Tools for Building Futures with Greater Humility and Respect and with more Efficacious Collaborations

Abstract

The societal goals of greater humility and respect, and more efficacious collaborations, must realistically be contrasted with our current situation. In the Global Village of today, many are asserting that their views are True and even that other views are False.  Further, some are even using violent language, or even violent actions, toward those whose views they believe to be False.  Clearly, the challenge we face is enormous. We will suggest vectors into our future which will attempt to incrementally overcome the above current situation, to reach across the Global Village building greater understanding of the uncertainty of our knowledge, and to thereby engender greater humility, and hence respect, in our interactions. We will do this by extending the perspectives argued in my 2016 DIALOGUE AND UNIVERSALISM article (with co-author Judith Puncochar) “How Does Collaboration Occur At All ?”. Integral to our development of these tools will be differentiating BELIEFS: Agent A believes a sentence S if A asserts S is true even though A does not know that S is true, and COMMITMENTS: Agent A is committed to a sentence S if A (while not asserting the truth of S) agrees to other sentences, or to actions, inferable from S. Fostering a broad and deep engagement across the Global Village, our tools will reach beyond traditional educational infrastructures, to include engagements, modeled after the “social education” programs led by Otto Neurath and others in 1920s Vienna, in union halls, community venues, and religious communities.