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Ethics is human, not institutional
Much is being discussed about “ethics” in business, finance, government, education, etc. The biggest misconception of all is to attribute ethics to institutions. Ethics is human, not institutional. An institution cannot be blamed for unethical behavior, their leaders and employees can.
Definition of Ethics:
Many people confuse ethics with social morality, as in religion, belief or cultural behavior. One of the more useful definitions of ethics is provided by wikipedia in the names of members of the foundation of critical thinking: “a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures”.
If fact ethics refers to “the conscious way we interact with our environment, human and living nature, in a constructive or destructive way”. Ethics is complex as it demand from us the conscious reflection about our progressive behavior and its consequences. Progress has always a destructive and constructive element, when initiated by human beings as well as evolutionary progress within nature. It opens up a large array of philosophical thinking on the extend of responsibility of the human impact on its environment. How ethic is it to destroy a certain natural landscape for our infrastructures, housing, industrial processes or even agriculture? Where does human progressive dominance end to allow room for other species to evolve or is human dominance and its effects on other species part of their own evolutionary challenge? Hasn’t the competitive crises in the human species stimulated our self-awareness in such a way that we became more creative and competitive? Hasn’t the anthropocene affected life of other species in such a way that new genetic variations have appeared that adopted perfectly well to the human dominance and even to human pollution? Isn’t humankind on its own a challenge for nature to react with destructive force to create balance again in living progress? How ethical must the human species be with its environment and what ethics can we expect from our environment?
When we look at the effects of humankind on its environment then this can be considered very high, especially now, in the era that we live in today. On the other hand we see that these effects are lethal for the long term human sustainability. It is expected that climate changes and pollution will eventually reduce humankind to a much smaller population then we count today. Within 40 years humankind may well implode to a size of little more than 1 billion people (as opposed to more than 7 billion today).
Ethics has hence nothing to do with the way we influence nature itself. This will bounce back to us with equal force as what we did to nature. Nature has this unique ability to find balance in all kinds of extremes, even against humanity. So when we refer to ethics we need to reflect on the way we affect nature in the short and long term to produce effects on us. With this type of ethical consideration we place human evolution within the meaning of sustainable human progress. In this sense we do not dominate nature as we affect our surroundings but assume an adaptive attitude around the effects of nature on us. Nature seeks natural balance no matter what effects this has on humankind. We however seek balance with our consciousness (learning process) about our surroundings to provide us infinite evolutionary chances using the environment properly. We become adaptive partners with our environment for our own benefit. Ethics then refers to the level of reciprocal balance we create with our universe in which we assure our health and security at all times by respecting nature for what it is.
So when people debate on institutional ethics we need to get to terms what an institution really is? From an operational point of view an institution is a specialized group of people performing to reach some predetermined team objective. There are many types of institutions that all perform different types of tasks in a human community. From an ethical point of view we can now look at the institution and determine what impact it has on our sustainable human progress from an environmental point of view? The problem we face is the paradigm in which such evaluation takes place.
Institutions have been traditionally registered and founded to become a legal entity that behaves according human, not natural laws. An institution is a legal instrument that allows the grouping of people around certain objectives protecting the integrity of the people against failure of the institution, while allowing the people involved to share the benefits of it. The institution can hence do things that people would maybe not do themselves from a moral point of view. What motives would an institution have to do what it does and can ethical values be attributed, and by who? Yes, we can, but not to the institution, to the people giving direction to the institution. Why?
The institution is a piece of paper. When no-one does anything with that piece of paper it will not do any harm or good. It is just a number. An institution becomes instrumental in the hands of the human being. It is the human being that deals with the institution that needs to be confronted with the ethics of this usage. The fact that an institution is constituted according to certain human laws does not liberate the user of the instrument from applying moral awareness and consider the ethics of its positioning or functioning. In our current society based on capitalist economics the morality of human progress is expressed in financial means. Within this paradigm ecology and human progress are considered a cost. Ethics are valued against the price one needs to pay and the material benefit one gets in return. The overall holistic picture of a universe reacting back to us is not considered tangible enough to be attributed to the ethics of a single institution nor of its leadership. It is the human system that is unethical because it shows a scientifically proven damaging track record against nature itself and especially our own expectations for a healthy future. What is then unethical? The financial system? Money? Capitalist economics? Consumption? Industrialization? Manufacturing?
