Part 4. These points on the Great Transition have been excerpted from the email/web discussion. Which of these statements do you support?
Please check off all points where you agree, and offer an edited version where you would agree if the wording were slightly amended.
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The Great Transition Initiative and the Tellus Institute have published an essay by Robert Paehlke entitled "Global Citizenship: Plausible Fears and Necessary Dreams". It is available in .pdf here.
This survey is addressed to readers of this essay, and excerpts many points from the email commentary. The survey is intended as a helpful and illuminating exercise in itself, but it is also an exploration of digital methods for convening agreement on complex high-dimensional issues that must be resolved in a collective context -- perhaps the very sort of thing that must be addressed if the Great Transition Initiative is to be successful.
This is Part 4, and includes points introduced by John Martin Gillroy and Manuel Manga
Thanks for your participation or comment!
GTI: Great (or Global) Transition Initiative GCM: Global Citizens Movement GJM: Global Justice Movement
Select ALL statements that are true for you (perhaps more than one).
If the options appearing here do not express your own view, you can add new options, which will be available to all participants.
If the meaning of any concept or term seems uncertain, follow your own personal interpretation.
Answer
1
GCM is a form of collective action problem [and] it is well established that these dilemmas cannot be solved from within, or by bottom-up efforts alone. (John Martin Gillroy)
2
In order for a GCM to be successful, it might start from the bottom-up with the development of social conventions in distinction to the market and sovereignty-based ones currently informing international law. But it would then have to turn these conventions of practice into legal rules and find an institutional structure to balance principle and process in the promotion of the alternative moral precepts that Paehlke advocates. (John Martin Gillroy)
3
Without top-down reorganization and the intervention of legal governance institutions, the [GCM] transformation is at worst improbable and at best impermanent. (John Martin Gillroy)
4
[If it is true that] "the history of citizenship suggests that global citizenship is part of a natural (though not inevitable) progression of human history," this history should also be acknowledged to demonstrate that the most successful collective action takes place within an evolving legal superstructure of rules, incentives, and changing principles. (John Martin Gillroy)
5
Although one level is both formed and reformed by the other, the dialectic of both is the most critical element of any analysis of collective action, but a full discussion of the forces within this dialectic as it applies to Paehlke’s GCM is largely absent from both the original essay and the discussion of it. (John Martin Gillroy)
6
There is little treatment of what the GCM collective action problem is, what the character of the strategic context demands, the assumed character of the individual assumed by the policy-maker to be involved in creating the collective action movement, let alone the relationship of the collective action problem to both the existing international legal structure, or the changes in that structure that would be necessary to implement Paehlke’s recommendations (John Martin Gillroy)
7
[That we do not solve or address the collective action problem] points to a more fundamental failure in our ability to trace the logical connections between the initial premises of our arguments and the empirical results we assume from them. (John Martin Gillroy)
8
What good is it to ponder something like a GCM if we cannot understand the fundamental assumptions and core principles, that is, the essential philosophical logic of concepts at the heart of what is being argued and what makes a certain policy and certain empirical results logical entailments of it? This is the difference between argument and opinion. (John Martin Gillroy)
9
[Paehlke is correct that] the problems that demand a GCM, like rising inequality, are "more a result of public policy than an inevitable result of global economic integration, particularly when such policies are economically inefficient, socially divisive, politically corrosive, and environmentally destructive."
10
It is the paradigm of policy design assumed by the analyst, viz. the theoretical and practical structure of argument that answers these fundamental questions, that is of critical importance to any serious discussion of a GCM as a component of global transformation. (John Martin Gillroy)
11
Only with such [well-formed structure of argument] can one establish the logic of philosophical and factual concepts that inform our premises and then generates the set empirical conclusions they demand and in this way present an intact and systematic argument that can be critically, that is logically, analyzed. (John Martin Gillroy)
12
In the book-length argument for his GCM, Paehlke gestures toward a possible policy paradigm with his reference to Rousseau’s thought as a basis for the generation of the movement, but a simple reference is not enough to see how a policy paradigm based on Rousseau’s philosophical logic of concepts would necessarily lead to the type of GCM described by Paehlke. (John Martin Gillroy)
13
If a great transformation is to be made, we need to understand and test various such paradigms and make complete arguments with a substructure of philosophical logic and a superstructure of empirical policy recommendations that are logically tied together and imply one-another in order to judge their comparative value. Otherwise, we are merely engaged in an eristic clash of opinion. (John Martin Gillroy)
14
Progress will not occur through disconnected assumptions, random critical principles, and a specific wish list of empirical policy goals with no apparent connection to one another. (John Martin Gillroy)
15
If Great Transformations are to be more than talking points, we need a revolution in the systematic study of law and policy that joins logics of policy investigation with concurrent logics of philosophical concepts: superstructure of argument with its substructure. (John Martin
Gillroy)
16
Not doing so is how a discussion like this can proceed without any significant mention of the demands of the fundamental collective action problem at the foundation of Paehlke’s call for a GCM. (John Martin Gillroy) [statement needs editing??]
17
Many GJM and other citizens movements are missing a wider appreciation of the interrelatedness of the issues or a systems perspective of our current reality. (Manuel Manga)
18
I disagree with Paehlke's claim that no leadership is needed or a centralized organization or website for the GCM. (Manuel Manga)
19
The world already has a global capital economic system of governance over nations, which undermines local and national democracy. (Manuel Manga)
20
Most citizens are living their lives in a micro level of understanding and not understanding our current global-Evolutionary Crisis at the macro level. (Manuel Manga)
21
The leadership of most citizen organizations are living their lives in a micro level of understanding and not understanding our current global-Evolutionary Crisis at the macro level. (Manuel Manga)
22
In addition to living and observing from a micro level, most people are trapped by semiotic systems that may not be helpful toward a GCM, global governance, or a Planetary civilization. (Manuel Manga)
23
We are living in the middle of an evolutionary crisis. A crisis that is systemic and that is driven by our worldview, semiotics, crisis of leadership and institutions, and our global capital economic system. This is the crisis that is taking us toward collapse and defuturing. (Manuel Manga)
24
[We need to] get our GJM , GCM, NGOs and thousands of organizations to see that the evolutionary crisis is real, systemic in nature, and impacts humans, species, and planet. The leaders of these organizations need to see this crisis, and begin to collaborate across sectors, and toward a shared vision. (Manuel Manga)
25
[We need to] communicate a clear and compelling vision of a better future. The GTI has great material to contribute in this area; however, people are not aware that the GTI exits and are not aware of its knowledge and resources. I think all the members of the GTI share a common vision of a just, humane, sustainable world. Let's get this vision out there. (Manuel Manga)
26
We need leaders that understand the systemic evolutionary crisis and the vision of a better world. We also need leaders to organize, mobilize, and communicate the GTI. As Jonas Salk said many years ago, we need a social evolution from our Epoch A (evolutionary crisis) to Epoch B (a just, sustainable, flourishing world). We need networks of evolutionary leaders everywhere, informed by the GTI and other sources. (Manuel Manga)
27
[We need to] design a coherent strategy that mobilizes a GCM toward an Epoch B world. There is enough wisdom, insights, and knowledge in this GTI community and in our world to design a coherent strategy that incorporates the best ideas posted in these comments so far. Take the best ideas posted so far and work on this strategy. (Manuel Manga)
28
All these ideas and intellectual knowledge are not going to have the impact needed if the GTI does not share this coherent strategy with the citizens and wake them up from their micro level of consciousness to a macro level of consciousness and get involved in a GCM. (Manuel Manga)
