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Missing sustainability link

May 31, 2011 10:01 pm / Leave a comment

There are five master areas that influence our daily human life. That is entrepreneurship, the consumer (the market), the banks, government and science. Each of the areas are controlled by humans through islands of influence of their own. The interaction is one of need, regulation and interdependence, not out of common purpose or partnership.

Each of these islands are driven by control and power through highly self maintaining institutions. Over time the gap between the islands has widened and cooperation or interaction is mainly out of self interest. The function of each area is a black box that is not to be interfered with by anyone outside that box. The size of these power zones have grown so big and powerful that corruption, insensitivity to the consequences of hierarchies of power and openess to dialogue for transformative change is impossible.

Together these five areas are so much dependent on eachother that they form a solid global operational system called the global economy of growth.

Another few master areas of influence have appeared that are beyond human control: natural disasters, our finite environment and unexpected system interruptions. These areas interfer increasingly with the big five causing the system to collapse and rebuilt with great effort, fear and anxiety.

One would think that with the impressive evidence of the ending of the system that people in power would sit together and try to solve it for the benefit of continuation. But this does not happen, at least not all five sectors together. And as all five are interrelated it is a key requirement to get them all to work together. But out of free will they will not! Who would be leading?

Governments have their own perception of reality and so do bankers and business people. Science wants to understand no matter what we do with the understanding and the average consumer simply wants to remain in the position to keep consuming. If you put the five together voluntarily they won’t even turn up for the meeting.  The word sustainability for the five means as much as “keep the system going” and “do not interfer with me or the system will crash”.

Invariably the system will crash no matter what but not until the five in power have done everything they can to get the last bit out of it. Meanwhile the amount of system interruptions will grow and cause crisis after crisis. Sensitivity for change is growing and true sustainability is defined to be much more of the kind of human survival and if possible, some quality of life for all of us.

The problem is that each of the five will not take leadership for change. They depend to much of eachother to let any take the lead for a transformation that will redesign the entire human organization. If one would start it would necessarily need to question the viability of the other. And for that it has no authority.

To bridge the independent yet interrelated islands a new island is needed, the island of partnership and trust. This island is governed by an independent purpose (not money) driven institution such as the STIR Foundation. It bridges the other five key areas that remain functioning as usual on their own with the same interdependence but lack of cooperation and trust.

On the special STIR island they get together with their competences to take responsibility for a common higher purpose. On this island the column of values rules and are safeguarded. The higher purpose is true sustainability but redefined in manageable sub issues. The independence of the island, its own internal purpose driven governance and the supervision as well as responsibility taken by the non governmental and non business and non scientific independent authority make it the missing link for defining and introducing true and complex sustainable progress without the need for war or chaos.

One example of such independent value driven cooperation is the AiREAS company that works on a local for local basis within the global context. Experimenting with the delicate process of bridging the feeling of safety when addressing a higher purpose without the stress of the hierarchy of power is highly desirable by all involved. All are intelligent and understand the need for change but feel trapped in their own maze of interrelated interests. By disattaching the competences from the system they can be united around a purpose and act together to determine new processes of value that can be rapidly put in place without putting the old hierarchies under pressure.

Using the missing link the transition can take place gradually but insistantly with the key parties involved taking joint responsibility and taking the universal issues also in consideration. By applying science and innovation in the complexity of our current civilization through small but highly visible steps we will get us step by step back into a new but different comfort zone  allowing the power positions to transform without necessarily crashing the entire system.

One day the transformation will be business as usual and the missing link may disappear again as true catalist of a complex process.

Europe falls apart

May 17, 2011 11:41 am / 1 Comment on Europe falls apart

On May 9th many cellebrated mother’s day but it was also proclaimed “Day of Europe”. In some of the media the editorials were dedicated to the future of Europe, the need of its unity and the fragmentation that is seen everywhere. Again, I use the column of values to see what can be expected.

