voice of humanity

Global Assembly now accepting sign ups

2007-06-24T23:17:37Z

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:

1. Members of the group write "candidate" messages either on a preset topic or on their own topic if so desired.

2. 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, Interfaith Network, Peace Network, Unaffiliated and MORE.

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 healthy 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.

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.

How to Make it Happen

We have to work our way up in stages. This is why we have decided to call our July launch with a few thousand email addresses a "prototype". That will give us a chance to relaunch in early 2008 after we have more experience. 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. 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!!!

news release

2007-06-24T17:20:34Z

PACIFIC PALISADES, CA -- June 24, 2007. The Special Events Committee of the Unity-and-Diversity Council held a Convergence gathering at Temescal Canyon Conference and Retreat Center on June 8-10, 2007.

Rev. Stewart and the Unity-and-Diversity Council (UDC - est. 1965) are best known for hosting nearly five decades of interfaith and intercultural events, the largest being "Survival Sunday" held at the Hollywood Bowl with 12,000 in attendance, focused on publicizing the United Nations First Special Session on Disarmament.

Four years later, in June 1982, the same concern produced the first Peace Sunday, which was held in the Rose Bowl with 100,000 in attendance, featuring such internationally known artists as Joan Baez and Bonnie Raitt. Peace Sunday was in support of the U.N.'s Second Special Session on Disarmament. Several smaller Peace Sundays have been sponsored by UDC since that time, with the goal of making it an ongoing community event.

The Convergence retreat featured three days of panels, plenaries and workshops conducted by experts and facilitators on topics ranging from global governance and interfaith relations to conflict resolution. With attention to protecting the Earth's fragile environment and providing special services, tools, and skills to our urban area's at-risk youth, the UDC has created topical working groups to contend with some of the most pressing challenges facing civilization today.

Utilizing modern technology in an automated and real-time fashion, the Global Assembly Dialog is an "online think-tank"; the first of its kind -- open to all with internet access.

Gathering wisdom from diverse perspectives to break negative patterns of thinking, the Global Assembly (GlobalAssembly.net) generates a roster of ideas and evolving statements that are then ranked by the collective participants.

"Our aim is nothing less than the creation of a vehicle of expression for the voice of humanity", explained UDC Executive Board member Roger Eaton, "the concept of the Global Assembly is along the lines of the UN General Assembly, but from the bottom up to build a world that works for all using the power of nonviolence."

"The Unity-and-Diversity Council has been dedicated to showing how religions and belief systems have a common ground in truth," expressed Executive Board member Byron DeLear, "and with the UDC's Global Assembly Dialog, we will be able to witness, global truths evolving right before our eyes."

"The goal of achieving 'unity-and-diversity among all peoples and all life' is a new idea whose time has come. It derives from the fact that the emerging global civilization is based upon pluralism, which means that there are many races, religions, cultures and organizations all needing to be included within a new and worldwide synthesis. No longer will any one religion or ideology be the dominant teaching or organization that controls the direction of modern life. Rather, there will be more and more acceptance of diversity among these paths, as well as an increasing degree of cooperation and mutual support..."

~ Rev. Leland Stewart

Global Assembly: www.GlobalAssembly.net

Unity-and-Diversity Council: www.UDCWorld.org

WiserEarth / Paul Hawken

2007-05-26T19:26:56Z

WiserEarth is supporting the exact same community of globally aware groups and networks that will be the backbone of the Global Assembly Dialog. It makes sense that the GA software be integrated with the WiserEarth software. However that is not so easily done, since GA is dot-net, alas, while WE is php. I am hoping to get a discussion going at WE about a possible collaboration. Please see my profile at WE for more.

Latest InterMix Design

2007-03-18T23:19:37Z

As terms are introduced, they are shown in bold
dark red. Hopefully this will be helpful rather than disconcerting!

To begin, here are a couple of diagrams to help with understanding.

InterMix hub

/                    \

dialog                     dialog

/     |     \             /     |     \

group network   network   group network group

/   \       /   \          /   |   \

group group group group   group group group

Dialog Round

---> Time --->

/           \

Writing Phase        Rating Phase

                           Rating-Section1 Rating-Section2

An InterMix hub can have many dialogs
and many groups. The hub has
an administrator, each dialog has one
or more coordinators and each group
has one or more moderators.

