Home » Articles posted by Jean-Paul Close (Page 176)
Author Archives: Jean-Paul Close
The biggest conspiracy against humankind
The internet is filled with articles about conspiracies against humankind. The most persistent ones are the stories about the banking families controlling the world of finance, the business conspiracy controlling the markets and the conspiracy of the Islam to control the religious world. Many more circulate. And YES! They are all true. In fact, they are all normal, even though you can hardly call them a conspiracy against humankind. They are conspiracies using humankind. In fact, the biggest conspiracy against humankind are we ourselves.
Why?
That is because we believe in wellness provided by external resources and allow people to develop hierarchies to control them, making us dependent through financial means, goods and the mercy of God.
There are good reasons why this has grown this way
World peace until we die
Dependency creates ignorance and ignorance makes people docile. Surround people with all the goodies of the world and we will never stand up again for ourselves. From a world peace point of view this is excellent. The vast majority of people in the world have not reached the level of awareness to carry responsibility in the highly competitive world of an advanced species. So spreading ignorance through dependencies is a means to avoid disaster, especially now that we are growing to a extremely large world population.
The problem we face is that this ignorance also structures our systems. All manipulators are people who just desire the power of control. Their blind focus is totally ignorant of the bigger consequences. If they become aware they are morally to blame so large efforts are put into keeping them clean of responsibilities. That’s why they purchase with money and institutional donations, scientific reports that contradict scientific evidence, spreading doubt and division out of self interest.
Democracy fails
Divide and rule is the democratic credo. When millions of people disagree, common greed and self interest rules. That’s the basis of a democracy that has no other purpose than to dispute each other’s opinion with the only common denominator being money. Since “money” has no other value than growth the entire democratic discussion becomes senseless, manipulative and meaningless.
We see political governance practice this technique. They control the tax money as unified source of control and spread it over the population through subsidies and services to create dependency, competition and confusion. The more they divide, the more they themselves remain in power. Power is what rules, not progress, nor responsibility. They themselves are never to blame because confusion reigns. They can always resign (against a self installed protective wage) or blame others and get someone else to continue the game.
The population meanwhile loves democracy because it gives a sense of control through freedom of choice and speech. The masses do not realize that they allow financial dictatorship continue while their democratic vote disappears in the permanent confusion of minorities. The governing politicians forcefully need to team up with the money makers because that is where the power of both comes from.
Indeed it feels like a conspiracy but it is culture and human attitude around power, dominance and dependence (in the shape of slavery)
Food, fun and shelter
These three key issues are needed by all human beings. Those who control food, housing and the fun control the human needs. In a growing population, resident in cities, these issues have become instruments of speculation. It has simply grown that way. The benefit of cities is that it keeps the destructive masses out of the countryside, allowing for optimization of space and services. Cities are money driven hot-spots where capital interests have risen sky high. People want to live in cities because of the perception of work and money, not realizing that they sell their souls to the devil because of the money driven slavery in the cities.
The tremendous needs for energy, material resources and food of the cities creates a sucking force that is in hands of the speculative financial markets, demanding large scale productivity with all the consequences for our global environment. The cities are centers of automated processes where money rules and the human being is the means.
It is not a conspiracy, it’s a personal choice. And indeed, the city has all the facilities, in fun and care, that the countryside misses. This influences our choice. 99,99% of the human population is blindly attracted by the circus of a city unaware of the consequences for the larger picture (and themselves). But who cares? In the city people become invisible due to the masses and very individualized, which is extremely attractive for economies to evolve without any sensitivity or morality.
Religion builds on fear
From a practical point of view the human being is just a physical tube from mouth to anus which is kept alive through insertion of food and elimination of waste. Every human being here is the same. Life is “a miracle” and we depend of external resources through competition and growth, or money.
We fear death while religious leaders claim to have mastered the essence of life by their proximity to “the Source”. They can use the fear of people to manipulate through promises or elimination of fear and sense of guilt.
In essence the moral and ethical discussion is enhanced by the religious dogmas that provide answers through story telling, paraphrasing and metaphors. Material poverty and lack of education is often misused to indoctrinate people around certain beliefs and behavior. This has two sides of a story of course. It gives people something to hold on to in desperate situations when they cannot trust themselves anymore due to lack of opportunity and help. A miracle and the existence of a helpful parallel world is something to keep them going. The other side of the medal is that structures misuse the innocence of people to manipulate them for a particular cause that is against all principles of life, such as causing death in the name of belief. The latter is shear competition between human powers that need a market to keep their position executed by blind ignorance. But…isn’t working for money in a polluting multinational exactly the same?
