The world, our world, Planet Earth is in trouble, a trouble of our own making. Humanity, by a combination of population growth and misguided economic development, has overstepped Nature’s limits. Civilization as it goes is not sustainable and will collapse, and in the non-linear way of things, all too likely sooner rather than later.

Humanity is responsible for the destructive chaos. That much is clear. Yet humanity is not taking this responsibility to heart as it must if we are to live in harmony with Planet Earth. Only a shared consciousness of our common humanity will enable us to accept our responsibilities at the global level.

What makes Voices of Humanity special? Imagine if Facebook listed the top-liked posts from the last 30 days. The whole world would share those items. That is what Voices of Humanity is designed to do. It is a simple idea that unleashes awesome possibilities.

There are seven Voices of Humanity: the Voice of Women, the Voice of Men, the Voice of Gender:simply human, the Voice of Youth, the Voice of Middle-age, the Voice of Seniors and the Voice of Humanity-as-one. Top-rated messages from these seven voices of humanity will be extremely likeable in the Facebook sense but more than that, because love, wit and spirit are what everyone appreciates, we can expect the seven voices of humanity to be consistently kind, intelligent and upbeat. Everyone with an interest in global issues will read the top-rated messages and be influenced in a positive way, giving rise to a surprising, ever changing global consciousness that will underpin a sustainable world.

The peaceful transition to a sustainable world requires global trust and cooperation between the nations and religions. We love our nations and our religions, and won’t give them up, so in this shift to a larger sense of unity, we need to be thinking how we can motivate the nations and religions to be willing partners. Dare we imagine a collective voice of America and of Russia, India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine? A voice of Islam and of Christianity? It might seem a foolish project, but when we realize that the nations and religions are being unified and strengthened within the context of a unified humanity, then the true genius of the Voices of Humanity project becomes apparent. It is by supporting the nations and religions that we motivate them to be willing partners in the unification of humanity.

Gender equality and age equality are both built-in to Voices of Humanity. It is no exaggeration to say this will amount to a new social contract. And yes, LGBTQ participants have their own Voice and are not required to specify male or female.

The Voices of Humanity Together and Apart feature brings communities together by also supporting their separate identities. Using the lunar cycle for timing, T&A alternates between each community electing its own messages and all the communities together electing messages to represent our common humanity. See below for more about Together and Apart.

Coming soon: Voices of Humanity supports bottom up networks. Are you interested in the intersection between #sdgs and #nuclear_disarm? No problem. Create your own “SDGs and Nukes” network. Everyone who is a member of both the #sdgs community and the #nuclear_disarm community is automatically a member of the new network you just created. When you go to the network, you see only messages tagged for both communities and written by those who are a member of both communities.

Last but not least, Voices of Humanity is nonviolent action oriented. A prominent “Nonviolent Action” button reduces the forum list to only those messages hashtagged #nvaction. While in Nonviolent Action mode, all newly posted messages are automatically hashtagged #nvaction.

Putting it all together, Voices of Humanity uses crowd-source technology (voting on messages) to give women, men, youth, middle-aged and seniors each a collective voice. Empowered with the gift of speech, these great divisions of the human race will join together with humanity-as-one to weave a tale of love and wit. Through this new lens we will come to see ourselves as the intelligent, generous and capable species that we are, giving us the trust and confidence we need to cooperate on pressing global matters.

Together and Apart

The Together and Apart feature of Voices of Humanity is designed to build a bottom-up global movement to implement the goals of the United Nations. It uses the lunar cycle to alternate between communities electing messages to represent their separate interests and the same communities together electing messages to represent their common interests. There are six of these Together and Apart collective conversations ready to go: The Genders, The Generations, The UN Goals, The Nations, The Cities, and The Religions. Also a special Together and Apart conversation tailored to support Mideast Peace.

The UN Goals. The goals of the UN are the best scaffold we have for the massive bottom up global movement the world needs. United Nations supporters generally concentrate on particular issues: climate change, education, gender equality, nuclear disarmament and so forth. The interaction across the issue silos does not get enough attention, to the detriment of all the issues. The Together and Apart feature overcomes the silo effect by alternating between 1) each issue community electing its own messages, and 2) supporters of all the issues together electing messages to represent the holistic view across the silos.

