Unify Earth

I am currently involved with a new non-profit initiative to create a global spectacle and peace meditation on December 21, 2012. We have just "soft launched" our website, www.unifyearth.com - please take a look and tell me what you think. This is mainly designed to be a presentation tool for potential sponsors, artists, and collaborators. My dear friend Mark Heley has also created a website, www.peace2012.net , which is getting people to link up for the synchronized peace meditation on that date. There are other initiatives as well, some of them with a pure intention and others that are more questionable. Below is the text of an email I wrote to a group of people who are seeking to coordinate these events. Unfortunately, I see some groups approaching this as another "New Age" business opportunity, and also some figures eager to step into the role of guru of the moment, rather than really actualizing the potential for a collaborative network to emerge.

If you are interested in helping lauch our Unify Earth initiative, please email me off-line - daniel@evolver.net - and let me know what you feel inspired to contribute.

Hi Folks,

I would like to share some of my ever-evolving thoughts on the events marking the end of the Mayan Calendar and the beginning of the new cycle.

While everyone is obviously free to do whatever they want, it is my personal feeling that these initiatives should not be appropriated to serve anyone’s private interests, and that neither the end of the old cycle nor the beginning of the new belong to any one person’s particular vision. It seems to me that the proper thing to do, for those of us who want to be creative partners in constructing an event that could have planetary significance for humanity, is to see ourselves as facilitators who work together to build bridges between myriad cultural traditions, organizations, corporations, activists, and visionaries. We should be seeking to create a platform that many can share. The impetus should be one of generosity and cooperation, as those will need to be the hallmarks of the new planetary culture.

What I propose would be developing a coordinating council that brings in and defines a role for many visionaries, indigenous leaders, activists, artists, and cultural catalysts, for the December 21 – 22 events. Beyond that, we should develop a strategy and a tactical plan for what the movement is seeking to accomplish, on every level. The map that Barbara (Marx Hubbard) has created and that Stephen Dinan offers in his “Vision 2012” are helpful tools for this, and provide some excellent jumping off points for the larger discussion. Many other people and groups also hold crucial pieces that need to be incorporated. For example: William Irwin Thompson’s development of a new educational curriculum. The Transition Town initiative approach to building a grassroots community movement. The Social and Ecological Justice Movements. The movement to create instruments for exchanging value that are de-linked from the monolithic currency system controlled by private banking interests and manipulated by them for their own ends. Jose Arguelles’ “rainbow bridge” meditation to activate the noosphere. TM initiatives to use meditation to reduce crime rates. Efforts, such as Biochar, to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere. Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman’s proposals in ‘Spontaeous Evolution.” Erwin Laszlo’s systems approach. The heart-based approach of Amma. Satyagraha. Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity movement. Ken Wilber’s Spiral Dynamics. As proposed in my 2012 book, a movement to change the calendar to mesh with astronomical cycles. Etcetera.

What would be great – and might be necessary - would be a series of “council gatherings,” online and off-line, where the various initiatives that have been proposed to transform human civilization and change the direction of human activity could be debated and analyzed openly. When Lincoln debated Douglas, the debates went on for eight hours! These days, public debate has been reduced to a charade. The indigenous model of “tribal councils,” where communities actually agree to stay together to resolve disputes, no matter how long it takes, need to be revived to confront the extreme complexity of today’s issues and to break the indoctrination trance of the media. The new tools for live, on-line teaching forums indicate the potential for rapid, transformative education to be disseminated to the global community.

If we truly want the Dec 21 – 22, 2012, event to function as a transformative threshold for global civilization, we should seek to develop, through a process of dialogue, tactical objectives along with tangible plans for enacting them. For instance, it is now obvious (if it wasn't before) that nuclear power needs to be eliminated, quickly phased out. Activists like Helen Caldicott and Ralph Nader stand for this – but there is obviously not enough momentum yet in the culture to deal with this issue despite the increasing potential for planetary cataclysm. A real transition from nuclear power is only going to be possible by inspiring a large-scale movement of civil society, and an awakening of consciousness. The same is true for GMOs, Wall Street corruption, military expansionism, etc. We need to change how corporations function on a systemic and fundamental level, restricting the rights they now possess to freely pollute the global environment and privatize parts of the commons. Etc.

This civil society movement also has to be realistic enough to promote sacrifices for the sake of the future – we can’t continue to promote the New Age clichés about infinite abundance on a planet that has reached peak everything. For instance, unless “free energy” becomes quickly available, we will have to radically reduce energy consumption in the First World, as coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear are all contributing to a rapid deterioration of planetary conditions, and potential extinction for the human race, as James Lovelock discusses in his terrifying book, The Revenge of Gaia (he predicts 150 million people, maximum, will be left alive at the end of the 21st Century due to climate change). A “Marshall Plan” for transitioning to renewable energy is urgently needed – only a civil society movement of many millions can break through the corporate and political gridlock to launch this. If tangible sacrifices need to be made, these can be compensated by a new spiritual dimension to human existence, a deeper interconnectivity, and universal experience of love as a natural state of being.

I propose that we go beyond the current thinking about Unify Earth / Peace 2012 /Day One to see it as an instigation for a large-scale movement of civil society, to take back the future and change the direction of our civilization. The moment of unity could be seen as the creation of the first tone or note in a new octave. We have a year and a half, plus change, to develop a cohesive strategy for what we offer as a set of tangible solutions for retooling our planetary culture so that it becomes sustainable, humane, equitable, regenerative.

If we agree that our shared mission is to collaborate to create a scaffold so that a better world can tangibly emerge from the experience of global unity and from the spectacles and teachings that surround it, we should be focused on achieving a deeper level of collaboration and cooperation than we have known up to this point. The process of orchestrating these events should model the transmutation of consciousness and social practices we are seeking to bring about. This means honoring the visionaries and sacred activists from many cultures, traditions, and nations. It means bringing in leaders from every religious tradition, indigenous cultures, leading scientists and technology developers, business visionaries, political leaders, etc.

Personally I believe that creating a new social networking infrastructure designed to serve civil society is a necessary element in this transformation. We have seen the power of Facebook and Twitter to spark revolutions, but these products are not designed to facilitate large-scale and instantaneous collaboration for reinventing civil society and sharing resources equitably. There is currently an initiative underway between BALLE (Building Alliance for Local Living Economies), Coop America, Planetwork, Evolver, and other groups to develop the nonprofit infrastructure for this “network of networks.” I think it would make sense for the Dec 21 – 22, 2012, events to align with this initiative: the event could be the global debut of this system.

We are reaching the point where humanity will stand together and learn to thrive, or we will continue our drama of separation and quickly die out. My hope and prayer is that those of us who feel ourselves called to coordinate a planetary event for the end of the cycle and the beginning of the next can supersede the habits of the past to embody the new way of being that so many have spoken about and looked toward. Bringing this into manifestation will require great dedication, along with an inner attitude of humility and sacrifice.

Anyway, my 2 (or perhaps 3) cents on the matter!