Religion is the dogmatic interpretation of spirituality. From a spiritual point of view this human physical mouth/anus tube evolved and became uniquely alive by the complex harmonic interaction of billions of molecules and a universe of microscopic species, all uniquely programmed through billions of years of evolution of life. Every human being here is unique. Life is a universal reality and to live we depend on our inner harmony through love and building relationships with our surroundings. We ARE the mirror image of the universe.
The universe has laws of its own that no human being can claim but we can understand and live accordingly. This however requires open education and awareness. As long as the fast majority of the world’s population is uneducated, education is being manipulated, and people remain unaware through ignorance building cultures, we face the destructive hierarchies that we call “conspiracies”.
We unknowingly fool ourselves but what is the solution?
From the above we can deduct that we ourselves are the basis of every conspiracy. Ignorance, unawareness and blind individualism, combined with the difficulties to get what we need on a daily basis, becomes a logical melting pot of politics, finance and religious structures that use humankind as if they were serving. When we become aware of a “conspiracy” it is a sign of waking up.
Waking up is not at all that pleasant because it introduces the responsibility of self awareness. What to do about this? Leaving the conspiracies eliminates the benefits too. Maintaining them makes us accomplice of the larger consequences. We get in touch with our own moral awareness and start behaving accordingly, making different choices then before.
The problem we face is that all the above happens within the confinement of human nature. We use our surroundings to fulfill those needs and those high level manipulators now face the powerful manipulation back from the unexpected “mother nature”. Suddenly we are surprised by natural disasters, climate changes, lack of resources, human made disasters, effects of pollution, etc. The manipulators are face to face with their own consequences. They have been selling wellness to the masses for money. Now they cannot comply anymore and have no one else to blame but themselves. There is a call again for human ingenuity and integrity instead of ignorance to solve the sum of all issues that threaten humankind and with it, all the manipulative basics of the powers in place.
The general public is waking up, shaken by the visibility of the consequences and the open reflection through internet and visualization through the media. Local solutions need to be found that cannot be solved by money anymore because they are caused by the culture that money created. We need to go to the essence of our existence and learn to understand life. This has to do with education, awareness and willingness to look for alternative structures of cooperation and sharing responsibilities. The old human made system is crumbling because of the ignorance of the system’s leaders, the robotics they created and the damage that the consequences cause.
Humankind is waking up all together as a species and sees how much work is ahead to save our selves. When we wake up we realize that the conspiracy against humankind was our own blindness, the wake up call then gets us away from those forces into the challenge of doing something about it. But what? That determines the explosion of human creativity. Ignorance is not anymore with the public that is being manipulated, it is with the systems leaders that stand solutions in the way with the monstrous systems they try to keep in place. All around the world we see people overcoming these obstacles to start experimenting with new formats, insights and solutions.
We call some of them Sustainocrats, or game-changers. Time has come for those people to unite and share experiences or best practice to expand the movement throughout the world. Maybe in the future people will call this again a new conspiracy but that will only be a sign of a new level of awakening into awareness and consciousness. For now we need to open up to new realities that include the powers of nature that now affect us and call for action through wisdom, respect and evolutionary pressure proper of life itself.
It’s happening, whether you are there or not
“To be there or not to be there”, that does make a difference.
In sustainocratic ventures (eg: AiREAS, co-creating healthy cities) it’s about making it happen, not negotiating the presence in the meeting. It’s up to the participant to consider it important enough to be there or not. When people see that a process goes ahead whether they are there or not they will make sure they are in it when there is something for them to gain or loose.
That is sometimes disturbing for people who consider themselves more important than the process or the commitment.
To explain the difference this story always helps:
Mary and John arrive home after making their wedding promises, and John (democrat) suddenly says: “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mary. In the weekends I always eat with my parents. On Monday eve I have my weekly jazz night out in the pub. On Tuesday my friends and I play poker and Wednesday afternoon it’s football time. Friday we have drinks with the colleagues at work.”
Mary (sustainocrat) smiles and says:
“That alright my love. Just remember that here at home at 6 pm we fuck, whether you are here or not.”
