As we continue the difficult transition from the Piscean astrological epoch into the vivifying energies of Aquarius, a multitude of fresh visions arise. Countless individuals and groups are exploring how we may live together in re-imagined networks of cooperation and sharing, transcending old barriers and borders. The significance of these overlapping visions is not so much that one or other provides a single model for the future: rather, they are magnetic archetypes, dynamic currents of evolutionary potential, which propel us into a more vibrant future. By directing our attention both onward in time, and inward towards the deeper spiritual principles of heart and mind, these complementary visions, and the organized activities they inspire, reveal the evolutionary power of the will-to-good.
The Festival Week of the New Group of World Servers, which occurs every seven years, and takes place this year from 21 to 28 December, is an outstanding opportunity to honour and energise such visions, and all who strive to bring them into practical form. Please go to festivalweek.org for more details. Presented in this issue is a small sampling of this Aquarian group work.
All articles are adapted from the websites of the groups featured.
Together First || World Future Council || National Peace Academy || UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award || Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures for Peace || The Long Now Foundation || Local Futures || The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation & Emergence || Business Plan for Peace || Emerge
Together First (https://together1st.org) is a growing movement of global citizens, coordinated by a network of over 100 experts, practitioners, civil society activists and business leaders from all regions of the world.
Together First is committed to making the best ideas for global governance a reality. Coalition members believe that making the conversation on global governance accessible and inclusive will not only help create a more democratic, transparent and accountable system – but “one that is, ultimately, more effective too.”
The UN’s 75th anniversary in 2020 is viewed as the potential starting point of a global governance transformation. With this in mind campaigns are underway for a multi-stakeholder summit to mark the occasion – “to discuss, adopt and initiate the reforms we urgently need, and to unite around a shared vision for the future.”
“Through our call for ideas, we will bring new voices to the decision-making table, and work with them to push for concrete solutions and implementation. Our efforts will be closely coordinated with the UN’s 75th anniversary initiative, which will stimulate dialogues around the world on the future we need, and the UN2020 civil society coalition lobbying for meaningful public engagement with the leaders’ summit.”
Throughout 2019 and 2020 Together First is leading a global campaign to:
First, identify workable ways to address global risks and enable the whole world to join the conversation;
Prioritise the leading ideas in a ‘to-do’ list which will be produced for the international community;
And then mobilise individuals, NGOs, states and businesses to make these solutions a reality.
The Together First campaign has been formed by a coalition of over 150 NGOs. With a secretariat provided by UNA-UK, the project was launched at the Paris Peace Forum by the three groups that form the Coordination Team: the Stimson Center, the Igarapé Institute, and the Chinese Initiative on International Law.
A twelve person Focus Group (which is gender balanced and contains at least one person from each of the UN’s geographic regions) provides Together First with its directional steer, with a wider Advisory Council providing guidance and expertise. §
The World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org) works to pass on a healthy planet and fair societies to our children and grandchildren. A sustainable, just and peaceful future is envisioned, where universal rights are respected. To achieve this, the Council researches, identifies and spreads the best and most sustainable policy solutions worldwide.
The World Future Council (WFC) consists of 50 eminent global change-makers from governments, parliaments, civil society, academia, the arts and business who have already successfully created change. Urgent themes are identified, which determine the agenda for the work. In close collaboration with civil society, members of parliament, governments, businesses and international organisations research is carried out into ‘future-just’ legislation and advice and support is offered to decision-makers who work on implementation. “Decisions taken by politicians today will have a major influence on the world of tomorrow. We seek to bring intergenerational justice and protection of long-term interests into the heart of policy-making.”
Network of Institutions for Future Generations
WFC projects include the Future Justice Commission which campaigns for Ombudspersons for Future Generations. The Commission has also helped establish the Network of Institutions for Future Generations, which aims to share knowledge, experience and good practice, creating a platform for innovative ideas on the institutional protection of future generations and their environment. The Network is composed of future oriented independent institutions from around the world.
