A recent TV report of an African famine, one of many that afflict that continent, showed an emaciated child. She obviously needed help, yet I thought that she was offering us an opportunity - one of changing the world: bettering her condition also changes those who help her, for you can’t help someone without helping yourself.

In Global Terms-One Percent, each person makes available one percent of his or her income to change the world, and the world can begin right outside your door. If you earn a $1 million, then make $10,000 available; if it’s $1,000, make $10 available.

People band together, and through good will and intelligence devise many help methods. It starts with one person. That person talks to a friend, relative, neighbor, who then talks to others. They arrange a meeting, and out of that meeting comes the first chapter of GT. Different groups get together and set up local, then regional chapters. Regional chapters coalesce into country chapters, eventually leading to a global association. The different groups will initiate and execute plans for the monies collected. Meanwhile, bank accounts are opened, officers elected and management forms.

Spelling out exactly how this is to happen is not necessary. There are as many ideas as there are people. It would be presumptuous to set parameters. My basic premise is that good will and togetherness will produce an efficient organization with many different beneficial directions.

Projects will range from the local to the global. On the local level, a chapter locates problem areas - educational, social, environmental, cultural - and develops ways of tackling the problems and funding the projects. On the international level - where GT can operate only when developed and financially solid - collecting money, supplies, and providing transportation and distribution in target areas. Suggested global projects include desalinization plants for drought prone areas and hemp cultivation and the establishment of a hemp industry. Hemp binds the soil, and unlike cotton, is environmentally friendly. Hemp is much more durable than cotton and hemp-derived plastics are stronger than steel. Another global project is Hope TV (see below).

Even in wealthy communities a local project should be instituted. In this way community members will see themselves as benefiting from GT. They will see themselves as different only in circumstances from people in serious need.

Membership is global; the name of a locality on the membership card is only for office purposes. In the final analysis, the smallest chapter in the smallest village is made up of individuals, and no individual is less important than any other. No one has to feel that they are getting a handout because they also contribute; by receiving, they actually enrich the suppliers who are paid by the one percent that they, too, contribute. Furthermore, “recipients” become donors just by belonging to GT.

Thus the major difference between GT and existing bodies is in the concept of reciprocity.

Why “One Percent?”

In all cases, a percentage of the money with a “One” in it should be left for global projects - even if none of them have begun yet. Leave a 1, as in 10%, 21%, 31%, etc., to signify the ONE of Humanity within the ONE of All That Is.

NGO

GT will be a non-governmental organization. When government or corporation officials join, it is in their capacity as members of the Earth community, not as representatives of any power organization, whether government or industry.

Governments and government-based organizations run into problems that GT does not have to encounter. For example, the European Union, made up of member states, budgeted funds for Honduras after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Because of bureaucracy, however, by November 1999, the monies had not been transferred. GT, unencumbered by state interests and a huge bureaucracy, would have no such problems.

Moreover, unlike liaisons between governments, where prestige and power issues are often involved, Global Terms, liaising between the global office and the country office, will supply goods and services quickly by bypassing issues that often divide governments.

Empowerment

The name of the game is empowerment, the empowerment of each and every individual on the face of Earth. No one has more or less of a divine spark than anyone else. The placement of power in the hands of religious, cult, government, and charismatic figures has made these people powerful and “above” others. If people believe they are empowered they have a greater sense of self-worth. Regardless of any relationship that concocted a negative self-image, by being in Global Terms a person has a say in the betterment of humanity and Earth. It seems to me that it would tend to enhance one’s self-image.

No Separation

There is no separation - not between people, or between “regions” of Earth. Regionalization of Earth for anything other than administrative purposes is nothing more than chimerical imaginings solidified by belief. Nothing is disconnected from anything else. Separation is an illusion we have allowed to develop and it has led us astray from One.

Systems are buoyed by belief; belief attracts like belief, including the belief that we are separate from one another, that the other person is less important than us, what happens far away is someone else’s business, not ours. Nothing could be further removed from the truth. How many Earths do we have? In one way or another, whatever affects someone on the “other side” of the world affects those on “this” side, too.

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1999 there were a number of earthquakes, some very destructive: Turkey, Greece, Taiwan, Mexico, California, and other parts of Earth. There were two quakes (tremors go on all the time) in the Red Sea, south of the Israeli town of Eilat, on the Red Sea coast. I mention these quakes, not because they caused any damage (they did not), but because of the attitude of the seismologists interviewed on the Israeli media after the devastating earthquake in Turkey and the earthquake in Greece.

Without exception, every seismologist I saw on television said that the tectonic plate “systems” in Turkey and Greece have nothing to with the Rift “system” that runs down Israel’s eastern boundary (which begins in Turkey, by the way), the Red Sea, southwards to the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. “System” has been confined within quotation marks for a purpose. It is to claim that there is no such thing as plate “systems.” There is only one system, the Earth System, just like there is only one Human System.

Job creation

Jobs will be created on all levels, from farming and manufacture to managerial, computer, clerical, packaging, transport, and financial. A ramified organization from the local to the global will ensue, yet with autonomy on the local level. Local levels will be encouraged to see their work in global terms, and even when dealing with pressing local problems the local chapter will still allocate funds for global projects. In this way, even projects that seem to be solely local will assume a global nature.

Staff in the developed world will train staff in the developing world. Trained Developing World staff is an important goal. Trainees in the Developing World will find it easier to relate to and trust them. This function can also help train officials in developing countries.

Hope TV

Hope TV is an idea I have been thinking about for a few years. It is about a global news and features network geared towards bringing about a positive change in human consciousness and building up an empowered mass of people who make positive action for Humanity and Earth the normal course of events.

Hope TV would not just list the woeful litany of what is wrong with the world, but show what people are doing, or suggest what they might do, to defuse and reverse dangerous situations. It is a different content-concept of television.

I suggested Hope TV to a global oriented TV corporation and to the UN. The TV organization thought it was an interesting idea, but one that didn’t fit in with their strategies. I haven’t heard from the UN.

Global Terms-One Percent could set up Hope TV as a way of spreading its message of empowerment and that we are all One.

If you wish to relate to the idea of Global Terms-One Percent, please write to me: damos@Jerusalemail.com

(Recently, while lying in bed with my eyes closed, I saw a very clear grid pattern. It was as though my eyes were wide open and the grid was right in front of me. At each intersection there was a bulge. What I think the grid might mean, is that there is a global network connecting us all, and the bulges mean that when we come together we are stronger. If anyone has another interpretation I’d be happy to know about it.)

David Strassler was born and raised in the wilds of Brooklyn, NY. He has a BA in history and an MA and PhD in Jewish history. David lives in Jerusalem, having moved to Israel in 1967, where he is a self-employed writer and translator. He recently completed a ten-part series of testimonies of Holocaust survivors in a village in Israel. He interviewed the witnesses, working their testimony into narrative form in English, and interviewed their children.

David has taught Jewish history, worked for a newspaper and has written many articles as a freelance journalist. He has been happily married for 29 years, and has two adult daughters. He is deeply involved in the New Consciousness and believes there is a need for a global association based on its major premises.