Introduction to the Voices of Humanity Online Initiative

Have you noticed that the United Nations has great ideas, but not enough follow through?

A smart, friendly, upbeat global consciousness is needed to support our efforts to achieve  all of the UN Goals, including nuclear and general disarmament.

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The mission of the Voices of Humanity - Order Our of Chaos initiative is to build an online community forum that will heal the world, bringing order out of chaos. We are particularly aiming to bring in individuals and organizations who support the goals of the United Nations and/or who identify with such marginalized groups as: women, indigenous peoples, other disadvantaged minorities, refugees, veterans, the poor.

See https://voh.intermix.org, where you can also find the text for this podcast.

By giving each nation and religion its own collective voice in a global conversation capped by the Voice of Humanity-as-One, Voices of Humanity both transcends and supports our nations and religions.

Please be aware that the online Voices of Humanity Forum is still in test mode. The app will not be available until Spring of 2023. You are more than welcome to join the online conversation in desktop mode. Your participation will help us test the forum.

Transcript

Welcome to the first Order Out of Chaos podcast. The mission of the Voices of Humanity - Order Out of Chaos initiative is to build an online community that will heal the world. My name is Roger Eaton and I have been working on this project since I was 5 years old. I’ll tell the story in the next OOoC podcast in two weeks.

The global chaos is evident. There’s climate change; there’s the loss of wildlife; and now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the possibility of WW III. Today I read about huge declines in migratory bird populations. Yesterday, the accelerating meltdown in Antarctica was the news. Every day there are new details. Civilization appears headed for collapse, even without a nuclear war.

And things are speeding up. AI and quantum computing will alter the world drastically and in unforeseen ways. Not to mention genetic meddling. Can humanity stay on top of these changes? Not without a major reorganization. That’s for sure.

On the positive side, people everywhere are smart and friendly. The global literacy rate is over 85%, and we have something like 140 million ph.ds. So why can’t we get it together to resolve the global issues? The simple answer is that the nations with their us vs them mentality are blocking the way.

 You can check us out at voh.intermix.org, where you will also find a link to the podcast text.

The Voices of Humanity (VoH) forum is designed to bring humanity together. If we leave it at that, then uh-oh is the correct response. But if the same design supports our differences as well, then we have what we need. With a both/and strategy VoH will implement its unity-and-diversity vision for the world. Unity-and-diversity is the Together & Apart paradox that underlies everything. It works by alternating between the two modes. Thank you Alfred North Whitehead!

So how does it work? Imagine if Facebook listed the top-liked posts from the last 30 days. The whole world would share those items. That is what Voices of Humanity is designed to do. Voting on messages, or “collective communication” as I call it, is a simple idea that unleashes awesome possibilities.

The VoH forum is host to seven Voices of Humanity: three voices of the genders: Women, Men and Simply Human; three voices of the generations: Youth, Middle-age and Seniors; and the Voice of Humanity-as-one. Top-rated messages from these seven voices of humanity will be extremely likable in the Facebook sense but more than that, because love, wit and spirit are what everyone appreciates, we can expect the seven voices of humanity to be consistently kind, intelligent and upbeat. Everyone with an interest in global issues will read the top-rated messages and be influenced in a positive way, giving rise to a surprising, ever changing global consciousness.

As a key part of its strategy, Voices of Humanity will implement a collective communication conversation between the nations. To get things started, a Middle East peace conversation between Israelis and Palestinians will be ready to go by next Spring when the VoH app will be available. The conversation will use the Together and Apart format to overcome the challenges. If the conversation alternated between the Israelis electing a message and the Palestinians doing the same, then the us vs them mentality of the hardliners on both sides would quickly build up, making the situation worse instead of better. But if we alternate between the two nations electing a message together with the two nations each electing their own message apart, then we can expect an improvement in relations.

In together-mode, Israelis and Palestinians will elect seven messages to represent their common humanity. The elected messages will be intelligent, generous and upbeat. Why? Because stupid, hateful and dull messages will not get upvotes and may even get thumbs down. As a result, participants will feel a growing sense of solidarity across the national lines. Moreover, hard-liners will stay away from the process because participation would seem to support the idea of a common humanity.

In apart-mode, Israelis and Palestinians will again tend toward electing smart, kindly and spirited messages to represent their own nation. To be sure, we must expect some winning messages in apart-mode may not be received well by participants from the other nation. Still, the important effect is that all participants will see that the process does support their separate identities. Therefore they need not fear that the growing sense of a common humanity in the together-mode will eventually result in an erosion of their sense of their own nationality. 

The process will begin with well intentioned participants, both Israeli and Palestinian. Over time we can expect that momentum will build, bringing in a wider range of participants, eventually even some of the hardliners. 

That’s it for now. Stay tuned!