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I very much agree with Algove's posting. Evolutionary Biology has much to teach us about the world's present predicament. Although many evolutionists follow the Darwinian doctrine of natural selection and competition being the key drivers of evolution, some post-Darwinians see that cooperation is equally important. These post-Darwinians understand that evolution has direction and is evolving towards ever-larger scales of cooperative governance; from single-cells up to multi-cell organisms, up to families, up to tribes, up to nation states, up to supra-national states (EU) and ..... They agree that the next great cooperative scale of governance will be global. Some describe these levels of cooperative governance as 'holons'.
Once a new level of cooperative governance (or holon) is created, it is characterised by healthy competition. That is to say, the new level of governance is adequate because it rewards behaviour which is helpful to the common good and punishes behaviour which is detrimental to it. But as time goes on and technological developments produce the conditions whereby actors can gradually find ways around that level of governance, competition become destructive: harmful behaviour starts to be rewarded and good behaviour is effectively unrewarded. Crisis develops.
Today's mobility of global capital forces all nations into destructive competition with one another to attract capital and jobs; a competition which forces them to sacrifice social and environmental protection in order to remain relatively more attractive to capital than other nations. Competition has thus become globally destructive. Globalisation is therefore nothing more than the crisis which either precedes the development of the new higher-level holon (i.e. some form of global governance) or a rapid degeneration to catastrophe. Which way we go is humanity's choice. As Algove rightly says, humanity is part of evolution. Our present dilemma is therefore little different to that faced eons ago by destructively competing single-cells before they discovered a way of cooperating to become multi-cell organisms: their dilemma is our dilemma.
Some post-Darwinian evolutionists have become very interested in the Simultaneous Policy initiative http://www.simpol.org/ because they say it is capable of resolving this dilemma; it offers an appropriate process for making the transition from destructive competition to global cooperation; a way to get to the new higher-level holon. It would therefore offer a process by which some form of World Parliament could be brought into being.
with best wishes John Bunzl
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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