Building on the engagement of WAAS and other partners in an earlier IPU workshop in April, this session deepened the conversation on how mediation principles can be anchored in parliamentary practice and in the broader human-security agenda.

Opening the discussion, UNHCR Senior Adviser and former Turkish MP Şafak Pavey stressed that parliamentarians already possess many of the skills fundamental to mediation. “Communication is at the very core of mediation, and your roles as voices and representatives of people already embrace that quality,” she noted. She reminded participants that mediation is not an abstract concept in politics but part of daily parliamentary life – reconciling interests, calming tensions, and building consensus. Pavey also challenged the traditional framing of the Humanitarian work–Development–Peace nexus: “It should have been peace, development and humanitarian work, not the other way around. We are the band-aid when peace fails.”

Donato Kiniger-Passigli, Vice-President of WAAS and President of the Global Peace Offensive initiative, reminded participants that “peace cannot be obtained with a stroke of a pen – it is a long and painstaking effort.” True peace, he argued, emerges from sustained relationships, not quick fixes. Parliamentarians, in this regard, serve as essential “linchpins” between national institutions and local communities, uniquely placed to translate lived realities into political solutions and to open space for de-escalation. Drawing on the philosophy of the Global Peace Offensive, he stressed that mediation must be context-sensitive, dialogue-driven and problem-solving in nature, rejecting “pre-cooked” formulas in favor of adaptive processes that rebuild trust over time. He outlined “golden rules” of mediation, rooted in the principles of the UN Charter: consent, impartiality, preparedness, cultural and contextual sensitivity, and ensuring that ownership of outcomes remains with the parties themselves. “If we are considered biased, we become irrelevant,” he noted.

Donato also highlighted the indispensable role of science, culture and education in restoring trust at a time when multilateralism is under severe strain. This integrated approach, combining political engagement, ethical mediation and knowledge-based dialogue, reflects the WAAS-IPU partnership and the GPO’s mission to create practical openings for sustainable, community-anchored peace.

The last speaker, Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, Executive Director of ICAN, called for a reframing of who is seen (and valued) as a mediator. “The minute you look from that lens, you will always see the women – they have been mediating long before we had the UN or governments,” she said, warning that peace processes too often elevate those who wield weapons while overlooking the community actors who de-escalate tensions daily. Drawing on cases from Yemen, Somalia and Colombia, she stressed that sustainable peace rests on two conditions: “If you have political will but no inclusivity, the public won’t trust the process; if you have inclusivity but no will, the process won’t move.”

The workshop closed with a shared recognition that parliamentarians are uniquely placed to promote dialogue, rebuild trust and advance human-security-focused peace efforts grounded in empathy, inclusivity and public legitimacy.

Author: Emma Slazanska, WAAS / GPOC junior researcher 

Source: 151st IPU Assembly and related meetings, Geneva, Switzerland, 19-23 October 2025 – Results of the proceedings, Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2025, pp. 34-35.

Among those who would join this intellectual fellowship was architect and systems theorist R. Buckminster Fuller, a man whose life’s work seemed almost perfectly designed to embody the Academy’s ideals.

Fuller became a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science during a period when both he and the organization were grappling with the same fundamental question: How could human ingenuity solve global problems rather than create them? The Academy was founded on the recognition that scientific discovery had created instruments of unparalleled power for either fulfillment or destruction, and Fuller had spent decades developing what he called “Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science”—a methodology aimed at making the world work for all humanity through technological innovation guided by ethical principles.

The philosophical alignment between Fuller and the Academy was profound. The World Academy approached all activities from a values-based, human-centered, comprehensive and transdisciplinary perspective, exactly the kind of integrated thinking that Fuller championed throughout his career. Where others saw disciplinary boundaries, Fuller saw patterns and systems. His geodesic domes weren’t merely architectural innovations; they represented a philosophy of doing more with less, of working with nature’s principles rather than against them.

Fuller’s famous concept of “Spaceship Earth”—the idea that our planet is a finite vessel traveling through space with limited resources that must be carefully managed—resonated deeply with the Academy’s mission. The Academy strived to evolve solutions to the world’s pressing challenges by transcending the limits of national self-interest, disciplinary perspectives and conventional thinking while integrating knowledge with universal values and social responsibility. This was precisely what Fuller attempted with initiatives like the World Design Science Decade and his World Game, which he envisioned as a tool for comprehensive resource planning on a planetary scale.

