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What will 2015 bring?
Explosively more everything, except harmony!
While working hard with my STIR Foundation on the City of Tomorrow with all its initiatives (AiREAS, SAFE, FRE2SH, STIR Academy, etc), to produce a harmony driven society and culture, the big reality is evolving in exacty the opposite way. 2015 will bring the world more of everything, especially explosive stress but no harmony.
The reason for this is the positioning of our leading influencers and policy makers, to which we entrusted our wellbeing development and progress, in the field of greed and economic growth (instead of harmony where they should be).
Growth of Greed
The dominant field of insensitive speculation for financial growth, debt collection and social cost reduction produces at the same time the further development of poverty, people in chaos and in search for survival.
Greed produces poverty and tries to protect its interests through bureaucracy
The problem of executive power concentrated in greed is that they develop legal instruments to increase bureaucracy and control mechanisms that block innovation and criticism of greed. This whole situation eliminates any sense of responsibility or ethics from the community while some people and institutions expand their greed over the back of everything else. Justice is in the hands of immoral criminality but this is not recognized in a system that created its own moral, blind and insensitive to its consequences.
Breaking the impasse
Many people turn their backs to the immoral executive of power by not recognizing their “authority” anymore. They start developing themselves into various directions:
1. They lay their hope into faith of the super natural, such as God, or religions, in search for spiritual meaning and purpose.
2. Or they lay their efforts into criticism of the greedy system that they turned their back to, in the hope to make it reflect and change, if necessary with force.
3. Further advanced people start to develop a new reality out of awareness and co-creation with like thinking people. Such new systems of complexity are challenging the old reality of greed but not necessarily target harmony yet, just the expression of their awareness and dissatisfaction. They often just want the destruction of the old wall of impediments rather than start developing the alternative in the field of harmony.
The field of awareness is hence still largely an unstructured chaos of initiatives and beliefs that have yet to mingle and commit to co-creation and direction. Meanwhile they do tend to become active in challenging the wall of impediments, offering more and more people the chance to escape from the senseless chaos and get into something more constructive.
All diversity of expressions of awareness are necessary to eventually develop a new evolutionary complexity of self aware harmony. Ethics, or the resistence to the lack of it, is a fundament for new society development but needs to cristalize itself into a common perception of structured progress and wellness. The search challenges the individual awareness in order to generate a level of empathy and cocreative effort. That is a next step. People involved first need to reassure for themselves their individual TO BE before they can contribute to a collective one. This only happens when they let go of the past and break through into creating their present and future together.
Awareness is necessary but also fragments all kinds of expressions
The self aware individuals (and even institutions) that manage to break through the wall of impendents are still themselves in struggle to define their own freedom and identity. Their anger with the blockage through impediments and their suffering of chaos first needs to given an emotional and spiritual position. You cannot eat “Awareness” nor does it provide housing, basic need or luxury. Awareness of what one leaves behind does not provide awareness where one goes to. Often freedom is accompanied by fear, a different type of fear than chaos, but fear it is. What will the future bring?
* Some let themselves be lured into the grips of other dogmatic systems that promise salvation but happen to be as dominant and greedy as the ones left behind
* Only few develop leadership skills to create a new harmonic human world. But these people are in such minority, with so little effect still in the shadow of the big movements of expansion of greed, chaos and awareness development, that the difference they make is still negligable.
Summing up all this we can easily state that harmony is still a long way away because of the powerful counter forces that move away from it. The sum of all arrows, especially greed and chaos, move away from from harmony making it an increasingly empty field, despite the efforts of some, like the STIR Foundation. At one stage the turning point will come and all forces will be directed at hamony but right now this turning point is still far away at the expense of more and more stress.
