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So internationalized that we lost our own authenticity?
Are we too internationalized in Eindhoven? Is this happening in other cities too? We arrive at interesting insights when we launched the magazine “150 years Living in Eindhoven” these days. We asked our international community what we could do for them to integrate better into our society and stay longer? Their response was mindboggling and uncovered yet another level of modern city’s vulnerability.
In the reigning political, economic and speculative reality it is lucrative for a town to focus on pleasing those who come from abroad for a couple of years. After all they bring talent and extra productivity. It is good to have them and often these new residents bring in fresh cash. It is therefor a strategic move to make them feel welcome. The longer they stay the better it would be, in theory, for the economy. But analysis reveals that people tend to leave within a few years…Why?
We asked our visiting students and expats about their challenges and interests.
In Eindhoven our local population has important problems to find proper housing. Waiting lists for rental homes are long, up to 8 years. It is therefore surprising that the visitors have everything taken care of. Keeping a housing shortage for locals drives up the costs of housing and living, which is seen as an economy of growth. Shortage for expats and students however would keep them away and this is not lucrative. Is it all again just economics that rules? How does this money based focus on internationalization affect the community as a whole?
*What do you miss then?*, we asked during the presentation of the magazine, which we presented in English too in order to get newcomers to engage with our roots. The surprising answer was “there is no local stuff to enjoy. Where is the local culture in Eindhoven?”.
Indeed, everything seems concentrated on engaging with the foreign people, including presenting a wide choice of things from their original home culture. All the local elements have disappeared. “Even our local architectural herritage”, states editor in chief of the magazine Peter Tholen. The local alderman, Mary-Ann Schreurs, said that this was “due to the economic success of the city, motivating it to modernize its herritage”. Old cities with their historic centres had, according her, suffered poverty and hence did not have a chance to destroy their historic properties in order to replace them with modernism.
So the richer you are as a community the less engaged you are with your roots? That is an interesting viewpoint….and highly disputable….
In Germany, France, the UK, Italy or Spain people can enjoy the local atmosphere in cities. There is the local food, local drinking habits, local language, local architecture, local climate. In Eindhoven we have the international diversity and rain. That’s it. There is nothing else according the people consulted. This is one of the reasons people get bored and leave again after a few years, as stated by themselves. They go to Berlin, Barcelona or London. That is an interesting conclusion. What we are proud of as a city seems to be also our mayor handicap. Our excessive focus on internationalization….
Who makes the difference?
According to the visiting population the nightlife in Eindhoven was boring. It is gradually changing, but not because of the locals. It are the contributions of foreign people who introduce their own initiatives to combat the absence. The local people are too occupied with surviving in an economically adverse climat in which they hardly can rotate their homes, have difficulties to find a job, feel financially blocked by excessive taxes, imposed financial responsibilities, social securities and limited career options. It is a huge contrast with the international community that gets all the facilities, is well paid and has a large potential of time, need, motivation and means to deploy themselves into the city.
“Rather than helping the foreign population we should help the locals”, became the overall suggestion. The lack of opportunity these locals have due to the regulated shortages seems to reduce their engagement to social life. “We are motivated to do things with our lives here because it is all new,” students state, “and share WhatsApp and social media to help each other”. Locals don’t. They are reluctant to engage out of fear to loose social benefits. Or they feel competitive jealousy among each other caused by the shortages and lack of opportunity. Their individual or collective comfort zone and autopilot is limiting them to do things in a different way….
This observation was also relevant for foreign residents someone stated. “I have been living here for five years and had never been in this expat center”. Also foreign people tend to engage with what they like at first sight and then stick to it without creating regular change in their habits.
The vibrant livelyness of introducing a game or challenge has to be focused therefor on the creation of awareness that there is diversity to engage with while getting people, foreign and locals for equal, to step out of their comfort zone once in a while and try something new.
Local government says it does not want to stigmatize people and wants to treat them all as equals. But is this true? There is a distinction between the facilities and motivation of the local population and for those who visit. From an economic point of view these groups are perceived differently and treated accordingly. There is no equality, not in the investment nor development of opportunities for people who are long term residents. All effort seems to be focused on the growth of new people from elsewhere because of the fresh cash they represent.
The international community even offers voluntary work to see if they can make a difference for the locals. It was amazing to come to such insights. How vulnerable is a city when it depends entirely on the influx of money from elsewhere? How vulnerable is a city when it’s herritage is destroyed and its old culture eliminated, and with it its attractiveness for everyone? And: “How vulnerable are people and communities who easily get fixated by their comfort zone?”. How can this be changed? And with what effects on the human beings themselves, the society, economy and local culture?
