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Welcoming All Humans
The Human Unity Project
Optimizing the Security and Wholeness of
All Life and Environments on Earth
“We must create not only a massive but a basic change in our culture, in our entire approach to our relationships with other human beings.”
—Walter Cronkite (America's consummate journalist; signer of the Declaration of Human Unity)
“If a weapon of mass destruction is detonated in a major city tonight, citizens will stop everything and demand action to prevent the next attack. Why wait until the day after?”
—Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (co-chair and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative)
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Center-Stage for All the World-
Our Identity and Our Security
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Dear Friends,
Imagine . . .
All Humans, undertaking the most profound journey of our lives, for ensuring the full majesty of our true lives, as humans, beyond while integral with, all of our myriad cherished differences on Earth.
A world in which the human agenda is front and center.
A milieu in which each of us rejoices in our individuality while cherishing all our differences and diversity as fellow humans.
An era in which everyone as humans agrees and shares interest in protecting our planet—and in achieving optimal prospects for all of its inhabitants.
A world fellowship that embraces an ongoing, ever-unfolding conversation and inquiry—through and for each and all humans—on how to accomplish our highest shared priorities as humans.
A home base from which all of our institutions and all of our cultural traditions connect affirmatively, serving to uplift all our horizons and—without even intending it—creating a network of reciprocal healing throughout the planet.
A mutuality through which each of us becomes a benefactor as well as a beneficiary of humankind and the planet in which we all live.
The Human Unity Project (HUP) has raised its horizon, dedication and agenda to such a vision of the world. And this human-focused agenda offers not only a forum, but sets in motion a uniquely practical process involving ongoing inquiry and discovery—a process that includes and profoundly benefits all humans. Key to the realization of human unity is a bedrock agreement already in place and already at least latently held by every human on Earth. This agreement is both so obvious and so easy to overlook, yet it can extinguish our conflicts and disclose the inherent majesty and wholeness of all our lives. It is even critical for saving planetary life and civilizations from extinction.
The agreement is as simple-sounding as they come: We are all humans.
However, far from being a platitude or tautology, the agreement that “We are all humans” derives from the deep wellspring of our essence, and it is the binding force that creates human unity. At some level, each of us—every one of the 6.8 billion humans—has already “signed on” to that agreement, but only in a semiconscious or perfunctory way (similar to the way we sign on to the fine print on documents we don’t care to read). But perhaps it’s time we look closer at what we humans have essentially agreed to, for it has a virtually limitless bounty of significance.
Incomparably obvious and important as it is, our human-focused agreement is almost invisible to us. And even when we are made aware of it, we fail to grasp its significance. How can this be?
First, the word “human” itself has been subjected to a legacy of a spectrum of misunderstandings and misuse (explained below in the section “Humans As Humans”).
Because of that misuse, the profound positive implications of the human have been closed off to examination.
We are so habitually identified with our various secondary identities (as individuals, religions, nations, cultures), and the levels of seemingly intractable disagreement they engender, that the genuine possibility of an essential, underlying set of primary interests, priorities and agreement scarcely attracts our notice.
Yet nothing is more exciting, more vibrant, or more practical than is our human-focused agreement in its capacity to safeguard and elevate our diverse identities, institutions and cultures for the highest good. Simply lifting our eyes, we can see and recognize our inherent identity as humans, allowing everyone and everything to blossom anew. Nothing can be a stronger catalyst toward fulfilling our lives than this recognition. It enables an undreamed-of level of exploration and celebration of our creative individuality and diversity. And it allows us to begin the stimulating and enchanting consummation of our lives as humans.
Purpose of the Human Unity Project
“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings, to human beings: remember your humanity and forget the rest.”
—Bertrand Russell (1950 Nobel Laureate in Litera- ture; philosopher, mathematician and writer)
"The awareness that we are all human beings has become lost in war and through politics."
—Albert Schweitzer (1952 Nobel Peace Prize; medical missionary, theologian & musician in Africa)
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Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
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Preeminent Early Champions of Humans
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The Human Unity Project has one immediate purpose in mind: to inquire into and build upon the universal foundation and empirical agreement of all our lives, that “we are all humans”—unveiling, catalyzing and actualizing ourselves to our highest aspirations.
There appears to be no other project, or regimen for human possibility that offers a wider or deeper array of agreement, conversation, inquiry and practical applications for ensuring the security and wholeness for ourselves, for all of life, and for all our environments on Earth.
