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The story of a loaf of bread
A local bakery of a village is happily baking 100 breads every night for his 100 customers. The breads cost 1 euro a piece and the daily turnover is 100 euro. All 100 families in the village are loyal customers. It has been like this for many years and everyone is happy.
One day the wheat salesman came by to say that there is a growing shortage. The price of the key resource has to go up. The baker can still get the usual supply but the situation is critical. The salesman said that everything was done to bring the situation back to what it was before. The baker had no choice and raised the price of his bread with 10 cent. The loyal customers understood and paid the difference gladly, knowing that is was only temporary. The turnover of the bakery raised by to 110 euro per day.
The situation did not change. The wheat salesman returned to say that the prices did not only go up further, he would also have to half the supply. The baker was desperate and went to the local politicians. They promised that everything would be better if they were re-elected but meanwhile he would have to cope with the dip. The baker raised his bread price to 2 euro but could not make more than half the usual amount. He decided to sell the bread in halves. The loyal customers were furious but had little choice. They bought the half’s for 1,50 euro. The turnover of the bakery had risen to 150 euro even though he had produced only half his usual amount. The local newspaper was talking about an economy of growth and certain local business people taking good benefit.
The resource problem continued and got worse, despite the promises of the suppliers and the politicians. In the end the half’s would cost 3 euros and the baker even sold bread by the slice. His turnover went further up, his productivity down and his customers became less and less loyal. They could not afford it anymore. Newspapers report that “the market was grimm”.
One day certain wealthy local citizens decided to make the bakery the deal of a lifetime. They were fed up with the half’s and slices of bread. They wanted their entire loaf of bread every day and were willing to pay 10 euros per piece. The bakery accepted, of course. He had been tought about market working in business workshops. His turnover shot up to record sales. The baker even became entrepreneur of the year and was invited to membership of the local Rotary to discuss “common interests” among the “powerful” every week. His status had grown but in his shop many people could not buy slices anymore, not even breadcrumbs. There were people now living in poverty and hunger in the village. And they are angry…….but the economy was growing.
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Now you can think of your own happy ending of the story. What will happen?
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Moral of the story: When you hear powerful people say that the economy needs to grow and that it is going to solve all the problems, please think twice, unless you are this baker of course and you have not thought yet of a happy ending 😉
The STIR loop
Global issues, local solutions, global application
Redefinition of our system’s complexity: holistic, governance, technological and social innovation for sustainable human progress.
This documentary of Rebecca Hosking about the “farm for tomorrow” is a well worked out case and example of one of the challenges we face now and the coming decades: food and energy. This we call a “global issue” that needs local solutions. But there is more…
Food and energy is key but there is more. Air quality, climate change, pollution, migrations, rising sea levels, poverty, water shortages, etc. I refer to these as “global issues, local solutions, global application” as a transformative process.
Unprecedented complexity
(Introducing the Eindhoven precedent with sustainocratic ventures)
If we want to do something about it we face challenges that are unprecedented in human history. The documentary of Hostings is quite clear about this. Knowing this what can we do? Ms Hosking may have an idea on how to deal with it on her own territory. She can make her own choices. But how do we transform a country full of cities, people, culture, politics, economics, expectations, opinions and relationships? Even the most powerful, selfaware business, government or religious leaders tend to find themselves trapped in a system’s-culture. It takes a certain mentality to take on the challenge, another to avoid it. In any case, it involves us all.
But how do we solve the riddle? My own contribution is called “Sustainocracy”. As part of that I present the practical “STIR loop”. Let us go through it in a few steps.
Understanding where we come from and its shortcomings.
Look at this picture. This is how we have seen our reality for a long time. Our surrounding national systems provided us jobs, healthcare and other securities.
System’s leaders operate from their own perception of reality
The current national systems are mostly based on a culture of economies of growth, consumption and consequence solving. Inside the system we find a tremendous fragmentation of interests based on economic relationships. Business, government, science, population, etc all interact through an economy of mutual interdependence. “Nature” plays no significant role. Economic growth, efficiencies, relationships, protecting self interests through globalization are the key instruments. Humankind has never experienced a larger growth in population ever before in history. Many individual people experience a level of wellness and life expectancy that is equally unprecedented. It is mentally extremely difficult to place this all in the temporary context of a small time frame of several generations referred to as “the oil-people”. Most disturbing is that we, the current adult population, are probably the last of that unique group of generations. Our children and grandchildren will have to deal with change much more and intense than we. The more we can anticipate today the better.
What is the reality that we have neglected?
The human systems develop within the limited confinement of planet Earth within the universal laws of harmonic natural progress
When we become aware of the huge unbalance between system’s dominance and universal natural leadership realities we need to “transform”. This means that we need to (voluntarily) let go of one system to co-create a new one that better serves our sustainable progress as a species.
But how can we transform when all human dependencies and securities seem to be firmly anchored inside the system? Within the fragments the issues that arise may be addressed as good as they can. But it is not just the fragment that causes the problem, it is the way the fragments relate to each other to form a destructive whole for humankind, while it was perceived and experienced as very constructive before. The current system’s executives trust they can get that back by applying the same measures that caused the problems in the first place. We are now even in the hands of speculative materialists that have dangerously changed from globalization of volume productivity and marketing into keeping shortages for inflation, debt exposure of the needed with control over the limited resources and those who get access.
