GLoW Project Documents

All the GLoW Project Management documents are in this chapter.

Executive Summary

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

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I – Project purpose

Wisdom gathering about successes and failures.

The Global Library of Wisdom (GLoW) concept is suggested as a highly desirable asset for Urantia's planetary progress towards achieving Light and Life status. GLoW will have the dual purpose of 1) preserving and 2) disseminating wisdom related to Light and Life issues. 

As an Information Technology system the GloW will be a publicly available online knowledge base that will capture and aggregate the best available wisdom, or best practices that can be applied to promote sustainability and wide spread stability. GLoW will also document known strategies that have led to major failures. GLoW will cover all the major sectors (as outlined in the GLoW directory) inherent to personal growth, planetary management and societal progress. In simple terms, GLoW will be a significant and curated collection of Best Practices (foresight) and Bad Practices (hindsight).

Consideration will be given to archives that have helped guide mankind toward a stable unification of society. Since we are a civilisation that has often lacked adequate planetary management, our historical record has significant gaps in it, especially in relation to wisdom pertaining to the achievement of Light and Life status. In order to help fill in these gaps, numerous revelatory initiatives have been put in place as co-creative endeavors between adequately trained human and spiritual personalities.

Global Library of Wisdom for guidance.

Today’s nations have no formulated policy on how to resolve their great problems. This points to the imminent fact of elements that contribute to the instability of our world. Our nations, societies and their institutions were never formed with the underlying intention to become sustainable. A civilisation that lives under the constant and destabilising threat and actuality of war and destruction does not logically make any plans for the distant future. Making it even more difficult is the fact that there is no library of wisdom of what works and what doesn’t, to assist political, economic, scientific and social decision-makers on how to proceed sustainably in difficult situations. This will be seen in the future as a “no brainer,” that there must be a base of wisdom, of what works and what doesn’t work, to guide the decisions that affect so many people. There are, in fact, a number of problems in our contemporary societies and their operation that will be seen in the future as silly—not to have thought about that, and to not plan for a sustainable future.

A library of wisdom is essential.

There has never been a library of wisdom to guide decision-making leading to Light and Life status, whether as a father or mother, family, community, state or a nation, and in recent generations as a global scale civilization. There are actions that support continuity, durability and stability, and actions that do not. There are actions that, in fact, are detrimental to the sustainability of families and nations. It is now time that someone begins to develop such a library of mankinds sustaining and stabilising wisdom, refined into logical categories, containing concise information, and made readily accessible to everyone. There are certain rules, certain proofs, certain truths that when broken they will surely bring about eventual social decline and collapse.

II – Our vision and design of GLoW

The Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission (TBG) operates as much as possible with Free Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as part of our Sustainability policy and this is reflected in our choice of software for GLoW.

GLoW is to be built as a digital repository of wisdom. No physical (paper) copies will be produced by TBG, but means will be available to users of the system wishing to produce printed media of portions of the GLoW data set, all of which is organized as books, chapters and pages.

Physical documents will be digitized as high resolution imagery then Optical Character Recognition (OCR) will be applied to these images to transform them into electronic text that can be edited to suit the needs of GLoW. The high resolution imagery will be archived separately from GLoW for safe keeping using the ISO standard PDF/A archival format which will ensure an archive lifespan of up to 1000 years, in conformance with the requirements of wise planetary management.

The back end of GLoW will be a robust electronic database software application sufficient for handling the large quantities of data that GLoW will collect. The front end Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be used for DATA INPUT by staff members and collaborators should be simple and effective to use. Some training of staff members will be required, and the required skill level to learn the system should be moderate to low.

The front end Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be used by everyone for searching should be simple and effective to use and well documented. Minimal user training for learning the search parameters may be required, and the required skill level to learn the system should be moderate to low.

GLoW will be accessible by everyone with internet access using a modern web browser and a reasonably fast internet connection. Every effort will be made to construct GLoW so that it will also work well on many types of devices such as laptop computers, tablets and smart phones, while keeping the technical requirements for its use as low as possible.

Project Description

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png


I – What is the Global Library of Wisdom (GLoW)?

GLoW is a knowledge base built with a wiki system called BookStack.

BookStack website: https://www.bookstackapp.com
Screenshots: https://www.bookstackapp.com/#screenshots
Documentation: https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/

The BookStack system uses a bookshelf metaphor, where shelves are used to contain collections of books, with each book consisting of chapters and pages. Each book page essentially consists of a simple yet elegant html web page which holds the primary content of the knowledge base.

