The Problem

Everyone loves the idea of democracy - a genuine union of true individuals - but there are very few lovers of democracy -- people devoted to achievement of the democratic ideal who possess knowledge of a Technology of Democracy that offers a viable means to achieve this goal.

HO Planetary Dialogues

What we witness appears to be an endeavor to extend various fragmented self-interest spaces, through a search of common interests. Maybe this represents a slow, glacially slow, and seemingly unconscious attempt to break the hold that the idea of nation-state has taken; it has full dominance now over our minds, over our ability to conceive of other new ways of establishing larger and wider social bonds. For the moment, no evolutionary leap seems to be in the making in this field. Nevertheless, we are forced to conclude that the introduction of ecological balance into our normative scheme requires that the notion of social bonding be viewed as transcending the idea of nation and extending to the planet as a whole.

H. Ozbekhan, Passages from, Toward a General Theory of Planning, in PERSPECTIVES OF PLANNING 47-155 (OEDC Report, Jantsch ed. 1968); explained in A.N. Christakis, A New Policy Science Paradigm, FUTURES, Dec 1973; applied in Ozbekhan, The Future of Paris, in ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS SERIES A, at 287, 523 (1977)