What would make a person “sustainocratic”?
After having covered the three institutional pillars of a sustainocracy (business, government and education) I now reach the individual citizens as fourth and main key to a sustainocratic society.
It is curious to have to deal with human beings in a different blogchapter than institutions. The latter are a human invention and only exist on paper. With an administrative number such institution starts living a life of its own using human beings to keep it going within a predefined mission. Institutions make products, sell services, proform scientific studies, educate, determine city layouts and regional landscaping, build houses, print money, extend loans, gather specific political interests, represent a certain belief, etc etc. So in reality institutions are human teams performing a specific task that has to do with human interests and activities. In a way they are all puzzle pieces that can be placed in certain ways to form a society of many teams of people interacting for a particular reason. Institutions keep enormous amounts of people occupied and give them something back. This is mostly a salary but also a challenge, status, a place to go, something to do, a something “to belong to”, a sense of security of different kinds. In most countries men and women can now be active in the institutions on a more or less equal basis, especially those that have developed around financial interest. Institutions around beliefs or politics are not necessarily based on equal rights.
We call this emancipation, the equality of rights to have a job for individual financial independence.
The institutionalized world has gradually occupied most of our daily lives and dominates our activities and choices. Emancipation may have ment that we can become economicly independent from other human beings but instead we have also become slaves of a system that has simplified our existance around money dependence. The purpose of this system determines the way institutions interact and how all the people find an occupation. The main institutional purpose is today blindly focus on yet another human invention: money.
The problem we face is that universal standardization of all objectives into financial means has taken our individual attention away from the real fullfilment of our basic requirements. We need financial means to gain access to our needs that are supplied by the system and we serve the system to get our financial means. We are unaware of what the system does to produce our needs and rely on it entirely. All this would be fine if there would not be a financial profitability aspect woven into the system. This makes the system speculative in its operation in order to produce maximum financial benefit for shareholders. There is no morality anymore in the processes because all attention is given to the flow of cash not the consequences of producing the flow. We have made money more important than ourselves. Poverty in the world of financial crises is explained to be “people who have no money”. In reality it are people who have nothing to eat or to live. We cannot eat money and do not live in a bank yet we organized our social dependencies that way. If poverty has food and a place to live they are not poor anymore. It has become of interest of the systen to deprive people from their needs just to get them committed to the financial system of dependency through work and debt. Dependency is control and control is power yet power is in crisis now because this system reached its limits of exploitation. Financial poverty cannot get back into the system even if it wanted to so it needs to become brilliant in finding alternatives to survive. Then people become aware and find new ways of building a complex society based on different values than just money.
A sustainocratic person has become aware of that and also that we keep this destructive “anti-ecosystem” going because of our own dependence on it for our daily needs. This awareness makes us conscious for change. To reduce our dependence we need to let go of it and become independent. That is extremely difficult. Self sufficiency is nearly impossible unless you live in the countryside. And even then you are only self sufficient for food and maybe energy but not for healthcare for instance. A sustainocratic person hence becomes aware that self sufficiency and sustainable progress can not be achieved individually. It needs to be done in cooperation, with expertise on how to deal with it productively.
When one becomes “aware” it becomes also a personal problem to remain inside the old system. It is like being trapped, made hostage in a way and deprived from all freedom while one sees how we destroy our habitat and social relationships. Letting go is a deed that can only be done if assured of some kind of new securities to sustain oneself and those who are close. Sustainocracy provides such security. It becomes a challenge to find people and circumstances to deal with it. To make things even more complicated one finds that the old system is so powerfully present in our lives that it wants to get back to us all the time. Many people suggest a conspiracy against humanity to use humankind for the benefit of a few. In fact we conspire against ourselves by creating and sustaining a powerful culture our of dependency and self interest.
When one is aware of different paradigms one can also find a transformative way between them that satisfies one’s own consciousness within a local practical reality. Finding a new balance of dependence and independence depends very much on the local possibilities that one can find.
I for instance live in a city where houses are built low and we all have a small garden. In theory it should be possible to get sustainable cooperation going for food and energy independence but human psychology interferes just as much as the old system. When surrounded by abundance of an obsolete but still very functional system why would you go to the trouble of producing your own? That would be hard work! It is difficult to see the need to make the effort also when hardly anyone does it.
