HUMANE CIVILIZATION WORLDWIDE FOUNDATION (HCW)
Activists for Sustainable, Humane Civilizations NOW – become a member Donate Now & Join Our Cause
ABOUT US – MISSION – BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT FOUNDERS OF HCW, AUTHORS OF WEBSITE .
HCW is a 501(c)(3) Operating Foundation primarily doing educational work (Texas 11/2017)raft Document – ongoing editing, revisions and additions.
ANNOUNCEMENTS on bottom of page .
Most recently updated /revised: Chapter on CLIMATE EMERGENCY – Mitigating, adjusting and adapting to climate change? We must prevent sliding into “climate hell” and start reversing global warming without delay.
CONTACT US: to get on mailing list, give us feedback, or request a speaker please write to HAe.HCW@gmail.com
HCW is about CULTIVATING loving kindness, giving and forgiving, cooperation, and broad compassion IN PLACE OF vindictiveness, ruthless competition, pursuit of material goods, and ‘us-against-them’ thinking.
- Cultures, the institutions of civilizations, largely shape people’s character, how we deal with natural propensities and express our instincts. Cultural institutions are the main cause of hostilities between individuals, groups, and nations and of the harm to the world’s ecosystems.
- THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY demands immediate bold actions: minimizing energy use and greenhouse gas releases, moving to mostly plant-based diets, sequestering huge amounts of carbon, etc. Living more simply and ethically, halting advertisement- and greed-driven consumerism, will make us healthier and happier The probably most valuable thing individuals can do is influence influential people, write to them, encourage them to propose, government-led action as radical as the U.S.’ response to WWII, rather than “business-as-usual-with-incentives.” Please forward this material to everybody you know:
- Improved institutions have to cultivate ethical thinking, emotions, behaviors and character in individuals. HCW works on creating plans, blueprints, or model frameworks that are based on science and ethical principles and should guide peaceful reforms of economic systems, governments and other institutions
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If you find this website interesting and stimulating thoughts, please share it with friends and acquaintances
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You-tube presentation. Abuse-Addiction articles BLOG: political abuse-addiction.
Contents, Principal endeavor of HCW, Mission Statement – Preface / Introduction
Donate Now & Join Our Cause=====
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Provisional date for next discussion meetings at the Twin Oaks Library in South Austin, S 5th St and W Mary St a few blocks East of S Lamar: Wednesday 7/17/2024: Eco anxiety interfering with young people’s quality of life and functioning Plan to play some classical piano music 6:00-6:30 and during short break, discussion starting 6:30 (for more details see blog, political).
Please contact me for suggestions and/or if you would like to meet with me individually to discuss issues and progress. hae.hcw@gmail.com.
Some sobering data that was published on my 77th birthday (below, more of my thoughts).
Harvard political reviews: Climate anxiety among international youth is at an all-time high. In a 2022 poll, “59% of youth and young adults said they were very or extremely worried about climate change and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning,” according to CBS News. Aug 26, 2023.
Citizens Climate Lobby leaders and other NGO leaders, many scientists, authors, and activists are afraid to discuss “doom” and a need for sacrifices, believing talking about present realities will “turn off” people, lead them to withdraw. In medicine and among family members we long ago stopped lying about catastrophic disorders that will slowly and painfully kill a loved-one; but we are afraid of discussing how we rapidly move towards “climate hell”? It is hardly disputed that, if there are not very dramatic changes in developments, our and particularly younger relatives’ future will be very difficult and painful. Sacrifices: we humans readily embrace sacrifices that appear meaningful; we accept strenuous, and often painful practicing for the benefit of communities and family; women have children, which is very hard on them but hugely benefits their families; men voluntarily join the army; families turn their lives upside down for a injured or severely ill loved one, many people pull up stakes and, accepting dangers and sacrifices, migrate to other parts of the world. Etc.
Hiding truths will not make ecoanxiety (or climate anxiety) go away, neither do seemingly meaningful actions that will not change the trajectory of developments.