When we ground our lives in the awareness that we are all humans, we discover a source of fellowship that guides how we relate to everyone and everything else. We begin to truly see that as humans we have shared priorities that honor, complement and nurture the highest aspirations of ourselves as humans—and of all our differences as well. Indeed, discovering our humanness is like beholding a heretofore unexperienced familiarity with ourselves. It is like “coming home” for the first time.
Further, we recognize that for all of us to feel and be totally secure and rise to our true wholeness, we must build on this empirical actuality and deepen and broaden this primary focus in our own lives and throughout the world we inhabit.
As a first but crucial step toward realizing these goals, a remarkably small investment of dollars and resources is needed, in exchange for unprecedented, manifold returns. In the penultimate section below, titled “An Unparalleled Investment,” we discuss in detail how your participation and support can make the crucial difference in everyone’s future. Your involvement in this project (based on your own consideration and assessment) is crucial to its success.
The World Public Forum—as a tax-deductible, public benefit association devoted solely to supporting the human at every level of our lives, everywhere on Earth—offers an incomparably sound way to make this a world in which all humans can survive and thrive to the utmost.
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Genesis of the Human Unity Project
"Universal brotherhood is the only solution for the well-being and progress of the people around the world."
—Giani Zail Singh (former president of India)
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Robert Hutchins (1899-1977)
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Giani Zail Singh (1916-1994)
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Among Earliest Supporters of the
Human Unity Project
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A world spectrum of distinguished leaders has inspired and encouraged me toward fuller development of the World Public Forum. Bertrand Russell's, Albert Schweitzer's and Giani Zail Singh's words (above) speak for themselves.
In 1967, I met with Robert Hutchins (founder of The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions), to pursue an inquiry into ways that our human lives have become confounded with our institutional identities at the cost of our humanity, and the resulting damage we do to ourselves and Earth. This led to further communications with journalists Norman Cousins and Walter Cronkite, economist Milton Friedman, futurist Willis Harman, psychologist Carl Rogers, scientist Jonas Salk, and many other national and global thinkers and leaders, including the former president of India, Giani Zail Singh.
The Human Unity Project, and its centerpiece Declaration of Human Unity, developed from observations I made in more than four decades of traveling and interacting with the world as an explorer, geographer, anthropologist and, not least important, a human. Observing close-up people’s diverse cultures and identities, I found a trove of intrinsic riches and worth in our lives as humans; yet I then observed, in my own discipline of anthropology as well as in the world at large, disturbing inattention to, and consequent distortions of, humans as humans.
Recent findings by Dr. Spencer Wells (director of the Genographic Project and geneticist at Stanford University School of Medicine) suggest that we all ultimately came from one mother. Over some 100,000 years, humans (homo sapiens) evidently spread to all ends of the world, learning to live in highly diverse environments and ways, forgetting their common roots and conjuring each other as strangers, eventually as enemies. During this time, our differences hardened, habituated and institutionalized, effectively making us like orphans, disconnected from the human family from which we all originated and of which we are truly a part.
Decades of search led eventually to the founding of World Public Forum (1973) and the Human Unity Project (1982), and to the co-authoring of the Declaration of Human Unity (1986). Each of these contexts, and those that followed, became a catalyst for further discoveries and developments, including “human agreement” as presented here.
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Declaration of Human Unity
"Long Live Human Unity. . . Welcome to the Global Human Unity Meeting organized by the World Public Forum. I must congratulate Mr. Eugene Haggerty, founder of World Public Forum for his persistant physical efforts, and mental pursuits which have brought all of us under this single roof . . . Let us generate the feelings of share and care of fellow human beings."
—Satya Paul (General Secretary, Servants of the People Society,
New Delhi, India)
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Satya Paul Eugene Haggerty |
Exploring the Dignity and Grandeur of All Humans
World Public Forum's mission is encapsulated in the Declaration of Human Unity (featured in both the project’s mailer packet and on the website). Its signers recognize the perilous conditions in which we live, the need for unified action on the part of all humans, and the power of human unity to utterly revivify our lives and the whole world. You are cordially invited to join hundreds of key thinkers and leaders worldwide—including such luminaries as Walter Cronkite and His Holiness the Dalai Lama—who have signed on to this declaration.
