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:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)