At 8:43 AM -0500 11/17/98, Ed Weick wrote:
<<snip>>
> Establish a
>supergovernment that would force us to act globally? I cannot think of a
>singe country that would be willing to give up any of its powers.
Yet Canada seems eager to give up powers to p[rovinces and especially
to corporations (through NAFTA and MAI)
>The UN has now been foundering in virtual irrelevance for about fifty
>years.
Not irrelevance- I hate to think what the world would be like without
it, but certainly to bullying by (mostly) the paranoid and anti-social
US, which cannot be overcome because there is no effective democracy
there. The UN still offers some (faint) hope, but not without reform
and getting out from under US domination, which seems unlikely, but
sodid the Soviet implosion, so who knows?
>
>I agree with Jay's dismal prognosis, but I see little hope of getting
>out of
>it by rational thought and behaviour. At some point we will wind down,
>whether cataclymically (Hurrican Mitch) or bit by bit remains to be seen.
>Meanwhile, there is work to be done in the mess we are in.
So long as we refuse to face the crucial issues (overpopulation,
squandering of irreplaceable resources, increasing inequality/inequity,
moral and spititual decay) other 'work' is like rearranging deck
chairs, or perhaps refilling Nero's glass while he fiddles. Jay is
right about the urgency, but I think it takes positive visions to get
people going. One thing the UN does is to help keep the vision of an
equitable, sustainable world alive.
Caspar davis
