(Or “The Greatest Contest on Earth”)
Summary: There’s no overall, widely-accepted global plan for making sure that humanity can meet the challenges of this century. But imagine if there were a plan that a majority of people on Earth could believe in. The mere existence of a viable plan would create widespread optimism and a greater sense of security. And reports of progress on the plan would help solidify optimism and help inspire greater participation in the plan. We believe that a competition every three years would be the best way to: 1) inspire the creation of better global plans; 2) generate widespread interest and enthusiasm for global plans; and 3) give people enough time to experience a plan before offering them the winners of the next competition.
We are aware of only three global plans. None are well-known. We believe that they all have bureaucratic limitations because they require the approval of many nations that often have opposing interests. We believe that global plans that work from the individual level and that spread virally would be superior to these plans because:1) The plans would begin to work as soon as small numbers of people made progress, and that success could inspire greater participation, and 2) When enough people participated it would generate enough popular support to influence organizations and then nations.
Any creative thinkers who develop programs or organizations could participate. We envision that some universities, large nonprofits, corporations, nations and independently-organized groups would field global plans for the competition. To help people see what a global plan from the individual level would look like, we’ve developed a model plan, an example.
Group Genie’s plan is based on our upgrades and our generic “Master Formula for Change:”
Did you ever feel caught off guard by some overwhelming situation in your life? At first you didn’t have any idea of how you would deal with the situation. But then you or someone who was helping you came up with a strategy, a plan to manage the situation. Note that as soon as you had a viable plan that you could believe in, you probably became far less stressed and more optimistic about your future. You felt better even before you began to put the plan into action!
We believe that the mere existence of a global plan that people could believe in would immensely help humanity. That’s because their optimism and faith in the plan would increase their ability to cope with problems, until parts of the plan could come up to speed.
As far as we know, only three global plans have been created to try to address humanity’s current and future needs. They are called the Global Marshall Plan, Plan B (from Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute) and the United Nations programs taken together, such as the Millennium Goals. Most people are unaware of these plans. We believe that the plans are weak because they depend on the agreement between a large number of nations and NGOs. There is little awareness, let alone buy-in from the general population.
Group Genie’s plan is different. Unlike the other global plans, it works from the individual level, and it’s designed to grow virally, person to person. Our ‘superhero” upgrades are actually components of our plan. We feel that the power of our plan rests mainly on original ideas that are huge upgrades over conventional approaches.
Yet as good as the plan is, we imagine two ways to do better. First, the plan includes an amendment process. Just as the U.S. Constitution evolved and can be improved through amendments, we expect our plan to evolve. Second, we’d like to someday help organize a high-profile global plan competition. Many reality shows are competitions, and many of them are somewhat farfetched. This would be one reality show that could have global significance. This competition would be of broad interest if people could see how they could personally benefit and be involved in one of the plans. This is in contrast to the centralized United Nations type of plans that are technical and organizational.
Here are some Group Genie projects that are part of our plan::
* The Sakai is the clear vision.
* Superprograms, PTTN, Helper’s Helper are methods to reach the vision.
* Supergoodness, Supercharity, and the new definition of the good person are meant to get people to choose the best projects over competing activities.
* The Golden Rule 2.0 is a new standard for fairness that helps people understand how much action, and what kinds of actions are enough to create a sustainable and stable world.
We offer our plan as an example of a global plan that works from the individual level. We believe that many governments, universities, large NGOs or corporations have the wherewithal to field their own global-individual plans.
Status: We are not actively working on the global plan competition because there needs to be some solid use and validation of superprograms and the other upgrades. Otherwise global plans that work from the individual level would be mostly conjecture.
Potential Impact: If people around the world became aware of strong global the impact would be immense. If people could participate in these plans, we feel that would lead to far more optimism and action than the current situation. Especially if progress on the plans were tracked and publicized (perhaps as widely as the daily stock market averages) it would lead to a sense of progress and growth toward a much better world. People would feel much more optimist (and much less anxiety) to be part of a world that has a plan that it’s steadily achieving.
Would this be a major upgrade for the world if enough creative people embraced it? Please comment!