About the Global Assembly Dialog
Introduction
The prototype Global Assembly Dialog is an experiment in participatory democracy on the web aimed at massively involving "We the People of the Earth" and leading to the formation of a nonviolent bottom-up Global Assembly with real power to build a world that works for everyone.
Global Assembly Dialog Results so far:
The Dialog uses a web rating technology to vote on messages written by the participants. Please join us . Your part will be to write a message and to read and rate messages written by others. The highest rated messages will be distributed back to everyone by email. The goal is to go global with massive numbers so that the "elected" messages truly represent the entire human race.
The Dialog is sponsored by the Unity-and-Diversity World Council. We are co-sponsored by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics in Malibu. Additional co-sponsors wanted. Contact UDC's Rev Leland Stewart or Roger Eaton . Our web community is being developed on the Wiser Earth site. If you want to participate in discussion about the Dialog and directions for the Dialog go to our group there.
At this point we have 900+ email addresses, which equates to 50+ active members. The sponsors are in it for the long haul, so please stay with us and use the Invite a Friend feature to bring in others. Plans are to add forums so we can discuss the messages before we vote on them. Once we hit critical mass, estimated at 10,000 active members, we should be able to zoom to planetary size in three or four years. Please join us as we build a world that works for everyone.
We are betting that democracy on a global scale is the solution to the ever more obvious shortcomings of the nation-state system. We love our nations, but we have to rise up to the global level to solve global problems. Unifying mankind, if we do it right, will mark the beginning of a golden age – and it is in our reach.
We have two plans to bring the online GA Dialog down to earth so it will have its effect. First, as we recruit groups and networks for the Dialog, we will be asking them to add a mention of Dialog results to their local agendas and to provide representatives to an annual in-person Global Assembly meeting. The annual Global Assembly meeting is expected to evolve into a global institution that sits permanently, something like the U.N. General Assembly, but organized bottom up from groups and networks rather than top-down from the nations. Second, we have high hopes for a Nonviolent Service Arm (NVSA) of the Dialog as described below.
In More Detail
The Global Assembly Dialog process is designed for the exchanging of messages between groups online. The focus is on the group level message exchange, not on the exchange of messages between individuals.
In the GA Dialog, topics are provided and each member of the group responds, adding his or her comments to the dialog. These messages are voted upon and the message that the group rates highest is put forward. Here's how it works:
- Members of the group write "candidate" messages either on a preset topic or on their own topic if so desired.
- The members rate the candidates on two scales, for interest and approval, and the highest rated message wins that "round" and is delivered to the other group(s) as an expression of the authoring group - this is what is meant by "group level" message exchange. To determine the highest rated message, we multiply average interest times average approval for each message and compare. Elected messages are therefore both interesting and approved. Because there are normally very many messages, there is preliminary rating to bring the numbers down for the final runoff.
Click here for even more complete detail. Later in 2007, or early 2008, we will be adding a discussion phase between the writing and rating phases of each round. The discussion phase will bring individual message exchange back into the process, but the focus will still be on the exchange of messages between groups.
The GA Dialog alternates between unity and diversity rounds using the Eaton Model of Collective Communication . In the unity rounds, everyone cooperates to elect a single message. In the diversity rounds, the separate groups each elect their own message. The prototype GA Dialog will begin with at least the following groups: Education Network, Environment Network, Independents, Interfaith Network, Overview, and Peace & Justice Network.
Dialog Expectations
The theme of the Dialog is how to build "a world that works for everyone." Humanity, we believe, is composed largely of intelligent and generous human beings who already agree it is past time to get on with the job. The missing ingredient is the common awareness that we, the people of the world, are already united. Consciousness of that unity is an important part of what the Dialog will provide.
The structure of the Dialog gives the advantage to those who want to work together for our common peace and prosperity in a well-sustained natural environment. The hardliners are faced with the difficult choice of either staying away, in which case they lose influence entirely, or participating, in which case they are effectively endorsing human unity and will feel the pressure every day to moderate their views. Therefore we, the Dialog proponents, are in the enviable position of being entirely inclusive in our attitude. If you are not against us, you are for us!