The Future Policy Award celebrates policies that create better living conditions for current and future generations. Each year, one topic on which policy progress is particularly urgent is identified. This is the first award celebrating policies rather than people on an international level.
FuturePolicy.org is an online database designed for forward-thinking policy-makers, to simplify the sharing of existing and proven policy solutions to tackle the world’s most fundamental and urgent problems. Grown from the conviction that solutions exist for the most essential challenges to humanity’s survival, FuturePolicy.org highlights the most exemplary policy solutions uncovered by the World Future Council’s research.
The WFC Commission on Peace and Disarmament engages policy-makers and other stakeholders on policy-solutions to the challenges stemming from the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction, the production and trafficking of conventional weapons and the lasting health effects from explosive remnants of war. §
The National Peace Academy (https://nationalpeaceacademy.us) is a home for peace professionals and community organizers looking to hone their practice and for budding community leaders and changemakers who are seeking knowledge and skills to create safe, healthy and sustainable communities and nurture positive change in themselves, their family, neighborhood, workplace and the world.
Peacebuilding vocations, just like careers in science, business or technology, are built upon foundations of knowledge and skills that are pursued through lifelong learning. While numerous universities are now offerings degree programs in peace related fields, opportunities to gain skills and knowledge in peacebuilding remain relatively inaccessible and expensive. The National Peace Academy (NPA), through partnerships with expert and experienced peacebuilders, is working hard to make learning for peace and change accessible, available and affordable to all.
The NPA is a non-profit educational organization that seeks to address today’s unique social, political, and ecological challenges by preparing individuals and institutions with knowledge and skills to take actions to make our world a better, more peaceful place. It is a principle-based, learning institution that strives to embody and reflect the principles and processes of peace as it supports, advances, and nurtures cultures of peace through conducting and engaging in the promotion of peace education, peace research, peace practice, and peace policy.
The NPA is motivated by a vision of cultures in the United States and around the world founded upon the concept of peace articulated in the Earth Charter, which is: “the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part.”
Toward realization of that Vision, the NPA supports, advances, and nurtures cultures of peace through peace learning toward the development of the full spectrum of the peacebuilder in everyone – inner and outer, personal and professional; and the development of peace systems – local to global.
To achieve that Purpose, the Mission is to provide, catalyze, and make accessible holistic and integrative learning and research for peace, and to elevate in the public consciousness the meaning and value of peacebuilding and everyone’s role in it. §
Azizbek Ashurov, a lawyer, whose work has supported the efforts of the Kyrgyz Republic in becoming the first country in the world to end statelessness, has been selected as the 2019 winner of the UN Refugee Agency’s Nansen Refugee Award (https://www.unhcr.org/uk/nansen-refugee-award.html).
Through his organization Ferghana Valley Lawyers Without Borders (FVLWB), Ashurov has helped well over 10,000 people to gain Kyrgyz nationality after they became stateless following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Among them, some 2,000 children will now have the right to an education and a future with the freedom to travel, marry and work.
As part of the Soviet Union, with no internal borders in place, people moved across Central Asia with internal documentation, acquiring residency and getting married. After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and the formation of new states, many people became stranded across newly established borders, often with now invalid Soviet passports or no means to prove where they were born. This left hundreds of thousands of people stateless throughout the region, including in Kyrgyzstan.
Statelessness affects millions of people worldwide, depriving them of legal rights or basic services and leaving them politically and economically marginalized, discriminated against and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Motivated by his own family’s difficult experience of achieving citizenship after arriving from Uzbekistan in the aftermath of the dissolution, Ashurov helped to found FVLWB in 2003 to offer free legal advice and assistance to vulnerable displaced, stateless and undocumented people in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan.
Ashurov and FVLWB formed mobile legal teams which travelled to remote areas of the south of the country to find vulnerable and socially marginalized groups. In their mountainous country, the mobile legal teams relied on a battered four-wheel drive or travelled on horseback.
