The following is my latest overview of Voices of Humanity, including our project to bring the goals of the UN home to San Francisco. I am thinking to publish it as a short talk on youtube. If I do, I will post the link as a comment. --Roger
The problem. Humanity has overstepped nature’s bounds. Global population growth is out of control and instead of fitting our economy into the natural patterns of Planet Earth, we are exploiting nature’s resources in a destructive manner. Humanity has benefited hugely in the process but clear eyes can see we are heading for a collapse of civilization if we do not cooperate to turn things around. Yet with our history of wars and with our nuclear arms telling us we live in an us vs them world, the high level of international distrust makes such cooperation most unlikely.
A big step towards a solution. Voices of Humanity - Order out of Chaos is an open-source online social medium designed both to support our national identities and to build a heartfelt sense of human unity. Collective Communication, Inc (CCI), a 501(c)(3) located in San Francisco is the sponsor.
Voices of Humanity uses crowd-source technology (voting on messages) to give women, men, youth, middle-aged and seniors each a collective voice at all geographic levels from city to state to nation to Planet Earth. These collective voices will create the global consciousness needed for the transition to a sustainable civilization. At the global level, messages from the six voices will be extremely likable 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” as the participants realize one by one that the human race is on their side.
Voices of Humanity will launch its new "Together and Apart" feature (T&A, as we call it) by the end of 2019. Briefly, T&A alternates between a group of communities electing messages together to represent the unity of the communities, and each community electing its own messages apart, thus maintaining its separate identity. We will use the new feature to implement collective voices for the nations within the context of a global voice for humanity-as-one. Dare we imagine a voice of America and of Russia, India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine? It might seem a foolish project, but when we realize that the nations are being unified and strengthened in a structure that also unites humanity, then the true genius of the Voices of Humanity project becomes apparent. It is by supporting the nations that we motivate them to become willing partners in a world that works for all.
In order to get the Voices of Humanity project off the ground, the CCI Board has developed a practical plan to bring the goals of the UN home to San Francisco. How do we do it? We build a civic / academic / business / government coalition to persuade the SF Board of Supervisors to establish a UN Goals Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee will develop detailed proposals how the goals of the UN may best be supported and/or implemented by the City.
The UN Charter was signed on June 26, 1945 at the Veterans Building across the street from San Francisco City Hall. The first paragraph of the Charter lists the original goals of the UN in memorable words: “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED * to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and * to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and * to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and * to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…”
Peace, human rights, gender equality, respect for international law, social progress and individual freedom. That’s a good start. The first resolution of the UN called for establishment of a Commission for nuclear disarmament. The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the UN in 1970 and ratified by the U.S. The NPT as it is called is still in force and it calls not just for non-proliferation, but also for both nuclear and complete and general disarmament. So disarmament is right up there in the list of UN Goals. How else can we expect to eliminate the scourge of war?
In 2015 the UN unanimously adopted the awesome Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (SDGs). There are seventeen SDGs with 169 associated targets. The three goals of most interest to businesses have been Goal 13 Climate Action, Goal 12 Responsible Production and Consumption, and Goal 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth. There is a strong consensus that aligning business practices with the SDGs can benefit both business and the world. At City Hall, the same three are important, but so are the rest of the goals, including Goal 10, Reducing Inequality.
The SDGs do not include international peace and disarmament for the excellent reason that they never would have been approved if they had. Nuclear arms in particular are very self-sustaining. The existence of nuclear weapons is strong evidence that we live in a ruthless world, and in such a world the nuclear weapons states are convinced it would be folly to disarm. The problem is that in this distrustful world overshadowed by nuclear weapons we don’t have the cooperation needed for 2030 SDG success. That is why the coalition we are building will include all the goals of the UN, starting with peace and disarmament. The SDGs cannot succeed without disarmament.
The Together and Apart technology will play a central role in building the San Francisco UN Goals coalition. All UN Goals will have a unified collective voice together “across the silos” and each UN Goal will have its own collective voice apart. Success in San Francisco will make possible a rapid development of a global UN Goals network of cities. It makes so much sense. The SDGs are coming down to the city level in any case. New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and San Jose are already in the process of adopting the SDGs. Plus, cities are nuclear targets and do not themselves have nukes, so cities already support nuclear disarmament. The Goals of the UN provide a common framework to unite human efforts to avert catastrophe and the cities of Planet Earth are ready to commit.
The Voices of Humanity technology will enable each city to develop its own agenda while at the same time sharing ideas and priorities at every geographic level. What UN Goals will San Francisco concentrate on? Thankfully, the immediate project to Bring the Goals of the UN Home to San Francisco aims only to establish a UN Goals Advisory Committee in City Hall. The Committee will be responsible for developing detailed plans and setting local priorities.
How quickly can we make it happen? The difficulty will be to find the first few dozen coalition members. And maybe it is not that difficult after all. We will find out. We have already drafted a Resolution for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and have received good feedback from City Hall. For details, including a link to the draft resolution, please see our new website at sfungoals.org.
The next step is to build a largely women’s A-team for outreach. The CCI Board believes that a women’s team will be quicker and more successful at getting the coalition off the ground. Best case scenario, a coalition of two or three hundred organizations and individuals will persuade the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution creating the Advisory Committee by June 26, 2020. That is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter here in San Francisco. More likely, it will take until the end of 2020 to get the resolution passed. The actual implementation of the Advisory Committee will be a slower step by step process, taking perhaps as much as a year.
Your support is most welcome. Do you live in San Francisco, or the Bay Area? Then be a part of the coalition. If you have an idea where we might look for grant money, we will follow up, for sure. See our website at sfungoals.org and use the contact page there to get in touch. There is also our facebook.com/sfungoals page. Thank you so much!
#nvaction #un_goals #voh
