SOVEREIGNTY

    There is an immutable truth that we forget at our peril. 

    EVERY CHILD ON THIS PLANET IS BORN SOVEREIGN OF THEIR OWN LIFE.

    If they are fortunate, they are born to loving, capable parents who guide them into maturity and full ability to exercise their sovereignty. If they are doubly fortunate it will be in a prosperous country where some measure of equity and liberty remain.  If they are unfortunate, they will be born to abusive or indifferent parents.  If doubly unfortunate they will be born in a poor, dictatorial country.

    Whether fortunate or unfortunate, all will be born in one nation state or another.  Their  natural born sovereignty will be taken from them without their consent or the consent of their parents by the nation state claiming ownership of that portion of the earth where they were born.  

    They will be subject to, and often destroyed by constant, violent wars between those nation states instigated by leaders to maintain control of, or enlarge their domains.  Threat of punishment by force of arms will be constantly employed against them by leaders of those nation states to take from them natural born right to sovereignty over their own lives.  States, cantons, counties, and cities within each nation state will all compete to purloin  lessor segments of their right to personal sovereignty.  

    As each person attains maturity, most are compelled by necessity to obtain the means to sustain their life and well being.  For most it means surrendering a good deal of the remnants of their natural born sovereignty to a command-and-control, hierarchical corporation, or other such organization in return for monetary compensation.  Such organizations are in constant, economic  battle for power, wealth, and dominion over more people.     

     There is another immutable truth we ignore at our peril.

              EVERY SOCIETAL ORGANIZATION HAS NO REALITY SAVE IN THE MIND.  

    Whether nation state, canton, city, church, university or any other societal institution or organization, it has no reality save in the mind.  It is nothing but a mental construct.  An imaginary set of relationships which is then codified as constitution, by-laws, contract, or some similar document.  (A more complete analysis of this truth can be found in the Essays section of this site entitled  “The Nature and Reality of Organizations”)  Four hundred years ago, with the emergence of modern science and the industrial revolution, mankind made a radical mistake.  We began to think of societal organizations in terms of machines in which power was arranged in hierarchical order in so that a command could be given in one place and a precise result obtained in another and we could know with certainty which command to give for what result – – – never mind that people would be required to behave like cogs and wheels in the process.  For several centuries we have been imagining societal organizations from that perspective, codifying them in written documents, and issuing the commands.  Rarely have we gotten the expected results.  What we have gotten is apparent.  Obscene mal-distribution of wealth and power, decimation of species, polluted air and water, poisoned soil perpetual war, unbelievable weapons of mass destruction and a global epidemic of institutional failure.           

     There is a third immutable truth we ignore a our peril.

WE HAVE FAILED TO IMAGINE AND IMPLEMENT A GOVERNMENT OF THE GLOBAL WHOLE. 

One cannot put it better than Norman Cousins, the American author, did several decades ago when he wrote:   

     “A great technological assent has taken place without any corresponding elevation of ideas.  We have raised our station without elevating our sights. We roam the heavens with the engines of hell.—–whatever mankind’s success in intermediate organization, he has failed to make an organization of the whole.  His finest energies have gone into interim projects.  He has made a geographical entity of his world without a philosophy for ennobling it,  a plan for conserving it, or an organization for sustaining it.”  

If there is to be livable future for our children and grandchildren, three things are essential:

1—Individuals must recover a substantial portion of the purloined, inherent sovereignty over their own life.

2—A new, more beneficent form of government for the whole of the planet must be conceived and implemented to curb the wildly out of control nature of the present nation states and commercial corporations.

3—That government must be so composed that the individual can surrender to it a small portion of their recovered sovereignty for the good of the whole, and trust that it will not be abused.

We must avoid the catastrophic mistake of conceiving that governing organization based on the industrial age, machine metaphor.  it must be conceived based on the evolutionary principles of the cosmos and all it contains.  I have written and spoken extensively of  those principles as Chaordic – – –  as harmoniously combining the characteristics of both Chaos and Order – – -as distributive of power and wealth, and harmony with the human spirit and biosphere. 

Fifty years ago, long before the internet, I was instrumental in created an archetype of such concepts – – -an organization for the purpose of creating the worlds premier system for the exchange of value – – – now VISA Inc.  It is, by a huge margin, the largest enterprise on earth.  Billions of individuals, financial organization and merchants now annually exchange more than ten trillion dollars of value under its name and service marks, even though the archetype contained many flaws. 

I intend to write another entry to this blog in the coming month suggesting how such a global governance organization might be conceived and realized.  Whether the time has come for such an organization is impossible to know.  I continue to cling to belief that in times like these, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream;  failure will be to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.