The Nations. International distrust rules the day, making full cooperation on pressing global matters impossible. The huge and growing investment in weaponry underlies this distrust. Nuclear weapons in particular feed on themselves, fostering a global sense of win-lose competition rather than win-win cooperation. In such a world, disarmament and the many other global issues cannot be adequately addressed, leading all too soon to global disaster of one sort or another. By supporting each of the nations separately in a context that also supports our common sense of humanity, we can marginalize the hardliners. All Indigenous Peoples, as defined by the U.N. or self-defined, will be able to participate as a nation of their own.

The Cities. The nuclear armed nations will not even consider giving up their horrifying weapons, so when the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were framed in 2015, disarmament could not be included. But the cities of the world do not have nukes and they are the targets, so they do support nuclear disarmament and peace as well as the SDGs. The Cities conversation is meant to jump-start a global network of cities that have officially adopted all of the goals of the UN. Each city will need to put together a civic / academic / business / government coalition to support the process locally. The Voices of Humanity Together and Apart conversation between The Cities will give the network a common voice while preserving the importance of local differences in approach.

The Religions. Hans Kung said it best: "There will be no peace among nations until there is peace among religions. And there will be no peace among religions until there is dialogue among religions." As with The Nations, the collective conversation between The Religions will marginalize the hardliners. Extremists will have a choice of participating in a conversation that brings all of the religions Together or losing their influence in the Apart phase for their particular religion. Voices of Humanity is a Cooperation Circle in the United Religions Initiative's massive and growing global interfaith community.

The Genders and The Generations. A back and forth conversation between the genders and between the generations might not seem advisable. So it is important to realize that Together and Apart conversations are structured to promote unity. In the Apart phase, the separate collective voices are simultaneous. There is no direct back and forth exchange.

The goals of the UN are listed as suggested topics for The Cities, The Nations and The Religions. For The UN Goals, the built-in topics are the communities that have good reason to support the goals of the UN, such as refugees, labor, the commons movement, indigenous peoples, academia, business, interfaith and more.

Bringing the Goals of the UN Home to San Francisco

Organize Locally, Connect Globally. The Voices of Humanity San Francisco based team aims to persuade the SF Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution establishing a UN Goals Advisory Committee. The committee will develop detailed proposals how the goals of the UN may best be supported / implemented by the City. The resolution will cover each of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), human rights, CEDAW, nuclear disarmament and world peace, with a blanket clause covering all the other goals of the UN. See our new sfungoals.org website. And please like the Facebook page that goes with it.

The plan is to build a civic / academic / business / government coalition for a collective impact project to get the resolution passed. Voices of Humanity will provide the required communication tool and the team will build the coalition from the ground up, all the while looking for a backbone organization to partner with and grant money for outreach staff.

The SDGs are coming down to the city level in any case, so our efforts are very likely to succeed. That success will generate much good will and momentum for a second stage to the project as our coalition transforms itself into the new San Francisco UN Goals Advisory Committee. Then the real work will begin.

An app for Voices of Humanity will be used to have a Together and Apart conversation between supporters of each of the UN Goals. Monthly meetups will bring in new team members.

Step by Step

1. If you use Facebook or Google to register, then it is a little easier and in the future you can log in with a single click. Go to the top of this page and click the Facebook or Google icon.
2. If you do not register with Facebook or Google, then begin by clicking the "Join" button at the top left of this page. After you register, you will need to link in from an email that will be sent to confirm it really is you.
3. In the process of joining or by editing your profile, you can join or leave communities of interest using the check-boxes provided.
4. At any time you can go to the Forum by clicking the "Order Out of Chaos" button in the upper left. In the forum you can read and vote on the messages that have already been added there.
5. You may also comment on any of the messages by clicking the comment link under the message.
6. Start your own topic by clicking "Add Message" at the top right of the page.
7. Be sure to click the "Save" button at the bottom after you have written your message. That's it!