[Springboard] 21st Century Contradicitons

Thu Nov 8 12:58:42 EST 2007

Hope this adds to the collection of data on this thread.  Found these in working papers towards ICAI's next conference in Tokyo -- Jim Wiegel

  The preliminary lens for the 7 th Global Conference is a set of 8 major human development challenges, which serve as starting-point focus topics: 
  1) Effective Governance and Protection of Human Rights 
  2) Persistence of Poverty 
  3) Environmental Degradation 
  4) Armed Conflict and the Arms Race 
  5) Access to Healthcare and Preventing the Spread of Disease 
  6) Literacy and Education 
  7) Consumerism and Over-Consumption 
  8) Disconnectedness and Barriers to Engagement 

  Gender inequity is recognized as a cross-cutting issue exacerbating each of these 8 challenges.

  Appendix Eight Central Challenges

  1. Effective Governance and Protection of Human Rights Effective governance is a global challenge not only for societies in transition, but for all of our communities – from the highest levels of government to village and neighbourhood leadership. Central to the mandate of effective governance is protection of rights, from the right to live free of fear and persecution, to the rights to development, self-determination, and participation, notably among women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and other traditionally underrepresented groups. Many important initiatives under the auspices of the United Nations, the World Bank, individual governments, and civil society organisations are currently underway to tackle the issue of governance and protection of the rights of all citizens. Yet often these initiatives face the criticism of being driven by outsiders bent on interfering in domestic affairs.

  How can we ensure that citizens are empowered to demand good governance and protection of their rights from their leaders? How can progress be made in this arena in developed nations, where the focus is so often on improvement of governance systems elsewhere in the world? And how can people living in societies affected by conflict, corruption, dictatorship, ethnic cleansing, and/or genocide effectively take action for change? What concrete advancements are necessary at all levels of governance – from village associations to the international stage – in order to achieve effective governance and protect basic rights worldwide?

  2. Persistence of Poverty According to many observers, the world has made important strides in reducing global poverty. Yet the statistics on global poverty remain staggering. According to the World Bank, half the world’s population — nearly three billion people — lives on less than two dollars a day. Thirty thousand children die each day due to poverty; that is 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under the age of five each year. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.

  1 Most gains in poverty reduction are found in a few specific countries and regions; in many of the most desperate areas, high population growth, stagnating economies, and increasing gaps in wealth mean that poverty is growing daily. Will the grand schemes for rapid poverty reduction work? Is the only alternative to continue to struggle for small successes through a piecemeal approach? What combination of policy change, technology transfer, grassroots development, and skills training will change the future for the poorest of the poor? What new paradigms and approaches can be applied to the many ongoing efforts to end severe poverty and ensure that the day comes when every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and fulfilling life?

  3. Environmental Degradation In the ongoing effort to improve our standards of living, human beings have been slowly destroying the planet’s soil, water, air, and biodiversity, with disastrous human and ecological consequences. Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of nearly 13 million hectares per year. 2 If current rates of extinction continue, one-third to two-thirds of all species of plants, animals, and other organisms will be lost by the end of the 21 st century. Chemical pollutants and toxins continue to be carelessly released into the environment and threaten local ecosystems and human health. The increasing human population and increasing human consumption puts ever more pressure on ecosystems, as people search for ways to increase production. And one startling consequence of our carelessness and indifference – climate change – may prove to be the biggest challenge we have ever had to face.

  The world mobilized in Rio in 1992 to give voice to the growing problems and to create an agenda for sustainability. However, 15 years later, problems continue to mount, and solutions seem desperately far. The rhetoric is by now well developed, and most international institutions, governments, civil society organisations, and even business are now talking sustainability, and some are making important strides in that direction. But how can small success translate into the changes that are necessary? How can meaningful human development and environmental sustainability be achieved through our policies and institutions? What new economic and social models can help us solve seemingly intractable problems? What new forms of cooperation can best address both social and environmental challenges?

  4. Armed Conflict and the Arms Race Among the many enablers of violent conflict, perhaps none is so profound as the arms race. Military expenditure, including the arms trade, remains the largest category of annual spending in the world, at about $1 trillion. Ostensibly aimed at protecting national security, in many countries this expenditure surpasses the amounts spent on social development, communications, infrastructure, and health combined. 3 The arms race continues in new forms, resulting in an overall decrease in the security of nations, and of individuals. Arms sales to human rights violators, military dictatorships, and corrupt governments proceed to fuel violent conflicts in some of the poorest corners of the world.