The World Game, launched in 1965, exemplified Fuller’s approach to global problem-solving. According to Fuller, the project was devoted to applying the principles of science to solving the problems of humanity. It was an ambitious simulation that sought to demonstrate how the world’s resources could be distributed to benefit all people, transcending political boundaries and economic systems. Though it remained largely an academic exercise, the World Game represented the kind of transformative thinking the Academy championed—ideas powerful enough to reshape how humanity approached its collective challenges.

What made Fuller an ideal fellow of the World Academy was his refusal to separate technical innovation from moral responsibility. The Academy’s founding motive came from the knowledge that academic knowledge cannot be separated or divorced from the social responsibility of how the knowledge is used. Fuller lived this principle daily, whether designing affordable housing solutions, developing more efficient transportation, or creating his revolutionary Dymaxion Map that portrayed the world without the distortions inherent in traditional projections.

Fuller’s work embodied what the Academy meant by integrating art and science. The inclusion of Art in the title of the Academy was intended to foster a marriage of the objective and subjective dimensions of knowledge essential for understanding consciousness and social evolution. Fuller was simultaneously engineer, architect, philosopher, and poet—a comprehensive thinker who understood that solving humanity’s problems required both technical precision and creative imagination. His geodesic structures were mathematical marvels that also possessed aesthetic beauty and symbolic power, representing possibility and human ingenuity.

The World Academy’s motto, “Leadership in thought that leads to action”, could have been Fuller’s personal creed. He spent over fifty years traveling the world, delivering lectures, writing books, and developing prototypes—always translating ideas into tangible demonstrations of what was possible. He believed passionately in humanity’s capacity to consciously direct its own evolution, to choose cooperation over conflict, abundance over scarcity.

Fuller’s relationship with the World Academy of Art and Science represented more than institutional affiliation. It was a meeting of shared conviction that the great challenges facing humanity—from resource management to environmental degradation to social inequality—could only be addressed through transdisciplinary collaboration grounded in universal human values. Both Fuller and the Academy understood that technical solutions without ethical frameworks were insufficient, and that ethical aspirations without practical implementation were equally hollow.

As the Academy continues its work into the twenty-first century, grappling with challenges Fuller foresaw—climate change, resource depletion, technological disruption—his example remains instructive. He demonstrated that addressing global problems requires thinking comprehensively about systems, acting boldly with prototypes and demonstrations, and maintaining unwavering faith that human creativity, when properly directed, can indeed make the world work for everyone.

This short film is more than an artistic experiment; it is a declaration of intent. Conceived as both manifesto and mirror, The Butterfly fuses tradition with innovation, weaving narrative, visual language, and sound into a meditation on our ecological and emotional interdependence. My goal was to create a piece that not only reflects the X-Art principles, but embodies them—to show how moral imagination can meet artistic craft in service of something larger than any single discipline.

The Global Peace Offensive, another project of the World Academy, reminds us that artists and scientists share a unique responsibility: to help shape the stories that guide humanity’s choices. We are asked to foster coexistence, build trust, and illuminate the complexity of our planetary moment. Art, in this context, is not ornament—it’s a strategic force. The Butterfly steps into this space with purpose. It translates the sweeping idea of Planetary Peace into a felt, intimate experience and demonstrates the WECANN values — Wisdom, Ecology, Creativity, All-inclusivity, Narrative, and Networks—through a unified audiovisual language. I created this video to act as a catalyst for empathy, echoing the X-Art ambition to “awaken the collective imagination needed to build a culture of peace.”

I offer this microfilm to the World Academy of Art and Science and the world as a living companion to the Planetary Arts Movement Manifesto. It stands as evidence that the vision of X-Art is not only aspirational, but already unfolding in practice. In its brief span, The Butterfly attempts to show how art can shift consciousness—not by preaching, but by revealing; not by argument, but by awakening. At a time defined by planetary-scale challenges, I believe artists must give audiences more than images—we must give them pathways to meaning. The Butterfly is my contribution to that collective work, and I hope it helps spark the deeper imagination we urgently need.

The Unholy Trinity and Sustainability Challenges

Vesna de Vinca: In your work, you identify three core systemic causes of the global inadequacy in responding to the ecological crisis, which you call the Unholy Trinity: bad memes, framed questions, and radical inertia. How do you see the role of these three obstacles in effectively blocking real societal and economic changes, and in what ways can art and poetry directly act to break them?

