Suddenly it is the talk of the day. Young people approach me with their worries. “What if the war extends across Europe?” “What if the banks freeze our money?” “What if……”. The amount of questions raised are numerous. Suddenly our vulnerability is sensed. Will we still have food? Energy? Water? Money?

They all know someone in the Ukraine or from the Ukraine. Our current worldwide crossborder and internet age has made us all brothers and sisters. People worry about their friends, about the family of these friends. They ask themselves: “why?”. A sudden burst of empathy is felt, not just with the people from the Ukraine, also for the people from Russia. Noone sees the russian citizens as the agressor, just the political elite. And all see those troops as victims, young people to fight a situation noone understands, no one wanted and suddenly one needs to sacrifice all those promising lives for.

Elderly people go mentally back to worldwar II. They remember the hunger winter, the fears they felt when the bombs were falling, the planes flying over.

Suddenly our core human values, the ones we take generally for granted until it is too late, become relevant. What about our health, our safety, our basic needs?

For over a decade the STIR Foundation has been inviting to develop our core values together on time, before chaos would surprise us and force us. Have a look at this short spontaneous video (2012) that shows our awareness after worldwar II, the society that emerged from it and the gradual abuse we took from it. Chaos is inevitable unless we take action on time.

This similar drawing I used in 2009 (see below) to show the risk of chaos as from 2020 (start of Covid and the technological/big pharma lobby for citizen control systems). In 2008 the world was shocked by the banking crisis. This had already an important impact on the awareness not to trust the financial system anymore and work harder on our core values. The 2022 Ukraine attaques enhance this even more. We cannot take our safety, our resilience for granted by laying it in the hands of politicians or big, globalized institutions with their self interests.

We need to get our self sufficiency act together if we want to avoid further chaos and painful situations for many people.