In the big picture, the growth of human population and technology has made for a very dangerous situation that our current international system seems incapable of resolving. We love our nations and religions and won’t give them up, but we must enlarge our sense of common humanity so we can cooperate fully on a global scale. We are no longer in a win-lose world, if we ever were. We have entered a world that is clearly either win-win or lose-lose. Only a powerful realization that we are all in the same boat can provide the perspective and political will needed to get us through the coming population peak without precipitous collapse. That’s the big picture.
The women’s movement has already transcended the nations and religions, so in a sense, we are halfway there. The “Gender Crosstalk Initiative” uses a new capability of InterMix Voices of Humanity Social Media to enable women to engage men in a collective dialogue that cuts across national and religious identities. Because it gives women an equal voice with the men, the Gender Crosstalk is a great way for the women’s movement to further its own interest, while at the same time building a global sense of identity for the men — i.e. making it possible for the men also to transcend the national and religious boundaries.
How does it work? Any InterMix discussion may go into gender crosstalk mode. In each “round” of a gender crosstalk exchange, there is one winning message from the women and one from the men. Everyone votes on messages from both genders, but the message written by a woman and rated highest by the women and likewise for the men, these two messages get special billing. These two winning messages are prominently displayed in the next round, thus inviting participants to continue the conversation between the genders.
Participants in a gender crosstalk exchange can drill down a little and find winning messages by age: youth, middle-age (voice of experience) and senior (voice of wisdom) and for humanity as one. Those who prefer to write from the perspective of humanity as a whole rather than adopting the perspective of their gender affiliation are welcome to do so. In fact, for both genders, the perspective of humanity as a whole makes very good sense even in the context of an exchange between the genders. This is why an exchange between the genders is not dangerous, as a direct exchange between nations or religions might be.
Gender Crosstalk has launched with the backing of UNA-SF, UNA-USA, the UN Foundation and the Global Fund for Women. A thunderclap was successfully crowd-sourced on May 28, 2014, to up the energy level and give the launch more credibility. With the new moon on October 23rd, two messages will be sent to the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, one from the participating women and one from the men. Go directly to the crosstalk here.
The next step will be to install a geographic level control in InterMix where we can easily move between metro, state, nation and global levels. Implementation of geographic levels is more complicated than it might seem so we will have to start with a simplified version. Even simple geographic levels when combined with gender crosstalk will give us a very welcome scalable approach to human unity.
Men and women, women and men, the genders agree that love and wit are what they most appreciate. For this simple reason, the winning messages of the Gender Crosstalk are guaranteed to be crowd-pleasers. Both messages will point the way to the human unity that we need. Social justice, peace, sustainability, democracy and human rights, the great challenges of our age, need this kind of positive and encouraging approach if we are to be successful. At the same time, the Gender Crosstalk is unscripted and therefore suspenseful. Once we get it going, people all over the world will take a natural interest.
Next up, an Age Crosstalk Initiative – coming in 2015: youth will have its global voice.
— Roger Eaton
June 20, 2014