The Declaration of Human Unity can be seen as an overarching public declaration for all human-focused initiatives and projects. The respective visions and goals of diverse and crucial projects can be truly realized when the actuality that we are all humans is publicly explored, examined and projected. Jimmy Carter’s initiative for human rights; Bill Gates’s for unmet health needs; Al Gore’s and John Doerr’s measures on behalf of the environment; Sam Nunn’s and Richard Lugar’s Nuclear Threat Initiative; George Shultz’s Nuclear Security Project; the Project for Excellence in Journalism; and our initiative for human-focused journalism (see below) are only a few of the existing initiatives that are vitally facilitated, amplified and optimized when we ground our lives in our universal human identity.
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Realizing Inclusive Diversity
"We are made for togetherness. we are made for fellowship. We are different precisely to know our need of one another."
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984 Nobel Peace Prize; signer of the Declaration of Human Unity)
If we focus on the human being, we are also moving to a unification."
—Fang Lizhi (astrophysicist; democracy and human rights advocate, University of Arizona, Tucson) |
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Eugene Haggerty and Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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Li Shuxian (wife) and Dr. Fang Lizhi |
Recipients of World Public Forum's first Human Courage Awards
(His Eminence, in 1985; Professor Fang, in 1993)
From our hominid past to our present-day disconnections, we have shifted from the family, to the band, to the clan, to the tribe, and to the nation (the basis for our state system), but we have not yet shifted to the human. All of us largely identify with various derived characteristics of our lives: for example, with our individual preferences and tastes, group of associates or friends (who have their various preferences), with a profession or life role (entrepreneur, homemaker, inventor, nurturer, executive, blue-collar worker, athlete, artist), with a race, religion, culture and nationality that can create strife on a global scale. But all of these characteristics—even those that are biologically based and predetermined—are derivations of the encompassing fact that we are humans.
Of course, becoming human-focused should in no way suggest rejection of, or disconnection from, any of these characteristics. Indeed, profoundly the opposite, it allows embracing and releasing them all to their highest aspirations and fullest possibilities. When human agreement becomes actuated in our lives, our cherished individuality and diverse identities become fulfilled and consum-mated as facets of a singular human whole. And the shared conversation and noble aspirations of all individuals and peoples are seen as mutually comforting and sustaining.
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Humans As Humans
“I always believe we are the same; we are all human beings… Wherever I meet people, I always have the feeling that I am encountering another human being, just like myself.”
"The need for simple human-to-human relationships is becoming increasingly urgent . . . Today the world is smaller and smaller and more interdependent."
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1989 Nobel Peace Prize; signer of the Declaration of Human Unity)
"The enlightened efforts of generations of democrats, the terrible experience of two world wars . . . and the evolution of civilization have finally brought humanity into the realization that human beings are more important than the state."
—Václav Havel (2003 Gandhi Peace Prize; writer and dramatist; former president of the Czech Republic)
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His Holiness the Dalai Lama |
Václav Havel |
On the Front Stage of History—
World-tested Heroes for All Humankind
I have chosen to call the irreducible, primary characteristic of each and all of us “the human of our lives.” It is both a shared characteristic and the deepest fact of our individual lives—beyond all polarities. And to be a human is not to be reduced to anything. (It describes, for example, as does no other concept, both our material characteristics and our participation in the transcendent.) As humans, we encompass and yet go beyond our myriad unique qualities. Take away the human, focus only on our differences, and our lives are like a broken mirror—fractured, distorted and incomplete. Our institutions become like automatons, so reflexively involved in their own roles and survival, and in their limited specializations, that they too often treat us as cogs or fragments within their structures; and even their best efforts are often ineffectual or carry unintentionally ruinous downsides. Culturally, most or all of us have habituated to identify with, and act from, fragments of “the mirror” rather than our shared humanness.
The tacit condition of the human as the primary, irreducible fact of our lives underlies all of the great initiatives toward peace, prosperity, sustainability and genuine human happiness—not only at the macro (world) level but at the micro (individual, family, workplace) level. Without the human, most all of our energy is spent on the endless defense of turf and the building of fortifications against often mutually perceived threats. Through fearful preoccupation with misconceived “self-protection,” which effectively translates into threats against the “other,” we create, willy-nilly, an unsustainable existence for ourselves and for our planet, to the neglect of our most vital shared priorities—and even denial of our actual lives as humans.
