Global Citizens Movement
The pathways to a Great Transition are uncertain and diverse, but the essay, Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, lays out certain clues: governments, limited by nationalist sentiments, are unlikely to lead the way. Transnational corporations are not likely to reinvent themselves. Civil society, although active on the many issues arising during the tumult of transition, is currently too fragmented and small scale to significantly alter the course of global development.
The Global Scenario Group analysis concludes that a Great Transition will not be possible unless larger numbers of an active and aware global citizenry get involved in the struggle for our future. It refers to this as a global citizens movement for a Great Transition. This movement would see itself as constructing a new planetary society rooted in values of quality of life, human solidarity, and environmental sustainability. An authentic global citizens movement would be quite different from the existing fragmented social movements active throughout the world today. These movements tend to be issue-specific – focused on labor, environment, human rights, feminist issues, indigenous struggles, poverty, AIDS, and numerous other interrelated but “siloed” efforts. Without a shared vision for the future, it is difficult to imagine how diverse citizen initiatives could overcome fragmentation and exert influence on the shape of the emerging planetary civilization.
Read more about this topic: Great Transition
Famous quotes containing the words global, citizens and/or movement:
“As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD, being built upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)