Natural Democracy

          Implementing natural democracy is the most important challenge facing humanity in the 21st Century.  To meet the challenge we must first understand the evolution-based characteristics of human nature, and then consciously apply that understanding in all the ways that people relate to each other in the broad political processes of natural governance.

          The horrors of W.W.II precipitated the formation of the United Nations.  The yearning that I felt for better ways for people to get along together was universal.  This yearning inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1947 (Ref: Glendon, Mary Ann (2001) A World Made New; Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  Random House. This reference will be moved  to the "Notes" section at the back of the book.).  This declaration provides a legal and moral beacon for the world toward which natural democracy must steer.

          The Universal Declaration specifies that these rights will become available:

               Human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief.
               All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
               Everyone has the right to life and liberty.
               Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
               Everyone has the right to the free development of his or her personality.
               Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.
               Everyone has the right to education.
               Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality.

          The Declaration also provides these goals as beacons:

               Freedom from fear and want
               Equal rights of men and women
               A standard of living adequate for health and well-being

          This century will see an inevitable movement from auto-pilot to self-pilot as people take better charge of their destiny, and work cooperatively toward achievable goals which they set.

         The last sections of Chapter 6 formed a vision of feasible natural democracy using the results of the tests reported in the previous chapters.  If we were to articulate that vision, and implement natural democracy, what choices would people be likely to want to make for their lives?  What goals would emerge?

PERSONAL CHOICES THAT PEOPLE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE

          Over the course of the experiments described in this book, I have asked many people with a variety of life histories and backgrounds, "What choices would you like to be able to make that you can't make now?"  Their lists were lengthy, but in almost every instance, their top seven choices in the order of importance were:

1. Developing into all I'm capable of being 
2. Achieving high and joyous levels of creativity and intelligence 
3. Having personal control over my destiny 
4. Having adequate systems for resolving human conflict 
5. Having a longer productive life 
6. Having mental and physical health 
7. Having highly effective ways by which I can share whatever is on my mind
   

          Then I asked the question to include their families:  "What do you want the future to be for you and your family?"  Here are their answers:

1. Our children and their children will grow into all they are capable of being. 
2. We'll be the ones to say what happens to us and our children. 
3. We'll avoid "Big Brother" and a planned, regimented society. 
4. We'll be doing the things that give us pleasure.  At the same time, we'll be making very important contributions to society and we'll feel good about that. 
5. We'll achieve high and joyous levels of creativity, exaltation from discovery, enthusiasm, triumph, self-esteem, meaningfulness, love and belonging; we'll help our children to achieve the same.  We and they will have much greater educational opportunities as well as opportunities for second and third careers.
   

MEASUREMENTS OF PROGRESS
 
         I had the opportunity to participate in The First Global Conference on the Future, held in Toronto, Canada in July, 1980.  Over 6000 people from 54 countries attended a week long series of meetings.  Many were actively experimenting with ways to help people get along better in the world.  As I listened to their progress, I asked myself, "If these people keep working on what they are doing, where will it lead?  What goals are they working toward?"  Here are my answers:

1. Humanity develops into all it is capable of being 
2. There is broad worldwide participation in decision making on goals and priorities of the human race 
3. Institutions exist which permit everyone to work cooperatively and synergistically toward great goals and institutions which help all people to have personal control of their destiny. 
4. All information is available instantly to every human being on earth, on demand as desired; world-wide communication is completely ubiquitous; everyone has the choice of being highly educated; rapid and effective perception of complex          interrelationships is achieved.
5. A healthy world; everyone has an opportunity  to live a vigorous physical and mental life.

          My boss at the time was Bill McCune at Polaroid who called these goals "excessively presumptuous."   Perhaps they were then.  But as I re-read  Goal 4, I realize so much has happened over the last two decades to bring us closer to achieving it.
 