The true union of communities needs to be based on a higher purpose that unites the first basics of values namely strong individual identity, safety, equality and trust before one can get to the higher levels of collaboration. Whenever issues arise s.a. a credit crisis, African refugees, a terrorist attack, water shortages, social unrest, etc. it is the strength of the basics of column of values that keeps the union together. The stronger this basis is the better the venture can cope with the challenges.

The countries that form the European Community have indeed their individual identities, one stronger than the other. But the higher purpose to create the community was not ideological or humanitarian but purely economical. The bases of the shaping the community were:

  • a large home market
  • cost savings through reduced bureacracy
  • easy human traffic to financial growth areas
  • financial unification through a single currency
Since mainly economic parameters prevailed no attention was payed to value issues like safety, equality or trust. The union became a top level boardroom issue not a humanitarium one on the streets. The cultural difficulties that arise due to migrations in the open border structures show for that lack of sensitivety. In the political boardroom people were only seens as work force, not as human beings with a backpack full of cultural baggage.
Country identities are not just economies but also cultures, especially in Europe. Economic partner discussions can be contained within the confinement of the own country’s bouderies but the culture spreads throughout the unified territory. Country identities clashed within each other’s bouderies, one more than the other. We see this for instance with the Eastern European cultures invading Western Europe now. A Rumanian or Polish person is still a Rumanian or Polish person, also when visiting Holland or Paris or Italy in search for personal financial wealth.
The effects of such cultural migrations were not accounted for nor organized. They were simplified by telling people that to work in Holland you behave like the Dutch, to work in Paris you behave like the Parisiens. But it does not work like that at all. On street level the cultures clash and may even create totally new cultures.
Since there is no higher common purpose other than money, the new cultures that arise show important signs of aggression, greed, individualization, cultural subgrouping, criminality, etc. and very little true cooperation. One sees foreign communities protect their interest within the confinement of the receiving culture. The orginal local population experiences a deterioration of their living environment and perceived quality of life and starts to blame the newcomers in the street.
The European Union was established for economic reasons and when these are in crisis the union simply falls apart because its reasons for unity are not valid anymore. Economic security and growth was enough for politicians to accept social unrest in their territories but when this security disappeares the tolerance does too. Right now we see European countries already setting up the original bounderies again to control the flux of undesired people across the borders.
A lot of European people were against the rapid expansion of the Union through the incorporation of Eastern European countries. The Western population of Europe feared a strong immigration of poor people with a strong cultural difference. The policy makers simply were seeking growth no morality. They were blinded by the potential of the growth of China and thought that a sufficiently large counterblock would be needed tp remain present in the global human power picture. The same motivation had created the orginal E.U. to counter the strength of the USA.
But money does not provide any security at all. This we have seen now around the world. What does produce securities is the willingness of the population to shape a high level cooperative community based on a higher sustainable purpose through hard labor, emancipation and trust. When the union was formed these key elements were undermined creating a cultural basis for structural decline that grew day by day.
We now do not just face an economic crisis in Europe due to Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Spain or Italy. We suffer a crisis of true values.
After identity in the column comes safety. One of the issues of Europe was to create a common border for community wide safety purposes. The Shengen treaty then opened up the borders within the union for free traffic of people and goods. The true motive for open borders was primarily the facilitation of movement of community members and goods within the economic context. From a recreational perspective the open borders were perceived as a great added value, even though the exitement of collecting stamps of the diversity of countries disappeared. The fact that one could travel from north to south an v.v. without being hindered by border officials and related traffic jams was perceived as a novel common good that did produce some united feeling of being European.
In the field of dynamic labor related migrations the enthousiasm was much less as it addressed directly the conservative, protective nature of individual cultural identities. Certain immigrating cultures were more likely to be accepted than others. The extremely fast opening of the community to Eastern European countries had the effect that western people rapidly started to feel less safe than before the opening. Agressive incidents and the massive influx of cheap labor from these countries provided a sense of insecurity for the locals.
The people of Eastern European countries prove hard workers agains very low wages but also people that have a different perception on rules, s.a. in traffic for instance.
An even larger sense of insecurity was caused by the massive immigration of people from outside the European Union, s.a. the Middle East and Northern Africa. Those immigrants were welcome to participate again in the cheap labor processes but brought with them their religion and local cultures and an overall lesser level of education than the locals. Subcultures appeared that became cultural and religious islands inside the main cultures. No integration, no higher common purpose, just little countries within countries with hardly any social interaction.
When you go visit a country on business or holiday you feel enthousiastic and curious about that foreign culture and the differences with your self. But when that same culture settles massively in your home street that feeling of exotic curiousity changes to a strange sense of insecurity.
Without security one needs not even mention the next levels of the column of values: equality or trust. These will never exist. On the contrary. One gets a sense of distrust, an “I” and “them” attitude that develops not only through individual behavior, communication and mentality but it eventually also conditions the evolution of the community itself, its regulation and culture. Even in the old boardroom that were happily interaction when dealing with money and growth the interaction on true moral issues claims the differences that cannot be overcome.
Now that the economic crisis affects Europe the sense of cohesion disappears. The column of values was never installed nor did anyone pay any attention to it, so all countries and cultures fall back now onto their own securities. Europe is breaking up, falling apart.
This is a pitty as so much more would have been achievable if the higher purpose to establish the union had originally not been of financial nature but built up along the lines of sustainable progress in which content was more important than growth. Maybe we find that common sense still in the chaos of the break up.