A group has members. A group
can join a dialog by applying to the
dialog coordinator. When a group joins a dialog, its members become
participants
of that dialog as members of the group. The technology is designed
to be intuitive for the participant, but the administrator, coordinators
and moderators have to understand how a dialog works.

Networks are groups, with the extra
capability of being joinable by other groups. A network cannot, however,
join another network, so we only have one level of networking; there cannot
be networks of networks. Having joined a dialog, a group can join
a network within that dialog by applying to the network moderator.

Both the group moderator and the network moderator must OK the join of
the group to the network. When a group joins a network, its members
participate in the dialog as if they were members of the network.
The members of the group that joins the network do not actually become
members of the network. However, because the network is itself a
group, it can have its own direct members.
The direct members of the network and the members of the joined groups
participate together in the dialog as if they were all members of that
network; there is no distinction between direct and indirect participation.

Participants may be a member of more than one group, but for a particular
dialog, they must choose one group for participation in that dialog.
Participants can change from one of their groups to another at the beginning
of a new round but not within
a round. See directly below for more about rounds. A "Change
Perspective" function allows a participant to swap groups for
the next round, and even to join another group for the purpose of swapping
to it. While participants may only participate in a particular dialog
as a member of one group at a time, they may participate in multiple dialogs
within the same hub simultaneously.

A dialog also has rounds.
Rounds occur sequentially, following each other one by one. Rounds
are created by the dialog coordinator. There are two types of rounds,
unity
rounds and diversity rounds.
These are also known as together rounds
and apart rounds.

Every round has two main phases,
a writing phase and a
rating
phase. The writing phase must precede the rating phase in each round.
Later we will be adding an optional discussion
phase between the writing and rating phase.

In a unity round, all participants are treated as members of a single
overarching group, which may be thought of as the common
humanity of the participating groups. Participants in
a unity round write messages knowing that they will be rated by all participants
from all groups. In a diversity round, participants write messages
to be rated by members of their own group only. Thus in a unity round
a single message is

elected to represent
the common humanity of all the participating groups. In a diversity
round, each participating network or group that has not joined a network
elects a message to represent its own diverse perspective.

Candidate messages are written by
participants in the writing phase of a round. Participants are not
required to write a message, but every participant has the opportunity
to write just one message for that round. Each message has a subject
and a body. Participants can
come back over and over to edit their message until the writing phase ends.

An important feature of the process is that many messages can share
the same subject. Moreover, the highest rated message for each particular
subject is specially distinguished at the end of a round as a subject
winner. This feature therefore allows for many winners
each round instead of just one.

When a participant first begins to write a message in a round, that
participant is presented with a list of subjects already used by other
participants, with the subject that has the most messages at the top.
The participant may either choose a subject from the list or start a new
subject. Depending on whether it is a unity or diversity round, the
list of subjects presented are from all groups or only from the particpant's
own group. Again importantly, the dialog coordinator in unity rounds,
and the group moderators in diversity rounds may seed the process with
pre-selected subjects thus kindling the imagination of the participants
and if not exactly steering the discussion, certainly influencing its direction.

The rating phase is divided into sections.

Each section
winnows the list of messages
until at the end of the final rating section, only one message is left.
Having a single winner provides the drama and closure that the human imagination
revels in, but actually the number of final winners can be set to more
than one if that is what is wanted. The number or percentage of surviving
messages can be set by the dialog coordinator for each section.

Because group sizes may differ dramatically, in a diversity round, one
group may have more rating sections than another group. For instance,
a group with a thousand participants may have 300 messages in a round and
require three rating sections, with the first winnowing the list down to
60, the second winnowing the 60 down to 8 and the third finally producing
a winner. While in the same diversity round, another group might
have only 30 participants and only 10 messages, requiring just one rating
section to produce a winner.

In each rating section, each participant is doled out a preset number
of messages to rate, normally somewhere between 5 and 10. Care is
taken in unity rounds that messages are evenly distributed over the groups.

Participants do not have to rate all their messages in one go. They
may come back over and over. They are not required to rate their
messages at all, and it is OK if they rate only some of the messages that
were distributed to them.