None of this is unethical because for every system an alternative system can be chosen. The fact that humankind has self-aware choices makes the usage of instruments that have an unethical impact on our environment unethical. It can be compared with a word. The word itself can never be attributed an emotion or value. It is the context in which the word is being used. The same goes with money. Money has no value, it is the value we attribute to it in a certain context. We can compare it with a hammer. The hammer is a tool that can be used in a constructive way to create a chair. It can also be used to kill. In both cases ethics can be applied, not to the hammer but to the hand that uses it and the purpose it is used for.
So instruments like words, coins, hammers or registered pieces of paper have absolutely no ethical meaning until they are used by human beings for one or another purpose. Right now the ethics of humankind is extremely off course. We are all to blame but those who claim leadership and intentionally keep up the system that is so destructive, should be brought to justice. The problem we have is that ethics has not found its way yet sufficiently in our systems of human laws and that is what is urgently needed. Sustainocracy can be help because it provides the tooling necessary to make a natural selection. It also helps institutions to transform while they still can. The excuse is still that they did not know better, had no choice and were not aware of a new paradigm. Soon no-one will be able to hold with such excuse because new standards are being set. These standards are based on true ethics. When people have a choice they immediately are at fault when their choice is contrary to a true ethical paradigm such sustainocracy. At this stage humankind can not afford to accept unethical leadership or behavior anymore whether we like it or not.
Why people avoid Spirituality
From Sept 21 -23 a group of academic and entrepreneurial visionary intellectuals from 14 countries met for the annual conference of EURO-SPES. The topic was “Spirituality & Sustainability” and the gathering took place in Visegrad (Hungary), 40 km north of Budapest. Our organizing host was Prof. Laszlo Zsolnai.
A beautiful weekend in a beautiful place full of history
Spirituality is a word that in the world of hard materialism is being neglected or despised as being soft or religious. This is a huge misconception and a true mental and practical blockage for development of true sustainable progress. Spirituality has various definitions as participating scientists correctly pointed out but the general description of the word is “the inner quest for the true meaning of our existence”. For people who live the simplified life of materialism such quest is of course a scary confrontation with their own consciousness and certainly something to be avoided. The world of the “having” is exactly opposite of the world of the “being”. Both reject each other like poles of a magnet. The transit from a “having” kind of mentality to one in search for identity (being) is usually referred to as a “crisis”. The process is one of letting go (voluntarily or involuntarily) of material securities and trying to find comfort in the new world of inner feelings and meaning.
In such open field of emotions people start reacting in many ways, some aggressive or depressed, others become artists or find unprecedented hidden forces of leadership. During the conference we were enlightened with views in each of these fields of expertise. Academic research is showing the importance of spirituality for humankind to recover from crises and develop sustainable evolutionary progress through the renewal of true meaning. It represents a combination of rationalization of inner search for meaning and putting the growing awareness into practice in experiments around new ways of organizing ourselves, individually and as a community. This is called the pre-paradigm, a phase before, after or within crises, in which alternatives develop to a reigning paradigm that is falling apart. Such pre-paradigms are always confrontational to the one that is being disputed. A pre-paradigm uses the logic of spiritual consciousness and is usually neglected and even denied by those who are unaware, or intentional to uphold the existing paradigm out of personal or institutional interests. The old paradigm has lawful support while the new paradigm has the power of timeless meaningfulness.
It was shown that such human evolutionary patterns of obsolete but reigning paradigm, crisis, pre-paradigm development through spirituality, and the opposition between old and new paradigm, are a natural evolutionary phenomena of a self-aware species. Even the dramatic consequences of a powerful yet obsolete paradigm, that could cause death and destruction, can be seen as a universal natural disaster hitting humankind, forcing ourselves to renew our spiritual awareness and develop a new evolutionary cycle. But this natural phenomena is of course not an excuse for those who are aware of it to let it happen just like that. The force of reasoning and new paradigm development is nowadays, thanks to many modern elements of peaceful reflection, education and opposition, capable of overcoming a forthcoming crisis without the natural need for or potential threat of a mass destruction.
