Benjamin Franklin, American founder and inventor, said “Failing to plan is a plan to fail.” The heart of Eleanor Lives!, as with Eleanor’s own heart while she lived, is a “plan for humanity.”
Humanity is in the midst of an epoch change. The Internet and other communications empower us to make advances in many fields by thinking together, sharing these thoughts, and accelerating change through collective action.
We have breakthroughs in Medicine, Physics, Psychology, Computer Science, Food, Music, Biology, Environmental Science…this list is long, and growing. Law and Democracy should be on this list.
Law is an agreement to live together. It can be a local town ordinance, a state or national statute, or an international treaty. All are agreements to on how we will live together. The remarkable gift that humans have, unique to them, no other species, is that humans can read and write. We can put our agreements to live together into writing, as is evident from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Part of the plan, in accordance with Article 28 of the UDHR, is that there will be future documents which will make the rights embodied in the UDHR enforceable in the courts of all countries. Now, for the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, December 10, 2023, at the War Memorial building where President Truman called for an “Iternational Bill of Rights” that document, an International Bill of Rights, will be put upon the table during a large public event. Each of us is needed to make this happen. Democracy is self governance. No one gets to govern because they were luckily born into a particular family or through some religious lineage. People are only allowed to govern when they are chosen, and then they are required to follow the rules provided by those who are governed. As Rousseau said, “the people build the machine, the Prince merely operates it.”
Given the global challenges we face, climate change, rising authoritarianism, increasing wealth disparity, pandemics, and now war in the Ukraine, it’s time for people in all countries to plan together for enforceable law in all countries — to save ourselves, and the planet on which we live, Earth.
Narrow minds default to the impossible. Open minds realize there is a fine line between the impossible and the inevitable and try to cross it. As Eleanor said: “We must do the thing we think we cannot do.”
Many may say that we cannot reach an international agreement to live together based on fundamental rights for all. They say “We will never agree.” At Eleanor Lives! we live by the responses Eleanor would give when she was dismissed by naysyers: “Let’s see”; “Let’s ask”; “Let’s Do!”
Planning ahead is a good way to help determine where you will end up. Leaving the Earth’s ecosystem, and our individual well-being to random chance, or the market, is not enough. We must plan. For, as Confucius said “He who doesn’t look at what is distant will find sorrow near at hand.” Planning ahead is the means by which we avert calamity, whether it is the climate crisis, or another World War.
Don’t be dismayed by the enormity of the task. The success of the plan only requires 1% of all people, nonprofits and businesses. Please be one of them! When the path to a plan is worn, others will follow.
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