This work in collaboration with the Kyrgyz government resulted in the country announcing in July this year that it had ended statelessness. §
The Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures for Peace (http://gamip.org) is a worldwide community of civil society campaigns, organizations, committed citizens, and government officials supporting the development of ministries and other infrastructures for peace. This is undertaken in order to strengthen the UN mission to establish international peace and security. The Alliance works with countries with established ministries and other infrastructures for peace to share best practices and support countries striving to develop a culture of peace.
The Alliance provides leadership for a global movement of civil society and governments striving to develop ministries and other infrastructures for peace. The vision is a world where all countries have ministries and other infrastructures for peace at all levels, that collectively form a dynamic system that fosters sustainable peace.
The Alliance had an essential role in the creation of two of the current four Ministries for Peace in the world, those in Nepal and Costa Rica. The Ministry for Peace in the Solomon Islands also benefited from this pioneering experience. The Alliance also functions as a support system to those institutions and individuals all over the world, allowing them to share experiences and learn during Summits to further initiatives in their own context. Peaceworkers are supported, facilitating exchanges between them, raising awareness on infrastructures for peace and generating engagement. §
The Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org) was established in 01996 [an extra zero is added to indicate the context of the next 10,000 years] to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. The hope is to foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of
market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed – some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth.
It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis: “When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.”
Such a clock should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.
Long Now added a Library dimension with the realization of the need for content to go along with the long-term context provided by the Clock – a library of the deep future, for the deep future. In a sense every library is part of the 10,000-year Library, so Long Now is developing tools (such as the Rosetta Disk, the Long Viewer and the Long Server) that may provide inspiration and utility to the whole community of librarians and archivists.
The Long Bets project – whose purpose is improving the quality of long-term thinking by making predictions accountable – is also Library-related. The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.
Guidelines for a long-lived, long-valuable institution:
• Serve the long view
• Foster responsibility
• Reward patience
• Mind mythic depth
• Ally with competition
• Take no sides
• Leverage longevity
The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars were started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking; to help nudge civilization toward our goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.
Another initiative of the Long Now Foundation is PanLex, which is building the world’s largest lexical database. By transforming thousands of translation dictionaries into a single common structure, the PanLex database makes it possible to derive billions of lexical translations that are not found in any single dictionary. Making translation dictionaries and technology available in under-served languages helps speakers exercise their rights and access equal opportunities, while supporting their social, cultural, and economic well-being. §
Local Futures (www.localfutures.org) works to renew ecological, social and spiritual well-being by promoting a systemic shift towards economic localization. A pioneer of the new economy movement, Local Futures has been raising awareness for four decades about the need to shift direction – away from dependence on global monopolies, and towards decentralized, regional economies. Books, films, and other ‘education for action’ tools are produced, and activist-oriented conferences and workshops organized worldwide. These programs are helping to catalyze a global movement for change.
Local Futures began as The Ladakh Project, more than thirty years ago in the Himalayan region of Ladakh. Local Futures has worked in countries all over the world, including the UK, USA, Spain, Australia, India, Thailand, Bhutan, Korea, and Japan. Currently projects are run under three main ‘umbrellas’: Global to Local Projects, work in Ladakh, and the Economics of Happiness.
Global to Local Projects
The Global to Local label encompasses a wide range of projects, each of which focuses in a different way on the importance of localization to societies and economies.
Global trade can be insane – it wastes resources, worsens climate change, and undermines the livelihoods of many small-scale producers worldwide. A short film and a factsheet are available to raise awareness about this issue.
The International Alliance for Localization is a cross-cultural network of thinkers, activists and NGOs from 58 countries. It focuses on the impact of globalization while also encouraging the regeneration of healthy local economies, communities and ecosystems.
Planet Local is a constantly-growing library of inspiring grassroots initiatives from around the world, including a selection of short films featuring grassroots food and farming projects.
Global to Local Webinars address key issues in the debate about the global economy. Many inspiring speakers have participated, including Charles Eisenstein discussing the topic of debt and speculation and Bill McKibben discussing climate change.
Local Bites Podcast features interviews with inspiring local economy advocates: covering the groundswell of localization around the world, from transition towns to not-for-profit businesses to farmers markets. Subscribe through Podbean or iTunes.
