Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: People need to connect with each other and there is the advent of modern technology, like for example the Internet and the telephones that help us to stay connected in ways that are unprecedented and therefore allows the mobilization of the ordinary citizen, banding together to create tremendous power among the people that actually speak to the awakening of the global sleeping giant which is civil society itself, to be able to help each other to become informed, to understand action plans that they can undertake, that can help to promote their mutual well-being through actions of cooperation, and there is this ability now to link with people from all over the world that we did not have the capacity to be able to do before. But we are increasingly having the capacity to do and therefore people who are well intentioned, well meaning, who see the way that the world can be made a better place must take it upon themselves to connect with each other and to create those action plans and initiatives that going to help the human family, regardless of how the leadership of any given country may behave. And so to that extent we can actually drop our loyalty and commitment to national identities where there is a recognition that leadership in any given country may not be leading with wisdom or justice or an ethical base. And the people themselves who have increasing power to be able to have their voices heard through their positive actions.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: What actually does "the decent people" mean? How can "the decent people" help each other? Who are these "decent people of the world"? Who decides who is decent and who is not? Do we all have the same criteria? If I think that someone is decent, can I, may I assume that others think that this person and his behaviour are decent too? Who decides this? What is "decent"? The governments - are governments against the decent people automatically? Are governments indecent at heart? No, this question points that there are people who think that they know the absolute truth. They "know" correctly what is right or wrong, what is decent or indecent, what is worthwhile or worthless. But this is not the fact: How can different opinions, the different people, different cultures and the different natures live together in peace? This is the question and the answer is democracy. Not because democracy is the absolute truth or the perfect solution for everything, but just because today democracy is the best method we know to allow a collective life, tolleration and respect to each other and this actually is almost the best we can get: Respect and accept the others as they are, not wanting to force them to live after our criterias or as we want to.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: Divisive, divisive. How can the decent people of the world help each other? Well, the actions of their leadership are self-serving. Divisive. We need to do what we’re doing. We need to drop some knowledge, we need to have these conversations and then it’s not about this instance, about what happen after this instance. We need to help each other by having these resources, this information accessible. And see that we are all connected, that it’s all relative, it’s all connected. We are all a part of this environment; it’s all alive, it’s all organic, it’s all moving at all times. And that this network within the circle and the relationships between them, we need to see how these relationships can mean mutually beneficial. And relationship that is mutually beneficial, how can we make it more mutually beneficial? Our leaders need to ask these questions, and not be so self-serving. They need to relinquish that power as in the previous question, relinquish the power of their ego, and see how they can contribute to whole, and create these relationships and these networks, and allow these resources to be available to the decent people of the world. What about the indecent people of the world? They are still a part of this circle? We’re all a part of this circle and even the leaders. They need to step away from the top and sit within. We’re all leaders here sitting together focusing in on the same one, with the same questions and addressing it. Some more dialogue, more multilogue not a just a monologue or a dialogue, but a multilogue. It’s a multiple conversations, multiple information coming in the play and listening. We have two ears and one mouth. We need to listen twice as much as we talk.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas:

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Bill Joy: I think we have new forms of media that give us a chance to get organized. People can associate through the internet. They can exchange video, they can exchange audio, they can have forums, we’re seeing realtime translation. People can begin to organize themselves around the truth, around an understanding of each other, around an understanding of what’s going on the world. The ability for people to propagandize and to lie is I think being limited by these new ways in which the truth can be spread. In Mark Twain’s day he said a lie travels around the world while truth is still putting its boots on. But I think these days the truth can travel as fast as a lie. So it doesn’t mean everybody will know the truth. I mean, it’s much harder to go back and change everyone’s mind who is convinced by an appealing lie. So hopefully as we improve the quality of education we’ll give people better bullshit detectors so they recognize when they’re being lied to. It’s far too easy to just believe these pandering lies. But I’m very optimistic that the communication tools that we have now with the internet, cell phones and all these technologies that are becoming very inexpensive and spread worldwide will allow much greater understanding and people to get to know each other and to care about each other when perhaps the governments access and maintenance of politic power more easily by telling convenient appealing polarizing lies.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Bora Cosic: There is always a possibility for the people of the world help each other and positively act towards each there; there is no government that can prohibit this. An example for this is the tunnel citizens of Berlin were digging under the wall separating them, even though that from the eastside even every bird trying to fly over was shot dad. Other touching example is of the Hollander that send his small dispatches in occupied Sarajevo, some salt in the envelop or needle and thread. I believe this is more useful as a model and sign of solidarity than the savage that’s being thrown out of planes in the crisis territories, sometimes even without knowing where dose bombs of humanity land.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Brian J. Weller: Well-well, let’s repeat this question. So, how can the decent people of the world help each other while the actions of their leadership are self-serving and internationally divisive? Well, let’s see, I think we can help ourselves by turning our attention back to where it needs to be, which is with each other where we live. Re-empowering true civics. Re-empowering true community. I think we give too much of our power away to government, which means we’re giving it away to people that often don’t deserve it. So, how can we help ourselves? By doing just that; returning to a sense of scale, returning to a sense of community, engaging in dialogues like this and true dialogues. Not arguing about what it is we think we should have, but really getting into the discussion about what’s truly important to us. That’s really – that’s what Dropping Knowledge is. You know, that’s what makes today so amazing. Yeah, it’s really starting this dialogue you know. I think the actions of our leaders are often self-serving and I think we do need to help ourselves. I think we give far too much of ourselves away. I think we’re giving far too much of our attention to so-called leaders. The job of a leader, actually, is only possible – leadership is only possible when the leaders love the people. You can only truly lead, which means people follow you, when you love the people. You can only really save the people – and I think this is a great quote we heard last night – I think it’s from Martin Luther King. “We can only really save the people when we serve the people.” So yeah, we’ve got to stop serving ourselves and serve each other. That’s really the thing and that’s what leadership should really be about, serving the people. We need a major U-turn here, I think. That’s the short answer to this. Maybe we just have to remind our leadership of what their true job is, you know, to serve. That’s what real leadership is about.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Catherine David:

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: The more in number, the more courage and the more the words of pain will reach to everywhere, so many people. It also will be a challenge to dictators or to those such leaders who try to make you shut up. And it also will encourage everybody else who want to stand up and to defend the truth. It will be encouraging for those who have shied away; to be encouraging for those who never want to stand alone and defend the truth, just like we are sitting here. You are encouraged to speak out. You're encouraged to tell what is really in your heart. And so the more words, the more the propaganda will be weak, because such a leader, of course, uses a lot of propaganda. And if there is no other counter to that propaganda, then it's a catastrophe.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Cornel West: I think this question has much to do with what we are trying to do here in this historic square right now. We are trying to come together. We are trying to constitute dialogue. We are trying to encourage one another, inspire one another, empower, enable, and ennoble one another in such a way that we are not fundamentally identified with our relative and respective national leaderships. We are free human beings and free citizens who speak our minds, who make our own judgments, who decide who speaks for us, not just politically but also morally and ethically. And the decent human beings in various nations around the world can come together and bring principal criticism to their own governments without being thrashed as unpatriotic, but simply saying that justice always has value over any national loyalty, that equality and democracy always have value over any patriotic sensibility. We are citizens of the world and we are human beings on this planet Earth who are wedded to all human beings. And, when our governments get in the way, they become secondary. And that, for those of us who are Christians, the cross always has priority over any flag because that cross is about justice and love; and whether we are religious or not, if we’re moral, ethical, sensitive human beings, our moral principles have priority over our national ideologies.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: Based on our experience, I think there is a need to network those people who have decent lives and who are willing to serve others. Well, we may have divisive leaders, but our divisive leaders especially if they are power-oriented can never see the reality that they should be there to serve the people. And, for me, it's very important to connect those people who have good hearts in spite of their divisive leaders to make difference in this society. I believe that we can only make difference if and only if decent people will work together, network together in spite of the geographical locations, the race, the gender. There is really a need to network these people who have similar visions to make difference - good difference in this society because as the question said if you have divisive leader, those leaders will never help to make difference in this world but to maintain their position in politics and their economic control. And, that's the reason why we need to network those people who have good hearts in order to make difference and serve those unserved people in the humanity.´ The one thing is it might be good if those decent people will work together and remove their divisive leaders because they don't deserve to be a leader if they are practicing divisive. And, we can understand that divide and rule tactic are being used by politicians. It's for me are always part of the culture of politics. And, therefore, there is really a need to network those people who have good hearts, those who are -- those who have decent lives to make difference in our society.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: Hello, Bo. I think the way to do it, I think certainly people can help each other in the world by creating transnational communities. People don’t have to be confined in their national boundaries. People don’t have to only help and try to make difference through delegating that mandate to their governments. I think it’s time that we globally take away the mandate from the governments and bring it down to, as you put it, decent people and work through transnational communities of interest. We certainly have the technology to do that. We certainly have the capacity to do that, and I’m sure there are a lot of people around the world feeling exactly like you. I don’t agree with what my government does. I think we should do differently and if I cannot do it through my government, I’ll do it myself and I will find allies in the other part of the world, because most of the issues today are of a global concern. So, finding allies, you don’t have to look only in your neighborhood, you can look wherever in the world and that is what I think the new technology has allowed us. Look at this platform today and that’s one way, and I’m sure there’s many, many other ways. That would be my answer to this question.