Academic intellectuals, artists and entrepreneurs from 14 countries meet for the paradigm shift
Sustainability was explained from an existential and practical point of view, using also nature as a point of inspirational reference. Various presentations coincided about the forthcoming mayor crash, a melt down of the world order of economics after decades of exponential growth and speculation. For the first time academic financial specialists looked at the broader picture and showed the unsustainable truth of current economic materialism. Not many presentations could pinpoint yet a solution. Some were still tempted to use economic instruments that were contrasted by others, including me, as “decades too late” and at this stage unrealistic and equally obsolete.
Solutions needed to be found in the inner world of reflection, awareness and consciousness, not the external worlds of old material securities. My own practical presentation of sustainocracy was well received. As I was one of the very first to present my case I had three more days left to get some deepening reflection about it with those who connected with the complexity of my line of thinking and my practical proof of concept that already went beyond the phase of pre-paradigm. During the questioning rounds after each presentation the power of my own model of human complexities proved its worth for my own inner guidance for reflection and interaction with the others.
The psychology of change in a paradigm shift is the true transformative challenge of humankind
The complexity of the current global situation was also beautifully shown through expressions of art around the world, presented by academic scientists, and available to create awareness in a difficult world of opposition, apathy, ignorance, commercial over-communication, fear and manipulation. The surprising beauty or challenging intellectual creativity brought forward in all kinds of artistic disciplines was mind blowing. Speakers could pinpoint where the problems were in the unbelievable massiveness of humankind in the world today, but also that solutions were not easily at hand. Humankind was expecting solutions from the external material world while all agreed that the real solutions needed to be found in the inner world of meaning through spirituality and structural renewal of our civilization’s organization around life and evolutionary essentials.
Many presentations therefor referred to the necessary inner quest for reason and meaning, not just as an individual but also as an organization and entire civilization. Many also referred to the powerful explosive potential that spirituality has when it hits the individual and the masses. “Water must flow freely” (biologist and journalist) Janos Vargha stated when he explained his decades of battle against the system of political and economic madness when the Danube was nearly doomed for exploitation with damaging effects beyond repair. He won!
In the red circle the “monster of the Danube”, artificial remains of human institutionalized madness
And so will spirituality as this too must flow freely. The dam that was going to affect natural life, including human’s, in and around the Danube, is now a metaphor for the blocking forces of artificial institutionalized economic and political interests that stand free flow of awareness and reason in the way. Public opposition builds up powerfully and eventually breaks through the dam with force. Right now we are all like Janos in the 80’s, claiming the free flow of meaningful reason and renewal in a peaceful but demanding way, before damage is irreparable. We have time at our side, those who try to uphold their unsustainable power position do not. This personal reflection should give us trust, no matter what happens:
“Spiritual meaning will eventually win as it always has, simply because it has eternity on its side while the temporary power of the self proclaimed mighty dies with those mortals that try to uphold it in their lifetime”.
The encounter was very powerful indeed and finalized with people who found each other in meaning, reasoning and purpose. Friendships were born, alliances too, and solutions were shared that went beyond the stage of experimental pre-paradigm. During that weekend in Visegrad along the Danube bend of Hungary the cultivators of a new human future shared seeds to sow across the world. The new paradigm of sustainable human progress exists and will grow there where true spirituality meets with purpose driven leadership and entrepreneurship.
