Welcome to the second Order Out of Chaos podcast. The mission of the Voices of Humanity - Order Out of Chaos initiative is to build an online community that will heal the world. Voices of Humanity (VoH) is designed to promote the Goals of the United Nations and that will be the focus of today’s podcast.
But first, my name is Roger Eaton and I have been working on this project since I was 5 years old. Well, so to speak! At that age I attended Sunday School at a local Lutheran church. One Sunday the teacher told us that we are all descended from Adam and Eve. I shot up my hand and blurted out, “No, we’re not!” I knew we weren’t all related. I couldn’t go to the door of a strange family and ask for lunch. The same thing happened for the next two weeks. The teacher insisted that we were all descendants of Adam and Eve. Finally I gave in. “Ok, then that means we are all related!” I said, and I looked around the room expecting everyone to change on the spot and become family. They didn’t, of course, and I was disappointed, but I never forgot the lesson I had learned: we are all related!
Going over the details again, the online VoH forum uses voting on messages to give us seven Voices of Humanity. Three genders: Women, Men and Simply Human. Three generations: Youth, Experience and Wisdom. And the Voice of Humanity-as-one. Gender equality and age equality are thus 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.
Messages posted by women as rated by women are used to build the Voice of Women. Similarly for Men, LGBTQ, Youth, Middle-aged and Seniors. All the messages as rated by everyone are used for the Voice of Humanity-as-one. The message list can be broken out by gender and age and can be sorted by rating as well as by date/time, so the highest rated messages will easily be found for each Voice of Humanity. And, the focus can be narrowed by nation, city, religion, community of interest and more. Whatever the focus, all seven voices of humanity are available.
You can check us out at voh.intermix.org, where you will also find a link to the podcast text.
The UN Charter was adopted on June 26 in the Veterans Building across the street from City Hall here in San Francisco. Have you read the Preamble of the UN Charter recently? It brings tears to my eyes every time.
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,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
* to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
* to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
* to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
* to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.
The goals of the U.N., including peace and nuclear disarmament, are built into the structure of the Voices of Humanity forum. Each goal is available as a community that you can join, and each goal is included in a UN Goals Together & Apart discussion designed to address the “across the silos” problem. The discussion alternates between a Together phase where all participants from all UN Goals communities together elect messages to represent a holistic view of the UN goals, and an Apart phase where participants from the separate goal communities elect messages to represent their particular perspective.
The goals of the UN are the best scaffold we have for the massive bottom up global movement the world needs. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were unanimously adopted by all the nations in 2015. Unanimously adopted - that’s awesome! But, alas, the reason the SDGs were unanimously adopted was because they did not include the original goals of the UN: international peace and nuclear disarmament.
When it comes to UN Goals, the interaction across the issue silos needs more attention. Those who are working on climate change are so focused on that goal that they might miss important details about the gender equality goal, and the other way about. The “across the silos” meme has helped improve the situation. For instance, the Drawdown climate change project is very much aware of the connection between gender equality and climate change. If there is one phrase to remember from this podcast, let it be “across the silos”.
The next two podcasts will focus on the recently adopted TPNW, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear weapons are not exactly good news! But the TPNW is. Then the fifth podcast in the series will show how San Francisco can use VoH to build a global network of cities that have officially adopted all the goals of the UN, including nuclear disarmament. That is where Voices of Humanity can make a big difference! Organize Locally, Connect Globally!
That’s it for now. Stay tuned!
#The_UN_Goals #climateaction #together #un_goals