Mario Petrucci: First, we need to make clear what the three parts of the Unholy Trinity actually represent. A meme is a self-replicating unit of culture, as coined by British evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. It describes the gene-like behaviour of interlinked cultural fragments; these travel from generation to generation, often mutating as they go. Examples might be a popular melody, a catchy TV advert, or a political slogan. The way in which assumptions and reactions concerning climate change are propagated and maintained, against the tsunami of evidence that demands urgent action, suggests that ‘bad memes’ are a key player.

Next, ‘Framed Questions’ are problems posed as though they invite open discussion, when in fact they have a tightly-constrained agenda lurking in their depths. ‘Are we aiming for 0.1% or 0.2% of GDP to be spent on sustainability?’ is a Framed Question: it offers an immensely limited choice. Framed Questions are to be found throughout economics and politics, partly because many of our inherited assumptions are invisible to us – one example of a critically buried assumption might be that untrammelled economic growth is necessarily an uncontested good.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all: ‘Radical Inertia’. This describes a deep-rooted resistance to change, encountered whenever an established way of doing things, or perceiving situations, holds us in a vice-like grip. This is not simply a rephrasing of the persistence of certain assumptions, ideologies or accepted ideas; it includes such mammoths of intractability as the built environment, technical infrastructure, legal systems, national customs, and so on. It doesn’t take a bucketload of imagination to predict the likely response to any attempt to, say, ban mobile phones or restrict TV. The point here isn’t whether or not such things are ultimately useful or desirable, but whether or not we have lost the genuine freedom to be able to take them or abandon them.

This type of inertia is extremely difficult to overcome, as it infiltrates all aspects of our lives, economies, and the many interwoven, interdependent systems that channel human activity and progress. It is a term I myself coined, furthering and adapting Ivan Illich’s notion of ‘Radical Monopoly’. Of course, any change requires that we overcome some degree of inertia; but Radical Inertia is different; it is ‘radical’ because the implied or attempted change is practically impossible to imagine, to address, pursue or implement within existing systems.

For me, these three aspects of the Unholy Trinity are among the main reasons that our species (post industrial revolution) continues to be largely unable to generate a fully conscious and creative humanity in harmony (or even détente) with ecology. It’s impossible to overestimate the impact and damage of denial and addiction here, those hapless associates of Radical Inertia. Directly and indirectly, the Unholy Trinity contribute powerfully to addiction and denial, and they demote our attempts to respond to climate change, breeding international isolation and re-seeding global inequality.

So, given the scale and extent of these issues, what on earth can art and poetry achieve? At the moment, the environmental ‘debate’ can sometimes seem like a juggernaut rushing towards a cliff, whose occupants are vigorously contesting whether they are doing 105 or 95 miles per hour. I’d be a fool to claim that, somehow, at our current collective and political levels of unconsciousness, addiction and neglect, great art can simply eliminate all resistance to pro-environmental change; it hasn’t been able to do so, so far, perhaps because for most people and institutions it is not a central plank of their day-to-day activity or a major component of their guidance system, in the way that (say) profit or cash-flow is.

To modern humanity, economy is the new ecology. Also, art cannot succeed in isolation; it has to be part of an integrated approach. That’s not to say, though, that art cannot serve as a formidable ally in the struggle. There is a complete book needed to explore this question fully, so all I can do here is to briefly summarise the main routes through which art can help us.

First of all, good art heightens our awareness of the detailed texture of perception. It helps reveal entrenched or habitual thinking, exposing assumptions, making the automatic and familiar strange, through what Russian Formalism termed ‘defamiliarisation’. In this way, true (not consumerist) art can shatter the three legs on which denial and unsustainability squat. Second, art can transform us, and transformation is the one thing that can severely fracture Radical Inertia. As poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: ‘What is your most pressing injunction, if not for transformation?’

We can all bring to mind a poem or painting, a film or sculpture, that revealed our selves to ourselves, that punctured a Framed Question, however obliquely. Third, great art challenges the dominant ideology simply by being what it is, plural and untamed, cracking the veneer of a meme or Framed Question, or splintering some shard of Radical Inertia, with its forensic insights and empowering trajectories through mind and heart.

