"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." - Thomas Paine
“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.” – Thomas Edison
"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." - Thomas Paine
"The most formidable weapons against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author
"Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." - Michael Lerner, journalist
"We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind." — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay." — Carl Sandburg
Subject: Watch "Humanity Today. The Great Transformation - Rethinking Humanity: Episode 5" on YouTube https://youtu.be/ZPMNmZjdgz0
“A whole world approach” needed to address bio and cyber security issues in context of AI. C-span radio 10-22-21: George Washington Univ Bio and Cyber security?
"A whole world approach is needed to address bio-related challenges. This approach involves a multidimensional, integrated approach, recognizing the importance of the therapeutic relationship, acknowledging doctors' humanity, and viewing health as more than the absence of disease. It also emphasizes employing a range of treatment modalities." BMJ Article: Definition of whole person care in general practice in the English language literature: a systematic review
Hayley Thomas1, Geoffrey Mitchell1, Justin Rich1, Megan Best. Correspondence to Dr Hayley Thomas; h.thomas@uq.edu.au
“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director. Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].
“Comprehensive, Holistic, whole of government, whole of society,..” Then “resilience” panel “We are called to be the architects of tomorrow. Not its victims.” R. Buckminster Fuller [Architects not victims? Chapter title?]
A new world must be born, a world that would justify the sacrifices offered by humanity. This new world must be a world in which there shall be no exploitation of the weak by the strong, of the good by the evil; where there will be no humiliation of the poor by the violence of the rich; where the products of intellect, science and art will serve society for the betterment and beautification of life, and not the individuals for achieving wealth. This new world shall not be a world of the downtrodden and humiliated, but of free men and free nations, equal in dignity and respect." - Inventor, Nikola Tesla
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." -- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi - (1828-1910) Russian writer Source: On Life and Essays on Religion
"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days
is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." -- Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948) Professor at Columbia Univ. 1935
"In order to change an existing paradigm, you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called." ~ Buckminster Fuller ~
"This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." Michael Lerner
The most important task humanity faces today is to understand the language of nature and apply it to our world of politics and law. It is the only viable path to sustaining life on this planet, our freedoms and our own health and survival. Nature’s systems and structures are the foundation and infrastructure upon which we stand to build a future capable of sustaining a future for our progeny. And eventually making it to another planet before out planet’s expiration date. Cw
Sustainability is about ecology, economics and equality. Evolution yields connections, complexity, cooperation, and suitability. cw
“All of our existing problems can be attributed to the same root cause and that is a total misunderstanding of how our systems and our bodies are interdependent and interconnected with the natural world. Once we realize this and come to this holistic and scientific evidence -- based on fundamental truths -- we are ready to move on.” Steven Jay
"Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." - Michael Lerner, journalist
“Mankind is facing a crossroad - one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction - I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road” Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy
The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.” Albert Scweitzer
"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." Rev. Martin Luther King -
"We are here for local information gathering and local-Universe problem-solving in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe. That is a very extraordinary and important kind of a function we have." Buckminster Fuller
“We are the product of the process of evolution, and ... we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives.” Jonas Salk (1914-1995)
"I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded. ... We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard-of-power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin." -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker Source: describing his fears for the former British Empire
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little" Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
-- Herbert Sebastien Agar (1897-1980) Source: The Time for Greatness, 1942
The essence of life is problem solving… There are three ways of learning. 1. Imitation. 2. Trial and error. 3. Conceptualization. Ones actions are based on knowledge, habit, beliefs and/or feelings. But they should be based on concepts like fundamental principles… Abiding by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” like the Golden Rule. Cw
"By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions
of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society" Albert Einstein
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." - Abraham Lincoln
"All of history attests that the centralization and concentration of power breed despotism." H.A.Scott Trask
"Let us not forget the scarcest resource of all: Time. We are running out of time." Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general, United Nations
"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do." - John Ruskin
“[O]ne of the most refined (and rare) certainties of liberalism is that historical determinism does not exist. History has not been written so as to negate any further appeal. History is the work of men, and just as men can act rightly with measures that push history in the direction of progress and civilization, they can also err, and by conviction, apathy, or cowardice, allow history to slide into anarchy, impoverishment, obscurantism, and barbarism. The culture of democracy can gain new ground and consolidate the advances it has achieved. Or, it can watch its dominions shrink into nothingness, like Balzac's ‘peau de chagrin’. The future depends on us--on our ideas, our votes, and the decisions of those we put in power. Mario Vargas Llosa, Liberalism in the New Millennium [2000]
You will only see or hear the phrase “world government” mentioned in two ways. First to dismiss those who advocate the idea as hopelessly naive. And second, to demonize anyone suspected of secretly plotting it’s evil creation. “Global governance” first emerged in the 1970s because of humanities growing interdependence and rapid technological advances foster recognition that certain problems defy solutions by a single state or a coalition of the willing. Cw
World Government however, was a staple of informed debate and especially discussed in the United States.