As we unite and become whole as humans, we also begin to tap into the full breadth and depth of our nature; the human is our true home, where all our beauty, love and consummate goodness finally resides. Beyond all imagination, It is where our highest truths and possibilities can be discovered. It is ours to inherit and embrace to the consummate fruition of our lives as humans.
The human is thus the sine qua non of all genuine success. And yet—in the very name of success—the world’s cultures, media, institutions and nation-states are so preoccupied with reflexive responses to clashing priorities that they tend to tragically overlook the human.
When successes are achieved, we tend to attribute them to inexorable nonhuman forces—such as “technology” or “progress” or “science.” But when failures occur, the word human often is pejoratively assigned: “human failing,” “all too human,” "human weakness." "human error,” “I’m only human” and “subject to human nature” are often stated as the ultimate cause and excuse for the fate of our lives. Every human on Earth is diminished—if not tragically wasted—by these unwarranted misusages, which effectively deny our humanness as the source of our greatest achievements, values and goals—indeed, of our apparent highest capacity for life itself. In order to reconnect with our fundamental nature and ground, we must begin to ask certain foundational questions:
“What indeed is our nature? Why are we commonly called "human beings," rather than "humans"? Indeed, though we are humans, why do we not live as humans? What would our actual lives and world be like were we to live (as well as be) as humans? Could we as humans more effectively speak out to ensure a most responsible and fulfilled life and world?” (See the Human-focused World Public and Human-focused Science sections below.)
To live as humans is our prospect for living securely, successfully and wholly—in ways that ensure both our survival and fulfillment. To live at odds with and in dissociation from our most primary essence is to risk all of the failures and catastrophes that we could otherwise (as united, living humans) prevent.
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—Pope Benedict XVI
“There remains a very real danger that terrorists could obtain a nuclear bomb or the materials to make one and turn an American city into a modern Hiroshima.”
—Matthew Bunn (senior researcher, Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom)
“I think we probably will lose a city or two in the next 10 or 20 years.”
—Paul Doty (professor of public policy and biochemistry at Harvard University; co-organizer of the Pugwash Conferences; board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
“Trust people like human beings. They’ll act like human beings.”
—Mohamed ElBaradei (2005 Nobel Peace Prize; former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency)
"We, at NTI, do share your interest in achieving human unity in the world."
—Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative office
"We can't get the genie back in the bottle." (March 4, 2010)
—(Lieutenant General) Patrick O'Reilly (head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, on the growing missile threat facing the United States.)
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Sam Nunn |
Pope Benedict XVI |
Among Sentinels for All Humans
Our world is caught up in “the race between cooperation and catastrophe” (Sam Nunn, November 10, 2007). Indeed, it is increasingly apparent that we are rushing headlong into one of two diametrically opposite worlds. In one, we operate in a world based on habitual perception, where we are denied to oblivion of our innate potential for enjoying our lives securely and wholly as humans. Here, our perceived differences and disagreements can turn lethal—and could even proliferate exponentially when abetted by runaway technological developments that far outpace our ability to use them wisely.
The diametrically opposite world is the empirical world of humans, where our neglected primary and universal humanness can be recognized through the eyes of every human. Our empirical actuality as humans enables us all to agree—and thus to build upon our agreement—to inquire, include and converse with each other, and to apply these foundational resources for ensuring our most crucial shared priorities. In this foundation and manner, the true greatness of our diverse treasured environments, cultures, institutions, and individuality as humans can rise anew, flourishing integrally, to build a world integral culture composed of whole human life, neither threatened nor diminished by our rightly cherished differences.
Humans, therefore, are our quintessential foundation for releasing every level of our inherent universal human agreement, for including all as humans, and encompassing, ministering to, celebrating and uplifting all of our diversities. We include ourselves as individual and diverse humans no less than as united humans, for the greater integrity, consummate goodness and unparalleled prosperity of all.
The ground for our enablement lies in recognizing the human of our lives (see “Humans As Humans” above). Through the profound structure of our humanness, we discover manifestations, choices and benefits never before accessible or even imaginable.
Today, with the entire world facing exponential capacities for threatening our continued existence, we are called with utmost urgency to choose between cooperation and catastrophe. If we neither feel nor are cognizant of this urgency, we are like a frog in boiling water: As the heat source is turned up slowly, the frog “adapts,” unaware—until it is too late—that the water is getting hotter. Adaptation to what “is” leads to complacency: being “well-adjusted” in a world of accelerating self-destruction.
