NOTE: The following is the latest draft of a statement of principles for a possible new project that will be launched if and when sufficient interest becomes manifest. Your feedback would be very much appreciated.
We the undersigned aim to help transform our interdependent world into a caring community dedicated to the well being of all humanity.
As wealth and power become ever more concentrated, modern societies are becoming more ego-centered, impersonal, materialistic, fearful, angry, unhappy, dogmatic, unequal, divided, undemocratic, and violent.
To reverse those trends, humanity needs to become more compassionate, warmhearted, spiritual, confident, positive, happy, open-minded, equal, unified, democratic, and nonviolent.
As members of the human family, we seek to make it possible for all people to meet their basic needs, enjoy life, develop their potential, and contribute to their communities.
Many methods can serve that purpose.
This declaration presents one: a Compassionate Politics Network composed of small support groups whose members have good times together and bear witness to one another in becoming better human beings and more effective activists.
As members of this Network, we endeavor to steadily improve our environment, our institutions, our cultures, and ourselves.
We create model communities that point the way toward a more just and peaceful world.
We love others as we love ourselves, treat others as we want them to treat us, avoid both self-sacrifice and selfishness, and spread contagious happiness.
We plant seeds, accept our limits, and celebrate life.
We meet at least monthly to share a meal, enjoy one another’s company, report on both our self-improvement efforts and our communications with our elected officials, make essential decisions, and consider planning a pleasurable social activity for some or all of us to engage in together.
Members might consider themselves libertarian, conservative, radical, liberal, socialist, independent, some other designation, or reject such labels totally. The bottom line is endorsement of this declaration.
Members respect and accept others’ decisions concerning how to implement their commitment.
Members set their own self-development goals.
The monthly support groups simply ask each person to report on their recent efforts concerning self-improvement and political action, if any, as well as their plans for future efforts.
In this way, these groups serve to hold members accountable to their commitments. Knowing they will be asked to report on their endeavors at the monthly support group, members are more likely to follow through on their pledge.
In these and other ways, our Network aims to attract more participants in the creation of a qualitatively different, much improved society rooted in a new higher purpose.
When we achieve those goals, humanity will have fundamentally transformed its global social system into a compassionate society that operates in harmony with the natural world.
Those who support this declaration are encouraged to invite friends and relatives to participate in a self-directed support group composed of individuals who endorse the declaration.
We invite you to sign this declaration and help build the Compassionate Politics Network.
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