So 2015 will show an increase of:
In negative sense:
- greed and speculation with all powerfull (legal) instruments of the evil to further suck wellness away
- poverty and chaos development with all signs of dispair, aggression, criminality, etc
- the reaction of governments with more taxes, bureaucracy and control mechanisms
- the further blockage of true innovation out of self interest of a few
In positive sense:
- the increase of collapse of the old system feeding both chaos and awareness
- collapse of the old system eventually weakens the wall of impediments allow for more break throughs
- the breakthrough of people in search for their own freedom and self determination
- the search for spiritual meaning and solutions for new phases of wellbeing
Every individual, every community, every family or institution is facing one of the situations and will recognize for themselves where they stand. The ultimate situation is to work together on harmony in society, like Sustainocracy tries to establish by inviting people from each area to work together (not everyone is chaos or greed is in that particular state but represent institutions that are. They are most likely to use their own breakthough into awareness to try to get their institutions along and accept the invitation into Sustainocratic value driven ventures).
What did we achieve in 2014?
Since Eindhoven (Holland) is my living lab for Sustainocracy I reviewed the year in Dutch first. To many local people involved it makes sense. Internationally it takes a larger effort to understand and emphasise with what we do. It’s different and breaks through your traditional way of viewing yourself in relation to the human world organisation or your own culture.
Understanding a new society, such as “Sustainocracy”, needs involvement and commitment, not just curiosity or a passing by blog. So I will keep it short.
City of Tomorrow
If I had the define 2014 from a City of Tomorrow (STIR Foundation) perspective then two words come to mind: consolidation and growth.
Since its foundation in 2009 STIR established four different value driven cooperatives, each addressing a key global issue locally in Eindhoven.
Note: Global issues affect local communities in many different ways. Eindhoven is a city with specific characteristics. The local value driven solutions here would differ from those developped in for instance a harbour city, a city in a land climat or a megacity with lots of sky scrapers. Establishing local sustainocratic initiatives would produce unique values that can be expanded commercially world wide through the STIR network.
Each initiative is a result of the definition of sustainable human progress dealt with by our foundation. The initiatives in Eindhoven are:
AiREAS (since 2010): regional Air Quality and Human Health
FRE2SH (since 2013): regional self sufficiency and productivity
STIR Academy (since 2009): awareness, cocreation and new educative formats
SAFE (since 2014): safety and self sufficiency together.
AiREAS and STIR Academy are in phase of consolidation and growth. FRE2SH and SAFE are in pioneer phase.
AiREAS is expanding into new cities who either assume the technology or desire to develop a Local AiREAS.
Meanwhile Local AiREAS Eindhoven is entering into phase 2 and 3, involving citizen’s directly in cocreation of their vital and healthy living space.
STIR Academy is capturing the experiences that accumulate in all complex multidisciplinairy initiatives and makes it available through inspiring educational programs, European HUBs in cities and guiding international candidates with knowledge. New proven concepts around Sustainocratic Leadership, piramide entrepreneurial paradigm, human complexities, multidisciplinary cocreation and transformation economy are offered to the emerging global world for sustainable progress (business, government, education, ethics, science, citizenship).
FRE2SH is developing well with one first farmhouse to connect city self sufficiency through interactive food and energy programma’s.
SAFE was just recently set up to help people and institutions to address chaos as a transformative opportunity rather than fearful risk. It creates room and freedom to let go of the past and develop a new phase of harmony and prosperity.
Footprint redefined
Impressive truth
How come that such minute physical presence on Earth proves so destructive? Individually we may size up relatively small with a footprint of just 0.25 m2 if we stand up and do not move. But lifestyle wise we use 1000’s of m2 individually up to a point that we reach a point of singularity both in physical available space as our moral usage of it. We need to transform our lifestyles and usage of resources and space.
Usage of space:
When we look at a city and the behavior of a single human being you only have to consider your own daily usage of space to be surprised.
Summing up: We need a home to protect our intimicy and our integrity. We sleep horizontally, occupying already 10 x more space than standing up. We use tables, seats, space for different functions in our daily routine (relax, cook, eat, dress, bath, etc.). In family configuration we share functionality and space but in economic optimization of individualised lifestyles our space is just reserved for a single person.