Sustainocracy is the commitment of otherwise fragmented interests (business, government, science, civilians) to achieve regional sustainable progress together (eg. AiREAS: Cocreating a healthy city). In such multidisciplinary setting it is not the promise but the being there that matters.
In established sustainocratic ventures we do not have a problem of senior atendence anymore. It took just 3 metings to settle the difference.
Jean-Paul Close (gamechanger)
Let’s not make things more difficult than they are. Sustainable human progress is loving the miracle of life through passionate, value driven cooperation, commitment, awareness, trust, health, safety and self sufficiency.
What does it take to be a gamechanger?
To understand what a “gamechanger” is you may want to have a look at this animation first. We couldn’t have expressed it better ourselves.
Anyone can do it. This is my gamechanger story. I live in the Netherlands and may call myself such gamechanger in practical reality already for over a decade. It is indeed exciting, especially if you play the game as seriously as I do, expecting in the end that our constitution, legislation, human and institutional interrelations, sustainable expectations and social culture, change too. I am even more ambitious and hope the rest of world will play “my game” too one day. It is exciting to play, not just because of the game but the changes that occur.
What is does it take to become a gamechanger?
You need three things: belief in what you do, a new game and players.
Most people know and complain about what’s wrong with society but have no clue how to create another one. Many do not even think twice about it, unaware as they are that societies are simply a set of agreements and a culture. Agreements can be changed, culture too.
The current Dutch society is money driven, based on consumption (goods and care) and debt. The principle rules of this game were established not too long ago, somewhere in the 1970’s, inspired in parts by the USA, even though certain fundamentals date already back from our first constitutional development in the 1790’s. The game was adjusted in the 1970’s to address the growing needs for financial means. The key instruments became money, debt, interest rates and speculation on shortages. Even though this game in Holland had the noble thought of creating and continuing a society of “care” over an aging, greying population, at the end of the day today we see it evolved into a financial dictatorship and monetary slavery at the expense of human dignity. Money and money based systems have become dominant and the human being the instrument.
The law of opposites
When human values evaporate due to system’s interests the name of the new game had to be around “human values”. In the old game people and institutions are forced to only think in money instead of values. If we want values they should be upfront in our approach. We need to turn around the culture 180%. That’s the law of opposites (commonly used in marketing too in a certain way).
This is where the belief in myself comes in. I have gone through hell with my children because of the inhumane dominance of the financial world, up to a point that I decided “to create a different world to pass on to my children”. Back then I was only aware of my own pain and the game I did not want to play anymore. Only later, while developing my mission I came across the equivalent pain of the rest of humankind and our environment, locally and worldwide. I became aware that the my own good was common too. I was just a front-runner in pain and awareness, talented maybe to try alternatives. The rest would follow at one point or another.
It brought me to a key point of the game change: self interest. Self interest is the best motivator for change. Many talk about the “common good” to be dominant over individualism. That’s true but no one serves the common good if there is no reciprocity to the individual. “What’s in it for me” is even the driving force of the largest idealists.
My gamechanging is done for me and my children first. Changing the game for the rest of the world is a logical consequence. In that part I can become of help but it is the rest of the world that needs to take responsibility by playing if they want, not just I.
This brings me to the next awareness: When I change game the entire world already changed. It is just a matter of growing the new game. My views of reality are real, my game too even if it is played by one, maybe two, four and eventually many who will not even know where it started. They don’t do it for me. They all do it for themselves and their children, only if it makes sense to them.
All I can be is the inviting party to this new reality, convincing other about the logic of my solutions.
The world turned upside down
The new game is different. It is not based on money but value creation, not on interest rates but on talented contribution (with reciprocity through value sharing) and not on shortages but creating abundance. That’s easier said than done.
The overall picture of opposites is clear. The choice is either-or, nothing in between. But both games are abstract. They need to become materially visible for people to understand. To do that we can look how the current main game evolved, producing climate change, pollution, illnesses, extreme healthcare costs and very high potential expenses due to rising sea water. Those consequences are not caused by the big picture but the sum of all the little things. The big picture is then the consequence. Most global leaders try to change the big consequences without disputing the game we play. This has its logic because the old game made them global leaders in the first place. The true global leaders of change are hence the new players that are all gamechangers after the example of someone who started.
