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Introduction of John EWBANK
John EWBANK
Thursday, October 31, 2002 12:42 PM
I am an 86 year old retiree who continues gainful work as a patent attorney
and am active in the decentralist-federalist movement. I am super-delighted
with the machine-translation of Pierre Caro's perspectives. Many aspire for
a world seeking greater justice. Many of us are victims of a great variety
of authoritarian cultures' religious, political cults, mass media, campaigns
by politicians, etc. so that we fail to recognize what a large portion of
our injustices are traceable to the inadequate wisdom of "reformers" of
earlier decades. Too many earlier reformers imagined that the then existing
technological and cultural matrix would continue for many centuries. The
theologians who injected the reform that humans were masters over all other
creatures and that humans could dominate the earth fulfilled a useful role
for their particular era. Flynn has helped to alert humanity to its
obligation to the stewards of the universe instead of exploiters. Changes in
attitude, such as recognition of how we continue to be brainwashed by dogmas
that (like "Man -the Master") were not even recognized, is basic perspective
concerning a World Parliament. Each individual's perspective on the here and
now needs to have a "millennia" perspective, that each individual is a
beneficiary of the generations of the last 400 years, and is a trustee for
the generations of the next 400 years, so that the happenstances of the 100
years of this life are constantly evaluated from a millennial time frame.
My dad had 6 children, and died at 82 with zero grandchildren. My brother
was in his 70s before he told me that it was my dad's authoritarianism that
prompted him, as an adolescent, to be childless. Those parents, who imagine
that their descendants will be revised editions of themselves, having faith
in the same doctrines, etc. as they, are sure to have some of the
frustrations of my dad. If he had lived to 92, he might have become
acquainted with our older adopted son, who died at age 30, and if he had
lived to 94, he might have become acquainted with our younger adopted son,
now 55, unmarried, homosexual, and not have children. Hence, my wife and I
have long assumed we would have no grandchildren, but it has not bothered
us. No individual has a right to grandchildren.
If humanity is to survive, if humanity is going to achieve greater per
capita happiness, the transformation of the institutional matrix will
involve primarily cultural changes about which a world parliament is almost
irrelevant. A world parliament is needed in order to cope with the ongoing
problems of military weapons. What will increase per capita happens will
result from cultural changes that cannot be effectively coerced. A world
Parliament can only be effective concerning matters about which previous
coercive governments have generally been truly effective. There is trivial
basis for the current participants in an e-mail parliament to pretext to be
having coercive authority. If we were able to be of sufficient service to
stimulate gratitude, then possibly within a decade, an e-parliament might
have some opportunity for "snowballing" impact. Initially, our impact will
be almost entirely upon each other. One trend in the world, such as seen in
the remarkably impressive "MANDATE THE FOR.ORG" (which has been functioning
in a manner vary similar to the e-Parliament, but from Colombo, Sri Lanka),
has been to emphasize youth, and unemployment among youth, because
population wise, that is among the most serious problems in the world today.
Achieving a sustainable population, and departing from the "infinite growth"
mania of the cultures of most of the world's areas, has been dealt with in
Europe on a cultural pattern. Shrinking populations create now problems, and
Europe is pioneering on how to cope. Coercion, such as the attempts by China
and India to have national population programs, have been tragic in their
overall effects, and help to clarify why any coercive restraints upon
reproductive freedom must be at the acquaintanceship group or possibly at a
municipal level, and clearly not any remote governmental bureaucracy such as
a province, nation, continent, or global government.
All forms of creeping centralism, such as the request of nations to help
finance birth control programs, are sure to lead to more "whiplash" than
beneficent results. Within a local constancy, such as a municipality,
majority vote and coercion are effective. When attempted coercion by remote
bureaucracies, whether religious, business, sports, educational, or
governmental, majority vote is almost irrelevant. All culture is local. Only
as responsibility for transformations is placed predominantly at the local
cultural level can it hope to have the flexible long term impact that
humanity needs for significant improvement in per capita income and per
capita improvement in decreasing the great abundance of injustices that
humanity has inherited from the "reformers"[idealists quite analogous to the
participants in the e-parliament.
I have not yet learned how to send a message to the e-parliament, so I am
tentatively addressing it to you. You have the machine translation
facilities that I lack. Each participant is so busy that only if we manage
to make our messages intellectually stimulating can we hope to build up a
worthwhile group of participants. It would be very easy for some explicit
doctrine to dominate the e-parliament, and thus make it relatively
worthless. I want to be open-minded about what might ultimately be some of
the conclusions of the e-parliament. I am not in any way trying to be the
most popular of participants. The future is unknowable. The future of the
e-Parliament is unknowable.
WP21 Alliance Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
E-mail : world-parl@forums.alliance21.org
Fax 1 717 264 5036
Information, inscriptions, désinscriptions: germa@alliance21.org
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