STIR Foundation is focussing on core human values in which regional resilience is achieved by engaging all citizens into these values. It is referred to as “awareness driven regional cocreation”. Such insights demand further research and most definitely progression in the social inclusion for the wellness development of the entire community. True equality is not just reflected in true equal opportunity but also in the stimulus to make use of it. The opportunities have not been taken away by the arrival of international people but through the speculative governance over its local population. It is the international population that helps the community restore its old values and engage with new ones in a true potential identity crisis.
For STIR and our mission it has been an eye opener and an interesting challenge to connect the two worlds into a culture of interaction and progression, based on true, authentic local value creation, recognition and sharing. This may be the biggest justification for the introduction of a local city currency.
150 years living in Eindhoven
Eindhoven grew from a small rural town of 6000 citizens in 1850 into the world known vibrant multicultural community of over 220.000 today. Many people lived here for some time to study or work in one of the multinationals or local enterprises and have still memories or even family ties. Others consider moving to or visit Eindhoven, not just because of job opportunities but also because of the local focus on a healthy environment and intercultural interaction.
This global Eindhoven-minded community has now access to a unique series of stories that describe its culture and development over time, as described by the top historical story tellers resident in town while using original photographs.
On Sunday 17th the series is released and presented in the Expat Hub for our local international community. If you are living abroad and interested in the magazine and series (2 editions per year over 3 years) you can contact our partner Eindhoven News (eindhovennews@gmail.com). The price is 5,95€ plus postal charges if we need to send it to you. This first edition describes all kinds of aspects of the development of Eindhoven over de the last 150 years such as Philips, DAF, the digging of channel, the anexation of villages, the care system, etc.
The second edition, due in October 2017, will deal with people, choices and the reaction to challenges that have been decisive for the city as it stands today.
Divine femininity
You may have witnessed the recent explosive disentanglement of masculine and feminine energy within me and my surroundings. Did it occur to you too? For me it was a brief, very confronting, highly emotional but necessary period in time that comprised exactly 7 x 7.7 = 54 days, precizely between three full moons. I am at peace for along time already with the understanding that whatever happens to me is a miniature prelude of what humankind can expect on a macro scale. In a sense it prepares me and my awareness to be of some kind of use by the time this is needed. Meanwhile I conduct my daily activities with the development of our sustainocratic groups within the City of Tomorrow concept of wellness driven cocreation. As such a new energetic field has emerged around me and is affecting me and everything that our Global STIR community does. I sense it as the emergence of Divine Femininity.
The emergence of divine feminity goes through chaos
Equality man and woman
As single dad with two daughters the adult man/woman combination was fixed in me as a single identity. I was in harmony (see picture) with myself and my two children, both feminine. The masculine part of me had to structure the household, protect the family from the political economic aggressions, take care of an income, etc. The feminine part in me was caring about the growing up and wellness of my two daughters. In essence this is what our current society feels like too. Masculinety and femininity unified in a dominant masculine structure. Our political economy of hierarchies and dependence is highly masculine while the expensive care and repair system is a masculine version of feminity. Just like in my case there seems to be an unnatural kind of harmony that is about to be messed up.
Here is a short reflection about my process. My eldest daughter already moved out to live her life with her boyfriend, soon husband. When my youngest daughter started to demand her freedom and space too my own presence transformed. My single fatherhood and harmony collapsed, just like the economized masculine care society collapses. My daughter reacts on my worries “why worry? I know my limits and get support for my safety from my friends”. In essence it is exactly what I claim with Sustainocracy in the participation society “we don’t want this (expensive) care and control from government, we take responsibility ourselves, together”. The whitepaper on the wellness-continuum-2 explains this societal transformation process.
Theory is great but the reality of letting go my caring mentality into a mentality of shared responsibilities appeared as an intense inner clash. Various female messengers appeared in my life to confront me in a very short time with my old masculine greed, my tremendous sudden emotional chaos and the emergence of the divine femininity as basis for a new phase of personal harmony based on genuine equality between men and women, masculinity and femininity.
