Rethinking/transcending the red-blue, left-right, secular-religious and related divides, domestically and globally

This short note introduces the third topic I want to address during my time at ERG this year. It follows necessarily on the first topic addressing scenarios of economic growth, economic justice and ecological integrity, and on the second topic addressing global governance of profoundly consequently new technologies.

It’s difficult but not impossible to construct scenarios of the human future over the next 100-200 years that most people would likely agree represent a path towards a just, sustainable, vital and fully human world. The difficulty is that real-world initiatives to craft, adopt, implement and maintain the policies and programs that would realize these scenarios require a degree of global consensus, unity and commitment, between and within countries, regions, and populations, of truly unprecedented scope, scale and duration. Further, we need more than just policies and programs - we need hearts and minds. We need a deeply internalized shared vision of where we are going, of how we are to live our lives and how we are to regard and treat one another, and why. We need a new vision of...