One stimulus for this proposal has been the poverty of imagination associated with fictional and dramatic scenarios of how executive councils function in the distant future - as reflected in science fiction films and books. Even when entities gather from 'the 100 galaxies', thousands of years hence, their encounter (even through 'holographic projections') still seems to be modelled on the United Nations Security Council or its unfortunate imitations.
In the year 2049, my gathering of the wise may best be imagined as blending the characteristics of policy councils as we now know them with those of an arts workshop, a poetry reading, a classical music concert, a theatre, a folk song-fest and a dance, together with other dimensions we would have difficulty recognising.
For instance, their 'business graphics' could have musical variants. People would be able to hear the various harmonies which provided integration to any policy represented, and they could hear the dissonances which challenged that harmony - whether as a stimulus to social growth or as a potential crisis. And their gatherings could be sophisticated psychodramas in which participants took the role of factions or constituencies rather than personalities.
Likewise the policies emerging from these gatherings would ensure that opposite perspectives were brought into play at appropriate times to correct for programmatic weaknesses resulting from the excesses of any one insight or set of priorities.
What I am proposing should happen would call for long-term commitment by many - perhaps equivalent to the Apollo programme - in order to escape from the conceptual gravity well in which we are struck.
Anthony Judge, Union of International Associations, 40 rue Washington, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium (tel 32 2 640 18 08; fax 32 2 649 32 69).