Discombobulation weapon systems. And the perpetual stage of human insanity.

 Everything is changing- especially technology.  But not the fundamental principles of physics, biology, chemistry - and the need for harmony in human relations with nature and each other.  And what is still  possible for sustaining health and happiness of our species giving the existing resources (financial and physical) on our gifted planet. 

In Saturday’s Washington Post opinion section, David Ignatius piece titled "The ‘Discombobulator’ arms race has begun" deserves praise - plus vital insights regarding the arms race for new weapons.

This has existed since we picked up a rock or stick the first time to defend our tribe or territory.  There was a profound change in our minds once a weapon was created that could kill others from a distance. And not witness up close, the suffering of its impact. 

Accepting that new capacity put us on the path to extinction.  Soon after we began defending our minds concepts, instead of recognizing our humanity...which would take a major war.  We should have woken up to this insanity in 1945 with the creation and use of nuclear weapons.  Realizing then that this evolution of weapons will never stop until our mind choses to protect our species instead of outdated tribal concepts like politics, religion, and economics.   

Every nation's investment in intelligence agencies and weapons research, will not lead to the Wisdom within our human spirit.  Our need to coordinate, cooperate, and communicate as the human race -- to take care of each other and nature. 

Our species has known this before the invention of religions.  Each was founded on the golden rule. A concept discovered earlier by indigenous people’s.  But even they failed to apply it across tribes.

As Americans approached the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence - the most progressive movements (peace, environment, justice...and the thousands of well intentioned organizations within each) persist in resisting the urgent and inevitable need to unite to achieve one mission.  To comprehensively, holistically, and synergistically achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals instead their traditional siloed approach what wastes time and other vital resources.  They must start working together at the local level - to achieve each of the 169 subgoals within the 17 -starting with the subgoals the local community has chosen. Efforts that would end the worse suffering of humans at the community level and then work their way up, with the energy from its successes working in unity, and correcting flaws on the way up.  

All this comes with a stark warning offered 250 years ago in the final paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, just before its list of grievances, ”...all experience has shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, then to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” 

We have 130 days before the Fourth of July.  In that time we can unite organizations locally to achieve at least some of the 169 subgoals that matter most within each community.  Or remain trapped in our competitive bubbles of egocentric organizations that put their own survival ahead of uniting for the good of humankind.   Project 250 is not an organization. It's intention is being an umbrella movement inviting progressives to do what's needed to have this world work for everyone, leaving no one behind, and having our species flourish... far beyond just surviving and thriving - if we chose.  

Economic power vs Health prosperity - and environment sustainability.

From Money and Power to Health and Prosperity: Rethinking What We Prioritize

February 20, 2026 Creative Director INSIGHTS, PUBLIC AND PLANETARY HEALTH

Every durable transformation in human history did not start with policy, but with perspective. If humankind is to build a secure, prosperous, and sustainable society for generations to come, the transformation must begin in our thinking.  Wisdom would move our mind away from money and power as ultimate measures of success, and toward the health and well-being of people and planet.  Progress on the SDGs (the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals) vs growth of a nation's GDP is the true indicator of prosperity. This is the wisdom offered by the late great Hazel Henderson. 

By Chuck Woolery, Rockville, Maryland

Last year a policy proposal advocated by the conservative The Heritage Foundation emphasized expanding organic agricultural production, energy conservation, and reduced use of fertilizer.  These are progressive ideals aligned with human and environmental health - strengthening the US economy and our food security.  That can be applied globally.  The deeper question is not how much we produce, but how we produce it — and at what long-term cost.   

The key question every person and nation must answer - "Are we healthy or are we sick?" In the US too many people and the our nation's agriculture budget is sick. 

And the cure is in the genius of Allan Savory  He laid out the framework in his book Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making (first published in 1988, later revised with Jody Butterfield).  He's documented the objective truth that desertification, climate instability, and declining human health are not inevitable, but largely the result of managing land in ways that violate nature’s patterns. Savory argues that properly managed livestock, mimicking the dense, migratory herds that once co-evolved with grasslands, can regenerate soil, increase biodiversity, restore water cycles, and draw down atmospheric carbon. 

