Index
- Agenda Note
- Proposed Structure of Civic Society-led World Government
- What is in it for the Central Government of India?
- What is in it for the State Government of Delhi?
- What is the urgency to organize in May 2024?
- Why Civic Society-led World Government and not Civil Society?
1. Agenda Note
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
A Quantum Leap for Humanity
Narrow-minded thinking of ‘this is mine’ and ‘that is not mine’ comes out of greed, apathy and selfishness entangled with ignorance, fear and insecurity. For past several centuries since the European Industrial Revolution with its predominant mechanistic and reductionist worldview to colonize the world through weaponization of trade and commerce, hoarding of material resources as ‘private property’ began to be celebrated widely, this narrow-mindedness seeped deep into the very fabric of modern culture and civilization. What used to be the ‘commons’ was now sold-off to private owners of fiat money as ‘sovereign’ states with a monopoly of organized violence and legitimacy in the present dysfunctional global order. These ‘sovereign’ states have been treacherously subjugated by a globalised financial cartel as their private armies. This is the nature of the global disorder today.
As we unpack this colorful and sassy patriotic brand of narrowmindedness, we can see thick toxic and murky discharge of ‘White Man’s Burden’ spilling out. This was disseminated through colonialist rape and plunder of indigenous societies worldwide that destroyed the relatively harmonious world order that had existed for thousands of years.
The wise and broad-minded, on the other hand, think of the world as a family, as the Sanskrit phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam depicts. Even if such broad-minded are few and far between due to the rabid globalization of Popular Errors created by the narrow-minded, they hold on to the Unpopular Truth that love, kindness, compassion and generosity, truth, frugality and honesty are truly human virtues and the key to our health, abundance and prosperity for all.
This is the import of these verses from the Maha Upanishad, storehouse of the cosmopolitan indigenous wisdom, Verses 6.71–73:
अयं बन्धुरयं नेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् ।
उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥71II
भावाभावविनिर्मुक्तं जरामरणवर्जितम् ।
प्रशान्तकलनारभ्यं नीरागं पदमाश्रय ॥72II
एषा ब्राह्मी स्थितिः स्वच्छा निष्कामा विगतामया ।
आदाय विहरन्नेवं सङ्कटेषु न मुह्यति ॥73II
This is mine, that is not, say the small minded,
The wise believe that the entire world is a family (vasudhaiv kutumbakam).
Be unattached, Be magnanimous,
Lift up your mind, Enjoy the fruits of quantum freedom.
Dangerous ‘vacuum’ in the Global Hierarchy with the Collapse of the American Empire
Michael Brenner, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at School of Advanced International Studies – Johns Hopkins is one among the few broad-minded people today. In a scathing indictment of ‘Western’ leaders, Prof Brenner writes on the West’s Reckoning in this article on 8 March 2024 here:
“Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities. The last are personal as well as political. Therein lies a puzzle. For, as a consequence, the West has set itself on a path of collective suicide. Moral suicide in Gaza; diplomatic suicide – the foundations laid in Europe, the Middle East and across Eurasia; economic suicide – the dollar-based global financial system jeopardized, Europe deindustrializing. It is not a pretty picture. Astoundingly, this self-destruction is occurring in the absence of any major trauma – external or internal. Therein lies another, related puzzle.
Some clues for these abnormalities are provided by their most recent responses as deteriorating conditions tighten the vise – on emotions, on prevailing policies, on domestic political worries, on ginger egos. Those responses fall under the category of panic behavior. Deep down, they are scared, fearful and agitated. Biden et al in Washington, Macron, Schulz, Sunak, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen. They lack the courage of their stated convictions or the courage to face reality squarely. The blunt truth is that they have contrived to get themselves, and their countries, in a quandary from which there is no escape conforming to their current self-defined interests and emotional engagement. Hence, we observe an array of reactions that are feckless, grotesque and dangerous.”
The West, though is no longer a geographical pointer, but widespread among the factory educated, as I refer in this 2009 article here titled ‘The Derailment Of Western Civilization – Does It Need A Bail-Out?’ “Western civilization is no longer about geography – it’s a stereotype for greed, addiction and overt and covert forms of white-collar crime; or perhaps, of a debauched asylum, taken over by its inmates. This doesn’t need no BAIL-OUT. That’s a serious misdiagnosis of the real problem. It needs REHABILITATION.”
