Some countries have laws that force their citizens to continue with Military Service every year (Switzerland, for example), other countries make it an obligation to Vote (Mexico, for example).

The Land of the Free should pass laws for citizens to volunteer, to make this Planet a better place for generations to come.

The best exploration of these sorts of ideas that I know are on the website of the Great Transition Initiative. I hope all those who are interested will go there and read some of the articles in GTI’s new paper series.

Deborah

Science is a relatively new gift, as you suggest. This gift from God is needed in our time because it could be more vital now than ever before to the preservation of human and environmental health.

Cooperativeness is a wondrous human attribute. I am for the unbridled expression of as much altruism as is possible in 2007. Who knows, perhaps global cooperation could mean that goodwill would be extended widely to include our many brothers and sisters in the human community; that biodiversity would be sensibly protected from extirpation; that human beings would fairly and equitably share our abundant storehouse of available resources; and that humanity would find its balance with nature……all of which would result in human beings discovering a viable way out of what looks to me like a predicament, one that looms ominously before humanity on the far horizon. By virtue of these ubiquitous cooperative activities, it would become readily evident to our children that we preserve more than destroy; enhance more than diminish, share much more than consume, and give back many times more than we take from the Earth. The dissipation of Earth’s finite resources and the pernicious degradation of the planet’s frangible ecosystem services that our children are witnessing today would immediately cease.

What I trying to say here is this: perhaps cooperation is like a “law of nature” in that we choose either to live well by cooperating with one another or to suffer certain dire consequences resulting from endless, unbridled competition for dominion over one another, other life and the Earth.

For example, competition embedded in economic globalization activities would give way to a new economic model that plainly reminds people of the economy of the natural world itself. Such a model would be organized by deploying the trait of cooperation. The current global economy with its seemingly endless, unrestrained and unsustainable economic growth activities would be replaced by bounded sustainable development enterprises based upon cooperation and on production capabilities getting better without getting bigger.

If human beings were to become as capable of providing financial incentives for cooperative behavior in the new economy as we are at incenting competition now, then the future will be secure for coming generations, I believe.

These poorly and tentatively expressed ideas need much work. Even so, your invitation to share them pleases me.

As ever,

Steve

Cooperate … or else!

Seems pretty imperative with so many people on the planet.

I’ve heard over and over again that sustainability relies on cooperation and recognizing the common good. Science can only help us if we all agree to work towards the common goal of saving the whole planet.

It sounds idealistic but it’s also pretty necessary.

Western science, as we know it, is only a few centuries old, however. And of course humanity existed long before our type of science came into being. Altruism - goodwill toward one’s fellow human - our human trait of cooperativeness - all these might actually outweigh science in their importance to the human race.

Thoughts on this?