A WORLD PARLIAMENT

          A proposal for a World Parliament has been developed and endorsed by 141 distinguished individuals from 31 countries and every continent, including E.O.Wilson, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and Paul Kurtz.  They propose a Parliament which would proportionally represent the people of the world rather than their governments.  It would be one house of a bicameral legislature. The present United Nations would continue to represent nations and serve as the other house.  The arrangement would be similar to the structure that emerged after the American Revolution when the confederation of sovereign states created the current federal system with a Senate and a House of Representatives.

          The test of natural governance in Chapter 6 showed that at the community level we can address local, state, national and global issues.  The World Parliament of Wilson and his colleagues has similarities to the community test in Lexington in 1975.  We could expand the power of the World Parliament, by allowing communities at the Lexington level all over the world to have a say in state, national, and global issues.   In effect, this proposal would apply self-piloting and conscious use of the tools of natural governance on a  world scale.  These thoughts startled me.  Were they realistic?
 
           I turned again to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The declaration  proposes a set of principles and functions which could well serve the framework of a World Parliament:

Promote the development of friendly relations between nations.
All are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of the law.
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.
Elections shall be by universal and equal suffrage.
Everyone has the right to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms
set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

 
WORLD PARLIAMENT OPERATING IN A NATURAL GOVERNANCE MODE

         The tests described in the previous chapters provide experience that is helpful  in describing how the World Parliament would operate in a natural governance mode.

          It could be designed to meet most, if not all, of the same specifications as those for natural governance at nation, state, and community levels.   The binding commonality is human nature in all of its manifestations:

1. Reciprocity present on all issues 
2. Conditions that induce reciprocity present 
3. Self-piloting by leaders moving toward self-piloting by all 
4. Taking human nature into account 
5. Deception prevented by reciprocity 
6. Proceeding toward great goals

          Just as these specifications could be implemented, so there could be a similarity in techniques to accomplish that.  Here is a list of appropriate techniques based on the experience of the tests discussed in Chapters 2 through 6.

1. World Parliament staff in face to face dialogue and internet exchange with anyone in the world. In the Lexington test, the staff members of the Advisory Board and the sub-committees were in face to face dialogue with not only the people of the Advisory Board and the sub-committees, but also with many people all over town.
2. Comprehensive agenda including long range goals. In the Lexington test, the agenda was comprehensive and included long range goals.
3. Pertinent information instantly available face to face and by internet. Lexington test: the Advisory Board and the sub-committees had gathered information and made it available to all participants in the debates prior to the voting. To a limited extent, resource people from state and federal governments were present to provide pertinent information as requested.
4. The World Parliament staff members participating in reciprocal exchanges with people in community, state, and national governance through the internet and directly through a World Parliament representative as described in Technique 7 below.        Lexington test: Prior to, during, and following the town meeting sessions, the Lexington town meeting staff worked reciprocally with people in the community, the state agencies and, to some extent, the national government to influence policy development at each of these levels. The policies were mutually advantageous, such as increased funding for research on increasing healthy longevity. Each community would have a website to facilitate cooperation on such issues.
5. All the tools of natural governance are in use in the World Parliament.Lexington test: Chapter 5 showed how the epigenetic rules were applied, and how the process at the town meetings was designed to induce reciprocity. Testing natural governance on crime (Chapter 3) showed how to heal breaches in reciprocity identified as crimes.  The healing opened the way for new reciprocal exchanges.
6. All participants are educated in an adequate understanding of human nature. Lexington test: Only the staff was educated in this understanding.  But since the staff guided the design of the meetings, the understandings described in Chapters 1 and 2 and in the Appendix were put to use. Worklife and Education test (Chapter 4): Technology was used to help educate young people about reciprocity.
7. World Parliament representatives are present in community governance providing staff help.  This person would be participating in community meetings (town meeting equivalents) in two roles.  The first role would be as a member of the community taking community concerns into account.  The second role would be as a representative of the World Parliament in constant communication with the parliament staff member as described in Technique 4 above. A community web site, as mentioned in 4 above, would facilitate such communication. Lexington was able to go only part way in the use of this Technique 7, primarily because the parts of natural democracy at the state level and beyond were only in nascent form.

