Home » Articles posted by Jean-Paul Close (Page 56)
Author Archives: Jean-Paul Close
Nature comes alive again, how about humanity?
The equinox on March 20th shows us once again the magical coherence of nature and reminds us of our own historical immaturity to deal with symbiose and peacefulness. Let us celebrate our steps to maturity through a musical online event.
Springtime shows how the ecosystem in nature comes alive with the extra sunlight. Trees, flowers, insects, bushes, everything is showing itself in its colorful diversity. The ecosystem is well balansed, peaceful and symbiotically interactive. Every event triggers other life events up to the full cycle fullfilment. After that it gradually downgrades itself into the winter pauze where storms, darkness and cold form a natural moment of rest.
Nature acts like a well orquestrated symphony. The question arises why humankind has some much difficulty behaving in a similar cocreative, multually dependent and peaceful way? We believe that it has to so with our evolutionary immaturity. For a long time humankind could grow nearly unlimited in a space without natural enemies, except ourselves. We also did not interpret the natural environment as a friend to interact with, we rather saw it as open storage of raw materials free for us to use. Our territorial drifts and controls, together with a puberal competitive drive, made us fight each other out of self interest.
In analogy with the orquestrated symphony of nature we, human beings, act like musicians that have learned to play an instrument but have not understood yet how to play together. We show traces of empathy and diplomacy at times but hardly manage to syntonize into values driven cocreation with each other or our environment.
This is changing.
We seem to mature the hard way, through painful conflicts, sudden illnesses and bursts of awareness. Awareness gradually show us that all these conflicts don´t serve humankind at all. We need to outgrow this mentality and become constructive, progressive, cocreative, according to the Laws of Nature. One of these laws is the musicality of the living environment. Let us celebrate this online at 17:00 CET (Amsterdam time)
Car free cities show less obesitas and diabetes
With AiREAS we work together on healthy regioal development. This requires a huge transformation in our behavior. One of those changes is our mobility. Now studies reveal that slow mobility in town is good for our health. It also contributes to better air quality, less climate issues and a better economy.
Water needs in Africa
Drinking water is a core value for the continuity of life, including us, the human being.
Food (another core value) based communities in Africa struggle with local government corruption and the long periods of draught, longer than normal due to climate change. They try to get water from deep layers in the ground. For that investment is needed to dig the wells, install (and maintain) the pumps and store the water in basins or water towers. With this they can irrigate their plants and feed the local community of hundreds of people. These people subsequently receive education in an attempt to raise the local self sufficiency and resilience.
The lack of government support and extortion nature of such governance drives these groups into international crowdfunding for their financial needs. STIR has supported some of these projects financially and receives these photos as proof of the money being spend properly.
Even though we feel happy to be able to contribute, we also realize that we don’t solve the big issue if we do not also address the corruption of local government. Africa has great resources and with proper regional governance there could be sustainable wellness for all these people. Empowering the locals needs to go together with the international pressure on redefining our moral and ethical values to which we can hold officials responsable. Sustainocracy provides those values but also needs to have the support to exert pressure for change to accountability there where needed.
With this corruptions engrained in our (financial) systems and (self imposed) hierarchies we will never get to sustainable human progress or peace. Ideas are welcome, support too to strengthen those local communities.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 