Each message is rated on two scales, from 0 to 4 for interest
and from -3 to +3 for approval.
A total score for each message, called the value
of the message, is calculated as the average approval rating times the
sum of the Interest ratings. The winning messages are those with
the highest positive value. A message may have high interest, yet
get low approval. A good example, from a previous version of InterMix,
was a message suggesting convicts be giving the option of being executed
in return for $20,000 for their families. This message got a high
negative value because it got high interest ratings and very low approval
ratings. By separating interest and approval, we greatly increase
the general interest of winning messages and correspondingly reduce the
possibility of electing platitudes.

Author Robert Wright argues that history has an arrow

2007-01-25T16:18:38Z

Hmm - the Ted Talks site has many sensible thought provoking lectures available in both video and audio formats. Here is one that I can recommend.

"Author Robert Wright argues that history has an arrow: That humans have continued to evolve -- if not biologically, than culturally and technologically -- toward greater complexity and intelligence. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:54)"
Watch Online Download Audio

Wright's view is that we are in danger of not making the leap to a global civilization, possibly leading to a global collapse. Seems sound to me! He also believes that for our own self interest, people everywhere have good reason to promote a world that works for everyone (tho he does not use that phrase). And he calls for the launching of a moral revolution, saying that a "major round of moral progress" is in order. Indeed! Thank you Robert Wright!

A Nonviolent Service Arm for the Global Assembly

2006-12-30T17:53:17Z

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 and the number of messages written for each subject. They will then either pick an existing subject or start a new one. In addition to an overall winner for the round, each subject will have its own winning message. The Dialog Coordinator will have the option to pre-seed a number of Shared Subjects, and for the Global Assembly Dialog, one of the pre-seeded Shared Subjects will be "Advice for the Nonviolent Service Arm of the Global Assembly".

The local task forces will be autonomous in that each one will independently interpret the advisories from the Global Assembly. At heart, though, the NSA is meant to be a cohesive service organization that takes its cue from the Global Assembly. What will the Global Assembly advise? Stay tuned and find out.

Having the NSA in place when the dialog starts up will add weight to the process, making it apparent that we can build momentum and 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.

Global Assembly Dialog Progress Report

2006-11-19T15:45:10Z

Global Assembly Progress report - November 18, 2006

We will be able to enroll groups and participants as of Dec 10, 2006. Enrolled participants will receive a message tailored to their group with both an "Invite a Friend" and an "Unsubscribe Me" link at the bottom. External links from websites will allow an individual to subscribe to the Global Assembly Dialog as a member of a group. Likewise links can be sent via email to make it easy for groups to invite their members to subscribe on an opt-in basis.

The Dialog will begin on January 15, 2007 with a Unity Round. The theme of the Dialog is “Creating a World that Works for Everyone”. Each writer in the first round of the Dialog will be able to choose from the subjects previously used or add a new subject to the round. The plan at this point, as developed by Robin Gillies and myself, is to seed each round with several preselected subjects, with "Organizing the 2008 Global Assembly Meeting" always being one of the subjects. Other possible subjects are "Global Warming", "Challenge to US Democracy", "Nuclear Destruction", "Human Rights" and possibly one or two more.

I will be manning a table for the Global Assembly Dialog at Peace Sunday. We will have copies of the UDC website material on the Global Assembly Dialog with an updated list of groups that will participate. At the table we will recruit individuals and organizations for the Dialog. Organizations will have the choice to email an opt-in link to their members or to simply include everyone, in which case the members of the group will get an email welcoming them to the Dialog with an unsubscribe link so they can opt-out.

A couple new organizations are likely to participate. Together, an organization based in Culver City, founded by Rebecca Rona, will consider joining its entire email list at its upcoming Advisory Board meeting. Culver City Area Interfaith Association (CCAIA) will email an opt-in link to its members. IARF Pakistan may be joining us as well.

The UDC mailing list is going to be split into two parts to make two groups for the Dialog. First, Interfaith, and second Unity-and-Diversity. Organizations that join up via the opt-in method will have a choice of being part of either the Interfaith or the Unity-and-Diversity group until their membership exceeds 100, at which point they will be separated out as a group on their own for the Diversity rounds. Therefore we will be starting with at least 4 groups: Interfaith, Unity-and-Diversity, Common Peace and Unaffiliated, with Together being a likely fifth participating organization. IARF Pakistan may also be a sixth group. With this much of a start I think that between now and January 15th we should be able to enroll at least a dozen more organizations, with most of them going for the opt-in method.