His urgency comes from a stark claim: unless agriculture shifts from industrial extraction to holistic management aligned with ecological laws, we will continue degrading the very soil that feeds us. In his framework, healthy soil produces healthy plants, which nourish healthy animals and people — making land restoration not just an environmental issue, but a human survival strategy for a sustainable planet. 

What's notable is that other institutions like the The Heritage Foundation have hosted discussions highlighting a long-running movement to transition agriculture from high-input industrial systems toward nature-based principles. What makes this significant is not ideology, but convergence: across the political spectrum there is growing recognition that soil degradation, rising input costs, and farmer debt are systemic risks. Regenerative approaches — including no-till or reduced-till practices, cover cropping, diversified rotations, and biologically integrated pest management — aim to rebuild soil organic matter, restore microbial life, and improve water retention. When soils function as living ecosystems, the reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides can be significantly reduced, along with the need for repeated mechanical tillage. This translates into lower fuel costs, fewer chemical inputs, and less wear on machinery. 

Economically, the appeal is straightforward: healthier soils often mean greater drought resilience, more stable yields, and improved long-term productivity. By mimicking natural systems rather than overriding them, farmers can reduce variable costs while protecting the asset that ultimately determines their viability — the soil itself. In that sense, nature-based agriculture is not simply an environmental strategy; it’s a risk-management and profitability strategy. It strengthens farm balance sheets while contributing to broader goals like water quality, biodiversity, and climate resilience — aligning ecological stewardship with economic durability.

Savory has also written Holistic Management Handbook – a more practical, field-oriented guide.  And The Grazing Revolution – a later work emphasizing regenerative grazing and soil restoration.

Meanwhile, American agriculture today is still dominated by large-scale monocropping, particularly corn and soybeans, heavily subsidized through federal farm programs shaped by powerful agribusiness interests. Corn, in particular, has become the backbone of industrial agriculture. It feeds livestock in concentrated animal feeding operations, supplies processed food ingredients such as high-fructose corn syrup, and is converted into ethanol fuel.

The ethanol program was promoted as a renewable energy solution. Yet critics across the political spectrum have long questioned its efficiency and environmental trade-offs. Estimates frequently cited in policy debates suggest that producing ethanol from corn can require substantial fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer production, farm machinery, irrigation, processing, and transportation. Some analyses have claimed that it can take roughly 2.5 gallons of fossil fuel energy to produce the equivalent of one gallon of corn-based ethanol fuel — though life-cycle assessments vary depending on methodology and technological improvements. Even where net energy gains exist, the system still depends heavily on fossil inputs and nitrogen fertilizers that degrade soil and waterways.

The larger issue is not simply energy ratios. It is the structure of influence.

Industrial monoculture farming favors scale. Scale favors capital. Capital favors consolidation. Consolidation favors political influence. When wealth concentrates, so does policy leverage. Large agricultural corporations and commodity groups maintain extensive lobbying operations that shape subsidy structures, crop insurance programs, and biofuel mandates. Meanwhile, small farmers seeking to transition to regenerative, diversified, or non-traditional farming systems often struggle to compete for land access, credit, and distribution networks.

Land prices in many regions reflect subsidy expectations. When federal programs guarantee revenue streams for commodity crops, land values rise accordingly. This makes it increasingly difficult for smaller producers — especially those wishing to practice soil-restorative methods such as regenerative grazing, agroforestry, crop diversification, or organic production — to enter or remain in farming. The result is not simply an economic shift, but a structural narrowing of agricultural imagination.

Yet soil itself tells a different story.

Healthy soil is not an inert medium for chemical inputs. It is a living ecosystem of fungi, bacteria, insects, and plant roots that together create resilience. Practices that rely heavily on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and repeated monocropping can reduce soil organic matter over time, increase erosion, and degrade water systems through runoff. In contrast, regenerative approaches aim to rebuild soil carbon, enhance biodiversity, and increase water retention — strengthening resilience against droughts and floods.

When we prioritize short-term yield and quarterly profit, we often externalize long-term costs: depleted soil, polluted waterways, rising healthcare burdens linked to ultra-processed foods, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. These costs are not borne equally. Rural communities face economic instability. Downstream communities face water contamination. Consumers face diets shaped by subsidy incentives rather than nutritional wisdom.

This is where the influence of wealth intersects with public health.