One of the options individual people choose is to step out of the old system and start a new one of their own, facing problems and challenges like Ms. Hosking does in the documentary.
The STIR loop
The application of the STIR loop is relevant to complex transformations of entire communities. In 5 steps it can clean up systems, making them sustainable in progress again. The key is that every relevant person and institution needs to be involved. The whole loop is focused on the quality of sustainable life in a particular territory (a city, a province, an island, an autonomic region, etc.)
The 5 steps to get back into productive balance
Sustainocracy describes the process of taking multidisciplinary responsibility locally around global issues. This can only be done in a particular way:
Step 1: Awareness
In the picture I have drawn the two systems (local human dominance and leading universal natural responsibilities) next to each other. I place the human being in between, with active selfaware citizenship and productivity as choices between both systems. The human system has human hierarchical leadership, fragmented structures, relations based on money and transactions, etc.
Awareness means that we manage to position the human system as instrumental, not dominant for our human evolution
As human beings we ARE nature. Everything we do that affects our environment negatively reflects in our natural systems of life. We show growing health problems that affect us much deeper than medically and scientifically (human system dependent) acknowledged. At one time I even wrote about the genetic anthropocene (the unprecedented damage we cause inside our genetic structures with lasting consequences). So it is not just food we need to take responsibility for. It goes much further.
When aware we face the tension between the old system and the new one we need to develop
Step 2: Choice of priorities
Within the context of global issues, such as food, water, health, security, self sufficiency or awareness, it is imperative to find local self supporting solutions. Rising seawater, food shortages, pollution, migrations, climate changes, dense populations, fossil energy disappearance, etc give rise to important local catastrophes, caused by globalized human systems, the local demographical situation, nature itself or a combination of all three. There is no generalized priority. Every territory has its own unique combination of threats. The local awareness has to have led to a generalized consensus “that something needs to be done urgently” and “we need to do this together”. This opens up for the initiation of the loop:
The need for action has to be acknowledged as well as the impotence of the fragmented parts to do this “alone”.
In Eindhoven (Holland) by experimental persistence and chance I arrived at “air quality, public health, regional dynamics” in 2010. A financial threat from the European Union (air pollution norms) got the local government to open up to new experimental formats. AiREAS became the first precedent world wide of Sustainocracy. In other places around the world different priority choices can be made, not necessarily air pollution, in any combination of the key issues of sustainable human progress (health, safety, self sufficiency, awareness and food).
Step 3: Establish the Sustainocratic commitment within the system of nature.
The essence of this step is to take the priority outside the human system, away from politics, economics, justice, etc. into the area of natural responsibilities. It is the start of the loop. The only representative of both systems is the natural evolutionary human being. So it’s the biological human creature that invites the powerful instruments to unite in a multidisciplinary way. This inviting person is the Sustainocrat, a key independent player. It is referred to as “the world upside down” for the participants. They are forced to reason through the views of the paradigm of nature, harmony and change.
The group consists of the Sustainocrat, local citizens, leaders from science, business and local governance (see picture below). The group concentrates on all aspects of addressing the chosen issue:
- Why are we starting the loop
- Create a vision for change (dot on the horizon related to Sustainable Human Progress)
- Initiate the stip-step process
- Apply innovation (Social, technological and structural)
- Develop the knowledge that can be implemented elsewhere
- Contain the unique values for the stepping back process
Top down and bottom up processes come together in AiREAS “Healthy city”
Step 4: the loop back
While dealing with the system from “outside” all the blocking bottlenecks and impediments become visible with each of the partner’s normal functioning as well as in their system’s imposed relationships.
The values that are co-created outside the system can be expanded again within. But also the many handicaps can be addressed and resolved in a documented, argumented and programmed manner.
The expansion of new unique values have an important economic potential that can be used to keep the loop going for as long as it is needed. In fact the loop itself becomes a competitive added value of a region and its local partners that make it happen. The values are always locally proven and then presented for world wide application.
Global issues thus have changed from a tremendous unsolvable problem into a local challenge and global opportunity. Local loops may seemingly get to compete with each other in the world wide context but always deliver uniqueness because of the diversity of local situations that each will have to deal with. Uniformity in the problem does not mean that uniformity will ever be found in the solution.
The loop back is significant as a transformative economy of change but also confrontational with the old system
Step 5: local consolidation
For the partners this 5th step is perhaps the second most difficult phase, after the letting go phase of step 1. Consolidation means that adjustments described in step 4 need to find their way into the old system, change it up to a new workable situation. The process is well received in the relevant parties that are still part of the progress. Those that need to be phased out, or were part of particular context and loose that context in the new setting, will of course oppose. In some cases they are powerful conservative blockages that avoid no means to keep their interests alive.
It takes guts and leadership to do the mayor cleaning up. At least the STIR loop backs the leadership with powerful instruments and indisputable reasons to do what needs to be done.
Conclusion
Solutions are at hand. They have been described AND put into practice with early precedents. They are a new instrument in those areas where change is key but too complex to be dealt with in the traditional way. The STIR loop then become a powerful method to make change happen, gain support for it first as an experiment and assure that the right steps are taken afterwards. During the start of the loop “nature” leads, the return is in human leadership hands bringing it back into the practical human reality.
The STIR loop is educated through the STIR Academy and associated partners.
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.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 