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Sustainocracy – not a choice nor a process
The fact that sustainable progress is not a democratic choice nor a transformative process was a true revelation to me these days. It is an act of taking responsibility. If I take responsibility I can ask others to so too, even institutionally. And if they do not take responsibility I can ask them to justify their reasons and even ask justice to speak out. Wow! Will the near future look like that?
I came to that revelation while wrapping up my new booklet on “the new society” with my conclusions. My model takes a complex issue (a human value s.a. health) in a region and asks business, government, science and the civil community to take responsibility together. Purpose driven, multi-disciplinary ventures appear s.a. AiREAS or STIR (initiatives that I started myself). Today I am still relying on the voluntary choice of an institution to participate despite the value driven purpose.
Taking responsibility together for sustainable progress
“Sustainocracy” defines the new model for society. The word is a fusion between Sustainable Progress and Democracy.
Sustainable Progress is in my view not a democratic choice but an imperative mission of humankind. The imposition on all of us to work together on a healthy, vital and safe human community seems very logical to me. New leadership in this new society is represented by someone who takes the initiative to create new age purpose driven venture based on that moral imposition. Why would a single person take such complex initiative? Because no one else can, not institutionally anyway, because of the way economics works.
My own awareness came when I was challenged to make an instant decision of human value. The safety of my children or my money driven career? There was no middle way. For me it was no choice, I was given no transition time, I had to make up my mind instantly. My decision was to bring my children into safety. What else? Would I at that instant be at ease with myself if I had made the other choice? Once a person is aware the decision is not a choice anymore, nor a process. It become an instant change of mindset, taking responsibility at once. After that moment, the consequences are huge because the process of no return starts when the new responsibilities need to establish and organize themselves in one’s life while letting go the old securities and way of life. But there is no way back. The new mindset was instant, the decision made and the consequences are logical and permanent.
This is key. When someone who is aware and has taken responsibility for sustainable progress and subsequently takes a seat on that line of sustainable progress in my model, starting to invite government, business authorities, scientific institutions and civil individuals to join him and take responsibility too for a complex local issue around human health, vitality or safety, can any such authority decline their participation? On what grounds?
In my own experience so far the institutional excuses have been as varied as:
- Not our main priority
- No people, time or money available
- If you have no budget we are not interested
- Don’t how to contribute
- Not taxable so we cannot support them
- My shareholders won’t let me
It is amazing that in the fragmented, consequence driven, money dependent organizations, the corporate interests have no connection at all to sustainable issues. Else there would be no issue to join the venture, would there? They would be honored, but they are not. Amazing! And even more appalling is the fact that this attitude is considered normal and legally supported. Right now our common focus is on the economies of growth without any interest or even awareness of the consequences of such mentality. Even the genuine invitation of participating with corporate talent and authority in value driven ventures is treated with apprehensive policy choices.
Sustainocracy is dictatorial from a perspective of a common human goal, and democratic in how to achieve it. Democracy by itself is inclined to sum up the self-interest up to a point of self-destruction (Club of Rome warns for this already from the 70s). It is necessary that we accept the greedy nature of humankind but also acknowledge the wisdom that sustainable progress is mandatory, not by human choice but by universal logic. A simple modification in our global systems of justice, defining that all institutional hierarchies should commit to sustainable progress by taking responsibility, could help reform instantly our global wellness expectations. This is of course wishful thinking at this stage, however while precedence with the new model grows the pressure on institutions to take responsibility will grow too.
Important for everyone to know is that sustainable progress can be instantly accepted everywhere in the world. It is now not a political choice anymore, nor a transition process that takes many years. It is a simple moment of instant truth in which we take responsibility or not. This decision is not made through voluntary choice but instant awareness, an act of consciousness that opens up our eyes to universal truth. When this occurs individually the consequences are personal and demanding. But can we expect this responsibility and awareness from our institutions? Yes, of course we can. They are not more than instrumental to human progress. We can demand from them to be constructive and not destructive.
There is not one single reason that would justify the lack of our participation, individually or institutionally, in human health, vitality and security improving missions defined by sustainable progress. It is up to ourselves to open up our eyes, take responsibility and expect others to do so too.