In the process so far, I have become convinced that existing Interfaith organizations should be a major target for growth of the Global Assembly. The Interfaith movement is wonderfully alive and by its nature it is inclusive and non-dominating. Therefore it is safe to include the Interfaith movement in the Global Assembly Dialog even in large numbers, since it can be trusted not to try to take over the process for its exclusive use.

True Religion Creates Community

2006-10-12T15:49:27Z

True religion creates community. At the beginning of an age, life comes together in a spirit of unity-and-diversity, accepting differences and learning from those differences. In the midst of the challenges of our time of transition, we are discovering a new sense of community which is global, universal. It is all-inclusive, reconciling misunderstandings and forgiving different ways of living.

The days of nation building are being transcended in the need for building the earth. The new community is that of the globe as a whole, as we also become conscious of belonging to the universe of many planets and solar systems. Life is sacred in all its dimensions. Our respect for life is essential to the building of community, of discovering our common humanity.

Today we are suspended between the dying of western civilization and the birth of global civilization. It is this transition which has brought about a temporary sense of chaos and confusion. It is the task of religions and spiritual groups to move beyond that transition and proclaim the new sense of meaning which can unite us all in a new sense of purpose.

We are told that world peace will come when the religions of the world are reconciled to each other and begin to build a sense of their common humanity. The interfaith movement is now beginning to build this new sense of trust and common ground. May our gatherings help bring about that sense of reconciliation. Our time cries out for a new way of Being that affirms the sacredness of life and of every living thing.

In the Spirit of Unity-and-Diversity!!!

Voice of Humanity and the Information Commons?

2006-10-01T18:24:06Z

The Information Commons is based on the uform, as its information atom. See also the Magic behind the Commons. The uform is simply an extensible list of property/value pairs with a UUID handle as a unique key that can be created without reference to any central key repository. The tricky part that makes the design work is that uforms may have properties whose values are the UUIDs for other uforms. Using this trick, uforms called “Roles” provide metadata for other uforms, and, stop right there, doesn't that seem a much better foundation for the Semantic Web than rdf? Here is a link to a previous article about the Semantic Web.

The Commons is designed to be a distributed bottom up semantic information space that is “future proof”. Roles can be redone relatively easily, so the same information fits into a different semantic or organizational framework. New waves of thought can repurpose great sections of information without disturbing the previous order.

All this makes the Information Commons a natural direction for the Voice of Humanity project. But even though it is much simpler than rdf, the uform is still technical enough that we will need some help, so the question is, will MAYA be interested to provide us with that help? Their business is precisely advice and help for complicated information driven projects that need good user interfaces, and they are very well connected in the non-profit world, so could we together get a grant? Hmm...

There is after all a common outsizedness of goal for both the Information Commons and the Voice of Humanity. Perhaps together we can accomplish what neither could alone.

The Outsider has a place in the Global Assembly Dialog

2006-09-24T22:12:05Z

Much of the progressive community shares the "unity and diversity" ideal, but it is struggling to cope with the powerful top-down dominance of the media by the right-wing. Particularly this is true in the U.S. Every day the right-wing think tanks pump out their message for the day and all the commentators and opinion leaders on the right take up that message, so the slow moving body of public opinion is pummeled by much repetition. This method of capturing public opinion by coordinated attack seems to work all too well, especially in a system where the media is highly concentrated into the hands of a few corporations.

The progressive elements therefore face a dilemma. On the one hand, they really do believe in diversity, but on the other, they see how powerful the coerced uniformity of the right can be in shaping public opinion, so the temptation arises to force a similar approach to get the left "on message". Yet the fact is that with so much of the media controlled by naturally conservative corporations, fighting the right wing propaganda machine with like-minded methods is a losing proposition. No more could the American Indian win with second hand rifles or arrows and lances against real firepower. The playing field is tilted.

The Global Assembly process with its alternation of unity and diversity rounds gives us a new method of creating a powerful media message, a method that allows us to stay true to our natural respect for diversity. We do not have to tell people to be careful how they phrase this or that. Instead we can say, "Go for it! Say what is really on your mind and say it in your own words." That way we have a much wider base to choose from and will come up with a more powerful winning message in the unity rounds of the Dialog.

So all you black sheep out there come on in. Give us a try!