Anything that Progressives do to reframe democratic values in terms of the values of social sustainability must clearly demonstrate the methods and processes that lead to decision-making that also empower pragmatic reframing of democratic participation by citizens in their communities. Citizens will need to be educated and trained how to use these values in local decision-making processes that contribute to their families, communities, and their larger society.

What has made the record of legislative and executive decision-making so erratic and inconsistent is the absence of a timeless, consistent, transparent, integrated, and proven set of values in terms of millennia of experience by our species.

Universal and timeless planning criteria. Without universal and timeless criteria, we have been unable to assess the relative improvement or worsening of conditions of our nation over the course of the centuries. In fact, because we have not had stable, consistent, and universally applicable criteria for estimating the relative change of conditions of our nation, and for its people collectively and individually, our public executives have been unable to plan effectively for the changes that will engulf us as we move into the future decades.

If democratic nations have any strategic intentions for the stability of future generations, then they will need to begin using the values that have sustained our species as the criteria to assess social, political, and, financial/economic conditions at the present in order to formulate social, political, and economic-financial policies to create positive and constructive change for the future.

Strategic Planning. Use of the seven core values provide any organization that develops plans and policies for social issues with the capability of developing consistent strategic planning. These seven values provide strategic planners with the criteria to formulate short and long term planning goals, with the capability of devising “if-then” scenarios for alternative plans. These values provide for a perspective of viewing all of the functional activities of a society as a holism of systems that contribute to that holism. Only by viewing longitudinal existence through the lenses of these seven values can planners make sense of it all. The motivation behind human activities then becomes understandable, and only when that is seen can short term and strategic planning become predictably effective. The events that will erupt in the near future will call upon the best efforts of all planners in every sector of society to apply the best tools and their best efforts to create solutions rather than dithering about trying to fix “old stage” problems.

I know of no nation that has multi-decades and multi-centuries strategic plans in place that assure an improving quality of life for citizens and with the capability for them to grow into their innate potential. National, state, and provincial policy-makers, public executives, and administrators are simply flying by the seat of their pants hoping against hope that “SHTF” ³⁷ does not happen during their term in office or in their career.

Do you think Royal Dutch Shell CEO, Ben van Beurden, manages that huge corporation by the seat of his pants? Surely not! And do you think he manages Royal Dutch Shell in simple, short term eras of only four years? Surely not! Shell has multi-decade strategic plans to carry its assets and its commercial value far into many decades ahead.

Here is a corporate truism that determines the longevity of any organization: The larger its assets, the longer future span of time that the organization must make plans for its future.

How is a corporation valued? How is a small commercial company valuated if the owners decide to sell it? By asset value, income, or market-valuation? To continue this example, what would it cost to buy all of Royal Dutch Shell? How much would it cost Google to buy Microsoft? How much would it cost to buy Greece? or the United States? If the United States or any other nation had the valuation of a corporation and managed it as a corporation, it would be making plans not just for the next two decades, but for the next two centuries.

Do you see the point? The captains of super tankers do better planning for potential future conditions than the whole United States government plans for the future of this nation, its societies, and its people. Nations seem to be floating in a “sea of change” much like Columbus, Magellan, da Gama, and Drake in their dinky sailing ships, knowing where they wanted to go, but having absolutely no idea of the conditions they would encounter along the way. They simply prepared as best they could and courageously set out hoping to survive whatever conditions they encountered. They had no GPS, NOAA weather forecasting, engines and fuel to move ahead through the doldrums, or personal survival gear.

That is pretty much the situation of democratic nations today as they set out into the future decades and centuries. It is laughably silly that nations worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, pounds, marks, francs, or rand have no criteria for assessing where they are, no criteria to help them plan for the stability and better quality of life for future generations, and no means of assessing their progress if they did have any plans and actually had the moral fortitude to implement them. All the planning that is being done is in preparation to react to difficult situations rather than being proactive to prevent those situations.

Do you think democratic nations are sustainable? What most people know, particularly those who are at the top of the hierarchies, is that most nations are almost completely UNsustainable to survive the coming decades and next two centuries. Knowing that, their decisions are simply to get the most they can get today, live the best they can, and not to worry about those who have little, who have no authority, control, and power.

As a humanist, I know that all of us will arrive in the future together: The few who are rich and famous, those who are poor and forgotten, and the many in between. What kind of society will future generations live in? Will it be as ours is today with its huge disparities of social justice, social equity, vast gaps of human rights for children and women? Will they be able to knowledgably discuss “the common good,” to know “what is fair” and enjoy a “fair” existence as everyone else? If so, who will proactively draw up the strategic social plans that bring whole societies peacefully into that future? Most importantly, what criteria will they use to know that their present is better for everyone who chooses to have a better life for themselves and for their society?

As I see the vast disparities in our society and in many other “advanced and mature” democracies, it will be easy to measure the improvements. “Relative to what?” will be easy to measure when the seven core values of social sustainability are used as the criteria for all social measurements of change and strategic societal planning.

³⁷  When “S__t Hits The Fan” – a reference used by “preppers” and those who envision apocalyptic endings when geophysical and manmade cataclysms create the destruction of nations.