  Concerned citizens, civil society organizations, and even governments from all corners of the world have rallied to denounce the devastating costs of conflict and the dangers of militarization. Important victories have been won, such as the international convention prohibiting land mines, but even this victory remains partial, as some countries refuse to join the global consensus. How do we support those people and organisations seeking to move from conflict to understanding and compromise? How can arms dealers (usually the world’s wealthiest nations) be held accountable for the uses of the weapons they trade? Which approaches and mechanisms can halt the sale of arms to the world’s worst human rights violators? How can balance be restored to national spending priorities? What are the practical alternatives to military intervention in conflict areas, and how can we ensure these alternatives are pursued vigorously? What new human networks can counteract the
 military-industrial complexes that perpetuate the cycle of violence?

  5. Access to Healthcare and Preventing the Spread of Disease Despite considerable advances in global healthcare, one billion people still lack access to healthcare. Millions die each year of preventable or curable infectious diseases – including, in 2005, approximately 3.5 million of AIDS, 1.75 million of Tuberculosis, and 1 million of malaria. Millions more are now living with these and other diseases. 4 In many cases, drugs are available but not accessible because of high costs. In developing and transitional countries, for example, 6.8 million people are currently in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 1.65 million are receiving the drugs. 5

  The MDGs have made fighting diseases such as HIV and AIDS a priority. The Global Fund and the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, among many others, have given some muscle and increased hope to these efforts. Yet problems continue to plague the response, and millions continue to suffer. Economic policies and reforms imposed on many developing countries have played a major role in contracting government spending on health and other social services in these countries. And access to healthcare is not a challenge unique to the developing world; millions of marginalized people living in wealthy nations also suffer from poor health and little access to healthcare services. How can we ensure universal access to basic healthcare? How can new strategies prevent the continued spread of the most malicious diseases? What new alliances can be built and approaches implemented to realize preventative medicine and treatment for illnesses as basic, universal rights?

  6. Literacy and Education Education and literacy are the foundations of participation in society. Yet about 800 million adults are illiterate and 100 million children currently do not attend school. In developing countries, non-formal education constitutes the learning environment for the vast majority of children, youth, and adults. 6 In the developed world, deep inequalities in education systems perpetuate long-standing social injustices. In other cases, reliance on a centralized, formal, standardized educational systems produce long-term, negative social consequences.

  The international community has affirmed and reaffirmed, on numerous occasions, the right of every child to a quality education, and many thousands of people and organisations are struggling daily to make this a reality. Progress in education will be a victory in its own right, but will also yield enormous benefits in all other areas of human development. Why is progress so slow? How can the right to education be more fully realized? How can we ensure a focus on quality and not just quantity in educational outcomes? What are the standards that best assess educational processes and performance? How can emerging trends in education worldwide be harnessed to strengthen self-respect, emotional intelligence, self- awareness, teamwork, and personal achievement?

  7. Consumerism and Over-Consumption Throughout history, peoples have created and acquired consumer goods with the aim to improve quality of life. The world is now awash with consumer products, providing incredible choice and increasingly affordable prices. But too often, products are developed and sold with little or no regard for their social and environmental consequences. How societies consume, and for what purposes, drives how resources are extracted – and often produces pollution and waste. How and where products are made, how they are transported, and where they end up after they are discarded are critical questions that are only just beginning to be asked by consumers, governments, and business leaders.

  The social and psychological context in which modern consumption occurs is also too often neglected. Businesses and advertising promote the consumption of products, driving up the psychological desire to consume. The resulting materialism inevitably takes a toll on society as a whole. Issues of consumption relate to environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, personal debt, and even the rise in obesity and other ‘diseases of affluence.’ What are the root causes of excessive consumerism and who is responsible 6 
  for them? How can new approaches be applied to reduce over- consumption? In the short term, which measures can be taken to diminish the pressures – social, environmental, economic – imposed by excessive consumerism?

  8. Disconnectedness and Barriers to Engagement The world has never been more interconnected by transport, trade, and telecommunications than today. Yet increasingly, individuals and communities are operating narrowly for their own respective interests; the individual rarely sees himself as responsible for the community and the community often makes little effort to represent all of its individual members. The related decline in citizen participation in civic life worldwide has been attributed to a number of factors, from the rise of television and the internet, to the digital divide in the developing world. Failures in governance at many levels, and the resulting suspicion and mistrust, clearly also play a role.

  Social disconnectedness makes it ever more challenging for communities to address their most urgent problems together, in ways that incorporate communal needs. For many, this disconnectedness constitutes a major barrier to social engagement in any form, particularly for those already on the margins of society. What underlying factors account for this fragmentation, which appears to come with social complexity? What has been the role of this trend in exacerbating other social challenges? How can new networks and systems be created to support and advance communal efforts when they arise, as well as encourage a more lasting human interdependency? 

