A Quote by Jonathon Porritt

We desperately need some new thinking today about systems of global governance. We're stuck with the same obsolete, ignore-the-earth institutions that were brough into being after the 2nd World War, and they're now failing us ever more catastropically. Wild Law shows just how radical we now need to be in creating new institutions that are genuinely 'fit for purpose' in the 21st Century.
After World War II, American leaders were, in Dean Acheson's words, 'present at the creation' of a global order. Now at the end of the cold war, we desperately need that same vision, that leadership, that creativity to be applied to the governance of the global marketplace.
It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.
For me, the concept of design is more than object-oriented; it encompasses the design of processes, systems and institutions as well. Increasingly, we need to think about designing the types of institutions we need to get things done in this rapidly accelerating world.
It is not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, or new institutions. We must understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this earth.
In what region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what corner of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication, does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for the benighted or the oppressed, bear witness this day, and trace itself, directly or indirectly, back to the impulse given to the world by the successful establishment and operation of free institutions on this American continent?
It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.
The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement.
Our marvelous new information technologies boost our power and opportunities for political engagement, but they can also disempower us by contributing to extreme political mobilization that sometimes overwhelms our institutions. These institutions were designed for rural societies operation at a tiny fraction of today's speed and with a citizenry vastly less capable that today's. It's unclear how they will change to adapt to the new reality, but change they must.
India is known for its sobriety and wisdom, balanced and sensible thinking. We need strong institutions and we need good governance in the country.
So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.
For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders.
We need to be much more far thinking in this new 21st century era of - of nation state failures and conflict. It's not just about getting rid of a single dictator. It is about understanding the secondary and third consequences that fall next.
After the First World War, it was, like, let's form the League of Nations, we have to learn to work together. It's the only way we're going to survive. And now it's like we're undoing these very fragile institutions that were built after the First and Second World Wars that were about nations working on a kind of global diplomacy for our mutual benefit. And we're undoing them at such rapid-fire pace.
A living system continually re-creates itself. But how this occurs in social systems such as global institutions depends on our level of awareness, both individually and collectively... As long as our thinking is governed by industrial, "machine age" metaphors such as control, predicatbility, and "faster is better", we will continue to re-create institutions as we have, despite their increasing disharmony with the larger world.
What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself. We need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.
We live in a world where there are a hell of a lot of new inputs that need to be factored in to your business. It used to be just about your employees and your customers. Now there are all the issues about global warming, about sustainability, about ethics and now about gender and the distribution of wealth.
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