1. Introduction

This proposal is deeply rooted in my work on deliberate living. By deliberate living, I mean living life in such a way that a person is aware of what he is thinking, saying or doing, understands why he is thinking, saying or doing it, and approves of it being thought, said or done, for every thought, word and action of consequence. Making progress in this regard requires commitment to personal growth so that we can gradually prune the thoughts, words and actions from our lives that don’t bear our stamp of approval. This is the most worthwhile approach to living that I can conceive.

Consequently, a society that shares these characteristics is the one that I would most like to live in. With this in mind, the proposal takes the concepts associated with deliberate living and extends them to the society as a whole. It strives for the creation of a self-reflective society – a society that is vigilantly striving to improve itself in an effort to become an authentic expression of the people who constitute it.

To this end, the proposal advocates the establishment of an organisation whose commitment would be to work towards such a society. I will refer to this organisation as Awakening Earth (a term that was popularised by Duane Elgin) in the remainder of the document.

2. What Is a Self-reflective Society?

In an effort to answer the question, we can begin by asking an analogous question at the individual level – what is a self-reflective individual? In the context of deliberate living, it amounts to more than an individual who engages in frequent introspection. Rather, that introspection becomes directed and goal-driven, performed specifically for the purpose of discovering how to live more authentically than before.

A self-reflective society is one whose culture mirrors that of a self-reflective individual:

• It actively encourages people to scrutinise the foundation on which it rests – in the form of values and beliefs – for the purpose of identifying and replacing those that don’t accurately represent them.
• It actively encourages people to scrutinise the social structures that were built on top of that foundation for the purpose of identifying and replacing those that do not produce results consistent with the stated values and beliefs.
• It actively encourages people to continuously repeat the above exercises, and so keep refining the society in which they live.

3. Goals of the Organisation

While the creation of a self-reflective society is the organisation’s single overarching goal, it will help to break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks for ease of implementation. These sub-goals can be grouped into two broad categories – personal and collective.

3.1 Personal

If we are to create a society that accurately reflects our values and beliefs, we first have to make sure that those beliefs and values are indeed ours, instead of stemming from the social environment in which we live and that we have absorbed uncritically. In other words, before we can create a self-reflective society, we first have to make sure that we are self-reflective ourselves.

Absence of personal self-reflection can jeopardise our efforts to create a self-reflective society in a number of ways:

• By preventing us from discovering what our highest ideals are, and so not knowing what kind of society we would ideally like to live in. As a result, we end up habitually perpetuating the society in its present form.
• By denying others the opportunity to identify their highest ideals. This is most evident during child rearing and education, where we raise our children to adopt our values and beliefs instead of empowering them to formulate their own.
• By denying others the opportunity to express the highest ideals that they have identified. This typically manifests as political power being used to suppress minority views (by declaring homosexual and polygamous unions illegal, for example).

A way to achieve the necessary self-reflection is to create an internal standard for making decisions, which we can then use as a guiding force in our lives. This standard needs to come from within us – by examining the emotions that we experience in the aftermath of our actions, for example. It cannot be subservient to state and religious regulations, culture and tradition, authority figures, etc, though it can certainly draw on them for inspiration.

With this in mind, the organisation will have the following sub-goals:

• To promote educational material whose purpose is to help people derive their own internal standard for living. I have described one such approach in the book Living Deliberately. Many other teachings exist.
• To offer examples of the application of that material in the context of daily living.
• Ideally, each member of the organisation would demonstrate the value of deliberate living through personal example.

3.2 Collective

Deriving an internal guidance system for how to live paves the way for expressing it in our social circle and the society at large. This process consists of a number of steps that need to be carried out in sequence:

• Identifying the characteristics of the society that we would ideally like to live in. For example, a society that has complete equality of opportunity irrespective of age, gender or racial differences, a society without war or armed conflict of any kind, a society that provides for the needs of every individual, and so on. Some of these features may well appear to be unattainable from our current perspective.
• Identifying the changes that the present-day society will likely have to undergo to transition to the idealistic one. The idea is to gain an appreciation of the interdependency between changes in seemingly disparate facets of society and how they can contribute to social transformation as a whole. It obviously requires us to be familiar with the characteristics of the society that we live in, as well as have a sound grasp of the psychological and sociological factors involved in the transition. For example, we cannot reasonably expect everyone to embrace the idea that the basic needs of every person should be freely met, given the present economic structure and the underlying value system. Such a transition is likely to require several intermediary steps.
• Identifying existing initiatives that correspond to these changes and showing how they contribute to the transition. This should make it easier to appreciate the value of each initiative, even those that we may otherwise disregard. For example, a person focused on increasing prosperity by technological means might not easily appreciate the value of decreasing our wants through spiritual initiatives, and vice versa.
• Creating the initiatives that would help bring about the transition, but don’t exist as yet. The newly created initiatives should function independently of Awakening Earth so as to avoid conflict of interests.