The shelves, books and chapters are used primarily as content structuring tools, but also serve as user friendly and intuitive navigational aids for logically and easily drilling down to specific portions of content by offering the user both a breadcrumb trail and an expandable hierarchical table of contents.

Like any good digital knowledge base the BookStack system comes equipped with a versatile and powerful built-in Search tool (Meilisearch) for doing keyword searches.

The BookStack Release v22.09 aims for at least WCAG 2.1 Level A standards for accessibility. 

II – How will GLoW be built?

There are three primary aspects to building the GLoW knowledge base.

  1. Acquiring a working instance of the BookStack system. The initial production instance of BookStack has been secured, as of November 2023, as a fully functional and managed service from: https://www.stellarhosted.com/bookstack/ Refer to the project Budget document for financial details.
  2. Designing the overall logical structure (directory) of the knowledge base, which means designing the necessary shelves, books and chapters. The option of adding new structural elements as the knowledge base grows will always remain open, and will be easy to accomplish due to the flexible nature of the BookStack system.
  3. Populating the GLoW knowledge base with appropriate wisdom. There will be an initial heavy input of existing content during the first 12 to 24 months, after which time content will continue to be added but at a significantly reduced pace as new sources of wisdom gradually become available.

III – Constraints

During the 2023-2024 period the main constraint is financial. The current budget allows for the ongoing payment of approximately USD $50.00 per month for the Standard package deal provided by https://www.stellarhosted.com/bookstack/

It is anticipated that this Standard package will provide sufficient features and bandwidth for this initial one year period. If at any time during or after the first year period, the requirements for the system should increase enough to warrant a package upgrade to Premium, then the cost would double to approximately USD $100.00 per month. If an upgrade to the Custom package should be required then the cost would triple to approximately USD $150.00 per month or more depending on the level of customization required.

Project Authorization

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

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I – Project Authorization

Machiventa's updated request to build a Global Library of Wisdom (project scope has been redefined).

Missing the transcript where Machiventa narrowed the scope to matters pertaining only to progress toward Light and Life status.

CTAG #19 transcript - October 16, 2023

We have always had little groups here and there all over the place, each one kind of working independently on their own and some have survived the three decades plus of this Teaching Mission and are a tremendous repository of wisdom and service.

So, we are in the very beginning stages of trying to envision how to create a repository of expertise and make available to our brothers and sisters our collective wisdom and experience so that it's there when it's needed.

Machiventa's original request to build a Global Library of Wisdom (project scope was too big)

Bryan Guignard - Sponsor Mar 2, 2017.

Machiventa Melchizedek presented the people of Urantia with the concept of a Global Library of Wisdom. Some of the transmissions from Machiventa referring to this are listed below. More references will be added as they are discovered.

From New Era Transition #04 – Evolution of Democracies, Oct 3, 2016.

Machiventa: As we have said as well, we hope that eventually there would one day be a library of sustaining human wisdom, so that what works is retained, and what does not work is also set aside to show and demonstrate to the readers and patrons of this library what does not work. We know that what does not work is often forgotten, similarly as the pangs of birth are forgotten by the mother in her great joy for her new child. So too, must this reality remain with you, but not agonize you; it must in fact, give you hope that through the positive and constructive wisdom that is retained, you have confidence that you can make improvements on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and decade basis to improve your societies. When hope is gone, then confidence becomes vacant; it is essential that you have confidence in the knowledge of what works from the past to begin the inception of new dimensions of inventiveness, socially, politically and economically.

Library of wisdom. 

As we have said as well, we hope that eventually there would one day be a library of sustaining human wisdom, so that what works is retained, and what does not work is also set aside to show and demonstrate to the readers and patrons of this library what does not work. We know that what does not work is often forgotten, similarly as the pangs of birth are forgotten by the mother in her great joy for her new child. So too, must this reality remain with you, but not agonize you; it must in fact, give you hope that through the positive and constructive wisdom that is retained, you have confidence that you can make improvements on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and decade basis to improve your societies. When hope is gone, then confidence becomes vacant; it is essential that you have confidence in the knowledge of what works from the past to begin the inception of new dimensions of inventiveness, socially, politically and economically.

July 20, 2015 – From New Era Conversations #51 – Democracy and Its Evolution.
Machiventa Melchizedek, Planetary Manager. 

