Blogger John Dale raises interesting issues - here is a portion of a recent posting by him, None of the 195 national governments on Earth, the vast majority of them led by males, currently puts the future benefits and sustainability of the Peoples of the Earth as a whole above its own narrow self-interests. It’s been 70 years since the founding of the United Nations, and despite all the talk by male leaders since WW II of democracy and self-determination, those leaders have confined the methods of democratic decision-making to within the nation-state so the Peoples of Earth still have no direct democratic advisory vote within the framework of the United Nations on global public issues and policies. Creation of humanity-wide programs and policies relating to the global human future (e.g., shifting from fossil fuels to a globally coordinated system of sustainable energy) require humanity-wide democratic mandates for purposes of creating motivation, empowerment, and a unity of will. But when was the last time your government asked you to vote in a worldwide advisory referendum as a direct citizen of the United Nations? The fact that this has never happened shows us male leadership under the current system for what it really is: not a genuine concern for global public system benefits but a facade using the discourse of public benefits to maintain the more basic agenda of personal and class and male gender control. Or maybe, with some leaders, the concern for benefits is real but publicly unable to be honestly articulated because the leader is embedded within a hierarchical and adversarial system of money and force that makes power and control and “survival” in a position of leadership an ultimate value and goal in and of itself for which all other principles get sacrificed. Expressing a “feminine” concern for the health and viability of the global human household would be attacked by other males as “weakness” in the face of our “enemies” against whom we must always maintain a posture of hostility. How is the colossal and continuing failure to of male-dominated national governments to use the United Nations to its full capacity in order to achieve global human welfare otherwise explainable? What else but primitive male evolutionary psychology can explain the gross failure of most governments to meet their promises to contribute 0.007 of their gross domestic product to meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals? And where is the global democratic outcry against this failure of leaders to work in cooperation through the UN? Where is the search by rational and intuitively sensitive people for ways around this central bottleneck to global cooperation and viability? Time to wake up! Time to start seeing that the current world order system, as the founder of the Bahai world community said 150 years ago, is lamentably defective. Time to start seeing that we need new patterns and methods of self-government on this planet. But what are the alternatives to what we have? Well, why not begin by looking at the principles, attitudes, and the functional patterns and methods of self-government at work within the Bahai community itself. Among the features of that multiracial, multilingual world community are: · A Covenantal duty of urgent concern for the problems of one’s present historical epoch and situation; · A systematic approach to the discovery of fact and the application of values and principles in the solution of these problems; · A supreme Covenantal and guiding value of the oneness and communicational health of the human system (“The earth is but one country and humanity its citizens.”) · Strong emphasis on justice in economic relations and the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty through multiple ways that move toward well-being and a spirit of unity. · Strong emphasis on the dignity and social empowerment of women and the education of the girl child. · Seeing the purpose and aim of immediate physical life as making a personal contribution to an ethically ever-advancing global civilization. · In terms of administrative functionality, no individual leaders, only group decision-making, all the way up; · Strong emphasis on ensuring gender balance and inclusion of diversity in the groups elected; · No self-chosen and self-promoted candidates for leadership; everyone is open for being chosen. · No nominating. · No campaigning or campaign contributions. · No parties. · No corporate free speech.” · Instead, just people previously consulting and getting acquainted with ideas and possible solutions and then voting reflectively, prayerfully, and by secret ballot for those whom they think are, in character and specialized talent, best qualified to solve the problems and to serve the best interests of the community in question. The time is over when the world can afford to waste energy on watching male political displays and outdated methods of partisan, adversarial self-government. We need a vision of a non-adversarial democratic form of self-government that, in the spirit and way it functions and in the way it incentivizes people, actually supports the spiritual-political aims of global justice, sustainability, peace, and good will. IMO, we live in an age that, in its prophetic, spiritualizing, and inward reality, is radical, evolutionary, and progressive beyond anything imagined by our general ethical, religious, and political culture. We no longer have to wait for it; instead, we are already living in the beginning of a fulfillment that has been promised to us for thousands of years. I urge, therefore: let us try to truly grasp the enormous historical importance of this age and of being alive at this time of history, and let us try to be a source of illumination, inspiration, and real hope to one another and to our fellow human beings. -- John Dale
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 07:44:58 +0000