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Re. mission and goals of HCW: People and organizations worldwide have to cooperate in improving national and international institutions:
- THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS NEED URGENT REFORMS: governments must create money to fund public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises that will restructure economic activities, and lending by financial institutions must be severely restricted. People need a guaranteed income and good safety nets. Taxation, particularly high taxes on any greenhouse gas releases. must powerfully influence the private sector.
- Developments must be guided by the goals of society, not by prospects of profits for investors.
- ALL FORMS OF BIRTH CONTROL (including abortions) must be readily and confidentially available to women worldwide.
- Unethical uses of the internet and of artificial intelligence must be reined in, particularly surveillance and data gathering, and the Ponzi-scheme-like bitcoin – these waste much computing resources and energy.
- All education, formal and informal must teach empathy, a forgiving attitude, and the pursuit of peace – broad compassionate empathy must replace replace vindictive and ‘us-against-them’ thinking with.
- HCW aspires to create a worldwide movement that studies and addresses recognized problems and pursues worldwide cooperation in establishing civilizations with humane condition and protecting the environment.
- HCW works on creating plans, blueprints, or model frameworks that are based on science and ethical principles and should guide peaceful reforms of economic systems, governments and other institutions of civilizations. Institutions are to bring the best qualities out of individuals. This draft presents a fairly comprehensive framework of proposed institutions: economic, social, governmental, etc. and an evaluation of ethical principles.
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Previous HCW meetings after Covid interruption (when library closed) (for more details see blog, political)
8/18/2022 The Climate Crisis and Ethics
9/22/2022 Addictions – Ethics – Climate
10/27/2022 Economics – Ethics – Climate
12/1/2022 The Important Questions In Life – Ethics? Health and Happiness? Climate?
1/5/2023 Happiness, Meaning in Life, and the Future
2/8/2023 Happiness, Meaning in Life, and the Future 2
3/14/2023 The Climate Crisis: Giving Up Is Not an Option. What are the most effective actions we can take?
4/26/2023 We must halt global warming and escalating fear may be the key to get needed, radical changes enacted
5/30/2023, The Climate Crisis and the Question of “Political Will”
7/6/2023: Corporate CEOs and Politicians Gamble With Our Future: How Can We Stop Them?
8/8 /2023: What does it mean “I care about what global warming does to the world of our children, to the most affected poor?
9/26/2023 Discussion Meeting: Humane Civilization Worldwide: Review of goals and activities.
11/14/2023 What is basically wrong with modern cultures? Is the focus of education what individuals and societies need?
1/5/2024 Thinking about the climate: How serious is the crisis?
3/12/2024. Discussing human reactions to the climate crisis.
4/30/2024 With our weak climate actions: Are we complicit in a genocide?
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I recently discovered your organization, due to a chance encounter.
I consider myself an environmentalist. I’m a writer, with an undergraduate degree in journalism. For many years, as a newspaper reporter, and for a time, editor for Environmental Action Magazine, and primarily as a freelance writer, I wrote about the environment, worker health and safety and consumer issues. In 1974, I wrote Muscle & Blood, published by EP Dutton, an investigative book, looking at dangerous working conditions in American industry.
Later, I became a Family Practice Physician, and after 22 years in the study and practice of medicine, I’m now retired; I have time again to be politically active and to fight against factors worsening climate change. I’m currently on the City of Austin Environmental Commission, where I try as I can, to advance measures protective of the climate, in order to safeguard and improve the quality of life for residents of Austin.
I’m interested in your organization. Noam Chomsky has pointed out that “there’s very little an individual can do” to affect climate change, but believes organizations may be able to have an impact. I hope that’s true. Thus, my interest in your work.
I know that for me, fear of our changing, more erratic and more destructive weather is a highly motivating factor. Unfortunately, I see too many people ignoring the changing weather almost completely, obliviously, and making choices which, given the current state of our erratic environment, run counter to their best interests. Moving to Austin at present seems a questionable choice; our weather is deteriorating, and Central Texas seems on a trajectory to become less and less habitable. But then, as the entire planet is changing, are there better choices? I think that’s nearly impossible to predict. We live in an interdependent world. Supply chain disruptions, from any cause, can have serious repercussions world-wide, among developed nations. So, we cannot run away from climate change, although it’s tempting to think so!