Prof Brenner writes in a 2017 article here: “Psychosis can stem from trauma and acute stress. In the American case, our traumatic event was 9/11. The ensuing terror psychosis is well into its second decade. It shows no signs of ameliorating – even though there have been no serious attacks against the United States over the past 13 years.”
Dominique de Villepin, former French Prime Minister, warns the world of the incumbent French premier Emmannuel Macron’s utterly irresponsible rhetoric on sending NATO ground troops to Ukraine and the extreme danger behind his and some other NATO leaders’ attempt to escalate the conflict into a full fledged World War:
“For this debate [over sending ground troops] to have been useful, it would have first been necessary for us to be able to answer 5 questions. Five risks associated with this escalation, this step we would be taking if we were to send ground troops, send fighters. Five risks.
The first is the expansion of the conflict. If we send ground troops, do we know if on the Russian side others will send, on the other side, ground troops? Will we face African fighters, will we face Asian fighters, will we face Middle Eastern fighters in this global south that also wants to take on the West?”
The balance of power in the chaotic multipolar world is already undergoing a megashift. Economist James K. Galbraith, professor at the University of Texas at Austin explains why the Western sanctions on Russia backfired, and why they were never going to succeed in the first place..
“This is a situation in which the sanctions were imposed by one important sector of the world economy which then cut itself off from resources that it needs – and that’s particularly true of Western Europe – in return for cutting Russia off from various things that Russia doesn’t really need.”
“If you go back to the period before the introduction of the sanctions […] the Russian economy was very heavily colonized by Western firms. That was true in automobiles, it was true in aircrafts, it was true in everything from fast food restaurants to big box stores. Western firms were present all throughout the Russian economy. A great many of them […] either chose to exit Russia or were pressured to exit Russia after early 2022. So on what terms did they leave? Well, they were required, if they were leaving permanently, to sell their capital equipment, their factories and so forth, to let’s say a Russian business which would get a loan from Russian banks or maybe have other sources of financing, at a very favorable price for the Russians.
So effectively a lot of capital wealth, which was partly owned by the West, has been transferred to Russian ownership. And you now have an economy which is moving forward and has the advantage compared to Europe of relatively low resource costs because Russia is a great producer of resources, oil and gas and fertilizer and food stuff and so forth. And so while the Europeans are paying maybe twice in Germany what they were paying for energy, the Russians are not, they’re paying perhaps less than they were paying before the war. So again I characterize the effect of the sanctions, in fact as being in certain respects a gift to the Russian economy. And this is, I think, quite different from what the authors of the sanctions expected. […] And the essence of the situation is this would not have happened without the sanctions.
You could have had the war, and it would have gone pretty much as it has gone. But the Russian government in 2022 was in no position to force the exit of Western firms. It didn’t want to, wouldn’t have done that. It was in no position to force its oligarchs to choose between Russia and the West. It didn’t wish to do that. These choices were imposed by the West, and the results were actually, in many respects, favorable to the long-term independent development of the Russian Federation’s economy.”
A close scrutiny of influential expert opinion even from America sees the emergence of Russia as a widely respected great power that not only survived the collapse of Soviet Union after the protracted 40-year Cold War phase of the continuing Second World War where the belligerent occupier colonialist state of America is finally seen as imploding under the massive weight of its own contradictions. The 2024 US elections, if it manages to survive by then, will mark the final nail in its coffin.
How did we get here?
“Hang the cost! Full speed ahead! Death or victory right now! Forward into growth! I guess that shows a faith that if we create too many problems in the present, the future will learn how to deal with it.” Kenneth Boulding, economist and former president of the American Economic Association called it ‘heroic ethic’. The economic ethic OTOH says: “Wait a minute, there’s benefits and costs. Let’s weigh the two. We don’t want to charge right over the cliff. Let’s look at the margin. Are we getting better off or worse?”
“Selfish behaviors are reward driven and innate, wired deeply into the survival mechanisms of the primitive brain, and when consistently reinforced, they will run away to greed, with its associated craving for money, food, or power. On the other hand, the self restraint and the empathy for others that are so important in fostering physical and mental health are learned behaviors – largely functions of the new human cortex and thus culturally dependent.” – Peter Whybrow,
Peter C. Whybrow is former Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. In American Mania: When More is Not Enough (2006), he grounds the extraordinary achievements and excessive consumption of the American nation in an understanding of the biology of the brain’s reward system offering for the first time a comprehensive and physical explanation for the addictive mania of consumerism. He offers a bold analysis of the cultural disease that afflicts us all. American Mania presents a clear and novel vantage point from which to understand the most pressing social issues of our time, while offering an informed approach to refocusing our pursuit of happiness.