Still there is a large undercurrent in society that is taking fragmented action. People become active in new mobility systems, grow their own crop, start doing this with solar panels and become conscious on the type of food they eat. Yet all this makes you a local hero but not yet sustainocratic.
You become sustainocratic when you step up your awareness to become “entrepreneur of your own life” in cooperation with other, on the way of creating a new local society. In your quest for self sufficiency you become active in platforms that give you back parts of your daily needs. You get organized in teams that produce direct local value. In fact you are institutionalizing bottom up a new society that focusses on local for local sustainable progress based on basic needs for health, vitality, safety and progression within the challenging posibilities of the local environment. This is time consuming and makes you step away from traditional employment but into a new kind of productivity and reciprocity. Within this personal transformation the art of letting go and accepting new responsibilities is delicate and often complicated. You may feel partly active in both worlds that each have different rules and manners.
When you do so you can also ask existing local institutions to reposition their powers to support you. A sustaincrat like me actively positions himself in the middle of a sustainocracy and invites old power institutions to look up their true value propositions that can be used in my own human based venture. It is a crazy thought for many people that a single individual can surround him or herself with “institutional monsters” of the old paradigm. But it is possible. Such monsters also consist of people who wish to do a purposeful activity and contribution. A hamer is meant to be used as a tool not as a killing instrument. Institutions are meant to produce benefits for humankind and if not they should be repositioned that way. As simple as that. It is democratic human working that makes this happen, as executive, civil servant, entrepreneur, student, medic, worker, parent, pensioner, etc. It becomes also a personal choice to contribute to one or the other purpose. In sustainocratic communities one can become individually active in various purpose driven communities. One is not confined to one job and income but active in various receiving reciprocal means in equal diversity. Money is not a goal anymore, it is one of the many means to an end. Human sustainable progress is the goal starting with local self sufficiency in as many basic needs as possble.
Sustainocracy is developing primarily around sustainocratic people, individuals and executives. Previously we were called cultural creatives due to specific awareness and willingness to adopt change in our lives. Now we connect this willingness to a new kind of commitment that develops outside the present dominance of financial systems. We may introduce new systems of value but they would be cyclic in a local environment. Sustainable progress is difficult for the early pioneers and so is sustainocracy that requires a multidisciplinary approach. As volume and support grows, voluntarily out of consciousness or involuntary due to crises and chaos, it will become easier.
The individual transformation and all the related choices one makes to set up a sustainocratic world also changes the attitude of the institutional world. They need to adapt or find ways to proceed without customers or workforce. In between there will be a challenging transformative time in which both systems coexist and transform in parallel. Think for instance of the foodsystem, now centralized through speculative means of production and distribution. It will grow to decentralized, direct access and with its own value system outside economics focussing on providing people with things to eat in exchange of their participation in the production process. Back to a life of agriculture? In a way, but adjusted to the situation today. Our relation with nature will change as we become aware of our environment. And in the long run we will balanse our lifestyle with climat changes rather than producing them.
A sustainocratic individual becomes a person that enjoys a higher personal awareness (self leadership) in a social system (self sufficiency) that produces sustainable human progress through purpose driven human interaction (cooperation), education and in close partnership with its local environment.
What makes education “sustainocratic”?
Education today is a fragmented part of our lives. Compulsory at an early stage and voluntary later on, mostly concentrated on ratonal transfer of information. In my view this is no education. It is an exercise of memorizing stuff. True learning occurs when information is gathered triggered by emperic experimentation and purposely reflected upon with use of existing resources and learning guidance. A person is a complex being that gathers awareness through a lifelong learning process, not just using rational thought and memorized information but also dealing with sensory information, culture, emotional feedback, spirituality and physical abilities and disabilities.
One needs to learn to deal with failure and success, individualism, teamwork and the general adventure of growing up in a self aware situation. Human beings have the tendency of wanting to dominate their environment out of self interest but the dynamics of this surroundings, human and natural, also dominates our lives back. It is an art of living life to deal with this successfully.