Fourth, art generally nurtures empathy and sensitivity, both essential to eco-justice. Fifth, real art is meme-proof: it cannot be hemmed in to any one-eyed meaning, that Cyclops view of the herd. It operates on several levels at once, across apparent boundaries. Australian poet Les Murray said: ‘Only poetry recognises and maintains the centrality of absolutely everywhere’. Sixth, art appeals to different parts of the brain than rhetoric and facts. For instance, art can be thought of as a kind of ‘what if?’ that encourages us to re-engender ourselves and our world, to challenge (in a different manner than ‘reason’) those patterns and habits in ourselves we might prefer initially not to look at. Great art, if we let it, deflates denial. Great art reboots consciousness.

Finally, positive poems or artwork could offer an antidote to the harrowing, brutal visions we’re exposed to in more pessimistic scientific predictions and many books and films, where we risk – or will surely lose – just about everything. Research suggests that we respond better to positive messages and encouragement than to fear and doom, and the former can actually foster intervention and involvement rather than the apathy and anxiety of the latter. Prophetic art can therefore serve to emphasise, as much as jeopardy, those eternal values we would hope to preserve, or even augment, in some future world, however compromised.

That way, Eco-poems – and Eco-art more generally – can avoid becoming just another form of Framed Question whose predictions are solely, and paralysingly, bound up in futility, failure and fear. I’m not saying that art is thus a substitute for lobbying or activism, or for practical and political endeavour; but it can help to mobilise and inform new forms of hands-on and ideological change in that webby totality of what society is. Even one poem or artwork in the classroom or in the public domain can re-channel many minds, or create the atomic starting point for an entire constellation of innovative activity. After all, isn’t ‘ecology’ fundamentally about starting points and subsequent Relationship?

The Role of Art in Overcoming Eco-Lethargy

You highlight that eco-lethargy stems from human slowness, denial, and habitual dependence, despite the clear urgency of ecological problems. Which forms of art, in your view, are most effective in raising awareness of urgency, motivating social action, and reversing the inertia of individuals and institutions?

Art can be part of the disease too. It can be blatantly commercial. It can be simply not very good. And remember all that god-awful jingoistic verse of the First World War? So, is my wish-list for helpful art met by the avant-garde? Perhaps, but not necessarily. What I’m really indicating, maybe, is art that possesses a radical but also authentic intent, or that observes so intimately and sensitively that we’re profoundly changed by it, made more fully awake, more completely connected. Any art that does this (whether or not it is also avant-garde) becomes, by association, ‘Eco-art’ – or at least a close cousin to it – because without these critiques, motivations, mobilisations, and re-awakenings in the human spirit we stay trapped individually in ourselves as we are, blown along by the collectively enmeshed systems of unsustainability, oppression, and deadness that most societies have invested so much in for so long. That said, clearly I’d include Aboriginal or Indigenous art as a potential candidate.

Also, any artworks/ practices that address ecology could assist; this is the more common understanding of what is meant by ‘Eco-art’; but the term can also apply, more technically, to art that immerses itself in the environment itself, as a site-specific contributor or integrated presence, a ‘collaboration’ that preserves, remediates, ‘meets’ or vitalises the environment it incorporates and is incorporated by.

You might ask: ‘Are these various manifestations of Eco-art on the rise? Do they work?’ Well, it depends where you look, another huge and complex question I cannot go into here. For now, let me say that art and poetry can contribute something powerful and important to ‘being in an environment’, perhaps a seed-crystal for a much greater identification with it: ‘Being of the environment’. Meanwhile, a suggestion. When you come across a poem or artwork, ask yourself: ‘Is this part of the problem, or is it party to healing?’ And that question is not just to do with content or what the art seems to be about, on its surface. It’s about You gently but firmly interrogating, and growing, inside yourself, the taproots of perception.

Redefining Sustainability through Art

You question the very concept of sustainability, suggesting that it too is often caught in the trap of the Unholy Trinity. How can art and poetry contribute to a genuine understanding and redefinition of sustainability, so that it ceases to be a mere phrase and becomes a practical guide for transforming society, ecology, and global policy?

