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1999
2000
In the fall of 2000 the State-of-the-World Forum convened its fifth conference, but this time, instead
of meeting in San Francisco, the group decided to schedule their meeting in New York City so that it
coincided with the opening session of the United Nations. As several participants in the Call-of-the-Time
Dialogues were participating in the Forum, and since, the Dialogues address the same overriding concern
as the State-of-the-World Forum, we decided to submit a paper - a declaration-to be read at the final plenary
session. By the time all was said and done, it turned out to be two papers: a shorter one, which could be
read in the five minutes available at the closing plenary session, and a longer one that developed the ideas
in more detail. We have chosen to make them more widely available in hope of stimulating thinking and
dialogue beyond our own series on the very important subject of "What is the Time Calling Us to Do?"
But first, what are The Call-of-the-Time Dialogues? The Call-of-the-Time Dialogue Series is a living
dialogue taking place on all continents, among people of all generations and from many different walks
of life. We are scientists and artists, social activists and civil servants, business people and
spiritual people, economists and environmentalists. What we have in common is that each of us is
somewhere on the field of world service and each of us believes that a spiritual dimension must be
central to any serious consideration of world transformation.
In preparing this document, we didn't turn to a handful of experts, as the world has tended to do
in the past, because in turning to acknowledged experts, we bias our "solutions" towards hypotheses
that are already well known and methods that are all-too-familiar. The world has long given
credence to the well educated, to those with power and position as if only these people are the
trustees of our collective world future. We believe that it is in the collective wisdom that
we will find the seeds of true transformation. We understand that this precious Earth is the
only home the global family will ever have, and that all of us must consider ourselves its trustees.
So we sent out a call to all dialogue participants asking them to respond to three questions:
The two documents included in this imprint represent their collective response to these three questions.
One of our first undertakings is to clarify the "DNA" of our work going forward: the defining issues, deepest
questions, and most important distinctions that characterize our shared reflections. To begin this, each of us
were asked to write a one thousand word statement about what
The Call of the Time is for you:
The Inner State and the Outer state of the World
Created for the State-of-the -World Forum