It’s origins are unclear. It is included in the most recent biblical translations. Dante’s Monarchia in the 14th century, or Hugo Grotius’s work in the 17th century, or Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace in the late 18th century also mention it.
The late Harold Jacobson’s 1984 Networks of Interdependence commented that the march toward a world government was woven into in the tapestries decorating the walls of the Palais des Nations in
Geneva— now the UN’s European Office but once the headquarters of the League of Nations.
It shouldn’t be hard to picture a process with humanity combining into ever larger and more stable units for the purpose of governance. First the family, then the tribe, then city-state, and then the
nation—a process which presumably would eventually culminate in the entire world being combined in one political unit.
It’s hard to envision a Washington, DC where the idea of world government is a staple of public policy analysis. But over 50 years ago it was. A 1949 sense of
Congress resolution argued for “a fundamental objective of the foreign policy of the United States to support and strengthen the United Nations and to seek its development into a world federation.”
It was sponsored by 111 representatives, including two future presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford, as well as the likes of such softies as Mike Mansfield, Henry Cabot Lodge, Christian
Herter, ”Scoop” Jackson, and Jacob Javits. In the 1940s it was impossible to read periodicals, listen to the radio, or watch newsreels and not encounter the idea of world government. The cause had an unusual hero, Wendell WIlkie, the defeated 1940 Republican candidate for President. In 1943 he published an unlikely best-seller (2 million copies!) called One World. It attenuated the Republican Party’s isolationism and helped secure bipartisan approval of the United Nations.
The June 1945 signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco diminished the influence of those pushing for a ‘world Federation’ but one organization emerged. The United World Federalists (UWF) members were widely inspired by another best-seller, Emery Reves’s The Anatomy of Peace. Reader’s Digest outlined its argument that the UN should be replaced by world law.
Grenville Clark, a Wall Street lawyer and friend of Roosevelt, teamed up with Harvard Law Professor Louis Sohn to further this idea in what later became their classic World Peace through
World Law.
Simultaneously, financier Bernard Baruch offered a visionary plan to place the nuclear fuel cycle under the UN at a time when the United States still enjoyed an atomic
monopoly. Led by its president Robert M. Hutchins, the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1951 sponsored a prominent group of scholars in the Committee to Frame a World Constitution.
The movement included Nobel laureates and a scientific luminary like Albert Einstein as well as visible entertainers such as Ronald Reagan, E.B. White, and Oscar Hammerstein.
Future Senators Alan Cranston and Harris Wofford sought to spread the message of world federalism among university students, and the Student Federalists became the largest non-partisan political organization in the country. Other prominent individuals associated with the world government idea included, at one time or another, Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Cronkite, H. G. Wells, Peter Ustinov, Supreme Court Justices William Douglas and Owen Roberts, Senator Estes Kefauver and Senator and future Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. And the list goes on.
Wide support evaporated by the early 1950s overshadowed by the Cold War and eclipsed by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red scare. This jump-started the fear of black helicopters and fostered the labeling world government advocates as pinko communists. Others on the left feared a top-down dystopia tyranny. Most European intellectuals focused on the continent’s reconstruction. But a few pursued the universal federal idea, including Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and John Boyd Orr (the first head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and 1949 Nobel Peace Prize laureate). Led by the French banker Jean Monnet, Europeans intellectuals pursued a federal idea for the continent rather than one for the globe.