When we heed the danger signals and recognize human-focused agreement as a survival resource and benefit, in fact as an imperative, then the choice (and our realization that we have a choice) is clear, and we will choose human-focused agreement as a supremely practical and beneficial way of life.
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Pathways for Security and Wholeness
“If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution. Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring… I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities, on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.”
—Bill Gates (business magnate and philan-thropist, during address to Harvard graduates on June 7, 2007)
"I do wish you well in carrying forward the Human Unity Project."
—Bill Gates Sr. (retired attorney and philanthropist)
“I have not found any worldwide project with greater potential for human betterment or with more favorable cost-benefit ratios [than the Human Unity Project].”
—Inamullah Khan (1988 Templeton Prize recipient; former president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace; signer of the Declaration of Human Unity)
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Melinda and Bill Gates with
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Bill Gates, Sr. and Mimi Gardner Gates
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Benefactors Reaching to Heal All Humankind
Uniquely Proficient for the Grand Venture
of Making All Humans Whole
Just how can we share the security and wholeness of all our lives and environments? We earnestly invite the most accomplished and caring of you out there—thinkers, designers, coordinators, investors, philanthropists the world over, as well as anyone else who wants to participate—to join in this quest for addressing the world's greatest challenges. We have sought the framework set forth here. It has achieved, certainly to date, an uncontested basis for such supremely practical achievement.
As we have seen, the ab initio agreement that we are all humans (the empirically-tested, foundational core for optimizing our lives) sets in motion an ever-expanding chain of operations for achieving security and wholeness in all life and environments. Beyond that, there are multiple pathways or avenues that can be taken. Consider your own most fundamental aspirations and priorities when you assess best means for optimizing our lives.
For example, from the standpoint of practicality and workability, you may wish to compare the advantages of primary human agreement compared to multiple forms of disagreement. From any standpoint, gridlock and strife based on conflicting interests are not practical. This is all the more true when what is at stake is our ability to live and thrive as humans on this planet.
Below are five pathways and the ways they can play out:
Human Agreement: We are all humans—the foundational link for optimizing our lives.
Practicality: the elemental advantage of building on human agreement rather than disagreement.
Cost/benefit ratio: the potential exponential savings from any investment of money, energy, and/or support (even a few strategically placed words) over against the combined waste of human life, depletion of our environments, and loss of unaccounted-for trillions of dollars of our wealth under today’s systemic disagreements.
Imperativeness: the pressing urgency of focusing on ourselves as humans, even while celebrating our differences. We must put an end to all that has prevented us from achieving our optimal state: ignorance (including that of ourselves as humans), fears, hatreds, hopelessness, and threats of—and the actuality of—terrorism and war.
Rational self-interest: the commonsense recognition that the sheer security of our lives is a necessary prerequisite for the fulfillment of every individual interest; and that we cannot be secure and whole as individuals or as separate identities or populations unless all our lives and environments are secure and whole.
The above list is not exhaustive. There are surely many other pathways for advancing the limitless possibilities and profound advantages of life on Earth as humans.
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Expressing Our Quintessence
How can we express our quintessence as humans? The Human Unity Project serves as a catalyst for a full range of human-focused activities, integral with all our differences, that can rise above the unconscious “background noise” of our “normal” lives and our consequent unmet needs. From a one-on-one human-awareness exercise (see at the menu A Human Focus Exercise) to a proposed global structure—Forming a Human World (see Invitation to Agreement) a focus on the human can generate incalculable benefits in countless areas, including the following:
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Communication and Conversation
"This is a San Francisco type of project. Human Unity supporters should know that they are welcome here and that this fair city is the best place in the world for the dream of Human Unity to become reality."
"Be it resolved that I, Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, recognize and honor the importance of human unity and the positive effect it can have on the world and its conflicts, do hereby proclaim February 19, 2000 as . . . HUMAN UNITY DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO!"
—Willie L. Brown, Jr. (Mayor of San Francisco; attorney, State Assemblyman and California State Assembly Speaker)
"Mr. Eugene A. Haggerty, whom I've known for many years, would like to share with you his ideas for a [World] Public Forum. Any courtesy or consideration you can extend to him will be appreciated by me."
