Sustainocracy, the new democracy

What is resilience? Within the context of our human existence the word resilience refers to the sustainable presence of our human species on Earth. This word hence is significant for every human being on the planet, every community of human beings and humankind as a whole.

Why transform society? Our current paradigm of financial dependence and economy of growth may be good for certain enterprises and supportive governments, it is lethal for our human species and our planetary balance. It therefor needs to be transformed into a new paradigm in which we develop our core human and natural values.

What is a Sustainocrat? A Sustainocrat is someone who takes personal responsibility for sustainable human progress and democratically invites local people and institutions to participate. A Sustainocrat is a missing link in our current societal formats where only fragmented interests are organized. The Sustainocrat brings in the connectiveness for a holistic approach, respecting and even enhancing the fragmented, authentic specialized qualities of each participant.

How can a Sustainocrat make the difference? First of all, the Sustainocrat adheres to the five core natural human values defined by Sustainocracy. These core natural human values are a shared responsibility by all people and institutions together. The problem in society is that everyone seems to recognize these core values but no one (persons or institution) can be pinpointed as single responsible for them. None can take on the responsibility for the invitation of all others to join into the cocreation and maintenance of these core values as it would exceed one’s institutional mission or a hierarchy would be formed over the other participants. Both would be undesirable as equality prevails. So secondly, the Sustainocrat takes on this responsibility as “human representative of the core human values” and invites the others to connect to him/her in cocreation, based on their fragmented contribution.

Who hires a Sustainocrat? No one does. Simply because anyone who is traditionally hired is subordinated to the hiring institution. A Sustainocrat needs to be independent to be representative of the core natural human values. You can join the STIR Foundation, the care taking NGO of the ideology, for support in your processes through the School of Talents & Wellness.

How than can a Sustainocrat survive in a money dependent world? He or she could if the world would be fully Sustainocratic, core values driven and shared. Money would then only be a means, if necessary (which it often is not), never a source of dependence. Unfortunately it is not. The human world is in a complex transition phase from money as a goal to core values as a permanent mission. The Sustainocrat is project driven within this transition.

What does a sustainocratic project look like? Many people and institutions try already by themselves to be innovative within their own perception of sustainable progress. Which is great. The mainstream however is not. The Sustainocrat is focused therefore on the most complex issues that can only be solved with the involvement of the diversity of people and institutions in a region. A sustainocratic project typically has the following components:

• A measurable shared ambition to fullfill any of the core values
• A start and an ending
• A multidisciplinary group of commited local partners
• A specific contribution of each committed parther with what they can offer (technology, wisdom, knowledge, money, creativity, changing behavior, infrastructures, etc)

What does the Sustainocrat do? The Sustainocrat initiates the project definition process through a dynamic clustering procedure of the positive values driven invitation. He or she protects the core values driven focus, chairs the multidisciplinary composition of the commited cluster and manages the committed contributions. Financially the 10/10/80 (or 5/5/90) rule is applied:

• 10% (or gradually down to 5%, depending on the size of the project) for the Sustainocrat,
• 10% (or again 5%) as a reservation for the training of all partners in the values driven interconnection of their participation.
• 80% (or up to 90%) is the working capital as budgetted during the project definition process

Note 1: A sustainocrat usually is not one single person. Often they are two. One as the visionary holistic process guidance, the other the more detail financial and project detail administrator. The percentage reserved for the sustainocrat is divided among the two.

Note 2: A sustainocrat sometimes also fullfills tasks in the operational working capital environment, for instance when no one is there to do it, usually in the field of coordinating citizen participation.

Are there any examples? Yes! In Eindhoven (Netherlands) we have the following initiatives:

• AiREAS – air quality, human and environmental health
• FRE2SH – city farming, permaculture and food forests
• COS3I – social cohesion, innovation and integration
• EQoL – Energy and Quality of Life
• School of Talents & Wellness – participatory learning in Sustainocracy

Will a new Sustainocrat receive support? Yes!