Aspirations about a world federal government were not absent from public discourse but they might as well have been. In the late 1990s The World Federalist Association, the last prominent remnant of the original movement, hired John B. Anderson, a ten term Republican Congressman who ran as an independent candidate for President, when his party chose Ronald Reagan over him in 1980? Then after the attacks on Sept 11, 2001, even the World Federalist Association yielded its name to popular opinion and became Citizens for Global Solutions From time to time deep thinkers like Robert Wright (Non-Zero) and international relations theorist like Alexander Wendt suggest that “a world state” or world government “is inevitable.” Dan Deudney wanted it because war is so dangerous. International lawyer Richard Falk calls for an irrevocable transfer of sovereignty upwards. But the idea of world government has been banned in sober discussions. It is absent from classrooms. And, certainly no young scholar would tempt a short her career by writing a dissertation about it.
Occasionally the term still is uttered by a mainstream academic for one of two reasons. First, the author wishes to demonstrate her realism and her scholarly bona fides and spell-out clearly what
she is not doing. Anne-Marie Slaughter began her insightful book, A New World Order, by stressing that “world government is both infeasible and undesirable.” Second, the term may be
invoked as a functional equivalent of something else, usually Pax Americana—for instance, Michael Mandelbaum's book on US hegemony, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the
World's Government in the Twenty-first Century or Niall Ferguson’s paean to American Empire in his Colossus. And any talk of global governance does not suggest an evolutionary process leading to the construction of new institutional legal structures able to provide global public goods and to address contemporary or future global threats.
Scott Barrett’s insightful book, Why Cooperate?, puts it well: global governance is “organized volunteerism.” But NGOs, transnational networks, corporations and activists crossing borders will not eliminate poverty, prevent pandemics, reverse global warming, control WMD or halt mass murder in Darfur.
Conclusion: We can’t keep going on this way and expecting a civilized outcome.
The last current global economic and financial meltdown should have highlighted the need for an ambitious vision. Then the Covid pandemic. But selfish individual governments have spent trillions of dollars,
Euros, and pounds to paper over the obvious cracks in the international system, and meanwhile international institutions have been largely invisible. It is unsettling to recall how feeble our academic expectations have become in comparison with earlier generations of analysts who did not shy away from elements of world government and robust intergovernmental organizations. At Bretton Woods, for example, John Maynard Keynes proposed a monetary fund with resources equivalent to 50% of world imports. The International Monetary Fund’s traditionally have amounted to less than 2%.
Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and some talking heads mention a “new Bretton Woods,” but what about the old one debated in 1944? An institution with 1/25th of what the 20th century’s most famous economist (Keyes) proposed is seen by some as too powerful. And, virtually AWOL in the current crisis. Is it really so far-fetched to imagine the global advance of inter-governmental economic agreements along the
lines that Europe has nurtured since the Second World War, including a global currency? Is it really so beyond the pale to imagine a third generation of international political organizations with some supranational features?
We need a Copernican moment on state sovereignty because anarchy still predicts much of international relations. Like Copernicus, however, we could look at the same sun and planets that others have seen since 1648 but re frame the relations among them. Any good historian will know that the weak 13 original colonies during the American Revolution were operating under a contested and awkward Articles of
Confederation. They then sought a “more perfect union” in Philadelphia in 1787. Now the world and the weak confederation of 192 UN member states require a “Philadelphia moment.”
It was highly unlikely the Obama administration will offer such a vision. Or Trump. Or Biden…and now Trump again!!! Something else is needed first. Something to overcome an appalling public ignorance, including most members of Congress, about why the UN confederation doesn’t work. That should be the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But organizations are unwilling to unite to achieve the funding needed from the business world…because governments are too indebted. NGOs don’t have the money. Only big businesses and billionaires have the 6 trillion dollars needed annually to achieve them by 2030.
Why, despite its weaknesses, does it have a presence in every trouble spot and in every emerging issue that anyone can spot? In the contemporary world, U.S. diplomats as well as the public need to understand the usefulness of setting global goals and standards. The value of seeking cooperative global programs (even those that are executed imperfectly). And thinking in terms of global justice as a better way of avoiding war.
But there remains to many Americans of the contemporary flat-earth society. John Bolton’s and John Yoo’s who dismissed even “the benignly labeled ‘global governance’” in a NY Times op-ed a decade ago. As Dean Acheson once said “We need pragmatic idealists more concerned about the future of humanity than the outcome of the next election.”
Consider Project 250. Email Project250@earthlink.net
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