Citizens everywhere can feel the ground shifting from under them, from terrorism to pandemics to job insecurity, yet we do not yet have a road map of the changes, let alone a blueprint for how to address them.
All of these dislocations can be tied in part to major changes in the way the global economy operates. Some of these changes have been documented by authors such as Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) and William Greider (The Soul of Capitalism), both in terms of a sense of great optimism and great pessimism, respectively. Yet no one has clearly tied these things together in a way that gets us past the stage of lamentation and onto a plan to respond.
The world is not flat, but round. We are increasingly affected and interconnected from one remote corner to another, and both the positive and negative effects of this transformation are multiplying.
A golden age is well within our grasp. It is not a pipe dream. What is good for us as individuals and as nations is in many ways directly tied in with the welfare of others.
Our Diagnosis - The Links Between Global Problems and Our Everyday Lives
The Solution - Why Our Attempts to Tackle Global Problems Fail, and a Way Forward
This site is about an idea that we think is ripe to come to fruition- the idea that we can begin to tie our fates together instead of cleaning up the mess that spills over from one place to another. We invite you to read the Futurist article that summarizes our approach. We also invite you to send us material that we can post to this website to continue the conversation, whether you agree with us or not. Please send your responses to ahira@sfu.ca The key point is to start a dialogue about what we can do to make this a livable, healthy planet on which our children will be able to thrive. However, we are not utopians but realists, and what we are proposing is a hard-nosed alternative to the fly-swatting that passes for global solutions now, attempts that often lead to greater and other problems rather than solutions. Check out the links on the diagnosis and the cure before becoming too skeptical. We invite you to join us in improving the ideas here and in passing on the word! This website was designed by Scott Jacques.
Andy Hira