We have created a culture to go to work nearly every day. We need a place to go where the work is executed. It is mostly a building where many gather for some kind of productivity with facilities, equipment, etc. While at work the space at home remains unused waiting for me to come back and vice versa. Between home and work there is variable distance that is covered with mobility. A diversity of options are at my disposal to choose from. When I choose one than the other options remain unused but occupy space while waiting.
I can only be at one place at Any time
Meanwhile a lot of space is reserved for usage
Whatever I choose to use needs storage at the place of arrival and an infrastructure in between. Our individualised consumer culture has stimulated me to have all the options in property including elements, such as a car, that proves extremely space and energy consuming.
In a city we are not consuming what we produce ourselves so our work generally is not related directly to the supply of my basic needs. These I acquire from a parallel infrastructure of logistics, shop surface and storage of my vehicles of access. Waste that I produce has yet another parallel infrastructure.
We want to see abundance even if we throw 50% away in the process
While this represents my daily routine as average adult citizen we also have children, elderly people, visitors, pets, etc that need their own modified facilities. My life is even more complex because in my spare time or holidays, when not at rest, I seek thrills through recreation, sport, travel, etc. All this needs still different facilities and infrastructures.
Holiday space
Summing up my own space and footprint I come to an astonishing figure that has nothing to do with my physical presence when standing still.
Transforming reality
When I realize this and consider the time spent in a traffic jam, wasted at some desk and doing different things in different places. Then I realize that we are doing it all wrong. Reducing my personal footprint requires attention to all the above. When I look at other species dealing with their reality of massive cohabitation I see:
Ants:
Ant heap
Bees:
Forrests:
The diversity is huge but the interaction is finetuned and usage of space optimized for self sufficiency. Everything is related to the rest in harmony even though growth, chaos and evolution takes place. The adaptive nature of everything is often breathtaking as well as the multifunctionality of infrastructures and relationships. There is a huge degree of reciprocity among interrelated species while competition is avoided. The footprint of any other species is relative to its size since every is always reusable and temporary in use.
Transforming my own life I become very much more active directly from home. I reduced my living space to a small sleeping area and working space for my laptop. I coordinate Sustainocracy programs with over 30.000 people now involved without hardly the need to travel. When I do I use a bike for local encounters and trains for stuff further away. Videoconference is ideal for metings in between. I have no office, nor does any of my multidisciplinairy ventures.
For food, energy and recreation I established FRE2SH, a co creative exercise to facilitate directly our direct consumption needs without hardly any logistics, loss or distribution system. Sharing our space and productivity with utmost application of innovative enhancements and scientific knowledge we use much more vertical space per m2 than before. We work in 5 levels for food: Under the ground, on the surface, bush and tree levels with animal life in between. We also want to do food exercises with insects and fish in the future. We do not work in mono food cultures but establish diversity of eatable species experimenting with harmony and abundance in productivity.
We hardly work with oil consuming machines. We do not sell products or services but invite people to participate and share in the results. Space previously used for mobility or parking is now used for real productivity. Our self sufficiency from self interest also develops a new biodiversity of species around us. Insects, birds, small animals etc start cohabitation with us demanding a new kind of knowledge development and awareness. We integrate our local rural options with the benefits of the city. A degree of self sufficiency uses up space in a much more efficiënt way reorganizing personal and collective economy too, with less financial dependence and more sense of stressless stability. It is even much less activity demanding while much more rewarding in direct productivity and multiple benefits.
We experiment with the objective of redefining our footprint. Of course we find multiple limitations in our surroundings caused by the fragmented multiplication of wasted space that is kept in place by all those old interests. Still plenty of opportunities arise to learn and do things that start small and start expanding as more effort and people get committed. It is a process that shows exponential growth but starts teasingly slow.
Having pioneered with it I am convinced that we can restructure cities and entire societies by committing to the reducing of our real footprint by letting go of our previous life while reconstructing a new one as we go. My current footprint is probably about 1/1000s of what it used to be and my quality of life has increased by various factors. And I have only started. When further along the line the change will be more and more visible as I get my entire city to transform with me.
FRE2SH (city self sufficiency) in action
