Different strategic worlds
Today I had the tremendous pleasure to speak in an elite group of a well known business club of high level business executives of known multinationals. My speech was announced as being focused on “sustainability” while my true purpose of being there was to address the potential of creating a local for local energy cooperation.
Twenty odd people attended the weekly diner in a top restaurant in my neighboorhood and each had a different background. I found an interesting mix of top executives of multinationals, successful entrepreneurs, retired business people, representatives of global creative and art communities, etc.
The contrast of all these top people surficed rapidly as I started to speak. My introduction was relatively short (for my doing anyway) and some discussion was allowed by the chairman. I explained the reason to be of my foundation and the complexity of creating co-creative, multi-disciplinary platforms for issue driven sustainable progress. I finalized with the referred proposition arguing that fossil energy was rapidly running us into problems, that concentration of power in global systems makes us dependent on those systems and that technology is available to become self sufficient.
It was interesting to see a few key standard stereotype firm position to be taken:
1. The large multinational states that energy based on fossil resources is not an issue. We will react with innovation and plenty of energy is available for many years to come. No need to be self sufficient. We can trust that availability will persist through global investments of the mighty.
2. The price conscious business focus (procurement). Energy “a” costs 100, energy “b” costs 105, energy “c” costs 120, etc. I go for 100! Who pays for the difference in costs if I go for another price, whatever the motivation?
3. The local organization that want to be self sufficient and independent in energy all together. No worry about costs and economy of scale of large investors, the fact that one is in control oneself is best.
4. The business that looks at the big picture, not just oneself (cost) but also surroundings and politics (issue).
5. The curious who just watch and listen.
Between the first four all kinds of arguments arise of….. what has been tried before, what publications should be accepted or not, what should be done or not done. Everyone seems to be right and everyone is wrong in the eyes of the others. And in essence they are.
In such setting no progress can be made. The powerful stand up and overshout the others, the ones without vision but prenty of statistics provide proof and the curious just follow.
Who is right?
The ones that proclaim progress as usual and trust the system as it innovates along the way?
Or those who claim the need for a transformative attitude and vision as business as usual will get us into chaos and disaster?
Those two worlds clash. Business as usual has the benefit of the doubt because it has proven itself for many decades and contributed to the Western economies of today. Transformative business is always risky as it demand guts and issue driven vision that could be wrong and needs still to prove it is right.
It became clear during my speech that I was the tremendous minority of the transformative world arguing in the business as usual setting. Sustainability was a word everyone could live with (whatever they mean with it) but self supportive local 4 local 4 global systems, including energy was beyond their scope of mass concentration of power and economy of scale.
Bottom up or Top down? Do we purposely neglect the signs by digging up those scientific reports that prove us right or do we act in the transformative way by using those arguments that prove us right? Bottom up and Top down are two different worlds that will meet somewhere through the thick layer of people who just look at costs (the easy way) and those who have no clue (the difficult way).
What I find promising is that the circumstances are there now that the comfrontation occurs for the first time, sometimes in unbalance in favor of one stream or the other, but more and more on levels of equality. That I think is the basis of true progress where people take responsibility and become willing to see what happens, one way or the other, without imposition but by true determination, proof of concept and ideological motivation.
Egyptian or world chaos?
For days in a row we have been able to see the masses in Egypt step up onto the barricades to challenge the leadership of the dictator that has reigned the country for decades. The Egyptian people are fed up to live in poverty, without work while being exploited by an imposed system. They want self determination, freedom of choice and the liberty to develop the values of their own lives.
The country has been in chaos ever since the population started demanding the departure of the dictator and the initiation of in depth change. It is an extreemly risky situation as the dominant leadership system in Egypt is very much woven into the countries culture and structure. I myself still remember the street fights in Barcelona and the struggles of a young democracy in Spain after the death of dictator Franco in 1975. The coronation of King Juan Carlos I had been prepared thoroughly by Franco himself and still the dominant military force tried a coup just a few years later by Coronel Tejero.
In Egypt it is the voice of the people that speaks and nothing has been prepared. What happens if the dictator remains in place? Chaos! What if he goes? Chaos! And within chaos anything can happen. A new dictator can step up, the military forces can assume temporary control until democratic elections can be organized (by whom? No one knows how this works …), a temporary shadow government can be installed to rewrite the constitution according whatever standard… And meanwhile, what do the people do? It will not be easy and large groups have tasted now the power of the public voice. Screaming for the end of dictatorship is a common, unifying goal but finding a solution for the route of the nation can have many faces. And those different voices will group and let themselves be heard loud.
