The following is from the latest draft of my application to form a "Voices of Humanity" Cooperation Circle (CC) with the United Religions Initiative (URI). More about URI at http://uri.org.
I am looking for fifteen charter members before sending in the application. We have several wonderful members for the new CC already lined up. If interested, please contact me at rogereaton@intermix.org.
Introduction
The purpose of the United Religions Initiative is to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings.
Voices of Humanity (VoH) is an action oriented Cooperation Circle with an internet-based strategy to accomplish URI’s grand purpose. We are using an open-source online social media specifically designed to create a global consciousness that will in turn underpin a massive action-oriented movement for human unity.
As bridge builders with a global perspective, URI and the larger interfaith movement are well positioned to be a catalyst for the kindly and intelligent global consciousness that we need.
The short version of our plan
- Goals: Peace, justice and healing for Planet Earth.
- Strategy: Build a global consciousness to underpin a massive nonviolent movement for human unity.
- Tactics: Be nonviolent action oriented.
The story
The world, our world, Planet Earth is in trouble, a trouble of our own making. Humanity, by a combination of population growth and an ever more powerful technology, 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.
The peaceful transition to a sustainable world requires global trust and cooperation between the nations and religions, and also the active support of the people everywhere. 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.
Voices of Humanity (VoH) has a role to play here. This new form of social media is distinguished by being community-centered rather than focusing on the individual. The VoH online forum has controls enabling breakout by community and geographic level from global to local. For every community/geographic level there are six “voices of humanity”: the voice of women, men, youth, experience, wisdom and the voice of humanity-as-one.
The six voices of humanity will create the global consciousness that is the sine qua non of the transition to a sustainable civilization that we need. At the global level, messages from these six voices will be extremely likeable in the facebook sense but more than that, they will be important because so many people from all over the world will read them. Because love, wit and spirit are what everyone appreciates, we can expect the six voices of humanity to be consistently kind, intelligent and upbeat. Narrow minded and hateful messages will always draw a large negative vote from one segment or another and so can never be selected to represent humanity as a whole. The ever wise and gentle humor of the voices of humanity will redefine the “other”. We can even hope to deliver a salutary shock as the participants realize one by one that the human race is on their side.
As the VoH network grows, unified voices for the nations and religions will develop. Dare we imagine a 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. This is how we motivate the nations and religions to be willing partners in the unification of humanity.
Consider the hardliners’ dilemma when deciding whether to participate in a Voices of Humanity discussion. If no, then they lose all influence within the discussion. If yes, then they are legitimizing the notion that we have a common humanity. At first, the hardliner hawks will shun the VoH discussions, and that will create a safe environment for the doves to get things started. Then, as the process takes off, the persuadable moderates will join in and by “trying on” the global perspective, learn to like it. This is a simplification, to be sure. Hardliners are not a breed apart. Rather, we are all hardliners/hawks to one degree or another. The idea still holds that the hardliner within each of us will be either integrated or marginalized.
The mechanism
Members of our Voices of Humanity CC will write messages each lunar month on topics of our individual choosing. We will trade them around and vote on them. Using this process we will decide on a monthly basis how best to influence the nations and religions to foster peace, justice and healing for Planet Earth.
At the new moon, we will elect messages of general interest. At the full moon we will elect nonviolent action oriented messages to implement the ideas brought out at the new moon. Through the next full moon, we will act locally on the basis of our globally shared action messages, and report the resulting stories and lessons. Our elected full moon messages will be a good basis for action. However, there will be no commitment to using these messages as a basis for action until we see what they are, month by month. Because there are six Voices of Humanity (Women, Men, Youth, Experience, Wisdom, Humanity-as-One), there will be up to six winners each month, so locally, we will have a choice of action ideas.
Discussion
The effort to build the global consciousness must be action oriented or no one will pay any attention. Our choice of nonviolent actions will be decided by the members of the VoH Cooperation Circle month by month. Examples of nonviolent action of a sort likely to be considered are 1) join or create a local action for the International Day of Peace; 2) write a letter to the editor in support of the United Nations; 3) bring in a friend to join the VoH CC. However, since this is a bottom up process, there is always an element of novelty and suspense and the winning messages may be something of a surprise to everyone. That is why we have determined ahead of time that there is no individual commitment to using the elected messages as a basis for action until we see what they are, month by month.
The Interfaith movement includes the religions, the indigenous peoples, and the non-religious are also welcome. So everyone is a potential member of the Voices of Humanity CC and we can expect to bring in huge numbers. However, the VoH CC is aiming to be a catalyst for human unity, not an umbrella organization. There are many positive global movements that are looking for ways to cooperate. People are thinking hard about how to foster cooperation across these “silos”. There is the women’s movement, the labor movement, the social justice movement, the indigenous peoples movement, sustainability movement and climate action, the peace movement and nuclear disarmament, the social justice movement, the UN SDGs, and the list is only begun. While many in these movements see the Interfaith movement as an ally, we must realize there is little interest in trying to bring all these movements together under an interfaith banner. Our aim must be to bring everyone together under the banner of human unity – always with respect for diversity.
The Voices of Humanity online social media is designed to foster cooperation across the silos. All the great positive global movements, including interfaith, will have their own collective messages every month, and at the same time, all the movements together will be electing overall collective messages to represent humanity. As individual online participants, we have the option to narrow or enlarge our perspective, and we can easily shift from one community to another. At the full moon, when we elect action oriented messages, we can see what we have elected for ourselves at the VoH CC level with only VoH CC participants, or we can shift to another community where we are also a member and see what is happening there. And we will want to check out what messages were elected overall. The result is an overall sense of togetherness that respects the separate goals of each movement.
One big advantage we have is that the breakout of the genders into the Voice of Women and the Voice of Men will provide energy to build the network locally, nationally and globally. The Women’s Movement has that energy and because it already transcends the nations and religions, there is no contradiction between its goals and our aim to build human unity around a global consciousness. More than that, the Women’s Movement stands to gain hugely as we build participation and momentum because the equality of the genders is built into the process.
Another advantage is that the VoH CC will be doing outreach largely to individuals rather than to organizations. If we have friends in the climate change movement, we can invite them online to be a member of our VoH CC, while expecting they will also join the climate change community. It is not an either-or matter, but rather both-and. This is how we can be a catalyst for a massive action-oriented movement to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings. Something else to realize is that the VoH CC is beginning as an online global CC, but as we build our membership, the possibilities for local groups to meet in person will arise, very possibly deciding at some point to be their own URI CC within their geographic region. Thus we will help build URI as we go.
#interfaith #nonviolence #vohcc
