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Reality is a confrontation with yourself
“I do not challenge the reality of others, I created a new one and invite people and institutions to join. This brings them in confrontation with themselves”
(Jean-Paul Close, Sustainocracy – the new democracy – 2012)
The reality we perceive is an interpretation by our rational awareness. We interact with our surroundings according to the interpretation of reality. We learn to perceive a particular stability as “normal” and will not easily challenge it when it provides us with what we think we need. When things happen that are out of the ordinary our perception is challenged. Our reality changes and we enter in confrontation with ourselves when need to deal with change. This confrontation contains a learning process that has been the essence of human progress through periods of creativity and change. We tend to be conservative in order to provide is with a sense of safety and control yet are especially good as a species in adapting to new circumstances when the need presents itself. This adaptation process is filled with emotions and meaningful awareness development.
Many people are now experiencing such a personal confrontation as the money based human world collapses. It opens up our minds to a new reality. At first we see our trusted reality fall apart. The old reality is unstable but a new one has not yet been created in our awareness. I already wrote about the fear for change of people, the process of letting go of old securities and the acceptance of new responsibilities. We may at first look at the world with apprehension and distrust but in reality we are looking within ourselves for the energetic ability to address the forthcoming insecurities. A new reality needs to be dealt with as it unfolds in front of our senses and reaches our consciousness. We first project the new circumstances on previous experiences and old abilities to see if we can re-establish our stability by applying the old reality. When we see that this does not work we come in the new world of creativity, emotions and meaning. We start experimenting with our awareness and feelings by discovering and applying other talents or even develop totally new ones. Our worries go to the primary fulfillment of our needs first (such as food, housing, clothing, etc). We open up to new methods and approaches to reality. We also look at risk in a different way.
When we deal with our old and proven reality we have the tendency to avoid risk but when a new reality needs to be taken care of risk avoidance is exactly what we do not need. In the process of search for primary needs everything is possible, from self-sufficient initiatives to theft and criminality. Renewal and innovation are values that both have to do with the process of letting go and creating something new. The whole event of change is experienced as a risk, but a different one in each of the stages. The emotions around letting go have to do with fear of what we loose. The emotions in our personal chaos lead us to fight for survival. The risk felt to gain new stability using our creativity has to do with what we can gain in terms of safety and wellness. When we establish a creative dot on the horizon we have less problems in letting go then when we have nothing to go for. A dot on a horizon can also get others to join into the process allowing change to occur in co-creative manner.
An entire society
The confrontation process of dealing with individual change and fear in changing realities is also true for institutions s.a. business, government, schools, etc. The confrontation is more complicated because many more people are involved and the institution in caught up in a chain of dependencies with others. The surroundings of a human being are not just artificial yet the surroundings of institutions are man made with financial systems, risk management an chains of liabilities. The old reality of an institution is “managed” in a day to day comfort. When a crisis occurs that changes the reality of the system, the new reality requires institutional “leadership”.
In our current financial world of fragmented institutional interests we see many worldviews interact through the management of chains of relationships. When the chains break up or enter into a crisis only leadership can open up to new realities. Then institutions are not fragmented anymore but open up to new relationships. Organizations that are reluctant to change due to excess bureaucracy and self interest based on old remaining values are for sure entering in chaos and mortal stress. The ones that are open to change, and receive freedom to do so by the people involved, will assume experimental risks by confronting themselves with themselves through a changing reality. This reality change is an open interaction between the surroundings and the institution. Both change in the process
Sustainocracy is the dot on horizon for the global society
In Sustainocracy we deal with the confrontation between perceived realities with all the participants of society, and society as a whole. It is exciting to see how it works when the dynamics of a large community, such as a city, gets into a proactive mode of risk taking progression with all parties involved. Leadership develops where least expected and confronts itself with the old power positions of managerial risk avoidance that remain in the surroundings. We see managerial people hanging on to old positions of power while leadership acts with new age authority. The process of letting go and developing new creativity for change becomes visible and fills the environment with energetic passion. Sustainocracy then adds our definition of sustainable human progress as a common dot on the horizon. It helps people to define profound challenges that become workable and recognized by all. The energy of change gets focused and changes the world.