—George R. Moscone (Mayor of San Francisco; attorney and State Majority Leader; tragically assassinated on November 27, 1978)
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San Francisco Mayors George Moscone (1929-1978)
and Willie L. Brown, Jr. |
My Earliest Friends and Champions in California
As the universal fact and agreement of our humanness is understood and communicated, its staggering implications progres- sively unfold, and our bright potential becomes apparent in countless and unexpected ways. In the process of communication itself, the nature of our communication is transformed, and conversation in its nearly infinite variety becomes a catalyst for new discovery and coordinative endeavors. In all its levels and permutations, from the most intimate human groups to the level of global human-focused communications, this "Great Human Conversation" can revivify our lives and rehabilitate the world in ways profound and simple, subtle and obvious.
The Human Unity Project is dedicated to the application of our universally human agreement—and the authentic conversation it engenders—to the crucial imperatives and prudent priorities facing our turning point, for assuring the security and wholeness of all our lives and environments in this now-perilous world.
Human-Focused Journalism
"My congratulations on your thoughtfully organized approach on this most important concern."
"Without a belief in human unity, I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites.
—Norman Cousins (journalist, author, public policy analyst; signer of the Declaration of Human Unity)
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Norman Cousins (1915-1990) |
Herb Caen (1916-1997) |
Signers of the Declaration of Human Unity
Cousins: Albert Schweitzer Award (1990);
Caen: Pulitzer Prize (1996)
Heralds of Human-focused Journalism
What makes journalism so pivotal to the “Great Human Conversation”—and to the fulfillment of our paramount priorities and deepest hopes?
Journalists are in a unique position in their potential to report, publish and enlighten the countless permutations of this Conversa- tion throughout the world. But to do this, journalists must honor their own higher aspirations and mission by listening in to this Conversation and then recognizing its integral and beneficial potential. When it is human-focused, journalism embraces all dimensions concerning ourselves, e.g, individuals, group iden-tities, publics, and at long last, humans.
In the Great Human Conversation, journalists would naturally deepen their craft and sensitize their own identities, including as humans. All humans, by telling their unique “stories,” create the first step in this Conversation, which at every step helps make us more whole and healed. The practice of human-focused journalism generates a paradigm shift that releases an entire noosphere of intercommunication, idea and fact exchange across the planet, creating a far more complete understanding of ourselves and our world. A new and unique genre of news would seamlessly advance the “news” as we know it, addressing the most urgent imperatives and challenges that each and all humans can face.
Through its role in initiating, focusing on, and supporting human-focused journalism, the Human Unity Project subserves profound levels of inquiry and exploration that would lead to an incomparable reduction in threats and acts of harm of every kind, a new appreciation of our inherent quintessence as humans, and a never-ending discovery of our capacity to benefit all life and environments on Planet Earth.
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Human-Focused Popular Culture
“The Human Element. Nothing more fundamental. Nothing more elemental.”
—Andrew N. Liveris (president and CEO, Dow Chemical)
"Finding newer, smarter, cleaner ways to power the world begins with the one energy we have in abundant suppy: "the power of Human Energy."
—David J. O'Reilly (chairman and CEO, Chevron)
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Andrew N. Liveris
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David J. O'Reilly
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Discovering the Quintessential Value of Humans
Today we observe a shift in awareness in our popular culture. Corporations, for example, have picked up on and encouraged this shift. Notably, the unique worth of the word human is echoed in campaigns such as Chevron's "the power of Human Energy," Cisco Systems' "Welcome to the Human Network," Dow Chemical's "The Human Element," Microsoft's "Something more . . . human," Quaker Oats' (PepsCo) "Go human go," and Virgin America's "Are you human? Then climb aboard."
The upsurge of such usages, whether in advertising or elsewhere, are a barometer of the growing awareness of and interest in our quintessential nature.
All manifestations of popular culture are both a reflection of and a catalyst for the prevailing paradigms as expressed in the human interrelationship. From advertising to motion pictures, from magazines to music, from television to the Internet, our fractured and dissociated existence is reflected in today’s world—but promising alternative expressions are also beginning to appear. Popular culture forms a large part of our ambient environment, and the sense of life—and of who we are—is reflected here in countless ways. In a world that recognizes and agrees that “we are all humans,” we will thrive in an increasingly whole (rather than disconnected) cultural milieu.