Despite an astonishing appetite for life, more and more Americans and by contagion, people around the world caught in the rat race, are feeling overworked and dissatisfied. In the world’s most affluent nation, epidemic rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, and time urgency are now grudgingly accepted as part of everyday existence; they signal the American Dream gone awry. ‘American Mania’ is sweeping across the globe powered by the dubious US dollar on various counts.
One, there is intergenerational fraud. Costs are passed on to coming generations. Two, in a large highly iniquitous country like India – this is Flaw of Averages. Three, air pollution, water pollution, land degradation, psychological and spiritual degradation are all brushed aside as ‘negative externalities’.
In the concluding passage of the final chapter on Meditation in his book 21 Lessons for 21st Century, popular author Yuval Noah Harari shares his experiences of a Vipassana meditation course and regular practice since, on advice of his good friend who suggested that he should put aside all the books and intellectual discussions for a few days.
‘Self-observation has never been easy, but it might get harder with time. As history unfolded, humans created more and more complex stories about themselves, which made it increasingly difficult to know who we really are. ..As technology improved..it became easier to delude people. In the near future, algorithms will make it well-near impossible for people to observe the reality about themselves. It will be algorithms that will decide for us who we are and what we should know about ourselves.
For a few more years or decades, we still have a choice. If we make the effort (to mediate), we can still investigate who we really are. But if we want to make use of this opportunity, we had better do it now.’
This echoes what philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin says in a recent article, ‘Faced with the polycrisis humanity is going through, the first resistance is that of the spirit’. With an increasing number of wars, climate change and the rise of authoritarian regimes, the world may be heading for disaster, but we must resist hatred, argues the sociologist and philosopher as he writes:
“Prodigious technological and scientific progress in all areas is the cause of the worst regressions of our century. ..Though difficult to conceive, we must realize that the progress of knowledge, through the multiplication and mutual separation of disciplines, has caused a regression of thought, which in fact has become blind. Linked to a dominance of calculation in an increasingly technocratic world, the progress of knowledge is unable to conceive the complexity of reality, especially human realities. This leads to a return of dogmatisms and fanaticisms, as well as a crisis of morality with the unleashing of hatreds and idolatries.”
Greed, apathy and selfishness, pull us down to protect the nation-states as a vulgar projection of ego where nationalism is used deviously not only to treat others as outsiders and enemies, overtly or covertly, both outside the national boundaries but also to suppress sub-national resistance, in the neo-progressive worldview. They subversively engage in what Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General in his recent speech at the Munich Security Conference on 16 February 2024 calls out as ‘aggressive opportunism’ and ‘miscalculations’ with ‘no accountability’. The existing global order, he says, is not working for anyone.
“Our world is facing existential challenges, but the global community is more fragmented and divided than at any time during the past 75 years.
Multipolarity has created important opportunities for balance and justice, and for new leadership on the global stage.
But the transition to multipolarity without strong global institutions can create chaos.
When power relations are vague, the dangers of aggressive opportunism and miscalculation grow.
Today we see countries doing whatever they like, with no accountability.
Impunity seems to be the name of the game and so we must all be determined to establish the primacy of the rule of law.
As the Munich Security Report makes clear, relative gains through competition between countries are being prioritized over absolute gains for all through cooperation.
Crises are multiplying, linked to competition and impunity.
A global order that works for everyone must address these gaps and provide solutions.”
Proposed Structure of World Government
As the tide turns, we now need a ‘parallel structure’ with a civic society-led world government.
This must begin with the setting up of the Centre of Global Governance Studies in every higher education institution in India with a centrally-coordinated and integrated Design & Policy Research Program on diverse topics through collaborative teams of users, industry, media, civic society and government.
This is an Emergency Response to develop a symbiotic relationship between academia, industry and government bodies. We can together find meaningful solutions for the country and humanity at large in a world which as our Hon. External Affairs Minister says, the very nature of our existence is globalized, and lead policymaking to drive change where the competitive aggression and impunity of the unbridled nation-states and a hapless United Nations poses a grave threat to humanity and snuffs out the prospects of any future for our children and coming generations.
Conventional notions of sovereignty and the nation-state in international relations and international law need to be revisited in light of the stark indictment of the current global order shared by Hon. Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres at the Munich Security Conference on 16 February 2024.