The confrontation with ourselves then changes fear into trust, insecurity into passion, conservation into progression and confinement into a sense of freedom. When reality change we learn through the confrontation with ourselves how to deal with it for our safety, stability and progress. Without change no progress, nor positive human evolution. Some of even take immense joy in riding these waves of transformative change and create a network of world changing initiatives. Sustainocracy requires such network of people active in the different fields of leadership authority.
Free download The Truly Responsible Enterprise from author Tóth Gergely
Through this space, in the blog category of “books on sustainable human progress” I start to make knowledge available to you. This is part of the universal academic environment (The STIR Academy) that I am creating as part of the development of Sustainocracy as a new way of co-creating society in a value driven democratic way. In a Sustainocracy co-creative initiatives are taken in which education is always included free of charge, not free of responsibility. Via this means you get knowledge of a new society that you can process yourself. You now have a choice between paradigms. Knowledge helps you to develop awareness on which choice provides you with the best prospects to conduct your life in an exciting and sustainable way. The authors you meet here are also invited by me to take co-responsibility when Sustainocracy extends across the world. This have the same choices as you yet through their publications they show that they are maybe a step closer.
Tóth Gergely
I met this extremely interesting Hungarian intellectual and author, Tóth Gergely, in September 2012 during the three day Euro-SPES encounter on Spirituality and Sustainability in Visegrad (Hungary). In Hungary we find many people with deep understanding on the subject but they publish in the very difficult local Hungarian language. I am very pleased to be able to share this document in English with you. Interesting to note is perhaps that Tóth also makes his work available to you free of charge, just like me and the others in the STIR Academy. We are convinced that knowledge is not just for those who can afford it but part of humankind that should be freely available and used for sustainable human progress.
Tóth Gergely
Download 0 The TRE here
Here you’ll find the biography of Tóth Gergely he describes himself in 2009 on the back of this work:
Tóth Gergely is a Hungarian citizen who was born in 1970. Together with his wife they bring up their four children. By education he is an economist and holds an M.Sc. in Business Administration, and a Ph.D. in environmental management. He has studied and worked for long periods in the USA, Holland, Germany, Romania and the Baltic States. He is fluent in English and German. With other collegues Tóth Gergely established the Hungarian Association for Environmentally Aware Management (KÖVET) in 1995; he remained the executive director of this NGO till 2006 and has since then acted as secretary general. He also worked as the executive director and then vice president of the International Network for Environmental Management (INEM) between 2000 and 2005. Since 2006 he has been an assistant professor at the University of Pannonia in Keszthely, teaching economics, environmental management and global trade. Tóth Gergely holds 18 honors and awards, including the ‘Pro Scientia’ prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, awarded in 1995. He has managed and supervised
20+ larger projects, financed by the European Union and other donor agencies. He has contributed to 30 books, has published 50 articles in professional journals and over the last 12 years has held 180 lectures in Hungarian and international conferences and training workshops. Beyond his children, his hobbies are writing, triathlon and other sports.
A sustainocratic multinational of 7 billion people
Last Thursday Marco and I were invited to another city with our AiREAS initiative in Eindhoven (NL). It was interesting to observe how two different worldviews meet, interact and come together. For quite some time already we had been convinced that we were working on something unique with Sustainocracy . This encounter confirmed it once again in full reality.
Top technological value, no price list
The encounter had been established after a call from this city. They wanted to know if they could get access to the technology that was being developed by AiREAS? Our technology is the absolute best one can imagine in current state of the art technological evolution around environmental measurements (finedust, CO2, ozon, etc). Why was it so unique? Because it had been ideologically achieved within a sustainocratic process, a true co-creation.. This means that it involved directly the higher regional purpose of human health combined with the interests of a city council, the local population, scientific research with directly applied knowledge and applied business innovations. The technology had therefor not been conceived from a product point of view with a money driven motivation. Human health was our common multidisciplinary goal not money. The technology had to serve multiple purpose, not just city council policy making but also health research based on cross data, real time city dynamics analysis and transparent involvement of the local population with data and an explanation on what one can do to improve the local environment.
