18: On the Possibility of Global Alliances in a Pluriverse

This paper takes a retrospective look at the conferences out of which grew the document Education 2000: A Holistic Perspective and the ensuing Global Alliance to Transform Education (1990), and examines a contemporary global document, Learning To Become With The World: Education for Future Survival (2020), commissioned by UNESCO and compiled by the Common Worlds Research Initiative. Thirty years apart, the documents are remarkably similar with significant differences, some of which were prefigured by a minority of attendees at the early GATE conferences. Both documents assume the need for a “paradigm shift” —literally a universal change in worldview. In part, this paper questions the possibility of universals in a pluriversal world while acknowledging the reality that we face unprecedented challenges that could tip us over the edge into the radically new ways of thinking and being that might enable the survivability of our species.