I’m not sure that sustainability is merely to be ‘redefined’ or made ‘more practical’. I’m not convinced that leads us to a sufficient solution. Certainly, the term ‘sustainability’ is in need of an overhaul: too often it is ill-defined; since (perhaps partly because of) Brundtland, it has become vague or co-opted, or a universally interpretable statement of generalised goodwill. Attempting to address it meaningfully can sometimes feel like shooting arrows at a multiple moving target. I’m not ignoring all of that; what I prefer to stress, here, is how emphatic the Unholy Trinity is in telling us that our ongoing crisis really begins with assumptions, habits, motivations, perceptions, communication. What we actually do, and the systems we construct to do it, are almost certainly forced to follow suit. That is to say, the idea of sustainability itself, what we each individually understand it to be and how we each attempt to apprehend and visualise it, is what aggregates by various routes into our collective response to the eco-crisis. A lack of genuine insight and vision expressed individually therefore leaves you, collectively, with a vague and nebulous cypher.

For existing vested interests, that uninspected ubiquitous cypher is far more manipulable than a series of individually held, vitally precise, inter-negotiating visions. Unless we constantly interrogate and challenge our own particular imaginings of what sustainability means, or what it might evolve into, if we fail to individually grasp what collectively we mean by it, our societies are most likely to simply repeat existing mistakes in new ways, perhaps even compounding and exacerbating them. In this sense, art can provide an invaluable tool in reassessing what sustainability incarnates as, beyond our academic arguments and papers, what assumptions lie behind and beneath it that we first have to set right.

Going even further, it may be that we need to spend less time talking about (or from) this fuzzy place of ‘sustainability’ and more time engaging with the actual, sharp environment, the precise and in-focus environment, the real and dirty and silty environment, the slugs as well as the dolphins, the mould as well as the mountains, the sewage as well as AI, immersing ourselves in it, listening to it, seeing ourselves as fellow travellers in ecology rather than managers and overseers, not being merely cerebral and cognitive but also visceral and instinctual. The environment is the greatest survivor, the complete teacher. Whether through arts or any other means, we must re-learn how to learn from her, as Indigenous peoples did.

It may be that ecology herself is the only teacher who can truly convince us that observation / attention is a far deeper process than scientific measurement alone; that valuation is only fractionally interpreted via a price; that understanding sometimes needs, but always goes way beyond, data and statistics; that human response may require, but can also be so much more creative than, a policy or law. Indeed, I suspect that humanity will only overcome the vast Radical Inertia of its unsustainable systems by creating, then surrendering to, approaches that themselves imitate how ecology operates. Perhaps this is what unsustainable institutions and cultures most need, at least initially: to embrace sustainable practices that are functional and negotiated, yes; but also to become capable of awarenesses and activities that have the quality of great art, that are open and sometimes mysterious, that are creatively, intelligently exploratory. How else can climate change be tackled inclusively?

One of the beauties of great art is that you can never be sure where it will take you. There is a great deal more I could say about the practical and aesthetic contributions art could make, and does make, to the ecological discussion currently underway; I believe, however, that the primary point is this: for all the urgency of our situation, we must find time – and, more crucially, clear space – as individuals and in our various groups, to engage with art, with ecology herself, and ultimately, within ourselves, to develop a meaningful receptivity to other-centred possibilities and the one-ness they engender. That is the ocean floor of Radical Inertia, where the deepest wrecks of resistance lie. Ultimately, sustainability is not an academic issue. How this receptivity, this consciousness, propagates through our systems and power structures is probably not entirely in our control, and it may even be that many of our existing systems simply cannot accommodate it.

The first step, however, must be engagement; to realise the full, enriching diversity of each individual selfhood, the profound courage and humble drive that we each need in addressing corporate ‘reality’, and the miracles that an involved Self is capable of. To extend our ‘best moments’ into a way of life: that is one thing, for sure, that great art can inspire us to at least desire.

More information on Mario Petrucci: Website / Wikipedia

The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the defense and promotion of human rights, human dignity, and human security everywhere. Guided by its values, by-laws, and the ethical legacy of its founders—including Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, authors of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto—the Academy declares: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we stand firmly against any violation of the fundamental rights and dignity of any human being anywhere.

Human rights are universal, inherent, and inalienable. Human security and dignity are the foundation of just and sustainable societies. Human security means more than the absence of war—it requires social justice, equality, freedom, opportunity, and the conditions that enable all people to live without fear or want. It requires a healthy sustainable environment and respect and protection of the entire web of life of which humanity is but one thread.  These principles are inseparable, and their defense is both a moral duty and a practical necessity for global peace and prosperity.

