We all recognize that our democracies find it difficult to resist the automation of technological civilizations as well as industrial and consumer societies. Ultimately, within these, we finally are being manipulated so much more subtle and refined than we were by the methods used in post-totalitarian societies.
We do not draw benefit because we also are victims of the same automation and are often unable to avoid falling into artifice or exceed our concerns about our personal survival to become responsible individuals who truly contribute to the creation of a sustainable and peaceful world – the creation of the collective destiny.
Our world is fully made up of systems, living or non-living, nested and in interaction. The society and the economy are two major systems which control is ensured by the use of cybernetics (the science of systems control). By definition, a balanced cybernetic system has the property of self-regulation. A trend in one way automatically creates the conditions for the reverse trend. Such systems demonstrate high stability in time. However, we note that all humanity has a general inability to control the situation. In sum, our systems are not balanced. Currently we misuse of cybernetics.
It is for this reason that modern society seems to lose more and more the spirit of community, natural empathy, affection between human beings and respect for the environment. It is now necessary to find a way to overcome all these dangers coming from individualism.
We should stop seeing globalization as a negative factor leading to the disappearance of the primacy of states and the domination of the markets. We all know that the time of states’ domination was marked by terrible wars and totalitarianism. Regarding the domination of markets, it is simply the consequence of individualization too implanted in our societies. Globalization simply has the face that we attribute to it by our collective actions.
However, increasingly, people are calling for a strengthening of the global capacity to regulate markets and international relations. Today, the international relations are always supposed to relate to the interests of certain states rather than ethical standards and positive and rational exchanges. So people are claiming another globalization – an alternative globalization – a different one – globalization with a human face.
The concept of global governance system must not refer to a world state, as some people imagine or fear, but at a orderly system (balanced cybernetic system) in which the states are increasingly guided by international ethical rules. These rules should not only be based on an agreement between states but also on a massive public support generated by a global civil society.
It is therefore necessary to establish a regulation. But are international regulations possible without an international state? Well, yes; it would be based on a new kind of social agreement with its system of values. This social agreement and its system of values would be based on a vision of the notions of values and reason printed in the human consciousness. This concept of social agreement would be based on the consent of individuals and would commit them.
A local civil society would be a participatory process, located on territory, through which individuals are in phase with each other and with the centers of economic and political authorities (which include institutions and companies). It would be a self-organizing activity designed for specific purposes related to progressive social and human values.
By civil society, we always understand autonomy and self-organization. But this is not to forget communication and transparency, two major components of a balanced cybernetic system. In the ideal territorial civil society, we logically see a slight withdrawal of the state in his usual roles and above all a creation of civic engagement islands working in symbiosis with the state (act and move in the same direction). These perfectly organized islands are generated by local dynamics of progress. The challenge is to create an ethics-based community, that is to say, a community based on morality, sharing and respect. All societies of the world (Western and non-Western societies) largely have the potential to experience something similar. For what reason? Simply because all cultures have traditions of human dignity, tolerance, use of reason and public deliberation.
If the territorial civil society is related to the territory, the global civil society is related to the concept of positive interdependence. Thus, a global civil society can without any problem, and should necessarily exist in the absence of an alias world state or a super institution with great power. The risk of misuse of this power is too big. However, we should be able to understand this interdependence and, as well, should be able to make a beneficial use of it. The state of our societies shows us that this is not the case yet.
In addition, no movement can reflect the aspirations of people around the world. This is why many say that the idea of a global civil society is a mistake because it is to represent a world opinion and substitute the functioning of representative democracy at national level.
Also, how global civil society can convince states to adopt a multilateral alternative framework to address critical issues? Well, there is simply no alternative but to try to establish a set of global rules based on consent and ethics.
The only way to achieve the consent of the mass (macro level) is to focus only on the micro level – by a real-time experiment made by the stakeholders in each territory of the world.
But what should we experiment in fact? It’s simply about experiencing the real benefits (the positive added-value) that these ethical rules could result in the territories (that is to say, getting an overview of local samples of more humanistic and sustainable socio-economic and behavioural models, then experimentingspirituality at the heart of the economy and local governance). This would inevitably create the collective within each society revealing a constantly growing number of players for positive change. Finally, this would allow a transformative learning sufficiently powerful and effective to give the means to deploy thesemovements of positive thinking and co-creation beyond the borders of the territories concerned.
These regional dynamics are all unique as they take into account every socio-economic and local cultural particularity. They are initiated by projects based on experience and become highly viral thanks to information technology (highly interactive philanthropic projects).
The multiple civic implications at the territorial level (also called singular territorial dynamics) fit together like a giant puzzle with an ingenious implementation mechanism using a powerful catalyst (Big Smart Data of EL4DEV concept) and a multidisciplinary activity of conceptualization. The whole will form a highly scalable and adaptable modular structure. Then, from this, the real global civil society will be born – in its prototype form. It will be born in a way that no one expects.
The rules of exchanges and global management of world affairs would ultimately be defined within the social agreement, in a highly participatory way and by the mass consent. It’s the only solution to form this global civil society so imagined and described as an utopia. In short, the social agreement will only be made by continually increasing civic involvement of stakeholders in each country around the world. The connection between the territories will be possible by the similarities encountered in civil implications. These similarities experienced by different peoples will be the foundations of the social agreement. The result of the whole is greater than the sum of all components set (a principle of cybernetics).
The social agreement will never be imposed on people; neither its values. It will exist thanks to the deep and shared desire of a heterogeneous international population looking to evolve into a sustainable lifestyle more respectful of people and the environment. It will be born from a participatory conceptualisation by all stakeholders of the world. It will be related to the concept of positive interdependence and new humanism. The civil society will be evolving from its primary form (the prototype form) to several increasingly sophisticate forms but whose fundamentals remain the same. The engines of this positive evolution are conductive education, thought and subtlety of mind and the intelligence of the heart.
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