China will bring us back to basics

May 16, 2011 7:52 am / Leave a comment

This weekend James Vena posted a discussion on his LinkedIn group International Trade and Internet. He was refering to an article in Wall Street Journal on May 16th and announced the possibility of an important financial dip in Q3 of this year, a dip deeper that before.

The post did not come as a surprise to me nor the fact that shortages of raw materials would eventually bring the global speculative economies to a hold. In fact it was very simple to reach that conclusion. You simply have to apply the arithmatic that Dr Bartlett shows in his famous lecture posted on YouTube. If China has a steady anual economic growth of 9% and this extrapolates to a simmilar growth of consumption of raw materials, and doubling time of the exponential consumption is about 7 years of all these figures line up.

China’s growth started when western worlds had already dramatically and irresponsibly consumed their way through the Earth’s resources. Back in the early 70’s the Club of Rome already raised a flag to warn us that we could not continue our consumption rate as the Earth’s resources were limited.

Our global economies based on structural debt demanded growth and more growth to counter the evaporation of capital through interest. The consumer society was expanded world wide until the limits of today. We have reached the end of the line of the unsustainable global approach.

I myself announced that the big crash would occur somewhere before 2015. I still took one doubling time as a margin to fool myself in the hope to have time to contribute still with an alternative, Global Shift, that would be strong enough to become a global promise at the time the obsolete system collapsed. But the doubling time is indeed too far fetched and optimistic.

I never took the trouble to actually calculated the remaining Earth resources and plot them along the line of growing usage. Common sense learns us that the end of that line is nearby. How near has various variables, s.a. the growing pricing, the innovative push to reduce dependency, the reuse of materials that are already in circulation, the consumer reduction effect of crises, etc. But these would only delay the crash with months not with years or longer.

All the huge capital injections of governments were oriented to maintain the old system of consumption and allow for growth to continue without any consideration of its consequences on material consumption and its finite nature. Money is now made on speculation on shortages, keeping survival away and accessible only to the highest bidder. The power game of politicians may have postponed potential war situations but they were acting over the back of the global population without using their power to introduce a parallel system of sustainable progress. They are especially to be blamed for that. They have played the global game for the wealth of just a few and blocked out of individual greed and self interests the evolution of a new human organization based on true values but not money.

Money prevailed, not as a means for the large masses but as a goal for the greedy, supported by policy makers, politicians and executives of multinationals. Soon all the money they accumulated will be worth absolutely nothing, not even to buy a bread. Because to buy a bread someone will have to harvest the wheat, grind it, mix and bake the flour. Soon bread will be more valuable than all euros and dollars together. The true rich people are those who have grown used to be humbly self sufficient in food production, housing and clean drinking water. Back to universal basics will surely become the global issue in the next few months and years. China teaches us but are we willing to learn?

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