Roots of Change Study Circle Program is a curriculum for hosting study circles featuring the works of leading political, economic and ecological thinkers from around the world. It lays out both how humanity has arrived at our present predicament and what we can do about it.
Work in Ladakh
Ladakh, also known as ‘Little Tibet‘, in the Western Himalayas, has
been home to a thriving culture in tune with nature for over a thousand years. When Ladakh was opened up to ‘modern development’ and the forces of the global growth economy, centuries of ecological balance and social harmony came under threat.
Since 1978, Local Futures has been providing Ladakhis with information about the history and impact of conventional development in other parts of the world, while exploring more sustainable patterns of development in Ladakh itself, based on the use of local knowledge and resources.
The Economics of Happiness
The award-winning film The Economics of Happiness (2011) explains the social and spiritual impact of economic globalization on local communities and economies, and highlights the many benefits of shifting towards the local.
Since 2012, Local Futures has also been organizing an ongoing series of international ‘Economics of Happiness’ conferences in the USA, South Korea, Italy, India and Australia. The conference series is focused on kick-starting broad critical debate about the global corporate economy, and exploring alternatives that benefit society as well as the environment. §
The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation & Emergence (www.thehaguecenter.org) exists to help align necessary resources for the current human and planetary transition. This transition is, in its essence, about moving from separation and polarisation, towards coherence and complementarity. This same transition is playing itself out across all sectors — ecology, economy, and governance, to name a few key ones.
The Hague Center (THC) focuses on international societal challenges whose complexity requires collaboration between multiple stakeholders, providing insight into the current condition, and co-designing and facilitating transition processes towards better futures.
THC operates on a global scale, including a network of small centers (in Europe, Egypt, Canada) and partnering with global-scale organizations. THC serves the global community through large-scale projects and local communities through projects designed to meet local challenges.
THC offers consulting services, project manifestation and trainings to guide organizations, cities, countries and groups in new ways of governing and making decisions; and offers many social technologies (The World Café, Spiral Dynamics, Systemic Constellation Work, Open Space, Theory U, Appreciative Inquiry, Generative dialogue, Holacracy and Meshworking and others) in order to enable large groups of people to efficiently interact and gain access to their collective intelligence, wisdom and consciousness. Through meaningful constructive dialogue, pattern revelation, and co-creative activities, THC develops new ways that honour differences and strengthen our interconnectedness.
Don Beck of Spiral Dynamics felt very strongly that the Netherlands was a focal point for emergence, and inspired several Dutch people to start the Centre for Human Emergence, NL. (www.humanemergence.nl/en) THC was a project of CHE/NL and two years ago became its own organizational entity. §
Business Plan for Peace (https://thebusinessplanforpeace.org) has ambitious long-term aims that challenge the status quo. These are based on solid evidence and recognition of both what is possible and of the urgency to change how humanity operates within our fragile world. A global shift in culture is envisioned, away from the habit of war, towards a manifest commitment to prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace throughout the world. The mission is to generate a groundswell of people from all sectors who believe that a world without war is possible and necessary and who consequently are actively engaged in hastening this change.
Since “the future belongs to those that can see it”, the Business Plan for Peace demonstrates how a world without war can be built. War is now neither necessary nor inevitable.
Inner work and self-knowledge are essential to make a profound contribution toward peace. To enable greater wisdom to permeate decision-making, women are supported and encouraged to occupy leadership positions with grace and resilience. Re-balancing feminine and masculine intelligence serves to prevent and resolve armed conflict.
Business Plan for Peace’s main effort is to encourage a change in policy and practice toward the prevention of violent conflict; provide learning opportunities on the main topics outlined in The Business Plan for Peace book; and enhance awareness through public speaking events, the media, and marketing opportunities, of the fact that war is no longer necessary.
The major global challenges today: Climate change; Migration; Rich/poor gap; Cyber crime; and Terrorism, cannot be solved with military might. Yet, every year, the world spends around $2 trillion on militarisation. It is time to find non-violent ways to ensure humanity’s safety, prosperity and sustainability.