Commodity subsidies make calorie-dense processed foods cheaper than fresh produce in many areas. Industrial livestock systems rely on grain inputs that could otherwise feed people directly or support diversified cropping systems. Healthcare systems then absorb the downstream impacts of diet-related chronic diseases. The cycle reinforces itself: profits are privatized, while environmental and health costs are socialized.

A society that measures success primarily through GDP growth or shareholder returns risks missing a deeper measure of prosperity. True prosperity is measured by healthy children, fertile soil, clean water, resilient local economies, and civic trust.

This is not an argument against markets. It is an argument against allowing concentrated wealth to define public priorities without regard for intergenerational consequences.

History teaches that wealth will naturally seek influence. The question is whether democratic institutions are strong enough to balance influence with wisdom. When lobbying power outweighs ecological science, and campaign contributions outweigh long-term public health data, policy tilts toward profit maximization rather than system optimization.

Imagine an alternative framework.

Instead of subsidizing monoculture commodity crops primarily for industrial processing and fuel blending, policy could incentivize soil-building practices, diversified cropping, local food systems, and measurable improvements in land stewardship. Instead of evaluating success solely in terms of export volume, we could measure success by soil organic matter, water quality indices, rural income stability, and reductions in chronic disease prevalence.

In such a system, small and mid-sized farmers would not be forced to compete solely on scale. They could compete on stewardship, nutrition density, and ecosystem services. Markets would still function, but incentives would align with long-term sustainability rather than extraction.

This transformation begins with mindset. If we define prosperity as the accumulation of financial capital alone, we will continue to prioritize policies that maximize short-term returns. If we redefine prosperity as the flourishing of human and ecological systems, policy architecture changes accordingly.

The debate is not capitalism versus environmentalism. It is short-term concentration versus long-term resilience.

The health of a nation is inseparable from the health of its soil. The security of a society is inseparable from the stability of its food systems. And the durability of democracy is inseparable from its ability to ensure that wealth does not drown out wisdom.

When thinking shifts from money and power to health and intergenerational sustainability, profits need not disappear — but they become a byproduct of stewardship rather than its substitute.

In the end, the most enduring wealth is not measured in quarterly earnings. It is measured in the condition of the land we pass on, the vitality of the people we nourish, and the systems strong enough to serve generations yet unborn. 

Mind vs Human spirit: Mental intelligence vs Human wisdom

Much of our modern confusion begins with a quiet separation between the heart and the mind, and with language that drifts out of alignment with reality. Words are powerful tools, but they are also filters; they can clarify, or they can distance us from what is. When language becomes more about defending beliefs than describing Truths, it reshapes our reality into something thinner and more abstract than the world we truly inhabit. In that state, understanding becomes something we argue for, rather than something that arrives.

When we encounter nature not as scenery or resource, but as kin—as presence, elder, and wise teacher—the conversation changes. We are no longer at the center of the story, but participants in a much older one, living beyond the human gaze - in coexistence with all life. If we pause long enough to stop explaining, justifying, or winning, something deeper within us rises. Conversation becomes a bridge between two worlds: the one in our heads and the one that is real. And in crossing that bridge, we discover that wisdom is not always learned—it is often something our spirit and soul are quietly remembering and ‘re-minding’ us of.

Rotary’s Four-Way Test and commitment to ‘service above self’ quietly acknowledges this Truth that modern culture often forgets: not all intelligence is located in the brain. Beyond our analytical minds (the part of us that argues, optimizes, and persuades), there is a deeper intelligence carried in our very biology, encoded through millennia of human experience.  It is this wisdom that allows us to know what is true before it is fashionable, what is fair before it is popular, and what builds goodwill long before it is efficient.  And that deeper human intelligence recognizes, without debate, that a child should not die before a parent, that dignity is not bestowed by majority vote, and that unchecked majority rule can become tyranny rather than justice. 

The Sustainable Development Goals, at their best, are a modern attempt to give policy language to this ancient wisdom—protecting life, reducing injustices, strengthening institutions, and safeguarding future generations.   History shows us that constitutions and institutions endure only when they reflect “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” —those enduring principles like inalienable rights, that protect life, liberty, and human dignity  -- regardless of opinion polls or political cycles.

Rotary’s role is not merely to ask what works, or even what wins, but what aligns with that deeper human intelligence. The Four-Way Test reminds us that service above self begins not in the cleverness of our arguments, but in the wisdom of our shared humanity.