Call for Leadership
When the human world is in crisis entrepreneurship and society call for true and transformative leadership. Why is that? And what kind of leadership?
The very first thing we have to acknowledge when the human world is in crisis is that the way we organised our world has become obsolete, else it would not be in crisis. Trying to restore old securities is therefor no sign of leadership at all, it is called management. Management will never get anyone out of a crisis simply because the paradigm (the total set of values on which human interaction is based) has cracked up. It served its purpose in the past but now cannot be revised and needs to be replaced with a new paradigm. And that introduces two leadership issues: Definition of the new paradigm and the intense en risky transformation exercise from one paradigm to the other. Let us deal with each separately.
Definition of the new paradigm: We can distinguish five different paradigms that humankind can apply. In times of crisis we have seen four that have been regularly been called upon in history: The State, The Church, Money and Technology. The one that has not been seriously used is the one that places the individual human being at the center of all our strategies. While we placed artificial human invented systems in place to conduct our progress we noticed that they invariably ended up in crisis. For the very first time in modern history the individual human being has sufficient access to information to become aware of its own evolutionary responsibilities and create a culture of progress through cooperation. This paradigm means that we leave all artificial structures behind and get ourselves into a purpose driven culture of individual responsibilities shared through our common progressive, evolutionary objectives. The shift between paradigms is intense because it places responsibilities at the individual level through self-leadership and at community level through result drive sustainable progress. Political leadership is asked or forced to let go and facilitate the process of self-leadership of the people. We are seeing this happening around the world while corporate leadership is asked to take purpose driven humanistic initiatives to drive progress with the power of result driven united talent and energy, demanding a totally new business culture and structure.
Transformation between paradigms: The transformation between paradigms demands from leadership strong professionalism that goes way beyond technical or financial leadership. It requires strong understanding of human fears and hopes, the psychology of change and charisma to conduct the long term change by producing short term securities for all the people involved. It is a very humanistic type of leadership, a servant kind but also strongly demanding from the people on the verge of dictatorship. Sustainable progress is not a political discussion or democratic choice. This type of leadership that has nothing to do with the drive for power over people but the drive to provide comfort through change by getting people to provide comfort to themselves by taking responsibility. It requires strong insight, will power, anthropological/anthroposophical understandings and perseverance giving people their own share in the fruits they achieve through their own productivity.
Does that mean that the other paradigms are obsolete? From an operational leadership point of view: yes, because they cannot be placed at the kernel of human progress anymore. But the learning that we have reflectively embedded in our collective awareness is important to use those paradigms to feed the new one in development. Moral awareness that was claimed by religions is needed to provide ethical guidance to the humanistic drive of purpose driven communities, the state is needed to provide territorial cohesion and interaction between groups while technological innovation is required to provide the necessary tooling for humankind to produce abundance for all. The speculative money system needs to transform into a true value system that does not measure and speculate on shortages but values abundance through result driven investment of individual and collective talent and energy. This part of the transformation of values is probably the most complicated one since most of the old paradigm has glued all current human systems around monetary dependencies. To break through that the crises need to do their work because human interaction will only encounter dangerous opposition from the old power positions. This impasse will slow down the processes of the paradigm shift at the expense of human suffering. The introduction of new value system based on different criteria can slowly make way for large human structures that can break through the protective walls of the old money driven paradigm. That’s why I see a huge chance for technology driven corporate business organisations to make the shift first and become creative in valuing their people while creating a movement of change through visionary, multidisciplinary cooperation with other actors in this holistic approach.
The call for leadership is hence a significant one. Extremely few people today unite the conditions that profile the transformative leader. They cannot necessarily be found in the current leadership positions because those are jobs for high level managers guided or puppeetered by the self-interest of powerful shareholders. The true leaders that will stand up are currently without a job but with a personal mission. They may have lead significant ventures in the past which have provided them with the network and experience of old paradigm people management. Their personal enlightenment, together with a renewed energetic impulse to become the true instrument of change (they have no leadership ambitions but strong desires to see the paradigm shift). Others stand up and start anywhere in society or in a corporate organisation with sufficient skills and freedom to make the difference already today. On them the speed of the paradigm shift will depend and with them the sustainable progress of humankind that needs to be addressed.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 