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Issue 3
At the time of this writing, more than 10 million lives are at risk on the Horn of Africa due to food shortages arising from poor rainfall and a consequently dismal harvest. But the source of their food insecurity in the region is also related to conflict, environment, education, governance, health and other issues. Famine has reoccurred in spite of a doubling of development... Read more
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In moments of crisis, all thoughts are preoccupied with immediate remedies to meet urgent needs, rather than reflection on root causes and ultimate solutions. Yet history suggests that it is only when we are under supreme duress that we are willing to put all the cards on the table and consider the comprehensive and fundamental changes needed to effect permanent solutions.... Read more
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By WAAS Strategic Planning CommitteeGarry Jacobs, Winston Nagan, Ruben Nelson and Ivo Šlaus
This document forms part of the second report of the WAAS Strategic Planning Committee presented to the Board of Trustees in May 2010 but never circulated to our Fellows. We publish it now inviting readers from both within and outside the Academy to contribute their ideas on the type of knowledge the world... Read more
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Appeal
And suddenly everything is different! With the Arab Spring we are entering into a new era while the European Union itself is facing huge challenges. This is the time to innovate! Diplomacy, economy and society have to be rethought to respond to the aspirations towards a new development model, the strengthening of the rule of law, and the establishment of a new framework for integrating... Read more
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Society constitutes an invisible web of relationships between its members. It has a defined structure of authority, status, rights, knowledge, beliefs, values, laws, specialized institutions, functional systems and formal activities radiating down and out from centers of power to the periphery. Beyond the perceptible limits lies an amorphous unknown territory akin to the undiscovered New World... Read more
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Society is an intricately complex web of mutually beneficial, productive and collaborative relationships between people, activities, institutions, laws, ideas and values. Ideas and values determine the breadth, depth and heights of civilization and culture to which society attains. Organization constitutes the warp and woof of that web and determines its strength, quality, amplitude and capacity... Read more
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September 2011
Members of the Academy and Club of Rome met in Dubrovnik, Croatia on September 26-27, 2011 to participate in the Dubrovnik Sustainable Development Conference and to launch the WAAS project, “From Crises to Prosperity”, which will examine the root and common causes of four international crises related to global governance – financial stability, unemployment, climate change and... Read more
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The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
1. One Tribe Becomes Many
Between fifty and one hundred thousand years ago, a small group of homo sapiens made its way out of Africa and established settlements in what we now call the Middle East. Over the millennia, we multiplied and spread across the whole earth. In response to... Read more
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Life evolves by consciousness, consciousness evolves by organization. Human life evolves by a progressive heightening of our awareness, expansion of our knowledge, widening of our attitudes, and elevation of our values. This evolving human consciousness progressively expresses itself through the formulation and creation of more complex and effective organization – a... Read more
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Editor’s note: This issue of Cadmus focuses on the power of organizational innovation to address social problems and enhance social effectiveness. The development of law marks the evolution of civilization. Survival of the fittest is the law of the jungle based on strength alone. As society developed, rule by the governing principle of physical strength on the battle field... Read more
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Humanity has made immense progress over the last few decades. The starting point for setting a future's agenda can be anchored in a healthier, better educated, more prosperous, and better informed and connected world than ever.
Humanity finds itself at an evolutionary crossroad. The choice is between a perfect storm of progressively deepening crises and expanding... Read more
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Abstract:
The relationship between peace and development holds the key to effective strategies for addressing the roots of social unrest. Rising expectations are the principal driving force for social development. However, the faster and higher aspirations rise, the greater the gap between expectations and reality. That gap promotes a sense of frustration, depravation and... Read more
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For over 40 years the Club of Rome has been concerned with the sustainability of our planet. The conclusion of the famous first report to the Club of Rome The Limits to Growth that the world was on an unsustainable path was anticipatory and prescient.1 Although Limits caused considerable debate, after an initial flurry of interest, the message of the Club of Rome was largely... Read more
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The yawning gap between the real world and the discipline and profession of economics has never been wider. The ever-increasing abstractions in finance and its models based on "efficient markets" and "rational actors": capital asset pricing, Value-at-Risk, Black-Scholes Options Pricing have been awarded most of the Bank of Sweden prizes since they were founded in the 1960s... Read more
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The number and severity of conflicts (violent clashes where there are more than 1000 casualties) have declined markedly since the end of the Cold War. This is shown graphically below despite this being a time of high population growth:1
Figure1: Number of reported, codable deaths from state-based armed conflict, 1946-2005
Even including a rise in the number of terrorist... Read more
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Technology offers a number of examples of serendipity, of random discovery, of experiments going off the rails - though we highlight mostly the ones where the offshoots were spectacular.
Aspartame was discovered - or involuntarily invented - in 1965 by James M Schlatter, a chemist working to produce an anti-ulcer drug. Schlatter just happened to experience a sweet taste when... Read more
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Abstract
Human progress is stimulated by external threats and pressures. Values distilled from long experience possess the essential knowledge and power needed for continuous development and evolution. Successive waves of foreign invasions following the collapse of the Roman Empire coalesced the tribes of England into a nation state. Centuries of incessant warfare finally... Read more
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Issue 3