WAAS condemns all forms of violence, discrimination, repression, and dehumanization. We reject systems and ideologies that perpetuate fear, division, or inequality. We affirm that civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights are indivisible and must be realized together. As a global community of scholars, scientists, artists, and leaders, WAAS acts not only in words but through research, dialogue, education, advocacy, and collaboration with governments, civil society, and international institutions. Our initiatives are dedicated to advancing with science, art, law, morality, and conscience practical and sustainable solutions that protect and empower people worldwide.

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto concluded with the timeless appeal: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” This remains our compass. The World Academy of Art and Science will always stand against violations of human rights and will actively work to promote the dignity, security, and rights of every person everywhere.

Myrdal’s journey from social reformer to one of the world’s leading voices against nuclear proliferation parallels the moral evolution of science itself. As nations rushed to harness the power of the atom in the wake of World War II, Myrdal stood apart — not as a scientist but as a visionary who understood the social and psychological consequences of living under the nuclear shadow. Her intellectual foundation was deeply rooted in the Scandinavian welfare model she helped shape with her husband, economist Gunnar Myrdal. Together, they sought to balance economic growth with social justice — a balance that WAAS would later frame as the search for “science with a conscience.”

At its birth, WAAS brought together luminaries such as Bertrand Russell, Robert Oppenheimer, and Joseph Needham — individuals haunted by the double-edged legacy of scientific discovery. They shared a conviction that the atomic age demanded a new moral architecture, a framework in which art, science, and human values were inseparable. Myrdal’s commitment to peace and human development made her a natural ally in this mission. Though not a physicist, she possessed the moral clarity that many scientists lacked: an insistence that knowledge carries responsibility.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Myrdal’s focus sharpened on what she called the “immorality of deterrence.” As a diplomat at the United Nations and later Sweden’s Minister for Disarmament, she challenged the orthodoxy that peace could be preserved by the threat of annihilation. In speeches that startled her contemporaries, she dissected the logic of the nuclear arms race: “Security based on fear,” she said, “is the most insecure form of peace imaginable.” Her insistence that true security must be based on cooperation and trust echoed the philosophical core of the World Academy’s founding charter, which warned that humanity’s survival depends on uniting scientific progress with ethical wisdom.

While Oppenheimer and Russell struggled with the moral aftermath of their own scientific achievements, Myrdal offered a practical path forward. Her leadership at the Geneva Disarmament Conference and in the United Nations General Assembly transformed abstract moral principles into diplomatic strategy. She advocated tirelessly for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), pressing both superpowers to accept verifiable limits on their arsenals. Her 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Mexican diplomat Alfonso García Robles, was not only recognition of her personal courage but an acknowledgment of her ability to transform ethical conviction into institutional change — the very synthesis WAAS was created to achieve.

The Academy’s founding statement declared that “the future of humanity depends upon the wise use of knowledge.” Myrdal’s entire career can be read as a meditation on that sentence. For her, “wise use” meant understanding the social systems that determine how knowledge is applied — whether toward the welfare of people or the destruction of cities. In her early sociological writings, she explored the relationship between family policy, education, and equality, believing that social progress must be designed as consciously as scientific progress. Later, in her disarmament work, she extended that logic to the global stage: if humanity could engineer its welfare systems, it could also engineer peace.

Her intellectual kinship with WAAS extended beyond shared ideals. Both Myrdal and the World Academy viewed art and science as two halves of the same moral project. The arts, they believed, could humanize the abstract power of science; science, in turn, could lend rigor and evidence to humanity’s moral aspirations. In an age when technology was beginning to outpace ethics, Myrdal and WAAS sought a balance — a reconciliation between the analytical and the humane.

It is easy today to forget the radicalism of her stance. In the heat of the Cold War, to question nuclear deterrence was to risk political exile. Yet Myrdal’s voice, steady and unflinching, broke through the noise. She refused to accept that moral choices were subordinate to strategic logic. “The world has not yet learned,” she said in her Nobel lecture, “that security can only be achieved through disarmament and confidence, not through arms and fear.” In those words, one hears the echo of WAAS’s enduring mission — to move the world from competition to cooperation, from fear to wisdom.

Myrdal’s legacy offers a lesson that is as urgent now as it was in 1960. The weapons may have changed — from nuclear arsenals to algorithms and autonomous systems — but the moral dilemma remains the same: how to ensure that human intelligence, amplified by technology, serves the cause of life rather than its destruction. WAAS continues to grapple with this challenge in the age of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and in doing so, it walks a path Myrdal helped clear.