“If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program… immediately.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“Every human being’s deepest, most natural expression is the desire to make a difference in life, of wanting to matter. We can choose to make the success of all humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family, to make our love for each other and for the world what our lives are really about.”  Werner Erhard 

 

The insanity of humanity is accelerating. With US support.

Yesterday’s WPost, page A13 news article titled, "Study: Aid cuts may lead to 9.4 million deaths by 2030: Pullbacks by US and other nations could undo decades of health gains."  The same “study also assesses a more sever scenario of aid budget cuts, in which the world would see 22.6 million additional deaths.”  You read that right. Additional!!!

Rotary, by urgently uniting other large globally minded service organizations into a Movement of Movements - to quickly achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 -- could reverse this modern holocaust that may take ten times the number of lives Hitler’s reign of insane ideology did.  

Unfortunately, Rotary's Legislative Council must move faster than the US Congress to make this Rotary's – and the world’s - highest priority.  Meanwhile, Rotary clubs and other progressive organizations continue to minimize their power by competing with thousands of progressive organizations, each with various priorities (like Rotary’s seven pillars) - for active members, money, media attention, timely access to policy makers.  And with Rotary a fear of non-partisan political advocacy. 

FYI: The US is over a billion dollars in arrears of our UN dues.  Plus, days ago, the US withdrew from dozens of UN agencies including WHO.  These US policies are a crime against humanity, and few Americans are speaking out.  More troubling is even fewer aware of the SDGs - humankind’s global need for a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic global plan - needed to reverse this current insanity of humanity.  

And reported in today’s WPost - last month’s HHS announced overhaul of its vaccine schedule on one or more of the “leading causes of vaccine-preventable hospitalizations and death.” Even our nation’s own Vaccine campaigns are now making childhood Polio and Measles vaccinations optional.  All of this will lead to thousands of deaths and tens of thousands suffering needlessly in the US.  

The Truth?  I’m ashamed of my country...and particularly Americans believing that putting America First will not have catastrophic consequences both here...abroad.  They obviously don’t understand Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’.  Such leaders and followers aren’t fit to run a sand box.  

American First makes US weaker

Trump‘s MAGA mantra of putting America First is only making US fall further behind.  Tariffs, lies, and military threats make him predictably unpredictable.  This reduces what little trust nations once had in America’s global leadership.  And Trump's New World Order with his Board of Peace is marshaling into existence a new block of nations that refused to live by his rules.

At India’s recent major Energy Summit our Northern neighbor Canada, attended that summit.   And a quote out of Ottawa by Tim Hodgson, Canada‘s energy minister, asserted “we’re not going to live in a world where might makes right... where the strongest puts tariffs on everyone else. We’re going to live in a world where we believe in free trade, where we believe in trusted relationships.”  This is the sound of our nation tumbling further down and dust bin of history.

Meanwhile, most of the civilized world is recoiling at Trump‘s para-military force as its anti-immigration drive brutally swings across liberal states.  This is the weaponization of partisan politics that authoritarian leaders smile at.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Romer’s 'modern growth theory’ asserts that ideas are non-rival: “My use of an idea does not prevent your use" of it.  "Knowledge" is like compound interest.  And a "new process, a better algorithm, a more efficient design can lift productivity across the entire economy. A barrel of oil can be burned once. A good idea can be reused forever.”  One major problem with this ‘theory’ is what will that idea being used for? To make more profits - or protect the health of people and our planetary life support systems?

America’s greatness and a little exceptionalism is in its global system that rewards discovery, experimentation, freedom, and entrepreneurial ship - all at scale.  But again, the main ideal must be using our freedom for taking virtuous national and global actions. Without doing this Americans will lose both our freedom and security.  And then our prosperity.  Simply because everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  And ideals need both virtue and global application.

Wise investments have never been more necessary.  And spending less money on servicing yesterday’s mistakes, lack of prevention, and interest on debt.  While investing more in preventing problems for creating a lasting legacy.  This means wisely prioritizing sufficient resources in achieving the 17th Sustainable Development Goals - ASAP.   We can either bring others up to our level of civilization, or they will bring us down to theirs.  

