The Planet of Consensus

There was once upon a time a planet where the survival instincts of milennia had given way to the law of “survival of the fittest.” This law came to govern all relations between people, particularly for the rulers of towns and villages.

While blood ties kept communities together and the planet was big enough for all, harmony was the norm and quarrels the exception. But the population grew and settled on the land, as was necessary to produce food and to live in a permanent manner. Thus the war of all against all became the norm and peace the exception.

To protect themselves from insecurity, the people began to gather all kinds of things. “With reserves, we will be better prepared for whatever happens.” Whosoever was able gathered food, but above all the means to produce it: soil, water, animals, seeds...However the accumulation in the hands of a few meant scarcity and insecurity for the many.

Once the communities were scattered (or dismissed as primitive relics,) the situation of accumulation in the hands of the strongest few and shortages for the many began to develop between countries as well as within them. Inequality became the new organizing principle between the inhabitants and the countries of this planet

To maintain this inequality, it was necessary to convince the people that it was according to the laws of nature and the gods, and that to accept one's fate, whether to be rich or poor, wise or ignorant, honorable or dishonest, was the best way to live in peace. Above all, by accepting this life on earth, it was possible to earn eternal life in heaven after death.

However, should someone fail to find these guarantees convincing, he had to be won over. Thus people and countries developed the art of using “reason” to get their way, using deceptions and confrontations, verbal or physical, in order to impose reason by force. In this way, the force of reason was lost on them.

Thus, with the passage of time, the people that ruled the countries and countries that ruled the world accumulated much greater wealth than others. This was thanks to being able to impose their vision of the world, their strategies to make themselves seem right, and their laws. Above all, they used their armed forces to maintain order and peace against dissidents and terrorists, using the most extreme violence against those who threatened their own security.

This planet became known as the Planet of Discord. The people organized themselves into parties and their arguments were usually to maintain privileges or erode those of other parties and countries, rather than to arrive at the best solution to common problems.

Occupied as they were with warring and quarrels to maintain or extend their privileges, the planet became uninhabitable. Not just for the masses, suffering from systemic hunger, poverty, and violence, but for the whole population. What they called “progress and development” was based on the illusion of limitless growth. The exponential growth of a few centuries, driven by financial interests and powered by fossil fuels, set off climate changes which altered the conditions of life on the planet.

The situation grew unacceptable, launching a global crisis. The way of life of the dominant civilizations began to crumble, as had happened many times throughout history. However this time there was a difference: this time nobody would escape destruction, neither rich nor poor, neither oppressors nor the oppressed.

This feeling of living in a critical moment in the history of the planet generated an unexpected reaction, an unforeseen metamorphosis. In only a few years, it turned around the catastrophic destiny that the people of the planet had wrought for themselves.

The idea was very simple and its implementation relatively feasible, but first it had to be tested. In the previous century, a few organizations had been created to bring together all the governments of the planet in order to avoid and minimize wars. Paradoxically, the most powerful countries, those which manufactured the most weapons, had the most disputes, and got involved in the most wars, were the ones in charge of maintaining peace in the world.

The dominant rhetoric preached “democracy”: one vote per person, one vote per country. As there were countries with a few thousand inhabitants, and others with millions, it was understood that not all votes could have the same weight. From this it was argued that the decision makers should be the strongest states, while these states used their privileges to grow stronger still.

It was impossible to have the whole world (more than 6 billion people) participating in the construction of a new model of relationships to succeed the ruling model of discord. However, it would still be possible to do such an experiment with a sample; a sample proportional to the population of each region of the world, proportional to the number of men and women; proportional to the knowledge of various key global themes; proportional to the various sectors expressing the need for a new vision and new strategies in order to make the world more habitable for all people.

A few years ago, this experiment would have been physically impossible. The costs alone would have been prohibitive, such as providing a permanent space for a multilingual and intercultural dialogue to work on alternatives to destructive forms of globalization. However on this planet, thanks to the obsession with total security of the powerful, there had been invented a system allowing communication and discussion at a distance, without the costs of having to move and interact for extended periods of time.

And this is how a few dozen people from all corners of the planet, who had for many years been among the most well known critics of the unsustainability of the dominant model, set to work. They began the identification and invitation of 300 people to try and develop, in a consensual manner, a new Consensus as an alternative to the dominant one, seeking above all a habitable world for all.

It dealt with how to combat insecurity in a new more effective and intelligent way.. Over the course of centuries, the accumulation of power, force, and wealth in the hands of a few had given them a feeling of more security, but in fact, sooner or later the inequality would prove too great. The rebellion of the disenfranchised against the privileged took over and became a new hegemony, which over time, would be unseated by a new class or by a new dominant country.

This game was endangering the survival of all people. There was a need to address the rules of the game covering the need to survive for all people, and getting beyond the cycles of oppressor and oppressed. With time it passed from a dynamic of discord to a dynamic of consensus; from a dynamic of imposition to a dynamic of coordination; from a dynamic of competition, to a dynamic of cooperation; from a dynamic of majority rule, to a dynamic of deliberation.

It addressed on a global and intercultural scale the capacity to visualize, through dialogue and debate, the issues where there might be unanimous consensus, and the issues where it was necessary to continue discussions in order to increase the degree of consensus. The objective was not to win, either by force of arms or by force of votes, but rather to elicit the intelligence and creativity of all people to tackle the best solution to each issue raised, to get beyond short term interests and fighting for privileges.

It was necessary to experiment with the possibility of constructing a new intercultural regime, beyond a dominant civilization; a new relationship of gender equity, beyond the imposition of male-centered values, as had been the case for millennia; a new integration of knowledge beyond the fragmentation of disciplines; a new cooperation between sectors, beyond the fragmentation between movements and organizations in the areas of social, intellectual, labor, and scientific endeavors.

The task was enormous, but the consciousness of the global crisis helped the process to gain momentum. Twenty, eighty, 150, 220, 300. In a year, by word of mouth, there had been 300 people identified, from a wide variety of backgrounds, but with the shared motivation to contribute to making a world habitable for all people.

The job could not be done in a meeting of three days; but nor could it afford to take many years either. Every two months, the participants submitted heir proposals on one of the key global issues. Once organized and translated by a dynamic team, the participants could indicate the degree to which they agreed with the proposals and could express their comments and opinions.

Thus, over the course of a few years, there would be consensual proposals on the kind of world they wanted (objectives and values,) and the kind of world they had (resources and communities); on how they wanted to make decisions (policies and security), on how they wanted to regulate the world (economics and finance) and how they would like to communicate (communication and culture.)

The finished by validating by correspondence a declaration including the proposals with the most consensus, and identifying the proposals that needed more discussion and analysis. And those who had been most involved in the process met in a city to get acquainted in person, in order to finalize the declaration and present it to the world.

In fact, this was what was called Consensus 1.0, an initial version which over the course of years was improved with the input of more people, in a growing community of discussion and debate made up of people motivated to overcome the culture of discord. The aim was to build a culture of consensus, with people who were conscious of the importance of maintaining a balance between genders, regions, knowledge sectors and professional sectors, in order to avoid the hegemony of men, of the strongest countries, of privileged information, or of dominant political and economic sectors.

It was a few decades before the Planet of Discord became known as the Planet of Consensus. Yet everyone recognized that this initiative was a determining factor in producing a change. This led to the primary objective of reducing insecurity being pursued through sustainably meeting the basic needs of the world's population, rather than through the accumulation of power and wealth.