Likewise in the age of globalisation, humanity can of course choose to reject binding global governance. But if we do, we’d likely be consigning ourselves, like the Maya and the inhabitants of Easter Island, to global collapse. If, conversely, we ordinary people of the world accept it is needed, we cannot simply sit back and expect it to happen by itself. For as we have seen, such is the vicious circle of destructive competition between nations that we cannot expect our political leaders to deliver a benign form of global governance on their own. Neither can we expect the existing global institutions to do so, for they, as we also saw, are not configured to provide it. We also saw how we are born into this world automatically taking on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in our families, local communities and nations. We are automatically born as citizens who belong to political communities of governance. But this is true only up to the national level because there is, as yet, no governing entity beyond the nation-state capable of defining us as citizens of the world. More importantly, there is no global political entity to which we automatically belong which exercises the five key attributes of governance. So, if we accept that having such an entity is in our own interests, we ordinary people around the world, will have to create it. This book could be regarded as a guidebook as to how we might go about it. For, as Dr. Peter Corning, director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, reminds us: “World government (with teeth) may not be a foregone conclusion, but it is not a bad idea. At this critical juncture in our evolution, our long-term survival (and that of our descendants) may very well depend on it.”35 The other understanding we can gain from what we’ve so far covered is the vital importance of global and simultaneous implementation, not only as the principal methodology by 35
Nature’s Magic – Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, Peter Corning, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
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