The main concern of most humans is rightfully the individual family unit, followed by immediate friends and acquaintances. At the same time, the welfare, safety, and security of such limited groups are dependent on broader social interactions at the village, town, city, national, and international levels. To accomplish these broader interactions, it is necessary to formulate principles for fair and just behavior regarding all the levels of interaction. After the devastating experience of two world wars, the United Nations (UN) was formed in 1945 and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Even though the UDHR was ratified by the UN over 70 years ago, to date, no member nation has implemented the UDHR as the fundamental basis for its constitution. As a result, the constitution of every existing member nation has at least some laws (some have many) that contravene UDHR. Unfortunately, the current system for changing the direction of “representative governments” is so politically corrupted that the desires of the majorities of national populations are frequently thwarted by “horse trading” among political representatives motivated more by selfish personal gains than human welfare. Some of them also foment discordance and even inspire violent conflicts among opposing factions to promote their individual agendas. Particularly deplorable are politicians who incite religious hatred as a tool to obtain and maintain political power. This trend of promoting discord for personal gain is growing steadily.
Presented here is the concept for establishing an organization tentatively named Congress Earth Direct (CED – pronounced “seed”) as a global, grassroots organization comprised of individual, independent, global members with blockchain identity numbers united solely by their dedication to future global adoption of all 30 clauses in the 1948 UDHR. The only requirement for becoming a CED member is personal adherence and commitment to the UDHR, both in concept and in practice, and to the ultimate goal of UDHR adoption as the leading clause of every country’s constitution. By charter, there will be no “representative” or “executive” CED hierarchy, and no individual would be authorized to communicate on behalf of any other or all CED members.
Given the exponential growth of current global existential threats to humans, an exponential model is proposed for CED to expand exponentially, to reduce those threats through UDHR adoption. To achieve exponential growth, it is proposed that CED members autonomously establish independent CED “Chapters” of 50-200 members. By the CED charter, Chapters would be self-proclaimed and arise spontaneously to gather together like-minded adult acquaintances by invitation. At the same time, their children would be encouraged to participate in meetings and assist in CED activities. Also, by the CED charter, Chapters would split into two independent Chapters when membership reached 100 to 200 individuals. This would allow for exponential growth in Chapters, each comprised of closely familiar members. Each CED chapter would be independent of every other Chapter and of any national or international organization or other hierarchy. Each Chapter would make decisions regarding its own activities by direct internal voting and carry out those activities independently of all other chapters, and with acceptance that some chapter members may not participate or not participate equally in all activities.
According to the CED charter, the routine activities of individual Chapters would focus solely on long-term, continuous engagement in humanitarian activities with groups of underprivileged people selected independently by each Chapter. People in the aided groups would be invited to join the Chapter or start their own Chapter, if desired. Cooperative, inter-Chapter activities may occur, but only by arrangement and operation by independent agreement among the cooperating Chapters.
Periodic, online, global meetings, freely open to observers, would be held to discuss issues with respect to successes and failures in Chapter activities and to determine whether any non-violent, collective actions might be taken by CED members worldwide to prevent or ameliorate existing or pending disasters. For example, they might consider whether a collective, worldwide decision by enough individual CED members to voluntarily not exceed a driving speed of 80 kmph (50 mph) could have a significant impact on ameliorating global warming.
The overall aim of the concept is to inspire the creation of an unlimited number of global Chapters without national borders or personal identity restrictions. The objective is to establish an international, like-minded, and digitally interconnected community using blockchain technology, ensuring free and open discussions and facilitating global membership opinion surveys through direct communication with and responses from individual members worldwide. In other words, there would be no “representative” or “executive” group authorized to communicate on behalf of any or all CED members. The main goal will be to establish a platform by which ideas for peaceful solutions to social problems and conflicts can be openly discussed worldwide in the spirit of the UDHR. Individals 18 years or age or older would be entitled to initiate their own grassroots CED chapter following this model, and to join the global movement of like-minded humans dedicated to the eventual global adoption of UNDHR as the leading chapter in the constitution of all nations.