The US no longer has the market cornered on generating and applying new ideas. This is the freedom nearly every nation that makes it a priority.  And for the US to fail in affordably competing in this - is simply insane.  Because the cost of failure is simply unsustainable and un-American. 

Ubuntu {oǒ’boǒntoō|} in ten words: I Am Because We Are, We Are Because I Am

 African culture:  UBUNTU {oǒ’boǒntoō|}: The 0rigin of the word Ubuntu comes from the Xhosa/Zulu culture, the community into which Nelson Mandela was born, and has been summarized in the phrase, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" in the Nguni language of Xhosa, Zulu, or Ndebele. The concept of this phrase can be translated to mean, "A person is a person through other persons," or "I am because we are." In Mandela’s explanation it touches upon the multi-faceted nature of Ubuntu, including the way one feels Ubuntu as an innate duty to support one's fellow man. People should enrich themselves, meaning grow in their own Ubuntu, but true enrichment will naturally align with the duty to act towards the spiritual growth of one's community. Ubuntu is a spiritual ideal, a way of life that is conceptually represented in a wide range of sub-Saharan African societies. While Ubuntu exists in many variations within different African cultures and languages, each conceptualization retains the same core of meaning that is both a goal and a guide for humanity. In a philosophical sense it promotes the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".

The Spirit of Ubuntu Music Video:   https://www.spiritofubuntu.us/videos/The-Spirit-of-Ubuntu-Music-Video/  4 min.

"I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian... we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop... free to work... free to choose my own teachers... free to follow the religion of my Fathers... free to think and talk and act for myself."  -- Chief Joseph  (1840-1904) Chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce Indians

WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES  By Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy,  2017: https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM-7-2/Article/1401978/warnings-finding-cassandras-to-stop-catastrophes/   The first 8 chapters detail the millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to catastrophes,– natural and human engineered – due to people in power failing to act on the advanced warnings of experts.   The last eight chapters estimates the billions of lives and trillions of dollars that could be saved if humanity collectively works to prevent the other dire warnings now being given regarding other threats (some existential).  Chapter 11 “The Journalist: Pandemic Disease”.   Most instructive is Chapter 9.  It outlines three cognitive reasons why humans ignore such warnings.

Here’s a video of optimism if you dare watch it  https://www.rethinkx.com/videos

Chuck Woolery 

Former Chair, United Nations Association Council of Organizations

Former Issues Director, Global Health Council.

Former Action Board member, American Public Health Association.

Author of 1996 and 1997 Congressional testimony warnings regarding threats to US and global bio- security.  For a Word Document copy of it...email chuck@igc.org

Rotarians (and other optimists) must rethink their hope that Peace is possible.

 

Is Peace Possible?  

 BC comic strip -Thor the Futurist:  A cave man asks Thor "Will there ever be an end to war?"  Thor's answer   "Yes! About 8 minutes after the Sun explodes." 

Not with Trump’s Board of Peace.  It would fundamentally work like the UN.  But under new leadership. Without fixing the UN’s basic flaw - its foundation is the illusion of independence. In a world where everything is connected, interdependent and vulnerable.  It maintains the protection of national sovereignty and wealth above the protection of human rights and nature.

World peace will not come from establishing Trump’s “Board of Peace”.  But humankind is not bored of peace yet. Not now, with more conflicts in the last 25 years than in the previous quarter century. If you haven’t noticed, the world’s progressive peace movement with its thousands of peace organizations hasn’t been working.  Even if they united, they could not overpower the national leaders who are so deeply committed now to the global paradigm of Peace through Strength – they are willing to let their nations go into bankruptcy or all go bust with WMD.

Here’s the problem in one word.  Ambiguoius.  The word “Peace” is ambiguous with every human ambition having a different definition.  The Truth is, Peace is a divisive word.  And trying to redefine it in our era of mounting Truth decay, political polarization, border disputes, the weaponization of everything, failing democracies, and rising tensions between an axis of tyranny and the instability of the axis of freedom -- not to mention the unknown future with AI‘s intervention in the evolution of weaponry as well as its own power, it’s a sure bet that world peace will not come even if 40 million or more people, play the Peace Game. You read that right.  It’s a real game!  Based on a decades old “Theory of Change” that assumes that if just one-tenth of one percent of the world’s people started taking small actions toward peace – we would have peace by 2030.  Rotary members are now being coached to play it between when they are not asking themselves the first question in their genius 4-way Test, “Is it the TRUTH?” As a Rotary member having studies peace and all other threats to human security for 4.5 decades, I assert it is “FAIR” that “all” Rotary members should be “concerned”.