This comes at a time when a mountain of evidence is pointing to the need for a new global order to address what have been called ‘super wicked’ problems characterized by four additional features – they need emergency response, they need a central authority, they need decision makers who do not have vested interests and they need whole systems design and visionary leadership for farsighted solutions.
John Bunzl, founder of SIMPOL, has great insights that echoes with what António Guterres said on 16 Feb at Munich Security Conference and what Harman Daly had shared since long back:
1. We need a World Government. Today, we have a global market but only national governance. Given this “governance gap,” it is not surprising that Destructive Global Competition is running out of any control and continues to drive us all to destroy the planet on which we depend. The main barrier to solving global problems is that no government can move first or act alone because doing so would make its national economy uncompetitive, risking unemployment, capital flight, and economic decline. As former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “The blunt reality of the politics of climate change is that no country will be willing to sacrifice its economy in order to address this challenge.”1 This remains true for all global problems. In a globalized economy, it will always be so. Governments are therefore caught in a “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” It’s not that they don’t want to solve global problems, but that they can’t. That, indeed, is why the wider movement has achieved little: because it demands change from those—i.e., governments—who are incapable of delivering it. Given its complexity and scale, the higher education system in India has a responsibility and opportunity to lead the formation of a world government, starting with setting up of Centre of Global Governance Studies. As time is running out this needs an Emergency Response. Gaia Earth Sansad, a civic-society initiative that I founded 5 years back along with Global Academy for Indigenous Activism (GAIA) has been working in this direction since 2006.
2. Hierarchies are natural and necessary: Our predominantly postmodern worldview that rejects all hierarchies and all meta-narratives, champions decentralization, diversity, leaderless coalitions, horizontal networks, etc. Set against this fragmented, horizontal, uncoordinated mass of global justice initiatives, we have the single, overarching dynamic of DGC: a global, unified, all-pervading, top-down, destructive, out-of-control dynamic. A decentralized, non-hierarchical structure can never succeed against this. Without acknowledging the need for unity and some hierarchy, we have absolutely no chance of forming a civic society-led world government.
We need therefore to understand that hierarchies are natural and indispensable. The trick, however, is to distinguish between actualizing hierarchies (i.e., healthy ones) and dominator hierarchies (i.e., unhealthy ones). Being a global dominator hierarchy, DGC can only be overcome by a unified, global actualizing hierarchy—that is, by some form of globally coordinated, cooperative, citizen-driven global governance process that transcends and includes nation-states: an actualizing hierarchy that puts us, citizens, in the driving seat, rendering us capable of driving nations to agree to a global hierarchy with a world government at its apex and the reconstituted provinces, community-states and grassroots governance institutions, cooperatively implement the necessary policies to solve global problems. India with its pluralistic society and rich diversity, led by the higher education institutions and its vibrant civic society, plays an exemplary role in the formation of the world government.
3. Subsidiarity builds movement unity. Another thing we are missing is that actualizing hierarchies promote unity where it is needed and diversity where it is not. Every coherent entity in the world is held together by some form of governance, whether it be an atom, a cell, your body, or a nation. Governance structures are also multi-level because, as societies expand, existing governance structures eventually can’t cope, thus necessitating the creation of new, higher-level governance structures. The operating principle between these levels is subsidiarity: what cannot be solved at the lowest possible level is taken up to the next-higher level. This promotes unity where it is needed, while leaving space for independence and diversity where it is not.
Proposed by:
Chandra Vikash
B.Tech. IIT Kharagpur
MBA IIM Calcutta
Convenor GAIA Earth Sansad
m: +91 8851556732
w: chandravikash.wordpress.com
e: gaiasansad@gmail.com
2. What is in it for the world democracy of ~8 billion people and for humanity at large?
- Peace and harmony based on truth and transparency, justice and equity, sustainability and prosperity for all including our youth, children and coming generations
- End of theocratic states. Religion will no longer, overtly or covertly, be the basis of nationalism or identity of any province or community-state in the proposed global order of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam. Culture will follow the indigenous way of life based on geo-climatic conditions. Religion must be universal and individual must be free to choose their faith and belief system in a spiritual way.
3. What is in it for the Central Government of India?
- India, as the world’s most populous country, a vibrant democracy with its pluralistic and welcoming culture, and immense Soft Power is best placed to host the World Government.