          The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also contains insights about techniques which should be taken into account for an effective World Parliament:

• Everyone has the right to take part in the government of their country. 
• Education shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among nations, and strive by teaching and education to promote respect for the rights and freedoms.
• Everyone has the right to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. 
• Everyone has duties to the community in which the free and full development of his/her personality is possible.
  

THE  WORLD  PARLIAMENT  AS  HUMANITY'S  BRAIN

          One way to think about the design of a World Parliament is to imagine it serving as humanity's brain.  Our brains contain thousands of interconnected neurons. A multicolored map of cyberspace created by Bill Cheswick and Hal Burch at Bell Laboratories appeared in the January 2000 issue of National Geographic. The way it was drawn gives the impression of networks of neurons in the human brain.  The connecting links between web sites are analogous to the dendrites connecting the neurons in the brain. The web sites of the World Parliament would be world citizens and communities.

          Establishing a World Parliament and having it serve as humanity's brain is a daunting  task.  Many people will be struggling with it.  The idea's time has come.  As I've immersed myself in it, I've felt the need to explain what I think it means to be "humanity".  Being humanity?  Humanity governing itself?
 
         The following poem expresses my thought and blessing for all of us together in the   world:
 

                                                  Being Humanity

                    Being all women, all men, all children of the whole world

                                           Being humanity's DNA

                 Being in every culture, every religion; believing in every belief that anyone
                                       on earth cannot live without

                                          Being every past human

                    Being of every point of view,  every belief about everything

                      Being the expression of every emotion, every feeling

                                                Being humanity.
 
 

           This poem also describes the task of the World Parliament; being humanity in all its glory, amazement and nobility.  Being humanity as we find ways to use all our brains in governing ourselves.

          The Parliament would operate by the rules of humanity's brain.  These rules are the tools for humanity using its brain, tools as shown in the previous chapters.  This book  has shown parts of humanity's brain working in natural governance modes.

          What I've described as a World Parliament would be a combination of what was happening in each of the tests, a composite of natural governances.  The total would function as natural governance because its components  would be feasible natural governances.  The interfaces between governances would be points of balanced and expanding reciprocity.  An example is the interface between the reparative board processes and communities.  Reparative boards catalyze more effective community governance by making more opportunities for reciprocity visible.

          Each community would develop great goals and share them with the world.  Each community would think through how it is going to get to where it wants to go.  All communities would share answers.  Because natural governance would be used throughout the world, there are bound to be similarities between ways of working toward the goals in the initial stages.  Any differences between goals shouldn't get in the way of the initial reciprocity.  The differences should narrow as cooperation increases at all levels of natural governance.  There would be value in having competition among long range goals.  It will provide a safety factor, a cushion, a hedge to allow for unanticipated contingencies, the continuing flexibility to change course to reach goals by other routes.

          As Robert Wright points out in Nonzero, there is also another safety factor: global commerce is expanding to include more and more people.  Global business over the internet, for example.  This gives people a shared interest in protecting that commerce from friction and disruption.  Natural governance will expand to help with this protection.

          People should not feel threatened by a World Parliament.  Political power would still remain at the national level within a modified United Nations.  The power of the World Parliament system would be moral rather than legal. Its authority would come from agreement on similar goals and on appropriate ways of making progress toward reaching them, similar to the authority of the special town meetings as shown in the Lexington test.  Funding for the Parliament would come from an international system of taxation based on the Gross National Product of all nations.  The taxation would be accepted because natural governance would demonstrate progress toward pre-negotiated goals.  For example, progress on the goal of extending the healthy years of life, progress which was catalyzed by the special town meeting process in Lexington, natural governance in action.

          The vision of Wilson, Clarke, Kurtz, and their associates is precise in its reasoning and consistent with human nature. Our tests of natural governance have shown their vision to be feasible.  The vision in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is feasible.

          Our opportunity to advance natural democracy is to recognize the inherent dignity, and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, so that all of us may enjoy freedom, justice and peace.

          A concurrent obligation is to understand human nature and devote it to the task of developing global natural governance.

          Our lives will be enriched.

          We will have decommissioned natural selection.

          We will be free to become all we can be.