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Human-Focused Science
“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
—Albert Einstein (1921 Nobel Prize in Physics; theoretical physicist)
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature."
—Michael Faraday (English natural philosopher and scientist (1791-1867); harbinger to Albert Einstein's discoveries)
"I would regard it as a privilege to facilitate such a [Human Unity Project] group."
—Carl R. Rogers (founder of person-centered psychology; Resident Fellow, Center for Studies of the Person)
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Albert Einstein (1879-1955) |
Carl R. Rogers (1902-1987) |
Pioneer Human-centered Scientists
Human-focused science addresses and studies humans as humans. As such, it must set a new standard for clear, empirically grounded exposition.
To bring to light significant facts and relationships, we need a vocabulary that reveals meanings rather than hiding them. There are many ways to do this. Sometimes even a new word coinage can expand our understanding in promising ways. For example, “wholth” unites two words of common derivation, “whole” and “health”, thus better conveying the health of the whole, of each and all humans. Such reframing can help us to better see and comprehend what is before our eyes. This in turn widens and deepens our comprehension of the full potential and promise of our lives as humans.
To communicate clearly, it is important to understand the misusages of language in today’s world. All too often, concepts are framed in ways that prevent insight or foster tragic misunderstanding and ignorance. Two professors of History of Science at Stanford University have been unfolding the science of agnotology (itself their coinage), which studies ignorance—or “how and why we don’t know” things—and the ways, unconscious or deliberate, that states of ignorance can be created. As they describe, agnotology helps us to “better understand how and why various forms of knowing have not come to be, or disappeared, or have become invisible.” (See Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (2008), edited by these two professors, Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger.)
“Why are humans—as humans—unknown to science?” and “What more appalling ignorance, in the main, can be imagined than public blindness to our own empirical actuality as humans?” When this specific empirical knowledge is identified and examined through science (as it has not been to general knowledge), a foundational paradigm promises to emerge. To live as humans is to discover and inherit the integral wholeness of all life and habitats on the planet. What exactly these wonders are we will discover as this global conversation proceeds.
“[Agnotology] makes us ask what is at stake when we don’t know things that are plainly before our eyes.”
—Sheila Jasanoff (Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University)
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Human-focused World Public
"Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood."
—Martin Luther King Jr. (1964 Nobel Peace Prize; civil rights leader)
"The oneness of human beings is the basic ethical thread that holds us together . . . I am convinced that poor people are just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone."
"Deep within every human exists a precious treasure of initiative and creativity waiting to be discovered."
—Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize (2006); Bangladeshi economist and founder of Grameen Bank)
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Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929-1968) |
Muhammad Yunus |
Courageous Leaders of the World
Releasing Freedom, Dignity and Wholeness
for All Humans
Toward forming a human world, the Human Unity Project has applied its human-grounded resources (such as human-focused agreement, inquiry and conversation) to a preliminary model of organization consisting of twenty-two Human Unity Coordinators, two from each of eleven regions of the world, approximately equal in population.
This schema would allow for (1) direct human-with-human relationship, communication and coordination at plenary meetings of the eleven regions, and (2) interactive leader-public communication both throughout the world public and within each of the population regions. This schema (modified from consultations in 1979 with the psychologist Carl Rogers and scientist Jonas Salk) is proposed as a practical format facilitating an optimal number of individuals for coordinating global intercommunication.
This model is considered in greater detail at the menu Invitation to Agreement: Human Coordination Initiative—Forming a Human World). The distinguished persons mentioned there (such as Walter Cronkite, Václav Havel, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama) are included only because of their status as exemplars to the world. They are widely known in their particular region of the world (and, generally, throughout the world), and they represent the types of individuals who would be included and appropriate as Human Unity Coordinators for the population regions.
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Life at the Crossroads
"People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being."
—Václav Havel (2003 Gandhi Peace Prize; writer and dramatist; former president of Czech Republic)
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Visionary Benefactor of All Humans
A world of disagreement, if not discord, that we see all around us couldn’t be more fateful, or its consequences more serious. If its own logic is unchallenged, a dystopian world nightmare could prove inevitable. But if we successfully expose it to the light of day, our futures can be bright beyond our wildest imagination.