  “Poverty Facts and Stats” website: http://www.globalissues.org.
  2 Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 “Key Findings” website: http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/32246/en/. 3 “Poverty Facts and Stats” website: http://www.globalissues.org.
  4 Ibid. 5 Figures from UNAIDS/WHO AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2006. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 2006.
  “Poverty Facts and Stats” website: http://www.globalissues.org.

John Cock <jpc2025 at triad.rr.com> wrote:      I do remember those words of the song, kind of. Do we have that recorded somewhere?

  Your Life Process Triangle sounds good; maybe I've seen it. Would like to look at it and let you talk me through it. Then we've got to talk about how Wilber and others and we talk about "spirit, mystery, etc." being at the heart of it all -- and how we represent that in our triangles, else we've left out the most important dynamic within the dynamics. We can't just do that talk as insiders when it's at the heart of all contradictions. Maybe that's included in yours, not really in Wilber's "I-we-it" diagrams -- he includes it in his books, etc.

  John

---------------------------------
  From: springboard-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:springboard-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jack Gilles
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 12:15 PM
To: Springboard Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Springboard] 21st Century Contradicitons

John,   

  I thought when we first made the trilogy from All the Earth Belongs to All we kept that phrase, that is, All the Goods of the Earth Belong to All etc. At least that is the way I remember the song John Tresise used to lead us in singing. Am I mistaken?

  As for the Social Process, some time ago I began to work on what I called the Life Process Triangle, which had the Natural Process on the left, the Social Process on the right and The Human Process at the top. This by the way fits into what Wilber lays out in his work.

  Jack
    On Nov 7, 2007, at 9:48 PM, John Cock wrote:

    There are two sets of vision statements mingling in my head now: the "All the earth belongs to all the people: all the goods (eco), all the decisions (pol), and all the gifts (cult)" -- which can mean all the goods of earth belong to the humans, all the decisions of earth belong to the humans, and all the gifts of earth belong to the humans. All this is true, but not in the meaning of exclusive or primary human ownership. Therefore, we have to be sensitive to the "belongs to humans exclusively" misunderstanding. Indicatively, at our best, our vision meant/means that all humans are meant to share fully in the universal blessings of goods, decisions, and gifts.

  Why not just say "all the earth belongs to all the earth" or "all the earth belongs to the universe" or, my favorite, "all the earth belongs to all"? We have to be at least as persnickety today about inclusive earth-community language as we are about gender language, wouldn't you say -- like changing the hymnals and Bible translations to be earth community correct as well as gender correct -- which is to say we humans have been and are abusing the total earth community every day in our language: an indication of our operating images, organization, and actions. 

  The other set of vision statements mingling is Jack's trilogy yesterday of "NEW EARTH/NEW SOCIETY/NEW HUMAN." Though these are very general, they are super good and easy to remember relative to all the above. In fact, their simplicity frees me up in thinking about "earth processes/social processes/human processes" contradictions (you see, I also have a little problem with the "social process" name being as all-inclusive as we sometimes infer).

  All of which is to say, unlike Roxana and Randy who are always at the head of the class, I do not have my 3-9 contradictions yet. "21st Century Contradicitons" really is a daunting assignment. As you can see, I'm just spinning my wheels, probably avoiding the assignment. 

  But I promise . . . 

  John

  One more vision (plus contradiction/strategic) statement: "The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and to build the earth."

---------------------------------
  From: springboard-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:springboard-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of R Williams
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 9:57 AM
To: Springboard Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Springboard] 21st Century Contradicitons

    Jack,

  I agree, "legitimate" vision is always indicative. It is never and imposition on history of "what I'd like to see," a perversion that often creeps into organizational planning. Instead it is, to quote Buber, "what is emerging from (the visioner), to the course of being in the world."

  Thanks for the feedback.

  Randy

  ----- Original Message ----
From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
To: Springboard Dialogue <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2007 8:44:23 AM
Subject: Re: [Springboard] 21st Century Contradicitons

Randy,   

  You are right, at least I think so. When I did my contradictional analysis I started with the Vision statement we made in 72 (?) of all the Goods.... all the Decisions.... and all the Gifts of Humanness...... It is important to remember that we saw these as indicative statements. That is, they are not what should or could be, but what is. My thought is that this reality is now becoming aware to a vast number of people, although they wouldn't probably articulate it like we did. People are becoming deeply aware that we are all in this together and therefore we have to figure out how to make the vision we stated a reality in some way. When an awareness becomes apparent that is being blocked by the present structures, mindsets, etc., then the emergence of the contradictions becomes possible to identify. As I said, I listed 9, three each for each of the three vision components. I'll share those later this week. Thanks for jumping in there. I like what you have stated. Let's
 hear from some more.