- Forming a World Government is an opportunity to abolish the undemocratic and offensive structure of the United Nations Security Council with Permanent Seats and Veto powers.
- This will help resolve the border issues with belligerent and offensive neighbors such as Pakistan, China and others.
- Wasteful and inappropriate expenditure on military-industrial-media complex and Destructive Global Competition will be now channelised in constructive projects and to heal and restore ecological wealth.
- It will further bolster global respect for India and fulfill its long pending obligations to the Non-Aligned Movement, to the Global South, BRICS, Quad and other alliances and treaties that India is part of.
- India will have the opportunity to create and steer a new global financial architecture with a new global currency.
- There will be opportunity for national leaders to grow and rise in the new global order.
- In the new global order, there will be opportunity to reform critical sectors of education and healthcare, energy and mobility services, as well as focus on cultural and spiritual upliftment enhancing the overall quality of life.
3. What is in it for the State Government of Delhi?
- Delhi emerges as the global hub and grows as a world city.
- As World Capital Region and one of the 80 provinces, Delhi will have all the administrative powers.
- Delhi has an extensive metro rail and bus service network. This will be adequately utilized and augmented with state-of-art Mobility-as-a-Service.
- With a global mandate that will check and reverse the Destructive Global Competition, there will be greater scope to address various other civic problems – mitigate water crisis and air pollution, create localized food supply, create zero-to-landfill waste to wealth and overall localized abundance and circular economy with LACE-Gaia Model.
4. What is in it for the other State Governments in the Indian Union?
- With ~1.4 billion population, India will have 14 provinces. With greater regional and local autonomy, there will be 14 Heads of Provinces and 700 Heads of Community-States.
- This will fulfill the common cause of collaborative federalism as 14 Provinces in India among 80 provinces worldwide.
- This will be a great opportunity to even out regional disparities and restore ecology.
5. What is the urgency to organize in May-June 2024?
- As shared in the agenda note, the world is in acute turmoil and needs an Emergency Response to mitigate the global metacrisis and a variety of super wicked problems.
- As the global system further breaks down, the recovery will become even more difficult and will drive panic and drastic measures such as blocking out the sun which can have devastating effects on Earth ecosystems.
Annexure: The Question of Indigenous
Are you indigenous or non-indigenous? Why does this question stump so many and often draw a blank and bewildered response?
The ‘non-indigenous’ barbarity disguised itself as a new kind of Civilisation and with passage of time, packaged as the ‘realist’ world order. Through several generations of subjugation and conditioning, it has rubbed off on the newly acquired subjects and slaves of the colonizers, infusing them with a ‘slave morality’. (The whiteness of racism incidentally was an afterthought to ‘divide and rule’ the colored slaves from the white skinned ones.)
Rest is history of the past few centuries, or at least the dominant view, taught in most of the textbooks in schools and colleges in most parts of the world that are even today mired in the shadows of neo-colonialism under different nomenclatures from the neo-conservative and the neo-liberals.
This narrow-mindedness of materialistic corpulence has bloated the new ‘standards of living’ way beyond actual human needs even for the most healthy and vibrant lifestyles. It has grown monstrously in the aftermath of the yet inconclusive Second World War. Here is what actually happened.
Instead of a defeat of the Axis of Evil of Nazi and their Zionist allies as is claimed and the victory of Allied Powers – mainly America, Britain, France and USSR, this War did not actually end. With America as its mastermind, the war morphed its form and became more treacherous and deceptive with a pervasive ‘weaponization of everything’. Both the Nazis and Zionists escaped and were rehabilitated in the occupier, settler-colonialist state of the United States of America. The diabolical tactics of the American state and its agencies such as the CIA, Federal Reserve Bank, propaganda machine bear a distinctive blueprint of the Nazis and the Zionists. They were joined along with similar narrow-minded but powerful elites from many other parts of the world as ‘human shields’ to hide its nefarious agenda, similar to how Israel was ‘settled’ in the 20th century. “The US is more than a protector of Israel. It is now an accomplice in its genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, wrote and published on Common Dreams in December 2023.
The conceptual arrangements of this treachery and deception of this One World against Many Worlds is much older though, and is coded into the very inception of America, after the genocide of 60-70 million people in the erstwhile Turtle Islands. Earlier called the United Colonies of America, USA is founded on the now repudiated Doctrine of Discovery and is the precursor to the cliched phrase used more often in the context of the Middle East – ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. The liberal and lucrative scholarships, jobs and venture funding handed out to the ravaged and/or ravenous refugees from various Third World countries, apart from being ‘human shields’ double up as smokescreens to hide the skeletons in the cupboards and the mountainous heaps of bones of the livestocks of the native peoples who they killed and captured their land.