Paradigm shift pioneering difficulty
Awareness of the need of a paradigm shift is the beginning of a complex personal process. The problem resides in the fact that the rest of the world is still wound up in the old pattern that one wants to take a distance of. The next step is to take responsibility. Instead of trying to convince other people of the need of the paradigm shift one gets to a point of taking personal responsibility. It is impossible to tell others what to do so one ends up doing it oneself. But starting the pre-phase of a new paradigm is a huge responsibility that is not yet backed by your own surrounding. In a practical sense: if you take a distance from a money driven paradigm to start one based on human wellness or human sustainable progress you find yourself totally disconnected from the ruling (human) life supporting system that surrounds you, without an alternative yet to support the pioneer. That is one of the reasons why one finds hardly any support for a paradigm shift. One stands alone. Letting go of old securities before new ones are installed is work of “fools”. One can easily crash in the attempt or be crushed by the old system that does not want paria like you disputing the system. You become an outcast, an outlaw, a paria, a loner, an idealist, at the worst “a weirdo” or at the best “an adventurer” ……
When you anyhow decide to take the responsibility of a paradigm shift you enter an empty world. This world needs everything to be created still. The paradigm you envisage is in your head but does not yet materialize in true reality. You have become a sort of Amundsen, Scott, Stanley or Livingstone, a Niel Armstrong, a person who set out to discover and create a new world out of nothing, just a dream….. You are an unsupported conquerer, a single handed constructor of a new world, a first seed of a new civilization landing to find fertile grounds. It may sound dramatic, romantic even but the emptiness, loneliness and hugeness of the environment and challenge is both scary and exciting. The drama of being such pioneer is in the paradox of where one comes from and decided to leave, and the idealism that made one start the venture. The old world that one leaves behind is totally opposite, a miror image, another dimension. Having the possibility to compare one finds the enormous contradictions that also reside within the pioneer himself and made him finally choose. Living and taking responsibility in the transformation is hence a magnificent adventure of tremendous inner and outer contrasts. It becomes a spiritual and realistic voyage of wisdom and idealism, a “can do” experience based on fundaments of inner trust in abilities, purpose and motivation. The driving force is so strong that fear becomes the first challenge that is overcome.
When I defined sustainocracy and started implementing it I realize that I am taking people and institutions on a round and maybe even one-way trip to an empty new world. This world is empty for their awareness as well as their practical reality. I ask them to help construct a new reality as if we had landed on a new planet, not copying our old rules from home but taking the opportunity to start a new civilization based on ideals, views and lessons learned. As these people work with me on this new planet they know that they can fly back continuously to the old world to go get materials and support, or to stay again after the work is done. This simple security gives them comfort to be with me for a while. The first loads of people and institutions come with disbelieve and discomfort, arriving at an empty space but with the inner reassurance that it is only temporary. For me however it is different. I am there to stay. Why they travelled with me has to do with their own choice or some imposition by the old hierarchy of the old world that seeks some old speculative values in the venture. They often carry their old habbits and manners, finding it difficult to let go and learn to behave in a different setting.
Conducting such new human world in its state of birth feels impressive. I become the creator in a way myself. A creator who is deprived of everything yet has everything. A paradox of the Wholiness where duality comes together in the All. It sounds romantic again but it is not. Spiritually it feels very rich but in practical sense it is bloody hard work with very little aparent reward or recognition. Who cares? I do, and that is enough.
While we work like aliens in the new paradigm people get acquainted with the new settings and the warmth of constructing something together. Some decide to stay permanently and slowly the community grows. Institutions that participate start new initiatives based on the new rules and situation, or decide to transform entirely into the new world. When that happens the creations becomes of everyone and not just of the creator. The pioneer can step back and enjoy the development of the new paradigm, concentrating just on the format and letting content flow freely and creatively. A new world is born and ships full of newcomers arrive to offer their help and their own pioneership to further enhance and grow out the new world within the paradigm.
AiREAS
On October 11th 2012 the very first small colony of the complex sustainocratic paradigm makes itself known to the old world. AiREAS is the first ever sustainocratic venture of the world and initiates its activities in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Its purpose is to create new human dynamics in the city that makes itself healthy and vital instead of heaving to depend on the consequence driven regulatory activities of governance when unhealthy dynamics cause discomfort and economic problems. The initiative is like building a community on Mars. It is a colony that is still fragile, consisting mostly of people that have a return ticket home and enjoy the adventure of the novelty of the challenge. Some believe that old Earth rules still apply and others are not even aware that they are in a new world. Yet it is a start. The next step is to develop the fragile situation into a more solid and permanent setting, a true precedence for the rest of the old world to relate to. The new paradigm has to prove itself by providing sufficient comfort and security to the early participants for them to wish to stay and not go back. AiREAS relates just to the environmental issue of a sustainable human society as defined by me. When it proves its worth to the participants it is only a small step to expand its mission to the other human values. Then we will see that the paradigm expands rapidly, attracting massive amounts of new people that overcome their personal fears of letting go of the old world to enter the opportunities of the new one with trust, ideals and ideas. They have all become creators and the new paradigm becomes a common good.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 