A library of wisdom is essential. 

We have mentioned in the past that there has never been a library of wisdom to guide decision-making, whether as a father or mother, family, community, state or a nation. There are actions that support continuity and sustainability, and actions that do not. There are actions that in fact, are detrimental to the sustainability of a family or nation. We estimate that eventually someone, sometime, somewhere will begin to develop such a library of humanity’s sustaining wisdom, and that they will be funded with knowledge and wisdom that comes from all the history of human societies and humankind, throughout all its history, and contemporarily, from all the millions of social research projects that have ever been completed, and that these will eventually be summarized into categories for social sustainability, social and societal sustainability, political and governmental sustainability, and financial and economic sustainability. There are certain rules, certain proofs, certain truths in those three areas that are invariably linked, that when broken they will surely bring about eventual social decline and collapse.

July 6, 2015 – From New Era Conversations #50 – Destabilizing World; Trust; Government.
Machiventa Melchizedek, Planetary Manager. 

There is no library of wisdom for guidance 

These nations have no formulated policy on how to resolve these great problems. This points to the imminent fact of elements that contribute to the instability of your world, if not the anticipation of the future. Your nations and societies and institutions were never formed with an underlying intention to become sustainable, so when these events develop they are new and they are difficult. What is worse (or as bad) that makes it difficult is that there is no library of wisdom of what works and what does not work, to assist political and economic and social decision-makers how to proceed in difficult situations. This will be seen in the future as a “no brainer,” that there must be a base of wisdom of what works and what does not work to guide the decisions that effect so many people. There are, in fact, a number of problems in your contemporary societies and their operation that will be seen in the future as silly—not to have thought about that, and to not plan for a future with the variables.

Mar. 30, 2015 – From New Era Conversations #43 – Peace; Intention; 3 Core Values.
Teachers: Mantutia Melchizedek, Regional Manager and Projects Coordinator, and Machiventa Melchizedek, Planetary Manager 

Wisdom gathering about successes and failures.

It is paramount in these projects that somewhere along the line that your historians stop writing about the history of failures and successes, but also become historians of wisdom—human sustainable wisdom—not just in archives that are hidden away, but actual, operational libraries that are online for gathering wisdom about the various aspects of human living and human societies, and human conduct, and human commerce. Wisdom gathering has been done by many people, some of you have read in Nancy J. Turner’s two book set “Ancient Pathways: Ancestral Knowledge,” that the indigenous people of North America in the Northwest have a history of many, many centuries of wisdom gathering concerning the use of herbs and plants for their daily use in thousands of different ways. They have done wisdom gathering to enhance their survival and their sustainability, and have been successful, at least until the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon Europeans who came to this continent in the 17th Century. Now, those wisdoms are being lost to the detriment of the sustainability of those indigenous cultures. Yet, your world, your civilization of Urantia is a culture unto itself that must begin gathering wisdom about its stability and sustainability, and particularly it must become a learning civilization, a learning organization to learn how to adapt to changing conditions. 

Project Charter

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

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I – Project Charter

Insert entire TBG Commission paper, or just the section referring to GLoW???.

Project Scope

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png

I – Project scope

List Machivents’s scope from the CTAG transcripts which limits the scope to Light and Life related wisdom.

Also mention what Machiventa says about the system being a digital one and there is no need for physical copies to be kept.

Project Deliverables

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

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I – List of project deliverables

Project Risks

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png

I – Project risks

Project Budget

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png

I – Project budget

For the first year of operation (December 2023 to December 2024), the BookStack instance hosted by https://www.stellarhosted.com/bookstack/ has been paid for according the yearly subscription model offered by the service provider, at a cost of approximately CAN $846.15. 

All other software and hardware (for offline backups, testing and research) is provided free of cost and without restrictions or obligations by the members of the Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

Project Roles

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png

I – Project roles

Bryan Guignard: Project lead, technology specialist, workflow management, process designer, document writer.

Donna Lynn Sarsfield:

Michel Levasseur: Web master

Glossary of Terms

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December 2023 

This project is being carried out under the aegis of the 
Truth Beauty and Goodness Commission.

tbg-logo1.png

Glossary of Terms

BookStack

BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information using the familiar bookshelf metaphor with books chapters and pages.

GLoW

An abbreviation of Global Library of Wisdom.

Knowledge Base 

A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, or topic. 

Light and Life Status






























Wiki