When the other city approached us we had not even established a price for the technology nor a sales structure to pass on the products within a typical commercial chain. The new technology was part of a purpose driven co-creating concept, not a stand alone product. In our working model (sustainocracy) technology was just a means not a goal and as such we would only be satisfied with the best we could achieve in multidisciplinary co-creation for the purpose of sustainable human progress in the region. The technology that we had developed today may well be the best available in the world but for us it is just a means we created to help achieve “the healthiest city of the world” in a sustainocratic way. It was hence “owned” by the entire AiREAS community and movement. Technology is likely to evolve further as our path along the line of sustainable human progress evolves too. What price do you attach to that? Wouldn’t it be easier for a new city to simply become member of the AiREAS community and its purpose, adjusting it to the local 4 local circumstances?
AiREAS has no personnel or hierarchy
The next difficulty was that AiREAS has no personnel, nor hierarchical organization of its own. AiREAS consists of the formalized co-creative venture to achieve healthy human environments through a sustainocratic cooperation. People are employed by the participating specialized institutions, not AiREAS. The general public participates through intrinsic motivating in their own city quarters by taking initiatives, not through an employment contract. The whole process involves already thousands of people in a purpose driven commitment yet no one in a hierarchy or on our payroll, not even me or Marco. We are in it as result driven professionals. No progress means no income for us either. How can we offer a product when there is no organization to back it up? We could only invite the new city to become a member of the movement and receive by consequence the technology together with the sustainocratic surroundings on a local for local basis.
When the city representatives mentioned that, in normal circumstances, they would have to tender for the technology it became easy for us to show that we could not participate. In AiREAS we have no client/supplier relationships, just a joint institutional and popular commitment to a goal of regional city health in which measurement is an essential but not conclusive instrument. This was also an eye opener for the people present and a new way of relating to reality. We were not there to sell anything. When we were asked to consider selling our technology we felt as if we were drawn back into the old world with its money driven structures, hierarchies, authorization processes, liabilities and bureaucratic difficulties. We did not want this. AiREAS wants to achieve health not money or power. Our authority lays in creating sustainable human progress, by facilitating it not by creating another bureaucracy around it.
Royalties?
An option we had now was to make the technology available through one of our money driven multinational partners against a royalty. This would provide the world with the technology without Sustainocracy. Many would prefer it that way even though we would eventually show that only Sustainocracy can solve the complexity of healthy regional environments and progress. The royalties would help us with means for reinvestment in our true purpose without the need to ask the local government for support through tax income. For local government it is of interest because they are part of the local reinvestment team, this time without having to challenge their own limited resources (in decrease too due to crises). We (Marco and I) would be challenged to avoid becoming yet again a money driven entity ourselves and remain in our role of providing progress rather than speculation. The uniqueness as well as the pitfalls of our creation became clear.
Involvement of the entire local population
In AiREAS we develop the purpose driven involvement of all people in a region, residents and visitors, private and professionals. In fact, AIREAS itself was initiated by me as a totally independent and free civilian around human responsibilities, not material or institutional complexities. The link between measurements and proactive public initiatives, facilitated by a sustainocratic venture between institutions, to achieve healthy dynamics through culture rather than regulation, was new too. Business, science and government were seen as instruments for sustainable human progress, not the cause but the means.
This holistic approach, in which all instruments for progress work together around a human driven purpose, was unique in our current global society. It was something that people from the old world of institutional dominance and hierarchies had to get used to. Some current institutions would fit in naturally, others would need to change while others would only play a role in the old money driven world and disappear in the sustainocratic reality. So be it. It is all part of creating a new biodiversity of human activities. We also see already totally new institutions arise around the powerful platform of local Sustainocracies.