  Jack

    On Nov 7, 2007, at 7:45 PM, R Williams wrote:

      Jack,

  I believe there need to be two backdrops as context for a conversation about 21st century contradictions. The first is the vision which we embraced with "All the earth belongs to all the people;" all the goods (eco), all the decisions (pol) and all the gifts (cult). It seems to me any analysis of contradictions has to be over against that vision. I believe that vision has basically not changed except that it needs to be expanded to include all creation.

  Second, contradictions must be considered in light of the imbalance in the social process, which is still today what it was 30 years ago--the dominance of the economic, the subservience of the political (to the economic, example, Greenspan's statement that Iraq is and was always about oil), and the collapse of the cultural. Not only has the cultural collapsed, but it has been co-opted by the economic. By this I mean that the economic rather than the cultural has become the meaning-giving pole of the social process, and the political has helped by imposing reduced values.

  Now to Niebuhr. His three contradictions were a reflection of the social process whether he knew it or not--"racialism" (cultural), "nationalism" (political), and economic imperialism. Reflecting on this, I believe we should identify and focus on only three inclusive "master" or major contradictions, one on each pole of the social process. As others respond to your query and offer their reading of the contradictions for our time, I expect that each stated contradiction can probably fit under one or another of the SP poles, if indeed the Social Process is as inclusive as we think it is.

  This will be interesting because there is so much overlap and inter-connectivity. A couple of examples. Racism has been revealed to be a contributing and related cause of poverty,
  especially since Hurricane Katrina. Catholic Charities USA has written a position paper entitled "Racism and Poverty: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good." Also, I think racism has to be expanded to include a kind of "species-ism" meaning discrimination against the non-human. A second example--is religious fundamentalism a cultural or political contradiction? I think I would put it under political. Islamic extremists in the Middle East and far right evangelical Christians in the US have become political movements. Rather than trying to "transform" the political, they are trying co-opt and "become" the political.

  The primary contradiction under the economic continues to be what it was 30 years ago--the growing gap between those who have much and those who have little, and we must expand this to go beyond just humans. However, now the emphasis is more on natural resources, particularly water, land and air. This can be seen not only globally but also in every locale. In the developed world it is often spoken of as the disappearing middle class.

  So with fear and trembling, at this moment here are my three. Under the economic, Disparate Resource Distribution which has led to economic impoverishment; under the political, Elitist Political Exclusiveness which has led to political powerlessness; and under the cultural, Discredited Cultural Heritage, which has led to cultural disenfranchisement.

  I hope a lot of people jump in on this so you have plenty of grist at Junaluska. Thanks to Roxana for being one of the first.

  G&P,
  Randy

  ----- Original Message ----
From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
To: Springboard Dialogue <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 6, 2007 2:23:59 PM
Subject: [Springboard] 21st Century Contradicitons

Dear All,

I have followed the dialogue on the OE list serve regarding the 
updating of the HRN call for social pioneers in the three areas he 
felt at that time where critical for the sensitive and responsive 
ones to respond to. Since we are referring to the Guild as that 
part of society that is sensitive and responsive to bringing forth a 
new earth/new society/new humanness I think it is important that we 
discern what the critical areas of contradiction are for our time. I 
have been working on this for a couple of weeks and have developed 
what for me are the contradictions that the Guilds (and the Order) 
need to be addressing. I won't share them just yet, but would invite 
everyone to think what would be your list. Next week sometime I'll 
share my list and rationale.

There are many, many areas of concern and issues facing the world 
today. So to try and discern the critical ones I applied the 
following test. I asked "What societal contradictions, if not 
addressed in the next 10-15 years will put the global society into a 
tipping point of danger?" That is, although there are many issues 
facing India today, I discovered a set that seemed to apply here as 
well as in the developed world. Common contradictions that are 
affecting us all and will "sink the ship" if we don't mobilize the 
sensitive and responsive to creatively respond. I found brooding on 
the imbalances of the Social Process as well as the Pressure Points 
we discerned 30+ years ago to be helpful in my discernment for today.

Maybe by the time of the Junaluska event we will begin to see a 
consensus of what these are and then we could perhaps do some writing 
on them at the gathering as well as use them as a screen for what we 
might be doing with the Guilds.

I look forward to hearing what you feel the Order needs to address.

G&P,

Jack

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