This ‘classical’, ‘realist’ and increasingly perceived as ‘practical’ narrow-mindedness added tinges of balancing ‘liberalism’ with the passage of time. It became vulgarly advertised in the new impetus on GDP growth as the key yardstick of the new mammonic religion of Development. It was now legally protected, programmed into the government machinery of even the newly de-colonised ‘independent’ countries; socially sanctioned as ‘upward mobility’ and incessantly fed into young minds since early childhood through factory education. Over time, this mechanistic and reductionist worldview has created conflicts that entangle into a vicious cesspool of trauma and violence, scarcity, deprivation and debauchery.
This is where we are largely today, at the rock bottom of human degradation, teetering at the brink of extinction. Only a few among those who are ‘factory educated’ manage to escape and survive to hold the mirror even when such notions of progress become a Popular Error.
Why Civic Society-led World Government and not Civil Society?
Civil citizenship pertains to how people interact with state institutions (by voting or running for elected office, paying taxes, or having their rights affirmed under law), whereas Civic citizenship tends to focus on how people live and interact within a community, be it a neighbourhood, a city, an ethnic diaspora, or at a global level. In the Civic worldview, state is an integral part of the society and not separate from it, as in the case of Civil worldview.
Civil citizenship is always related to the nation, but Civic citizenship can reach beyond national borders and zoom out to macro level, global citizenship, or it can zoom in to micro, hyper local citizenship.
This incidentally is the true import of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam or World as a Family/Village which also means Family/Village as a microcosm of the World at large.
Microcosm is Macrocosm. (Yatha Pinde Tatha Brahmande)
LACE-Gaia model promotes both global citizenship in global affairs for knowledge sharing as well as hyper-local or grassroots citizenship for our daily lives with ‘carbon sink’ lifestyles as Emergency Response to heal and repair climate and ecology and to manage our daily lives locally as far as possible.
Reference:
1. LOCAL IS THE FUTURE @ Sustainable Cities Congress in Australia, Nov 2018
2. A Better Way towards healthy, harmonious and holistic world order & indigenous ways of life @ World Council for Health General Assembly Meeting #37 on 18 April 2022
Presentation: GAIA Earth Sansad – A Better Way
Video Proceedings: A Better Way to a Healthy, Harmonious, & Holistic World with Chandra Vikash of GAIA Earth Sansad
‘We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late’.
– Martin Luther King
“There is the true joy of life; to be used by a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; to be thoroughly worn out before being thrown on the scrap heap; to be a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that life will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
George Barnard Shaw
And finally..
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
References:
1. A Better Way towards healthy, harmonious and holistic world order & indigenous ways of life @ World Council for Health General Assembly Meeting #37 on 18 April 2022
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CouqCK2iwHHZdKv3AZBrMoJsY2z5hckQIIWtrGyaSuY/edit?usp=sharing
Video Proceedings: https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/better-way-chandra-vikash-gaia-earth-sansad/
2. An Introduction to ‘One World for Many Worlds’
3. Filling up vacuum of global governance to stop injustice with Palestine as Focal Point
https://www.counterview.in/2023/11/filling-up-vacuum-of-global-governance.html
4. Gaia Nation: Reclaiming the Indigenous as the Soul of Humanity
5. Curtain Raiser for GAIA Earth Sansad based on LACE-GAIA Model https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ffKI45o5zasA_YlKI8zI0NQsIBxtep0DeIJncbawYzY/edit?usp=sharing
6. ‘The Progress of Knowledge Has Led to a Regression of Thought’ By Edgar Morin https://footnotes2plato.com/2024/02/03/the-progress-of-knowledge-has-led-to-a-regression-of-thought-by-edgar-morin/
7. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks on 16 February 2024 to the Munich Security Conference: Growing the Pie: A Global Order that works for Everyone
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2024-02-16/secretary-generals-remarks-the-munich-security-conference-growing-the-pie-global-order-works-for-everyone%C2%A0
8. Large-Scale Frameworks, Small-Scale Solutions by David Bollier August 2019 https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/global-local-bollier
9. Global Identity Is Real by Andreas Bummel August 2019 https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/global-local-bummel
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