Good Will, Ethical Responsibility & the Sustainable Development Goals: the Challenge of this Century

November 29, 2016

Director of Lucis Trust & World Goodwill in Geneva, Mintze van der Velde, opens the World Goodwill Seminar at UN Headquarters in Geneva, October 28, 2016

Goodwill is one of the most basic spiritual qualities of the human being and the great untapped resource at the heart of every human community. This energy is potentially a powerful force for social change – yet its power remains largely unrecognized and underutilized. World Goodwill fosters understanding of this energy and the role it is playing in the development of a new humanity.

It is the thoughtful, planned action of networks of goodwill that is driving the response to all the problems of our age: from poverty, poisoned race relations, migration and refugees and environmental destruction through to sentimental spirituality, despair in thinking about the future, and the crises of materialism and selfishness. People of goodwill from all cultures, faiths and professions are creating, through their words and actions, a new world where sharing, cooperation and right relations are taking root and spreading. Never before in the history of the planet has goodwill been so active.

To bring in the new day and the human well-being which is our birth-right, we need a deeper sense of reality based on spiritual values, and a new perception of humanity as a unit of divine life within an ordered and purposive universe. It is difficult for modern man to conceive of a time when there will be no racial, national or separative religious consciousness present in human thinking.  It was equally difficult for prehistoric man to conceive of a time when there would be national thinking and this is a good thing for us to bear in mind.  The time when humanity will be able to think in universal terms still lies far ahead but the fact that we can speak of it, desire it and plan for it is surely the guarantee that it is not impossible.  Humanity has always progressed from stage to stage of enlightenment and from glory to glory.  We are today on our way to a far better civilisation than the world has ever known and towards conditions which will ensure a much happier humanity and which will see the end of national differences, of class distinctions (whether based on  ancestry or financial status) and which will ensure a fuller and richer life for everyone.

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Amidst Chaos, Seeds Of Hope: United Nations, the Sustainable Development Goals, And World Goodwill

November 28, 2016

Huffington Post Blogger,Alex Ratcliffe, reviews World Goodwill's Seminar at the United Nations in Geneva.

Just days before the election, on 28 October 2016, I attended a seminar amidst the salubrious surroundings of the Palais des Nations, Geneva, “the capital of peace and freedom”. The topic of the seminar, which attracted 150 people from a wide range of backgrounds, professions and nationalities, was: “World Good Will, Ethical Responsibility and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations”.

The keynote of the seminar in Geneva was that we can make development sustainable, but it requires global cooperation and global accountability, the partnership of governments, private sector, civil society and citizens alike to recognize the urgency and put plans in place with an eye to future generations. But, it was emphasized, this action implies the need for social and political will, and behind that is, and must be, a willingness for the greater good as opposed to individual agendas. ...

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Habitat III and the New Urban Agenda

November 9, 2016

For three days, from October 17 – 20, over 30,000 people from around the planet gathered in the city of Quito, Ecuador, to envision future possibilities for the cities of the world. Ten thousand people including national politicians, urban planners and thinkers, and representatives of business and peoples’ movements came from outside of Ecuador. Around 400 city mayors attended the ‘Cities Olympics’.

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