• We gradually create a global network of Sustainocrats as STIR Foundation (City of Tomorrow) and support eachother in the learning process (School of Talents & Wellness).
• We publish processes and results through open access
• The STIR Foundation will also develop (if possible and necessary) a fund to support certain investments. The fund can be develop through providing trainings under the second 10%, or through philanthropists who wish to accelerate the transformation by facilitating its growth.
• Partner organizations draw further attention to the need, the public awareness development and legal preparation and deployment of laws that criminalize the (government supported and even financed) business abuse of our planetary and human resources.
• The pressure is building up, not only by us with our partners, also through crises, impossibility to govern and natural disasters.
• Further growth of zero tolerance to pollution by human industrial and logistic activities
• The building up of numerous positive examples of Sustainocratic progress around the world

What is the profile of a Sustainocrat? Man or woman. Preferrably someone who made a personal awareness breakthrough (the I am revelation as in the drawing). With experience in demanding leadership positions. Determined. Networker. Not angry (anymore) at the past. Locally well empowered and embedded. English skills for international communication in the network. Supported by his/her surroundings. Humble, ecocentric, empathetic, persistent, etc. Disconnected from hierarchy formats, understanding human equality and institution instrumentation.

It is exists, join the movement and become a sustainocrat. Leave us a message and join our weekly zoom encounters to see where your regional priorities are and how we can get started……

Dr. Swati in India is since a few years a TV personality. Already before Covid 19 she did her best to make the Indian population aware of the importance of health by giving practical advice in her videos. During Covid19 Dr. Swati’s popularity rose even more.

In this presentation she explains some myths that developed over time about fat and cholesterol. Also she warns about sugar….It is for us important to share her message that has been subtitled in English. For resilience against virus, bacteria and other sources of illness we have to take our health seriously. Her tips can be used by any of us…

Small steps, major impacts. Just imagine you start a journey of 2000 kilometers in a straight line. You decide, when you set off, to take one step to the left, with a slight turn of 30 degrees. It may not seem much. But what would be the difference after 2000 kilometers? This would be about 2600 kilometers!. So if you set out from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Sevilla (Spain) you would end up Greece, at the other side of the Mediterranean.

This is the same with many other things. A small change makes a huge difference after some time. Sometimes, a small change, a decision with the best of intentions results into tunnel visioned drama in the long run.

The ending of worldwar II (1944/1945) marked a starting point to get to today (2020). It had not just been a big war against fascisme. Fascisme had found a breeding ground in severe unemployment, poverty, social differences and humaliation due to worldwar I.

When this second worldwar ended the worldwide community analysed these circumstances and tried hard to create a common basis that would avoid repitition of such attrocities. The world had been shocked by the way a population could be brainwashed to support the incredible massacres. This had nothing to with Germany. It was some wicked human psychology and misuse of manipulative communication under dramatic social circumstances. Can it happen again? If it is psychology and manipulaton it can indeed.

Many debates followed. One gave rise to reflections around social securities that would protect a country to fall for a new fascist wolf in sheeps clothes. In other words, to avoid public sensitivity to those political lies that lure desperate people into the trap of totalitarism with the unfunded promise of a solution to their problems.

The question that did not arise was whether the problem was politics itself? A definition of politics is: “activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing power within an organization”. Even in our usual democracy, based on voting for representatives every four years, the citizens cannot dispute the political system. Citizen’s selfinterest and the image of the political representative is related to the votes, not a sense of the governance reality. In case of a new wave of poverty, or fear, the basic elements are still in place for political malpractice. Such type of democracy is therefor not always a safeguard, rather a trap.

Back to the 50/60’s: Social securities were created to be a cushion that everyone would work for in order to avoid (temporaral) poverty. It is a cost covered by the labour force to support those in temporaral need, which could happen to anyone. The fund should have been managed by an independent cocreation group like we know now in Sustainocracy. It was not. It was placed into the hands of the national government. That is where social instruments become political. Initially maybe a logical decision. In the long run a big problem.

New generations have not lived through the war and started to consider the social securities as a fundamental right. Government is facilitating this as a societal cost now, not just a workforce cushion fund and saving. This may seem a minor modification (a small step aside) but in the long term it becomes a problem of its own, socially, economically and politically. Socially because the securities are not related anymore with productivity. Economically because they are seen as a cost, not a saving fund. And politically because it is misused in a powerplay and humilation of the unemployed.

Employment gradually disappeared further to low wage countries or due to automation. Meanwhile the social costs rise and develop authoritarian bureaucratic institutions of self interest to manage them. The costs grow further. Instead of facilitating the participation impuls, government builds on the so called “social care” system, expanding the cushions and also the social (financial) dependence. “Care for eachother” is abandoned and even discouraged. It is replaced by “solidarity by law to the financial care system”. The power of social cohesion is transformed into a business model at the expens of social interaction. “Even putting on someone’s left sock has become a cost instead of an act of love”.