Also in the sustainocratic processes I had been the masculine representation of masculine and feminine manifestation unified in me. If I wanted to let my processes grow I would have to let go of it and allow the equality appear between the emerging divine feminity and the redefinition of old, obsolete masculine dominance. After my clash with my self and the help of several women I became surrounded by literally 100’s of women. With each and all together I developed a relationship of love on a very special, deep and exciting energetic level. At first it was confusing, because it arose my natural sexuality and masculine desire to control. But the women were very clear to me: “we don’t need your care, we want your partnership, your transparant love and divine connecting overview over the emerging reality”. They give me their partnership, love and divine femininity in return to take their authentic place in the community and act as a consequence. Wow! What a great force started to deploy itself.
Genuine equality appeared and it was beautiful. Never in my life I had experienced this before. Not even in my two broken marriages. Now I was in the midst of it and broke through into the era of pure love, the emergence of a new phase of human life, the rebirth that I have been writing about for decades had become reality, including for me. The latter surprised me maybe most. Why me? Why this way? How will this evolve? What is expected from me when emotions hit the world? We will see. I let go and learned to go with the flow.
Equality does not mean a status quo. It is hard work to sustain our core human values through open, transparant dialogue and shared emotions.
Three powerful lines of evolution defined themselves for progression in this field with our global movement:
Core human values: The core human values and sustainocratic processes had brought us to this stage of breakthrough. Our core values also developed our column of values which paint a strong contrast between the worlds.
People may use different names or references for it but in essence our new framework for societal evolution has opened up so much space that the divine femininity could manifest itself not only individually but now also in the collective group processes men-women, women-women, men – men. Our old masculine societal structures based on power, hierarchies and dependencies crumple. We don’t want them anymore. We seek the authenticity in people without prejudice or demand, just engagement in the development of our shared core human values. New relationships emerge based on this new energetic dimension of divine femininity, change, sustainable wellness and true equality. The letting go is manifesting itself with the comfort of new connectability in genuin wellness and proper equality for masculine and feminine energy forms that interact in their values driven potential. It is difficult for both to adjust to this new reality. The memory of the old is still powerfully present yet opening up for an intense dialog about relationships, sexuality, role models, rituals, cocreation, love, true values, healing pains, eliminating old impediments, daring, fears, progress, etc. The open dialogue and shared emotions helps us deal with this new reality. It feels good, powerful, caring for us all together and very lovable among eachother. A hugging and kissing type of society emerges in Sustainocracy as a phyical contrast to the old reality where we found it hard to say even hello or touch each other.
Healing: The biggest drama of where we come from is the enormous historic and often hidden surpression and abuse of (young) women, especially in this era of economized emancipation, perceived levels of equality and freedom. Men and women are educated to perform, to be docile, to be subordinate to economic securities and not express their emotions (except maybe our greed). The divine femininity was eliminated from our reality and replaced with individualism within hierarchies, sexual abuse and aggression, disconnected from the feminine roots through excessive masculine bureaucracies and economized care systems.
Within the City of Tomorrow divine feminine representatives now group together and make programs that help people (men and women, young and old) cross their line, deal with their own and collective chaos, heal, put their past in perspective and open up to divine feminity by breaking loose from fear, hate and anger. Emotions are allowed, shared and used to evolve into understanding, awareness, love and learning. To relate in a new way with masculinity without the old dogma’s, rules and limitations. Both men and women now need to evolve into this new relationship. Personal relationships have the tendency to fall back into old behavior. It takes guts, open, transparant dialog and experimentation with new experiences to progress. As a huge community we help each other while the field of energy grows every day.
Awareness and education: The breakthrough opens up to new awareness based formats and education. New products and technologies arise to help young women (and their mothers) develop their own divine feminine awareness. Being a woman is becoming very special, with its own initiation rituals around menstruation, sexuality, sense of self leadership and ownership. Intimate initiation workshops from girl to woman, the relationship with men in different stage of their lives, awareness of the body and its secrets, pleasures and care are introducing themselfs into society, our schools and neighborhoods. An entirely new educational format emerges in which the girls and women get to discover their entire divine femininity in all aspects of their being, their development and symbiosis with their surroundings.
My own role has transformed from initiator of sustainocratic processes to the connecting facilitator between impressive masculine and feminine forces within the context of social and societal innovation (COS3I). Huge circles of social inclusion in Sustainocracy are appearing where masculine and feminine expressions of music, art, craft, sport, entrepreneurship, care for core values, etc emerge, group together and start shaping society in a totally new way. And above all, the processes are being guided primarily by women. The next blogs will develop this further with examples of female partners with powerful awareness, experience and methods that have joined our core values driven movement, teaming up with me in the field of sustainable human progress and now make it a world wide process that goes far beyond the bounderies of myself.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 