Life patterns follow five lines of personal evolution, referred to as “quotients”. These are: IQ (intelligence), EQ (emotional), SQ (spiritual), PQ (physical) and AQ (awareness). All 5 together form the evolution of the individual consciousness as the individual experiments with life. Most educational support is given in the early phases of a lifetime, up to the initiation of early adulthood, just to give a person basic abilities and some direction, often influenced by a dominant culture or worldview. A young person has generally little to no awareness of the complexity of life. It is a newcomer that experiences the adventure of a lifetime as it comes. After the physical growing up phase the real learning process starts, mostly without guidance anymore other than the support and advice of friends, family or collegaes and the pleasure and pain of one’s own choices in life.
From a cultural perspective one is surrounded by a local situation that is determined by many factors. One can address these as a matter of fact but also challenge it through one’s own growing awareness. Today we find many people breaking through a glass ceiling referred to as the higher consciousness. This is a high level of awareness that allows people to look at one’s own situation from a timeless universal point of view within the complexity of humankind and its evolution. Knowing this as a point of reference at a later age, after living an adult life for some time, the aspect of education changes. Higher awareness is a significant within the future perspective of human evolution also at society level.
In sustainocracy education is seen as a lifelong process and integrated in the value driven processes of human sustainabe progress. Top level education should therefor become available to anyone, at all times, guiding individuals and groups in sustainocratic challenges.
In an economized world financial awareness and growth is dominant, also in education and the educational system. Its value is determined by its level of uniqueness and practical desire in “the market”, available to the highest bidder or subsidised by “the system”.
In sustainocratic processes education is measured against the sustainable achievements of the group. Excellence should translate in abundant returns of cooperative work which in turn fuels the education for renewal and forward driven processes. The success of the alumni in purpose driven cooperative work is also the success of the academy, termining also the reciprocity for continuation. In a money driven world this compensation is translated in money too. In a sustainocratic world other direct local values can be used also, such as housing, food sharing, energy, safety, etc.
What makes a government “sustainocratic”?
A sustainocratic government is one that is willing to participate in purpose driven local multi-disciplinary teams without any more authority than facilitating regional development of sustainable human progress. For many governments today this would mean an overall transformation by stepping into the pack instead of the old dominant regulatory role. This transformation is necessary to pick up the challenges that human kind faces and that are shown through the appearance of all kinds of crises.
This is the comparison between traditional (current) and sustainocratic governance:
Transforming from one governance to the other needs others to become participatory too.
Most governments today are of the traditional type. In a money driven society the institutional interests have become so fragmented into isolated self-interests that all pieces of a society live a life of their own. This results local social consequences that need to be attended by the local governance in a reactive way. Local government uses taxation and debt to finance itself. Such governance feels powerful in its regulatory and controlling authority with a risk avoiding service to its population. This type of governance has become very vulnerable due to its disconnection from an evolutionary reality which develops beyond its control due to open borders and globalization of financial interests. Just the measures that fit the local consequences are within its span of control at the expense of its limited sources of financial income. This is explosively dangerous. Governance has nothing else to draw from then regulation, financing the growing consequence driven government dominated institutions (health care, police, expensive infrastructures, etc) through distribution and consumer growth while watching its society deteriorate.
Urgent need for change
In an open border, globalized world, such governments are vulnerable for any influences from elsewhere. Self interest does not lead to any partnership among governments as all search ways to keep up their necessary level of income at the expense of the others. Since local government income is dependent on levels of local consumption the stimulus is concentrated on keeping this in tact and growing, either through volume (automotive, food, energy, clothing, retail, logistics, etc) or through speculation (housing market, fashion, shortages in commodities, etc). This situation is unsustainable, resulting a ever growing public debt, internal instability, reduced government maneuverability, etc. Although powerful in regional regulatory dominance the governance has become ineffective, reactive and out of control. Such governance unavoidably leads to war and chaos, unless sustainocracy is applied.
The above suggests the urgent need of renovation of governance in an evolutionary sense. Sustainocracy is such next step in which regulatory dominance is transformed into facilitating partnerships through regional multi-disciplinary co-responsibility on human well-being issues. Key here is that governance assumes a territorial role of purpose driven technological and social innovation focused on sustainable local human progress instead of global competitiveness.