4. Implementation

The form that the proposed organisation can take largely depends on how successful it is – how many people choose to get involved, their location, skill sets, and the resources that they have at their disposal. For this reason, I will focus on describing what I see as the initial structure and operation – what is needed to get the ball rolling.

4.1 Legal Structure

The organisation is educational in nature. Its only product is information that is to be freely available and disseminated worldwide. Its philanthropic mission naturally lends itself to a non-profit structure, preferably a charitable one. This should place the focus firmly on the provision of services and enlist the support of likeminded people and organisations.

The exact legal structure depends on the laws of the country, and the region of the country, in which the organisation is formed.

4.2 Information Content

Most of the goals listed in an earlier section give rise to specific information deliverables. This information will also be classified as either personal or collective for ease of presentation.

4.2.1 Personal

Awakening Earth will provide the following information:

• The list of books, articles, videos and other such material that can help people derive their own internal standard for living, and the benefits that one can expect to gain from each.
• The list of organisations that engage in helping people derive their own internal standard for living, and the benefits that one can expect to gain from each.
• A sample list of examples of real-life incidents where people have admirably demonstrated the application of their internal standard for living in challenging circumstances. Focus should be on ordinary people rather than renowned spiritual leaders so that their examples appear more attainable to an average person.

4.2.2 Collective

Awakening Earth will provide the following information:

• The list of characteristics that we would ideally like the society to exhibit, the list of values and beliefs that naturally lead to those characteristics, and the causal chain from one to the other.
• The list of characteristics of the present-day society, the list of values and beliefs that underpin it, and the causal chain from one to the other.
• The list of changes that can be made to the present-day society to bring it closer to the idealistic one, the list of anticipated consequences of these changes, and the causal chain from one to the other.
• To list of existing initiatives that correspond to the proposed social changes, and the mapping of each initiative to discrete transition steps listed above.
• The list of transition steps that have no initiative associated with them, and the list of proposed initiatives that can fill this gap.

It may be prudent to adopt an iterative approach to putting this information together. We can begin by providing a broad overview of the whole field to get a sense of the magnitude of the project. Then we can gradually build on it by going into more detail on each of the topics, mentioning organisations active in the area, referencing pertinent scientific studies, and so on.

We should indicate the kind of sources that the above information is based on – scientific research, personal experience, media trends, etc – so that we have some idea of how reliable it is. This should also help resolve disagreements.

The end product of all these steps is a living document that details the path that we can follow to bring us closer to the desired features of society, without being prescriptive as to what those features should be or rigid in assuming how much work it will take to realise them.

With time, the information should also be available in multiple languages.

4.2.3 Example

I will use a brief example to illustrate how I see the above process unfolding. Let’s say that we want to live in a society where the basic needs of every person are met. Note that Awakening Earth will not prescribe this goal; it will simply offer it. People can embrace it or not according to their own internal standard.

The next step is to examine the corresponding features of the society in which we live. Here we find a mixture of approaches:

• People earning a living according to their perceived contribution to society. This is the arrangement that usually comes to mind – earning an income commensurate with the nature and quantity of the work that one does.
• People earning a living according to the effort that they put in to contribute to society. This manifests in various social safety nets that are introduced for the benefit of people who would not survive if the contribution-based approach were followed strictly. For example, by legislating the minimum salary, or by giving money to people who are unemployed provided that they keep looking for work.
• People not being required to earn a living. We might not expect to find this arrangement in our society at all, yet it is widespread. It typically occurs within small families, who share resources according to each member’s need rather than effort or contribution.

Because our current society sometimes exhibits the desired feature, one input into the transition plan is to find ways to increase its prevalence. By paying attention to families that share resources freely, we can observe that they exhibit qualities like caring and trust, and that their members derive greater benefit from giving than trading (I have explored this in the article Experiencing Abundance). The transition plan now becomes a matter of finding ways to make these qualities more widespread. This can be done by developing our ability to empathise with other people, changing our value system, learning about and interacting with people whom we would otherwise place outside our circle of caring, and so on. It is the purview of spiritual and community-building organisations.