Many see Egypt as an isolated drama with the extremely difficult potential of a positive outcome and the tremendous risk of affecting the entire middle east. I see Egypt as one of the first steps towards the global abolishing of dominant leadership. Egypt may have been reigned by a dictator but the entire world is being lead dominantly by dictatorship, the dominance of speculant financial systems, in the hands of a few. The cry for self sufficiency, self determination and freedom of choice is being heard all over the world since the bank crisis opened up the eyes of many to what world we had created for ourselves. The greed of the financial systems at the expense of humanity and our planet are dictating the behaviour of our governments, multinational business structures and banking, and yes….even our own mentality.
Consider that 80% of the large currencies around the world now consist of speculative values (i.e. hot air) based on no true collatoral at all. We are all sitting on a time bomb of a global magnitud that multiplies the Egyptian chaos into a global one. Already three years ago I predicted that China will enter in a chaotic crisis well before 2020 due to the unsustainable growth of its economy acting as a black hole on the finite global resources. Financial analysts now start to second my prediction and also begin to realize that our money and monetary systems do not represent any value anymore. The true values of human society have be abolished by many years of speculation and need to be gained back. Those true values are represented by entrepreneurial creativity serving (not using) humanity and our planet, and the genuin caring way we interact among eachother. If we abolish family life for equality in economic independence we create a feelingless, individualistic and competitive society, the one we have now. If we do not care for eachother anymore then humankind disappears.
How can we change this? Just like in Egypt we have grown dependent on our own dictatorship in the shape of money. Our entire society has been built up around the same and hence extremely difficult to change. If we abolish the system we enter into chaos, if we maintain it we will enter in chaos and self destruction also. The movement across the world has started even though we do not yet walk the barricades but the fighting of the system is in full progress. This we call the Global Shift, or the process of Transformation to Sustainable progress. It starts with the individual like you and me, letting go of our own dictatorship around money, searching for the true values of and within our own lives (becoming self aware and responsible for our lives and that of our loved ones close to us). We need to re-invent the value of human interaction, love and care for eachother, without translating everything into hard currencies but finding the soft currents of giving rather than taking. This can be done with our neighbors, our friends, our own next of kin, creating warm and social communities which become rich by cohesion.
We use innovative technologies to become self sufficient in water, food and energy production on individual and community level (neighborhoods) and cut our ties with monopolists and dominant leaders who control those basic life lines. We learn to value our true creative and caring values in different value systems than money and we can use those valuesystems to exchange caring and goods among eachother without leaving our values in the hands of unworthy power structures that misuse the trust we placed in them.
The Egyptian chaos is also the world chaos by recognizing dictatorship and becoming aware that we want to be freed from it. The chaos leads to insight and insight leads to awareness, which in turn leads to a purposeful enlightenment for a new society. This new society is based on true human values of equality, safety, trust and cooperation. Just like the Egyptian dictator can be isolated in his palace we can isolate our own global dictators by turning around and learn to be independent and human again, not a robot in a system, joining forces to peacefully extend our hands and create a society based on true values, not money.
We have entered the era of the disappearance of dominant leadership.
Hé? Take that foot off MY footprint!
When the footprint was first introduced early ’90’s of the 20th century it also suggested the principle of equality of all human beings on the usage of the Earth resources. In the 2001 calculations the estimates are that every human being on Earth would have the right to use 1,8 hectacres for personal use and self sufficiency.
Before that no one actually had a clue that many were keeping up their wealth against the poverty of others. The footprint made us all think! But tough to do something about it.
Prior to the extensive explosion of human population on Earth our planet gave a sense of unlimited abundance. This sense has been engraved into our genes, mentality and behavior. When we learned about the finite resources for the first time we had already irrevocable systems in place that were based on infinity rather than shortage. Looking back we now see how we even used these systems to ensure our own individual interests by monopolizing our access to all kinds of resources.
So many people started to think when acquianted with the footprint rights and its distribution across the globe:
- What right do I have to step on the footprint of someone else?
- What can I do to be self sufficient in abundance on my own share?
Other people elsewhere may have started to think?
- What right does anyone else have to use MY footprint?
- What can I do to get to use my own share for my own abundance?
This thinking is slowly meeting. Some people call for sustainable transformation, other fight for their legitimate rights. In any case the human world is about to change. We become aware, we abolish (some try to maintain) the old selfish systems and introduce new ones (which some try to block).
Science has evolved so much that we never need to feel scarcity and can have abundance for everyone on Earth. There is no need at all to step on any one’s else’s footprint, or occupying it unrightfully. We just need to let go of what we were used to and embrace with confidence and moral joy the new world of true abundance, not only in terms of material wealth but also in spiritual significance proper to the purpose of our species.
