THE GLOBAL COOPERATIVE FORUM

Unprecedented world challenges call for entirely new forms of solutions. A critical role of the Global Cooperation Project is to facilitate the emergence of the Global Cooperative Forum, which is proposed and discussed at length in Not-Two Is Peace. (Read excerpts from Not-Two Is Peace.)

The Global Cooperative Forum is to be a new kind of organization, unique in its core disposition and philosophical framework, its practical roles and functions of the world stage, and its organizational processes.

The underlying principles of wisdom, outlined in Not-Two Is Peace, will allow the Global Cooperative Forum's organizational structures and functions to be unusually adaptable to the myriad circumstances they must address. And while the Forum will have diverse pragmatic operations on the world stage, its primary emphasis will always be upon enabling a crucial shift in consciousness—the disposition of “prior unity”—in leaders and players on all levels. Another uniqueness of the GCF is that it will weigh how things are done as well as what is done; the human orientation of its participants and its internal organizational processes will be of paramount importance.

The following quotes from text give some feel for the striking originality and scope of the Global Cooperative Forum vision.

The presumption of prior unity

There must be a Global Cooperative Forum based on prior unity, on principles that have to do with the unified totality of humankind, and the unified totality that is the Earth-domain itself.

The tabula rasa: relinquishing "self" imagery

The Global Cooperative Forum would not eliminate existing national, social, religious, or political institutions. That is not the point. But the Global Cooperative Forum is about cooperation between all these institutions—and the basis for that cooperation is a kind of 'tabula rasa' (or clean slate), without 'self'–imagery, as the circumstance in which to engage (with all others) in an address to common human problems.

The face-to-face meeting of human kind

A rightly functioning and truly all-inclusive Global Cooperative Forum, based upon the working-principle of the prior unity of all of humankind, will make the face–to–face meeting of humankind as a whole into a positive means of political and social order.

Wash the flags

There are no separate 'flags' in the Global Cooperative Forum. The Global Cooperative Forum is not there in the form of confrontation with anyone. It relinquishes confrontation in principle. No confrontation, no war, no 'self'–imagery beyond that of being part of the totality of humankind, and having the entire globe as the domain in which to consider all issues … Therefore, all who function as representatives in the Global Cooperative Forum must constantly 'wash their flags'.

The crucial ability to “lose face”

The ability to 'lose face' is fundamental to being able to function rightly in the context of the Global Cooperative Forum. You cannot show up as an ego, full of 'self'–imagery of any kind—personal, racial, religious, national, or whatever it may be. You cannot manifest that, and be anything like a principal individual serving as a significant representative of everyone via the Global Cooperative Forum.

Human beings—and nothing else

The Global Cooperative Forum is different from any international institution that has existed up to now. No one would 'sit at' the Global Cooperative Forum. In the Global Cooperative Forum, people would not have placards in front of them, announcing their national identity as the basis for discourse. The fundamental 'label' each one would have is 'human being' —and nothing else.

A new mode of discourse

The fundamental principle governing discourse in the Global Cooperative Forum is the setting aside of the projection of limited identity—whether that identity is based on factors local to one's life–situation or on one's national, racial, or religious associations.... Thus, the Global Cooperative Forum has an entirely different basis for its discourse. It is not 'hot' discourse—it is 'cool' discourse.

Although the Global Cooperative Forum is new as a model of a specific global organization, many elements of the Global Cooperative Forum are already emerging throughout the world, as pointed out in books like Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest. Mr. Hawken highlights the millions of people who are coming together to form thousands of altruistic organizations all around the globe. He suggests that this phenomenon constitutes a vast, unseen social movement of sorts. It may be that the Global Cooperative Forum, with its universal characteristics of human sanity and wisdom, is the inclusive framework that connects the "dots” of many of these heroic enterprises.

In the early stages of the Global Cooperative Forum, participants are not stepping into a fixed bureaucratic entity. They are co-creating the necessary structures and mechanisms of the initiative.

In Not-Two Is Peace Adi Da gives us the core principles and key features of the Global Cooperative Forum, the central principle being that all participants are founded in the disposition of "prior unity"—and the moral integrity that such an orientation naturally awakens in people. Specific details of the organization, however, can emerge only out of consideration, dialog and pragmatic imperatives in the field. Facilitating this creative process is one of the key roles of the Global Cooperation Project, because the Global Cooperative Forum must always be highly fluid and mobile, able to evolve and adapt to the many world circumstances it must address.

This is not to suggest that the Global Cooperative Forum is to submit to “the tyranny of structurelessness.” Highly ordered structures of leadership, management, organization and communication will always be required, at all levels of the Global Cooperative Forum. But if the core principle of prior unity is being embodied, if the humble spirit of “losing face” remains central, then all organizational structures will remain agile and effective entities.