epic movements

How do you create a global movement? What does it take to start something that sufficiently compels the leaders of governments around world to make the necessary trade-offs on a national scale to make change happen?

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to spend 30 minutes on the phone with Steve Killelea - a very interesting fellow who has taken on an equally interesting mission - global peace. To do this, Steve decided to make peace tangible - define it, quantify it, and build a model that allows each country to be assessed and ranked so that government leaders can see how they compare to each other, and take action.

As our conversation went on, he said that there were three causative factors for peace - income per capita, perception of corruption, and education. So the wealthier, more educated and less corrupt you are, the more likely you are to be peaceful - kinda makes sense. I also learned that the biggest driver of change in a country's ranking is domestic stability; Mexico for example has fallen significantly due to its drug-related issues.

Around the same time, I had the good fortune of previewing the premier of the upcoming NOVA scienceNOW season, where I learned about Luis von Ahn, and in particular this really cool idea he has called GWAP - games with a purpose. von Ahn is a fascinating and rather divergent thinker - he's done some brilliant and powerful work in a variety of areas - watch the NOVA episode when it airs to learn more.

Going back to Killelea's GPI (global peace index), I think it's a bizarrely interesting idea to quantify peace (I would have thought of it like porn - you know it when you see it:-)). First, I think you have to be very sure of your data before you publish - there are some numbers that I do question - the USA is absolutely not 99% literate, nor with a 75% (or less) high school graduation rate is post secondary enrollment 82%. I say this because the countries that this Index needs to influence are those that will dismiss the analysis (which I think is worthwhile) based on any error, and then we're nowhere.

I think for Killelea (or anyone) to create geopolitical change, there needs to be a really (really) big hammer - it's called the power of the people. There's no way you're going to pressure the USA (ranked #83 - remember the three factors - education, corruption and wealth!) to do anything differently without two actions - demonstrate the profundity of their impact, and get their citizens to viscerally understand how widely-felt their country's acts are, and start the change from within (witness recent events in Iran).

To do the first, the Peace Index must include a coefficient of influence for every country that measures and demonstrates the ripple effect on other countries of their malfeasance. So if America does something untoward, the impact spreads well beyond her borders to affect XX other countries. In this way, the whole world can see how interdependent it is, and each country will know just how much it's harshing on everyone else off with its actions. This can be an incredible motivator - both for the one country and those that are affected by its actions.

To do the second, we must humanize. Let's bring Luis von Ahn back into the mix. I think his GWAP is unique in how it connects with people's insides. The two gents need to collaborate and build a game (or other vehicle) that can go seriously viral, that shows people exactly how their government creates un-peace, how it affects them, and then helps them understand and play out approaches to shift the balance so that the country becomes peaceful from within - as Kellelea stated, domestic issues are the biggest driver of changes in ranking - let the people act!

Global change comes from within - let the people be the change they seek.