Global Civilization outline

Outline for Global Civilization.

1. Context
   • Moving humanity, world and Earth toward Greater Livingness and a high Quality of Life [[ For All Life ]] requires that we find ways to cooperate at a level that we have not seen before.
2. Problem
   • Global problems require global cooperation
3. Discussion
   • Forces
     • Our experience of the world, as seen though the lens of the media, is that we are hopelessly divided along numerous lines: nationality, politics, race, religion, culture, gender and so on.
     • The news and other media focus on these divisions because that is what constitutes news. News about people getting along does not draw an audience. And in an increasingly competitive media environment, the headlines and stories are increasingly polarizing to get people’s attention.
     • But this view of the world only represents two of the stories that are happening: Business As Usual and The Great Unraveling. If we can look past these, then we can start to see the Great Turning in action.
     • There is a cooperative world that exists below the surface, a hidden world where people and institutions are collaborating on creating solutions.
     • In their book, The Cultural Creatives, Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson estimated that there were roughly 50 million people in the U.S. alone that were working toward what we are now calling the Great Turning, but they point out that they barely know about each other. “Most of them think that their worldview, values, lifestyle, and goals for the future are shared by only a few of their friends. They have little notion that there are 50 million of them. They do not know that they have the potential to shape the life of twenty-first century America.” (p.39)
     • And that’s just in the United States. Cultural creatives live all around the world, and while the internet has helped connect some of them, they still appear to be lost. Before I started writing this book, I largely thought I was alone in my thinking.
     • According to David Korten in his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, there are an estimated million or more organizations working toward the Great Turning.
   • So how can we create more interconnections?
   • the burden and opportunity of building a better world needs to be shared by all people across the planet. We can no longer hand our future over to others and expect them to fix it. No individual, group, government, business… no ONE has the power and the wisdom necessary to set things right. No one can swoop in with the perfect plan to fix the whole world, and we wouldn’t want that anyway. History shows that when someone tries to dictate Utopia from the top down, it always ends in disaster. A better world can only come from our collective effort; we will have to grow it from the bottom up.
   • That means it’s up to us. Not just you or me (or government or business), but all of us. We each have a part to play, and if more of us do our share, we’re much more likely to succeed. Despite what you’ve heard, individuals and small groups have always been the innovators and problem solvers. People are the change makers, not institutions like governments and businesses. We need to reestablish ourselves as important contributors to our own future.
   • To be effective, we’ll need to collaborate and cooperate with other people around the world. Individual minds create, but synergies happen when multiple minds get together. And there is power in collective effort, the power to make ideas real and create meaningful change.
   • What are the requirements for global cooperative efforts that can result in meaningful change?
     • A global civilization operating between and around the current political boundaries of nation states.
     • A diverse creator community made up of people around the world who are working collaboratively to build and improve the global civilization.
     • As many people as possible participating in the creator community.
     • People working locally to implement the solutions that are developed by the creator community.
   • Notably, a global civilization is not a centralized world government or “new order,” and it’s more than a global community. It’s an emerging global system of decentralized governance: a collection of people, organizations and institutions located all around the world that work together, without central control, for the good of all people. To take advantage of global opportunities, it has a global scope. Its purpose is to ensure the survival and success of all humans. As a result, it has to reject systems that benefit some people at the expense of others or the planet. It cannot be globally selfish like the more regional civilizations that came before it. It gets its power by having citizens all over the world that can act locally in the civilization’s interest, building local projects and pushing for their national governments to act in the interests of all people.
   • According to David Korten in his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, this global civilization is the result of the move away from the Era of Empire to a new Era of Earth Community. “Empire organizes human relationships by dominator hierarchy. Earth Community organizes relationships on a model of partnership characterized by mutual caring and accountability.”
   • We want to tie into that world and contribute as best we can to help it develop.
   • Ralph Waldo Emerson said “…man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots whose flowers and fruitage is the world…”
   • Therefore:
4. Solution
   • Join and help strengthen the global civilization.
   • Find ways to work cooperatively with others around the world to develop and strengthen the emerging global civilization.
   • Look for ways to create meaningful and cooperative relationships across all boundaries: national, ethnic, racial, economic, cultural, and so on.
5. Posttext
   • In creating new connections, work to organize them on a model of partnership— [[ Decentralized Control ]].
   • Look for ways to bring more people into an active role.
   • Find ways to contribute to the big movements already underway—Collective Actualization, Design Revolution, and Global Regeneration—as a way to participate in the global civilization.