Electing a message is a unifying activity. Elected messages become doubly important, first because, by the nature of the rating system, they are highly approved and interesting but also because we realize that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone has read these messages. In other words, the top rated messages have reached collective consciousness. They are shared messages, and as such leap ahead of the other messages in everyone's imagination. We get everyone on the same page in a very literal way, thus encouraging the groups to self-coordinate. At some point we will have enough participation so the whole world will be reading the messages elected by humanity. That will be such powerful PR for the global perspective that all the media money and hardliner spin-machines in the world will not be able to dent our impact.
Moreover, the highly rated messages will consistently express love and wit, because these core attributes are what all the world appreciates. As we see generous, intelligent and good-humored messages prevail again and again, our sense of trust will grow, and our feelings for the "other" in general will be uplifted. This effect will take hold within our developing movement and raise our spirits from the start, giving us the energy to go global in a big way. Along these lines, see the wonderful results of a Jewish-Muslim dialog using an earlier version of the GA technology.
Finally we should consider the effect of participation on the participants. The continued alternation of viewpoint from the unity perspective to the separate group perspective and back should prove highly educational. Because the framework of the dialog itself guarantees the separate group identities, the participants can ardently promote unity in the unity phase without feeling any sense of disloyalty to their separate group. And it works the other way about as well, where the participants can whole-heartedly promote the welfare of the separate groups in the diversity phase without thereby betraying their common humanity.
The Nonviolent Service Arm (NVSA)
The Nonviolent Service Arm of the Global Assembly will be composed of autonomous local task-forces connected via the internet. The purpose of the local NVSA task-forces will be to support the Global Assembly through nonviolent action based on GA advisories. Each local task-force will have a secretary whose responsibility will be to coordinate with the other task-force secretaries and to respond as a group via the dialog software to the Global Assembly. See also the Wedding of Humanity and Nonviolence article. The expectation is that the NVSA task-forces will self-assemble into an autonomous organization devoted to, but separate from, the Global Assembly.
The dialog software has a feature called "Shared Subjects". In the writing phase of a round, the participants will be able to see the subjects that have been used so far. They will then either pick an existing subject or start a new one. In addition to an overall selected message for the round, each subject will have its own selected message. For the Global Assembly Dialog, one of the provided Shared Subjects will always be Advice for the Nonviolent Service Arm. A major function of the NVSA will be to respond to and, insofar as practical, to act upon the GA advisories.
Having the NVSA in place will add credibility to the process, making it apparent that we can have an effect in the world. On a more theoretical level, by channeling all action through a nonviolent body, we will train the Global Assembly to think in terms of nonviolence. When we get to a position of global power, the built in nonviolent bent of the Global Assembly will help prevent the misuse of that power.
Because the Nonviolent Service Arm will be built from the bottom up, it is impossible to specify exactly how it will be structured, and this vagueness about structure makes it hard to explain and recruit for the NVSA. To begin, therefore, the NVSA will be a network within the Global Assembly Dialog. This is structurally clear and it gives the NVSA a built in way to respond to the GA advisories. Also, it makes it easy for Global Assembly participants to be recruited for the NVSA.
How to Make it Happen
We have to work our way up in stages. This is why we have decided to call our September 2007 launch with some 800+ email addresses a "prototype". That will give us a chance to relaunch in mid 2008 after we have more experience and the forum capability. The Global Assembly meetings will continue the pattern of expanding by stages. Each Global Assembly will bring in the new players to decide directions, always including a new relaunch, until the next Global Assembly.
For the upcoming prototype launch, we will build on our existing strength in the Interfaith and Peace communities, and reach out to the Environmental community, which we think is a natural ally. We will be enlarging the initial groups by seeding the internet with as many links as we can to bring in participants, and by advertising. The software has multiple paths for bringing people in: via direct invitation from the Dialog coordinator and moderators, via email links, via web links and through an "Invite a Friend" link that will be at the bottom of the page for existing participants. All these will come into play. Please join us!!!  | |
Safari 3.0 will be supported for the Global Assembly after it comes out of beta testing. Meanwhile, if you are using an earlier version of Safari, please download and use Firefox.
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