Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature-world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-6

But this is not what people perceive as occurring. Asked how much their country is governed to the will of the people the mean response was 4.6. in every country a majority-on average 73%-said that their country should be governed according to the will of the people more than it is.

What then can be done to increase the influence of the aggregated consciousness of the people? The first step is simply to give the people a greater voice.

Some have argued what is key here is for individuals to step forward and organize themselves into organizations that put forward key ideas and concerns about what needs to happen. This is doubtlessly an important part of the process by which new ideas and concerns are developed and disseminated into society.

However, no individual or group can speak for the society as a whole. To give voice to the whole of society we must go back to the method that the ancient Greeks used to develop the first democratic government. They created their government by selecting people by lot from the whole of the citizenry. In modern vernacular we call it random sampling.

This is the essence of public opinion polls. When a sample, randomly selected from the general public, is asked questions in a clear and unbiased fashion this can provide a useful way to discern the dominant tendency in the public as a whole.

People around the world also want government leaders to pay attention to polls. Even when presented the counter argument that government leaders “should not pay attention to public opinion polls because this will distract them from deciding what they think is right,” in all 18 nations polled majorities said that government leaders “should pay attention to public opinion polls.”

Some people express discomfort with polls. They hear that wording questions differently will produce different results and are afraid that polls are used to misrepresent the public for political ends. This, no doubt, sometimes occurs.

But there are means to address this problem. When public opinion researchers take many different poll results, some of them seemingly contradictory, and analyze the wording carefully, they are generally able to see that there is a reason the public responds differently to different questions. The public’s attitudes are complex and, like the blind men encountering an elephant, each poll finding elucidates one aspect of the whole.  However, in putting them all together there usually a discernible coherent voice.

Another approach that I have found effective in discerning the voice of the public is to take the majority position in numerous polls and to imagine that one ‘person’ had taken all these positions. I have even tried writing out a kind of interview with this collective-

Rather than just having an occasional poll or citizen jury, there could be a large ongoing representative sample ready to give input to the government, a Citizen Advisory Pane.

‘person’ where the answers to a series of questions are all majority positions from different polls. Interestingly this ‘person’ is remarkably reasonable and nuanced. Such an ‘interview’ with the American public can be found at pipa.org/articles/RBI_all.htm.

To be continued…

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature- world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-5

Some have argued that long as there is a level  playing and all people have the option to join or form an interest group, when-

Asked by WorldPublicOpinion.org whether their nation is run “ for the benefit of all people’ or “by few big interests looking out for themselves” in nearly every nation polled majorities…said it was the latter.

Interest groups compete the net outcome is something that approximates the will of the people. Some have argued that this market of competing interests has an innate intelligence that is most likely to produce outcomes serving the common good.

But most people around the world do not think that is what is occurring in their country. Asked by WorldPublicOpinion.org whether their nation is run “for the benefit of all people’ or “by a few big interests looking out for themselves” in nearly every nation polled majorities- on average 63% - said it was latter.

Publics also tend to be less polarized than elected officials. Plotting the position of elected officials on a left-right spectrum, one tends to find a bimodal or u-shaped curve with clusters on the left and right and few in the middle. Thus, it is often difficult to find common ground.

However, the public lends to follow more a normal curve with a bulge in the middle and few at the extremes. Among the public, most do not strongly position themselves on one or the other end of the spectrum, but rather to try to find ways to balance, and hopefully integrate, the values at the ends of the spectrum.

Increasing the influence of the Whole

So what do people think should happen? All around the world people seem to think that the will of the people- i.e., the voice of the society as a whole- should play a larger role in government decision-making.

In a poll of 19 nations from around the world, majorities in every nation agreed with the principle enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “the will of the people should be the basis for the authority og government.” On average, 85% agreed.

This does not mean that they think that other more specific elements in society should not also play a role. Asked how much influence the will of the people should have on their government on a 0-10 scale the mean response across 21 nations was 8.0- not the highest possible number, through still quite high.

To be continued…

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature – world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-4

WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted a poll of eight developed countries in which respondents were presented the annual per capita contribution that would be necessary for meeting this goal, based on the World Bank estimates. In every case, and in most cases by a large margin, majorities of respondents- on average three out of four- said they were willing to any the amount necessary to meet the goal, provided that people in other countries did so as well.

Publics as more receptive to Evolutionary change

All this is not to say, as some have proclaimed, “vox populi, vox Dei” (the will of the people is the voice of God). However, it does appear that in many cases publics tend to be at least one step ahead of their government when it comes to addressing important issues. It does appear that the citizenry as a whole is more receptive to emergent ideas promting key changes.

Institutions…tend to pursue a narrowly defined concept of institutional self-interest. Individuals… are more likely to think in terms of the common good.

This dynamic is especially true when it comes to dealing with problems of a global nature that require international cooperation. Nation states as institutions have proven reluctant to cooperate in ways that compromise their sovereignty or their freedom to pursue their maximal national interest. Cnflicts are often viewed in terms of narratives of winners and losers in a zero-sum game.

But it appears that individuals as a whole are more ready to cooperate in a global framework and are not as constrained by competitive national narratives. While for most people national identity is strong, most also think of themselves as global citizen. A World values survey found that majorities in 43 of the 46 countries polled said thay saw themselves as global citizens- on average 72%.