War – part of the human experience for centuries – is neither necessary nor inevitable. It is now clear that the knowledge and the tools exist to prevent and resolve conflict. Global institutions now focus more on developing effective ways to prevent war. The problem is that all these institutions are underfunded, while funding for militarisation continues to increase. Local people know best how to prevent and resolve conflict. The five-fold rise in locally led peace initiatives indicates that the momentum toward a more peaceful world comes from the grass roots. The cycle of violence repeats and is perpetuated, unless interrupted by wise and courageous people. The Business Plan for Peace is generating such people.
Western countries lead the world in military expenditure; a major shift in public policy and divestment from arms trading by these countries is crucial to the prevention of war.
Five of the world’s six largest arms dealers are the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council; this explains why the effort to curb the arms trade is so challenging.
Every year, the world spends around $2 trillion on militarisation.
It would cost only $30 billion a year to end global starvation and hunger.
It would cost only $11 billion to provide the world with clean water.
It would cost only $2 billion to prevent armed conflict worldwide over 10 years.
To build peace effectively, whether in government or at grassroots, requires us to understand the nature of conflict, confront our deeply embedded convictions and experiences, and learn the skills required. For example, humiliation is a key driver of violence, and respect is the most effective antidote to humiliation. When he came out of prison, Nelson Mandela opted for patience, flexibility and wisdom over violence. This successfully avoided a civil war in South Africa. §
Emerge (http://www.whatisemerging.com) is an independent, non-profit media platform highlighting the initiatives, individuals and ways of thinking that are sowing the seeds of a new civilisation.
Emerge is exploring the emerging cultural narratives of our time by collecting useful content from across the web, profiling change makers and thinkers, publishing thought-provoking commentary and producing original videos and podcasts.
Humanity is living in times of profound transition, where our ways of working, communicating and governing are quickly transforming. Many received wisdoms, habits and perspectives are becoming obsolete. What will emerge in the vacuum created by this disruption is not yet clear, but some critical questions hang in the balance:
Will we manage to avert ecological crisis? Will our new technologies enable powerful collaboration, or create intense polarisation? What does it mean to live a meaningful life in relationship with ourselves and others?
By combining live events with the power of the internet, Emerge is a hub for people and initiatives searching for solutions to pressing global challenges, asking the question: What new patterns of living, working and existing together are currently emerging?
Emerge is a network and a movement that celebrates people and projects, and offers an invitation to each of us to discover our role in this new story.
The challenges facing our world today are more complex and species-threatening than ever before in human history. The global threat of climate change, and the social impacts of digitalisation and globalisation, are currently far more complex than our collective capacity to comprehend. In order to move forward, thinking about global problems has to evolve to match their complexity.
Individual psychology is of huge consequence to the outside world. If society is to transform, then the personal development of individuals must be taken seriously as a societal, as well as an individual, concern. There is no one ‘true’ way of seeing the world. In order to move forward binary thinking must be transcended. This means moving beyond left and right political divides, thinking in terms of individual and collective responsibility, national and global identity, honoring individual identities and recognising the need to focus on a greater “we”.
The world is socially constructed in more ways than we habitually tend to think. Human beings are dependent on and connected to the natural world, but when it comes to human society we are the creators. This means that we have more power than we realise to change it. The emerging future will be co-created by all of us. The world is learning to come together in new ways and each of us has a vital role to play. Emerge is a place where all are called forth to bring their gifts to the greater circle.
Across the world, there are hundreds of initiatives, projects and persons already tackling real world problems from this place of deeper awareness. The aim of Emerge is to bring awareness to this growing movement and connect the dots between the people and projects contributing to this emergence.
Emerge began as a three-day live event in Berlin in November 2018 initiated by three non-profit organisations: Perspectiva, London; co-creation.loft, Berlin and Ekskäret Foundation, Stockholm. The gathering brought together pioneers in complexity science, philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sustainability, creativity, and wisdom to explore dynamic solutions to our planet’s greatest challenges and discover new pathways of working, living and creating together. §
