedly been observed that some animals display unusual behaviour before certain earthquakes and attempt to move away from the area of danger.
More recent research has also shown that some animals may perceive changes or signals hours before certain earthquakes that human beings are normally unable to detect.
The mechanism behind this ability is still not fully understood. However, humanity’s inability to explain a phenomenon is not evidence that the phenomenon does not exist.
[2] I do not exempt myself from the limitations shared by all human beings. For this reason, I have repeatedly and humbly described the slime mould as my teacher, for it was this living organism, which has no brain, that led me to recognise the incomplete functioning of two-thirds of my own homeostasis.
A considerable part of my intellectual effort is therefore devoted to avoiding the traps—such as cognitive biases—that my own mind continually lays before me. Although I do not occupy a position in which my mistakes become binding decisions affecting the lives of others, I continually subject my own thinking to criticism in order to reduce those mistakes as far as possible. Against this background, I am astonished by the arrogance of those who enter politics and the structures of power without recognising these human limitations, make decisions that affect the lives of others, and then take offence when the incompleteness of the human personality and the incomplete functioning of two-thirds of homeostasis are pointed out. It is as though, among all human beings, only Bahman Azadfar is expected to acknowledge these shared human weaknesses and strive to overcome them.