This differences between individuals and institutions is evident within the nation state as well. Institutions- corporations, interest groups, and political parties- tend to pursue a narrowly defined concept of institutional self-interest. Individuals have a more complex and holistic to think terms of the common good.

Though individuals have the capacity for a holistic and inclusive perspective this does not mean that all or even most of them do. But taken as an aggregate, the collective often does show these features. Why is that? When all the voices of society are considered on an issue, the self-interested voices, because they differ, tend to cancel each other out, creating a kind of background noise. Those who look at issues with at issues with a more a neutral and inclusive consciousness than become the swing vote that creates a dominant perspective.

To be continued….

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Feature – world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-3

In a 2009 WorldPublicOpinion.org, in fifteen out of nineteen nations majorities indicated that their government should give higher priority to climate change than it does now. In no nation did more than one in three want their nation to give it a lower priority. On average, 60% of respondents across all nations polled wanted their government to give climate changes a higher priority.

One of the biggest obstacles to the resolution of many international issues in the resistance of nation states to subordinate themselves to international law and to give international institutions the necessary power to resolve international problems. Some leaders have even explained that this resistance arises from nationalistic feelings in their populace.

However, international polls again show quite a different picture. Most people around the world support an international order based on international law. Majorities in most countries believe that international laws create normative obligations like domestic law and reject the view that nation should not feel obliged to abide by international law when doing so it at odds with their national interest.

Most significant, publics show a far greater readiness than their national governments to enter into cooperative international efforts to address global issues, majorities in most countries favor having a much stronger United Nations and favor giving it new powers, such as the power to regulate the international arms trade or to have a standing UN peacekeeping force.

Large majorities in publics around the world, including countries with nuclear arms, favor an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons that includes intrusive international inspections. Publics worldwide would favor an international regime under the United Nations that would stop new countries from beginning production of nuclear fuel and instead would supply them with the fuel they need for energy production.

Robust majorities approve of the United Nations intervening in the internal affairs of states to investigate human rights abuses. Very large majorities in nearly every nation say that the United Nations should try to further women’s rights even when presented the argument that this would conflict with national sovereignty. Perhaps most dramatic, equally large majorities say that the UN has a responsibility to protect people, by force if necessary, from serve human rights abuses by their own government.

Another key area is in regard to poverty and economic development. The UN member states have established a series of key goals for economic and social development called the Millennium Development Goals. A key goal to cut hunger and severe poverty in half by the year 2015. While there has been some progress on this front, developed countries have not made the increases in aid that the World Bank has deemed necessary to meet this goal.

To be continued….

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Hacienda Luisita case falls on Corona’s lap - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Hacienda Luisita case falls on Corona’s lap - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Feature – world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-2

Giving Voice to World Public Opinion

While in recent years there has been increasing talk about global society, it is not an entirely new idea. For quite some time people have spoken about world public opinion as a kind of moral force. Even though there was no clear way to define it, there was still a shared sense that it existed and, on some issues, an idea of what it said. However, it was still quite amorphous.

In just the last decade, though, this has changed. For the first time, there have been a substantial number of surveys that have been conducted in parallel in numerous countries –enough to constitute the majority of humanity. These include the surveys conducted by the WorldPublicOpinion project, World Values Survey consortium, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, and the BBC World Services polls conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

…the question of what is emergent in society has increasingly become the question of what is emergent in the world as a whole.

Recently, WorldPublicOpinions.org in partnership with the program on Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations developed a comprehensive digest that drew together all of these international polls.  What we found was quite striking. It revealed a remarkable level of consensus on a wide range of issues facing the planet. [See www.cfr.org/thinktank/iigg/pop for more details including questions and country-by-country findings.]

A key example is the issue of climate change. One might think of climate change as a problem that publics would have trouble relating to. People can barely see it effects and they continue to hear debate within the scientific community. Nonetheless, clear majorities in most nations say that it is necessary to take significant action to address that will require real costs – even when it is put in very specific terms – and to make change in their lifestyles.

Given the some of these changes will be uncomfortable, you might expect that the dynamic would be one where the government would be pulling on its citizenry to make the necessary changes, like a parent tugging on a reluctant child. However, the opposite appears to be the case.

To be continued….

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature- world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

When we look at world conditions and project current trends into the future we see much that is disturbing-environmental degradation, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, persisting poverty and injustices, violent conflict, the fiscal collapse of democratic governments. The institutions that have the greatest power-nation states, corporations, and organized interest groups –seem locked in patterns of self-interest behavior such that the necessary changes are hard to imagine.

Yet when we look to the past we see that three have been remarkable evolutionary changes – the emergence of democracy, the abolition of slavery, universally recognized principles of the rights of women and minorities, concern for the environment, international laws against aggressive wars and significant efforts by those in wealthy nations to address global poverty. During the run-up to these changes they too surely seemed unimaginable.

So what is it that brings about such shifts? At every point there are self-interested forces that cling to a status quo, which few like, but still seems impossible to change. And yet somehow, at key points, a new consciousness emerges in society that is less rigid and polarized and more inclusive and flexible, which gradually prompts changes in the way society is structured.

In formulating retrospective narratives of how such changes occurred, it is common to portray the process as driven by heroic and visionary leaders. No doubt they play a critical role. But the people where they do not really want to go. Leaders can only articulate what is already trying to emerge in society and in that way facilitate its realization.

To be continued….