A few years ago, I asked a wise Rotarian of 40+ years of ‘service above self’ what his “definition of peace” was.  He answered, “That depends on if you ask the policeman - or the protester.”  Now, with federal ICE officials murdering people when it feels right -while having the backing of their federal overseers, they are not building “GOODWILL & BETTER FRIENDSHIPS” with the 70% of Americans who are not MAGA devotees.  And this will not be “BENEFICIAL to all concerned!”

What is urgently needed here now and globally is a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic effort at preventing violence. As well as every other form of human rights abuse known to humankind or nature’s vital environmental life support systems.

There’s only one word for this approach. It’s called Health!  And starting with mental health. By first transforming the concepts in our mind to prioritize cooperation and coordination among humankind, instead of competition and chaos between different religious, political, and economic views.

Next would be ensuring everyone’s healthy body, family, community, environment, government, and economic system, plus the health of our human spirit.

Fortunately, there’s a global plan already in place. In 2015 most of the world’s Non-Governmental Organizations and other concerned entities came together at the United Nations in NY. They finally agreed to and signed off on the 17th Sustainable Development Goals.  All to be achieved by the year 2030.  With only four years away from that goal – humanity is nowhere near achieving this wise endeavor.

With the world appearing crazy now from any perspectives, the most insanity can be found in the three progressive movements (Peace, Environment, and economic/social Justice) and their perpetual competition with each other for money, active members, media attention, and their access to key policy makers to urge favor for their particular mission.

Meanwhile, professional advocate leaders ignore the need of these movements to unite in common cause. And instead empower some to compete against each other for a limited amount of essential resources.

This has gone on for decades. With each movement, gambling on a different result. There are two names for this behavior.  Insanity and extinction.  Any living thing’s failure to adapt will not turn out well as environments change.  And our global environment’s irreversible interconnectedness has only increased while our minds and outdated governance systems have basically remained the same.

Perhaps with enough pain and suffering it might change their bubble mentality.  The finally unite to create heaven on earth with its unprecedent economic and technological wealth.  But don’t hold onto your lungs CO2.  

The resistance of the human mind to change - and doing the wise thing - is nearly impossible. 

Peace would be possible if humankind adopted the ideals within the American Declaration of Independence. Its 250^th anniversary is coming up in about 156 days. There are two phrases within we must contemplate. The first and most important “the Laws of Nature end of Nature‘s God.”  Take care of nature and each other.  The second is “…all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

This reflects the global movement’s failures to adapt.  They prefer their own favorite mission priorities. But not the single priority that humankind needs – achieving the UN 17th Sustainable Development, Goals.  And time is running out.  The acceleration of the evolution of weapons, pathogens, truth decay, political polarization, and mental insanity will not end well.  And time is not on our side.  Only by uniting do we stand a decent chance of pulling us away from this brink in wishful thinking.

 

"One day, hopefully, the globe will be civilized. All the points of the human dwelling will be illuminated and then the magnificent dream of intelligence will be fulfilled: to have the World as our homeland and Humanity as our nation."  Victor HUGO 1802–1885

 

"The unification of all humanity is a sign of the stage now approaching human society. The unity of the family, of the tribe, of the city, of the nation has been successively tried and fully established. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in the sovereignty of the state is reaching its climax; a world that is progressing towards maturity must abandon this fetish, it must recognize the organic unity and wholeness of human relations, and establish once and for all the mechanism that best embodies this fundamental principle of its existence.”  Shoghi Effendi  Appel aux Nations,

"Belonging to the human family confers on every person a kind of world citizenship, giving him rights and duties, men being united by a community of origin and destiny supreme. (...) The condemnation of racism, the protection of minorities, assistance to refugees and the mobilization of international solidarity towards those most in need are only coherent applications of the principle of world citizenship." John Paul II (01/01/2005)

 

“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and in triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction, of a dot.” Carl Sagan Astronomer, Astrophysicist and Cosmologist

“I'm not from Athens or Corinth, I'm a citizen of the world." Socrate.