by Dritëro Kasapi

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Eliane Potiguara: I made part – and I still do philosophically – of the program to combat racism of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. And by a certain time, like 15 years ago, I was visiting the inmates in a jail with some participants of this program, and we were talking to them. And I was talking to an inmate, commenting and chatting about freedom and the world ethic aspects. He seemed to be such an honest, correct person, and he was talking with a lot of determination. He showed so much interest for knowledge and he was saying that as if he had no reason to be there. When we finished the conversation he said to me: “Don’t you remember me, madam?” I said “no”, and he said “Well, one day I was driving you in my taxi and I was about to kidnap you and rape you but you started saying so many things about life, about oppression and the situation of the country that you really touched me. And in that day I didn’t commit a crime, because I always raped women and that’s why I’m in jail.” And then I thought, and have been thinking all these years: when I talk to people, to drug dealers, to people who lost their ethics and have their moral values disfigured, when we talk to that person, as I’m a teacher I use to talk to adolescents and I see that if you look to that child, to that adult, to that person, you will say : “It’s impossible that this person killed someone.” Because they show their human side, and this is really interesting. Thinking about the governments and governors, if you look to a governor and talk to him or her, they are also going to show his human side. Because in reality all people are the same. They all feel honest, they all feel pure, they show it : “oh, how I’m suffering such injustice…how this, how that…”. People don’t come with subtitles saying : “I am a rapist”, “I am corrupt”, “I am violent”. No, when they are in their normal state, they show this side of theirs, do you know what I mean? It’s very complicated. So, it’s difficult to know on who we should count. It’s really difficult to know whether that human being is talking the truth or not. And when they’re in groups, in these governments, in the government for example, they are going to defeat their interests. Until the question of the corruption comes up. And that’s why we are in a world like this. Because everyone thinks they’re good and wonderful. The speech of the president of the republic, if you hear it, they are going to talk in the name of family, women and motherhood. When he finishes you will be convinced of that, but you will be wrong.

by Eliane Potiguara

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Eliot Weinberger: I am not sure I like the idea of the decent people of the world, because one person’s decent is the other person’s indecent, and I think that the leadership is always self-serving in that sense. It doesn’t have to be internationally divisive. Obviously, what one does is one tries to change the leadership of one’s own piece of the world, and by persuading others to your point of view. But, it’s worth considering what -- this idea of decency. Who are the decent people of the world? Clearly, the indecent people of the world think that they are pretty decent too.

by Eliot Weinberger

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: I believe that the decent people of the world are already helping each other a good deal even though their leadership is self-serving and internationally divisive. The rise of NGOs in the world in the past couple of decades has been enormous and there are so many people all over the world, just for example after every great natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake or a tsunami, people’s hearts open up. They give, they go to volunteer, they do so gladly and readily. People naturally are inclined to help each other when each other is in trouble. It’s a very human response and there’s much of it going on on the planet that sometimes it seems that the wave of decency and goodness in the world is very much overshadowed by the problems. But most of those problems are economic. And as people go to do good in other countries they begin to recognize that for instance the violence of modern development in creating deserts out of lands with big agribusiness and things like that aren’t working for local people. So more and more they learn about the problems of people in other parts of the world, they see the things that don’t work. We recognize now that we live in an unsustainable world and we know more and more about why that is. So I think it’s wonderful that people are moving around the world with good intentions and learning so that we can see what is it about our economies that we can keep for the future and what has to be changed. Every new generation inherits the world. And young people today understand so much more about the world than past generations have been able to. And they have the internet. Young people can make friends with each other on the internet. They can go to myspace and make friends and theoretically they could make a pact that no difference among us will ever be worth our killing each other over. We’re not going to do violence to each other. This is a time for our species to grow up, to cooperate, to form global family. So governments are losing power. Don’t worry too much about them. Build the local power wherever you go in the world and in your own communities at home. Try non-adversarial politics. Learn how to reach consensus among the different elements of a community. This is what will work in the world and then human decency can overcome even divisive governments because you won’t divisive governments in the future once you’ve learned how to cooperate with each other. It’s really not about fixing the messes, cleaning up the messes we’ve made. It’s about building the world that you all want.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 2:00:00 PM cite

Ervin Laszlo: There are two ways. One is to bypass the leadership operating through associations of people in civil society, for example creating non-government organizations. More and more of these have been created, and they are more and more effective. Another way is simply to elect leaders who are not self-serving and not divisive. This in democratic society is possible, and it also depends on the evolution of the vision and the will of the members of the society.

by Ervin Laszlo