Another input into the transition plan comes from observing that some resources that we need are so widespread that we have no difficulty sharing them. This includes air and, when no infrastructure or treatment is required, water as well. The transition plan now becomes a matter of finding ways to make food, clothing and shelter sufficiently plentiful to comfortably meet everyone’s needs. Technocratic organisations are active in this area.

A related input arises from noticing that our wants sometimes directly compete with our needs. An example is the recent diversion of some of the traditional farmland away from food production and towards biofuels. The transition plan amounts to finding ways to reduce our wants so that more of the resources can be directed towards meeting the basic needs. This is the focus of the voluntary simplicity movement, among others.

We can also look at population size and how it affects our ability to meet everyone’s needs. And so on...

Hopefully it is clear from this example that we can attempt to realise a particular goal in a number of different ways, and that we may in fact need to employ most if not all of them if we are to succeed. Likewise, most initiatives give rise to multiple consequences, and so lend themselves to the pursuit of several goals. The information content will primarily comprise mapping out of these interdependencies so that we gain a clear picture of social transformation in all its intricacy.

4.3 Contributors of Information

The philanthropic nature of the organisation makes it very unlikely, at least initially, that it will be able to hire people to supply the necessary information content. This information is most likely to come from the following:

• A relatively small group of knowledgeable and dedicated volunteers.
• Social scientists who see value in engaging in research in this field and decide to undertake it themselves or offer it to their postgraduate students.
• A potentially large and diverse group of people who take casual interest in the project.

All proposed information changes should go through the first group of people, regardless of the source. This is to ensure consistency and minimise the danger of information changes with malicious intent.

A discussion forum should be created to stimulate public involvement. It could be used to gain better all-round understanding of the topics at hand, give voice to multiple preferences, and add transparency to the process of extending the information set associated with the organisation.

Longer term, it may be useful to embrace a more open model, such as that of Wikipedia. This will depend on how many people choose to contribute information and how often we can expect it to change.

4.4 Dissemination of Information

The need for low-cost global reach makes Internet an obvious choice. To this end, a domain should be registered for Awakening Earth, and a website created that will present all of the information in an easily understandable format. Further advantages of this approach are that the information can be presented interactively, it will have a permanent presence in the public domain, and it can be easily cross-linked with other initiatives for promotional purposes.

In addition, a list of subscribers can be maintained to whom regular updates will be e-mailed. An e-zine can also be published for promotional reasons. Including reader-written material would help increase public participation.

The open, informative nature of the organisation gives us an additional promotional opportunity. Because it will involve gathering information about practically all the initiatives aimed at positive social change without being in competition with any of them, this association can be used to gather further publicity. This can be done by simply mentioning Awakening Earth in whatever promotional material these initiatives use for themselves. The idea is to create a brand that becomes synonymous with deliberate social change, where promoting any one of the initiatives that is associated with it effectively promotes them all.

4.5 Resource Contribution

The organisation should accept resource contributions – in the form of grant money and equipment – that it will need for day-to-day operation.

5. Anticipated Impact

It should be apparent from the above discussion that the role of the proposed organisation is not one of actively driving social transformation in the manner that other organisations and initiatives are doing. It has a more subdued role of giving us an overview of their work and how it conspires to bring about global change. This role holds firm even for initiatives that it has helped create. So what impact can we expect Awakening Earth to have?

To answer the question, it might help to briefly examine the present state of our society. On the one hand, we have formed numerous humanitarian and other organisations aimed at social improvement – to provide homeless shelters, medical assistance, education grants, alternative economic structures, and countless other benefits. On the other hand, the dominant mentality within our society is still one of actively competing with other people for the purpose of acquiring material wealth and social status.

The measure of Awakening Earth’s success will be how effectively it has countered these trends. I expect the information that it provides to have the following effects:

• Stimulate public involvement in critically evaluating our society and looking for ways to improve it, instead of embracing it uncritically or giving in to disillusionment, despair and passive cynicism.
• Increase public awareness of and participation in the various initiatives for improving society that are presently under way.
• Improve our understanding of how they complement each other to bring about large-scale change. This will hopefully improve their cooperation and encourage us to approach them in a more positive light.

It is my hope that Awakening Earth will come to occupy a permanent place in our social consciousness, enticing us to stop seeing our collective problems as inevitable, but recognise that we can do better than tolerate having them in our midst, and that it is our responsibility to bring about the change that we want to see in the world.