"If men can be found who revolt against the spirit of thoughtlessness, and who are personalities sound enough and profound enough to let the ideals of ethical progress radiate from them as a force,
from Out of my Life and Thought
The very idea of broadening one’s loyalties and affiliations beyond the narrow confines of the marketplace and the nation-state to include the human species and the planet is revolutionary and portends vast changes in the structuring of society.The new visionaries view the earth as an indivisible organic whole, a living entity made up of myriad forms of life brought together in a community.
"There is reason to be hopeful that a new vision based on transformation of consciousness and a new commitment to community will take hold. If an alternative vision steeped in the ethos of personal transformation, community restoration, and environmental consciousness were to gain widespread currency, the intellectual foundation could be laid for the post-market era."
from The End of Work
"A new ethic is required--a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth...This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes."
"A world government with powers adequate to guarantee security is not a remote ideal for the distant future. It is an immediate necessity, if our civilization is to continue. It is the condition of the survival of ourselves and of all we value.
The establishment of such an organization must not depend upon the initiative of the various governments. Only the unbending will of the peoples of the world is capable of setting in motion the forces required to make such a radical break with old and obsolete political traditions."
"There can be no planetary equity until all the sovereign nations are abolished and we have but one accounting system--that of the one family of humans aboard Spaceship Earth. Ample food and growing capacity exist on our planet to feed well every world human. But the sovereign nations and their international-trade-balancing system, and the individual hoarders of foods and other goods within the separate nations, prevent the distribution of the foods. World Games discloses that humanity will perish on this planet if the sovereignty of nations is not abandoned and if the World Games world-around computerized time-energy accounting is not forthwith inaugurated."
"Today humanity is facing a triple security crisis: the effects of environmental decline, the repercussions of social inequities and stress, and the dangers arising out of an unchecked arms proliferation that is a direct legacy of the cold war period.
Analysts are finding a growing privatization of security and violence in the form of legions of private security guards, the proliferation of small arms among the general population, and the spread of vigilante and "self-defense" groups. A culture of violence in which vicious responses to social problems are the norm has taken root in many countries....
The 1995 World Social Summit in Copenhagen recognized, rhetorically, at any rate, that poverty, unemployment, and social disintegration are closely linked to issues of peace and security, and that there is an urgent need for a new global commitment, a global social compact, to reduce deep inequities that breed explosive social conditions, fuel ethnic antagonisms, and drive environmental decline."
"Given plenty of time and pressure, conspicuous consumption of all types might decline as have smoking in the United States and ivory sales worldwide. The trouble is, time is awasting for the planet, and constraining consumption of entire categories of products--fossil fuels, for example, or chemicals--is not as simple as doing it for a particular item.The challenge, then, is to generate unprecedented, organized pressure for change, and to aim that pressure where it will have the greatest effect." "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death... There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We therefore absolutely and urgently need new ways. The less we lose time, the less species and nature will disappear.
Faced with this momentous challenge we must remember these words by Henry Thoreau: "For every thousand people hacking at the branches of evil, only one attacks the roots. Attacking the roots is unpopular." Well, we must conceive a people’s awakening, insurgence or revolution which will make attacking the roots popular. "There are no limits to what the campaigns of tomorrow can achieve--campaigns not yet born, for causes not yet articulated, championed by hearts and minds still unformed. And it is often those single-minded enough to believe their missions to be the most important, who are also likely to make it the most successful. (July 14, 1998)
"How much is Enough?--the Consumer Society and the Future of Earth"
Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series
quoted by World Report
of CARE
Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism...
Let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world."
Former Under Secretary General of the United Nations