Throughout the world, people are desperately waiting for those of us who can to indeed do what we can—and what they by themselves cannot: to permit human unity to shine in every corner of the world, and on every individual human on Earth.
Short of universally acknowledged human agreement, all of the efforts by the world’s finest thinkers and leaders could fail us. As our technological age continues to enable ever cheaper and more catastrophic means and scenarios of killing and destruction, none of our lives will be secure until our highest aspirations as humans are assured through our combined efforts.
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The World's Greatest Investment
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Warren Buffett |
World-pacing Businessman
Investor and Philanthropist
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Isn’t it a no-brainer that we must invest in the present and future life of ourselves and our loved ones? But unless we have an economically and humanly hospitable world, we will have no future in which to invest. If a single practical investment of dollars or resources could simultaneously optimize everyone’s security as well as quality of life on a global scale, would we choose to make such an investment?
The Human Unity Project (HUP) creates a underlying milieu serving to inspire and nurture all of the highest endeavors of all of our organizations, initiatives and activities. An investment in the Human Unity Project, therefore, is also an investment in all the countless and diverse organizations, institutions and practical measures that can make the critical difference between an unlivable world and a world of undreamed-of security and possibility. What greater win-win scenario can be imagined?
The World Public Forum (WPF) is a tax-deductible nonprofit organization solely devoted to maximizing universal human agreement (based on the axiom that we are all humans)—and thereby enabling the realization of a world that supports the human and all human-focused benefactions at every level of our lives, everywhere on Earth. We know of no comparably sound way to make this a world in which all humans can survive and thrive to the utmost.
WPF's Human Unity Project needs your inspiration, ideas, and distinguished leadership. Whatever talents you or your friends can bring to the Human Unity Project—contributing your skills in writing, Website/Internet development, hosting seminars, scheduling public presentations, organizing, fundraising, establishing a contact network, planning, execution, direction and inspiration—will further ensure the consummate realization of our most critical human priorities. It is paramountly crucial that the Human Unity Project receives the funding and mainstream public exposure essential for expeditious operations at this pivotal moment in the world's history.
Your queries, support and personal engagement—as well as those of your colleagues and friends who may be keen and capable for championing, publicizing or funding this initiative—will hasten the test of every premise brought forward here through action-focused, ever-correcting inquiry.
No greater cost-benefit ratio nor benefit for all humans appear in sight, while spin-off opportunities manifest virtually from launch. The project ensures the most exponential investments and benefits ever, by grounding the project in our very lives as humans. In this way, all humans and environments synergize as resources as well as beneficiaries. All individuals, institutions and environments are made secure and whole through ourselves as humans, integral for the goodness and prosperity of all, including yourself.
For fuller information on this human dynamic, watch for and support our unique forums and research on key practical human priorities. These include the primacy of humans on Earth; extrapolations based on our empirical actuality as humans; factoring out both investments and philantropy; cost-benefit analyses, and our Pro Forma Budget. We can be reached at the addresses below.
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How You Can Contact Us
Contact information is given below.
We welcome your hopes, inquiries, suggestions and engagement—they are profoundly significant.
The Human Unity Project requires funding and publicity to meet the dire challenges presented by this moment in history. Whatever contributions are right for you are most important and gratefully appreciated. You will assuredly honor the immense promise of all our lives by the uniquely impor-tant contribution of your leadership and support to World Public Forum.
Sincerely,
Eugene Haggerty, Founder
We are searching for The World's Most Respected and Honorable Humans.
Of course, we have already found and witnessed some of these
greats among us. Whether shy or open to the limelight, we
understand and respect their—everyone's—personal
needs for security and privacy. Please join with us
in discovering today's most respected and
honorable humans on Earth.
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*California 501(c)(3) tax-deductible, public benefit association
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We welcome your hopes, questions, suggestions—and your active engagement. Your participation is profoundly important for meeting the dire challenges presented by this unique moment in history.
The World Public Forum seeks funding and public support for optimizing the security and wholeness of all our lives and environments on Earth. Whatever contributions are right for you are vitally important and gratefully appreciated. Please make your check payable to
WORLD PUBLIC FORUM
A California tax-deductible, public benefit association
P.O. Box 12068
San Francisco, California 94112 USA
humanunity@humanunity.org
www.HumanUnity.org
Fax: 415-333-1995
You can also make your contributions online through our secure Paypal service. Click the Paypal link below to make your contribution today.
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