Money is an abstraction that has materialized into our everyday needs. We use it for everything. It has gone so “crazy” that I deal with people who grow food that they sell to get money to go to the groceries. That’s the process we need to turn around. The essence of my new game is “everything we can make ourselves we do not need to buy”. If we don’t need to buy things we can do without money. This ends the old game that looses its dominance and dictatorship. If we change the little things the big ones are forced to change too. The game has then changed.
Sustainocracy – small things that are big
I made Sustainocracy more visible by defining our key values to be: nutrition (including clean water), health, safety, self sufficiency and awareness. If we look at our current society we lack all of those values. They are only accessible through money, if accessible at all. We don’t have health if we have a good health care, we cure sickness. We don’t have safety with a good police force, we address criminality. We don’t have food in a city of cement, we have shops. We don’t have awareness through education, we have schools that teach how to deal with money. Behind all that we have money driven hierarchies that want to produce more money, not value. We see then scandal after scandal in our food, our environment, in our human relationships, cancer in our bodies, etc. If we want value we need to create it ourselves.
The opposites works, not just as a new game with an objective, it is a choice. The counter part is collapsing. People, even leaders, need a way out, an alternative. The “What’s in it for me” in the old game is money, not just at the expense of a destroyed habitat and life expectancy but also the position of old game leaders.
Scientists can dispute the details, politicians can negate the consequences, business analysts can try to sell green business but the simple facts are that the old game is game over. It is disappearing due to all the negative effects that it is causing itself. Even in Holland we see now that people do not want to be policy maker anymore because they cannot win, only loose in the old game.
People need perspective, purpose and a personal drive. That is part of the value of being alive. If we feel that we are being blamed for the atrocities of society through taxation, inflation and lack of a job, and only get financial dictatorship back, then there comes a point that we take responsibility ourselves and turn things around. No old laws will stop us, we create new ones. Leaders cross over too, step by step if they think they can be more influential in the new game then the old. Businesses develop along the new rules, etc. etc.
Experimenting with reality
The gradual collapse of the old game is the only way to be able to get players for a new game and create openings to address true, measurable change. If the old game would be going strong there would be no awareness to the need for change. That’s why certain leaders in the old games try desperately to get back to the old strength rather than change, blocking whatever gamechange they encounter. But their chances are low because their struggle is upstream, short term and extremely tiring. The gamechanger has time, uses up the empty spaces that appear when dominance collapses and develops change gradually.
The strongest assets for the gamechanger are the weaknesses and collapse of the other game. The strengths are the exact opposite. The gamechanger does not have to explain the weaknesses of the other, just work on its own strength and invite the world to participate and share the results.
This is great in theory, especially looking back at hindsight, but for years I needed to experiment with my new reality to find a way through the old system. As said, a lot of people and institutions are hijacked through the money driven dependency. They may want to change but cannot. Whenever you propose something new they all expect still money. Despite the expectation of creation of unprecedented values the people and organizations involved want to see cash. It’s a culture. There is only one way around that. Negotiate without money.
I have the game, the focus and the challenge. Others need to supply the money, the innovations and the authority if they want to share the values too. I do not hunt for a budget, I hunt for talent to create value.
At first I just gathered people like me, with vision, without money. All entrepreneurial people that wanted a different world. When they teamed up they started making a business plan with a money driven justification, to find start up capital somewhere. They made it all work around money again, creating more of the old same. When it went again about money the fights and distrust started, breaking up any venture before it could become alive and working, let alone successful.
It became clear to me that I should not work with the “same of a kind” (just business, just governance, just civilians) because it does not work due to competition or singularity in attitude. I created diversity in the team by setting up multidisciplinary ventures (business, civilians, science, government). With different interests people may join forces better as there is no competition.
With a “poker hand” one only wins through speculation and a large cut for each. That is why we see G7, G20, EU etc come up with constant measure of more power, money, tax, etc, without solving anything. They are all government and think in terms of control and bureaucracy, not value creation. Business with business just want cost elimination and profit sharing, etc.
With a straight flush the key is to keep the differences complete and produce winning progress together.
Mission impossible
Even when the name of the game is known, with the abstract objective, even the multidisciplinary team to do it, it still needs a mission impossible to tackle. As gamechanger I tried it all and always found impediments. Persistence is key, not just banging the head against the same walls but by adjusting, experimenting and trying again. Finally the most unexpected puzzle pieces fall together. That’s when we got to set up AiREAS, a complex venture to co-create healthy cities. The rest is known. We are playing now at society level.
The game changed from chains of dependencies to ventures of shared responsibility