The decision is also made to consider it as a debt on future years, a social debt. Loans against the gold standard or government IOU’s were reduced or abandoned. Funding through labor was not enough anymore to also finance all the silos of interests. Again it may have appeared as a small deviation step, back in the 70’s, it is a huge problem now.

When STIR was invited by the SER (national social economic council) to participate in a societal debate we were shocked to hear the national government view “of a greying society connected to the government financial infuse”. Such downgraded view of people is the basis of manipulation and further subordination. Social securities are no securities anymore, they become a bribe to sustain an unsustainable authoritarian structure.

The tunnel vision of government grew, to see itself as a leading entity of its own, with great self interest and perceived (without option to modify) self indoctrinated responsibility. A big “we solve it all with money” kind of umbrella covered the societal reality with only limited players to interact with. The flow of money goes from public debt (a power instrument for subordination) to the pockets of a happy few. There is no circular flow anymore in the money system.

Instead of dealing with balancing business, people and infrastructures, for a circular economy, the national governments start start to pupeteer in the world economy of debt development, acting with manipulation, bureaucracy and speculation out of money dependence.

The division with the geniun society grew gradually and so did the unsolicited debt on society. The post war ideology was still present in the political stories but they had turned now into hidden totalitarian political and financial wolfs in sheeps clothes. Moral judgement gradually disappears. People become scared sheep, affraid of loosing their securities which are now manipulated by the invisible hands of speculation on shortages instead of sharing abundance.

Poverty starts to grow, and so does inequality. The breeding ground for fascism is open again, based on blind dependence and subordination out of desperate self interest for survival.

The 2008 financial crisis showed the identity of the manipulative wolfs, but there were more. The financial world had become infested and gradually moves into a new wave of manipulation luring country governments into their grips through financial dominance. The wolf cannot hide itself anymore. The small step aside back in the 70s now shows us the unprecedent social ecological gap that no one can bridge in this blinded mindset.

The community can be productive, there is enough to do, even self sufficient with our current level of knowledge, awareness and techological means. This requires a change in mindset that connects again our social and ecological values, as initiated by STIR in 2009 through Sustainocracy (green line in the drawing). But that is not in the institutionalized interests anymore of the global wolfs (red line in the drawing). At local level institutions group and do their best to optimize their profitability through partnerships, cost saving ventures and even cocreation. The big foot of a fascist like type of capitalisme hangs over all smaller initiatives. There is a public debate about capitalist fascism or totalitarian capitalist. Many refer still to “radical nationalism”. The danger we see today is however “radical globalism”. The tentacles of globalism can be found in food supplies, big pharma, internet and technological services, social media, etc. A huge monopoly game in which the winner takes all, everyone else looses, even humankind as a species.

A dual field appeared, one of managing financial growth at the expense of everything, and one of leaderships defending our sustainable human evolution and establishing communities cocreating it.

Already in 2014 we predicted that 2020 would be the year of the initiation of the new cycle, starting with a new crisis where this type of fascism (or whatever you want to call it) shows its face again. I even predicted that this would be with the help of nature. Covid19 is the trigger used by these global fascists to push their plan on a global/local level. Poverty, fear and promises are their instruments, as always. It takes guts to turn the back to them.

2020 has shown their absolute desire for control, not to serve the people or the planet but to save themselves and growth, no matter what. The surprising globally followed lockdowns and emerging state reactions are symptoms.

The planet and people will react but this will be slow, painful, lethal, fragmented and dangerous. Still it will be done. And the wolfs of capitalist fascism will be beaten, again, hopefully once and for all. But beating this totalitarism is not enough. A new society needs to emerge, based on the learning we have done to avoid fascism, not through politics but through cocreating and sharing our values. A real time democracy will emerge as it is visible already in all kinds of experiments.

In analogy with nature capitalist fascisme can be compared with a devastating fire. No matter how destructive, it consumes itself. Afterwards it only takes weeks for life to emerge again. Hopefully still with humankind and lessons learned. Maybe they burn their own castles and we can protect our local communities by turning our back to dependence quickly and start focusing on our value creation fast. Their money is fake, so is their power by using it. We just make it real by accepting it. If we don’t they have nothing.

In Sustainocracy we build this new world already, together, based on purpose, equality, trust, quality of life, sharing and engagement of people and institutions.