Indeed there is always a lot happening in a consumer driven democracy from a public involvement point of view. The difference in a Sustainocracy is that the initiatives are not “to be authorized or regulated” but facilitated towards the common goal. When the population takes the lead the authorities offer their position of authority to enlarge purpose driven experimentation rather than authorizing them. This creates a totally different dynamics in a city with a proactive interaction between regional development of infrastructures and public initiatives around their own health and sustainable progress. Local content and involvement eliminates bureaucracy and society gets into a totally new phase of self-sufficient participation. The cost savings are tremendous and the value driven social and technological innovations get a boost. Local involvement is value driven and values are shared together. People learn to interact in a purpose driven way instead of competing and selling each other their talents without sharing key responsibilities. Now talents need to partner up for a common intention and achieve steps together. So does the harmonic relationship with our environment due to the direct relationship between living green, food, mobility, housing, social cohesion, health, etc. in AiREAS.
The relationship between measurements and human health is then not to evaluate the consequences of health or money related policies. It becomes an instrument to co-creatively and transparently measure progress through public proactive initiatives, organic social innovation, applied science and technological innovations.
New social order and learning process
With sustainable human progress defined as “working together on a healthy, vital, safe, self-sufficient human society within the context of our ever changing natural environment” the social organisation transforms. When working together the relationship needs to evolve based on trust and commitment while we come from a society that is based on exactly the opposite. To achieve a new social order in another city we cannot ask government take the initiative. They are the authority that needs to step back a little and no other institution can take its place. In Eindhoven I invited the old world to work with me in the new world. The “I” represented the holistic human being within a fragmented world that used the human being instead of serving its evolutionary purpose. The “I” became both Marco and I as a dual team at the center representing the interaction between the universal ethics of “To Be” and the professional “To Do” that produce the sustainable human progress in the model of human complexities.
In another city Marco and I could hardly take that responsibility because it requires the intense networking with people who go through an individual process of change when they are invited to the process. Each person has to learn the basics of Sustainocracy and the individual role in such venture as a person and a professional. When the individual is convinced, then the institutions themselves go through a similar process. It does require powerful people to be able to do all this, even if it is seen as an experiment. It is impossible to conduct this operational process at a distance. We need local independent and free Sustainocrats to place themselves at the center of the local process. The role of the Sustainocrat is one of connecting all forces in the multidisciplinary format to the common goal and translate idealistic intentions into practical projects. It is a position without power yet with great authority and responsibility. Every region where a sustainocratic venture appears has its unique opportunities to create value of their own that could also benefit the rest of the world. It should first however benefit themselves making the region the perfect reference for their own sustainable progress. Within the local venture all the participating parties are equal without dominance or hierarchy. This is achieved by the Sustainocrat that represents the spirit of progressive democratic and spiritual freedom of humankind.
I am establishing a global STIR Academy to help the new sustainocrats and the local co-creative initiatives. This will make the process easier and smoother as this new operational structure of society gathers knowledge and experiences to be shared. The STIR Academy is also sustainocratic, just like AiREAS.
A network of Sustainocracies
I envisage a global network of purpose driven local for local sustainocracies such as AiREAS. The concept of co-creating “the healthiest city of the world” through local civilian involvement and commitment in their own city quarters of residence, is equally the basis of “the healthiest living planet” in the universe. The working model of Sustainocracy makes it potentially the global multinational of permanently applied social and technological innovation without a single person on the payroll and all the 7 billion people contributing in value driven processes, sharing the values abundantly among each other.
The current 40000 involved in Eindhoven (NL), the proven ability to co-create state of the art complex technology, the proven social and institutional commitment for sustainable human progress, attracted after just 6 months at least one new city. When we continue like this and assure the quality of our progression, the global multinational for sustainable human progress will soon be a fact. It confirms people in a format where authority proves itself to the world as a progressive facilitating power for the benefit of 7 billion contributors to their own sustainable harmony and progressive stability.
By then the human world will have changed from a huge risk in chaos to persistent wellness through applied human excellence and higher awareness.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 