Self sufficiency
The most significant purpose of any community is to be as self sufficient as possible. Self sufficiency reduces the vulnerability due to the reduced dependence on others. Self sufficiency also requires the intense involvement of all local participants that shape and give content to the community. This is essentially what sustainocracy is all about: awareness, responsibility, participation and local wellness.
On paper this is easy to explain but how would one change a traditionally dominant regional governance into a facilitating sustainocratic partner? The logic maybe understood by local executives but the system is based on risk avoidance, regulation and control. Even if the executives wish to partner up in a sustainocratic processes they still face the need to involve their institutional structures too. Such structure is steered around the compliance of rules not bending the rules for progress. Executives run the risk of becoming non-compliant to their own systems of law. It is not simply a re-positioning of a business or letting a state go bankrupt. It means a totally new way of organizing society including jurisprudence. In a democratic society this can hardly be done because consensus is needed in a majority to make such drastic changes and such majority will never be found unless the society is in war or chaos already. Before that the conservative voices promising continuation of the past will always win from those who promise a better future.
Step by step
Governance cannot transform organically from traditional to sustainocratic. It would have to take the seat in the center of a sustainocratic process, relinquishing all its dominance. That is impossible to conceive in today’s reality. When government is willing to step into the pack with its territorial responsibilities and commitment, the pack will need to step up to take co-responsibility too. In an environment where the other social components have been living an independent, individualistic, self interested life, this is a new complexity to deal with. None of these parties can take over because it would make them dominant in the relationship which is not logical either. Co-creation and sharing responsibility hence needs to be placed with the context of a new, modern cooperative entity. This entity is independent and represents the purpose of the venture. Various purpose driven entities can be established in this way uniting the influence and authority of the four pillars of society (government, business innovation, science/education and the local civil population) around a single complex purpose for local self-sufficiency.
Experimental starts
In Holland I started sustainocratic ventures like that on a local for local basis. The first one is AiREAS, using air (environmental) quality measurements, related directly to human health, as trigger for social and demographic innovation. This is unique in the world. In the process of setting up this cooperative venture we needed to attend all the above transformative challenges. It is only succeeding because of the commitment of highly qualified people at the center with me and within the institutions that need to be involved. The intensity of the process from fragmentation to holistic cooperation is huge and vulnerable along the entire way because of the negative forces of individual institutional self interests fighting it continuously. It is a chicken and egg situation where partners are willing to join if governance is willing to step down and join the group based on equality rather than dominance. The only way governance can do that is by letting go of its financial control system over public means, providing cash to the sustainocratic venture with a demand (reciprocity) of shared result driven responsibilities.
Investing in change rather than maintenance
The financial commitment of using public funds from local taxes to invest in purpose driven ventures with the local population as beneficiary in wellness, is of course common sense. Yet traditional governance invests billions in maintaining an obsolete system, neglecting the building up of local for local self sufficiency. With only a fraction of all the investments that have disappeared into sustaining banks and bankrupt governments sustainocratic ventures would have already changed risk into sustainable local stability.
It is of course in the interest of a few people to keep a financial dominance out of self interest but common sense, and the availability of sustainocracy as new way of solving key human issues, will get a bottom up movement going starting primarily in the smaller urban centers where human interaction between institutional powers and civil entrepreneurship is still fairly close. State governance will change bottom up, peacefully if central governance is willing to let go of its financial dominance and dependencies, allowing things to happen for the sake of long term stability. Else populations will demand attention forcefully like they did in Egypt, Libya, etc. This is not necessarily done through acts of war or civil uproar. It can equally be done by demanding liabilities and responsibilities through the wisdom of the crowd and claiming constitutional human rights where they are being violated by money based governance that causes inequality, poverty, hunger and criminality. Social media are becoming a strong alliance of people demanding openness and transparency from governments. In many places in Europe and the rest of the world we see governments giving back regional development to their own people. In this peaceful process we observe that population can perfectly well carry the responsibility, especially when ventures are co-creative and partnered up by institutional interests together with creative local entrepreneurship focused on local wellness.
“Can do” needs the freedom of purpose driven ventures without the burden of old financial blockage. Taxation creates no value, creativity does, especially if directed at common human interests with involvement of all.
AiREAS is the first sustainocratic venture in the world
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 