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Transforming our narrative
Arguably about 5000 years ago we started to develop a narrative based on hierarchy, fear, dominance, awareness driven competition, agression and social control mechanisms. I say “arguably” because the narrative may already have found its roots in landscapes where certain individuals claimed land ownership and developed a dominance over populations wishing to make use of it for a living. This narrative is still dominant today.
During our weekly online meetings about spreading the narrative of core natural human values, equality, shared responsibilities and cocreation, some refer to this 5000 year old historical human step as “a historical misdirection”. One that has taken darwinistic proportions over time with the “narcistic dominance of the most aggressive”, reaching (in our current lifetime) a point of natural collapse that produces unprecedent human suffering and chaos. While nature does its work of seeking natural balance of a living flow, of course at the expense of the unnatural and fake human hegomony, some people pretend to play God in an attempt to regulate, manipulate or control the events out of some kind of self defined interests and faked morality, proper of this narcistic dominance.
Others, including myself, define the end of the era of abuse and the beginning of a new servant one as a natural evolutionary path, predictable and necessary. So is the narrative that we introduce as Sustainocracy, the “next step” in our human evolutionary voyage through time and space. One that we can observe in our natural individual growing up phases (in a single lifestime) which we now proyect on the same phases for the evolution of humankind (over a span of millions of years) as a collective transformative experience:
- Phase 1: Unaware living life – early human life forms in small groups
- Phase 2: Unaware competitive life – human groupings encountering eachother and intuitively defending their interests
- Phase 3: Awareness driven competitive life – growth of human presence on the planet, regular encounters and desire for dominance for self protection and growth. Development of vertical hierarchies and horizontal growth
- Phase 4: Awareness driven living life – development of diplomacy, wellness driven dialogue, peace, multilateralism and shared cocreation among people and first steps in symbiosys with nature
- Phase 5: full symbiose
Our current era is immerged in transforming between phase 3 and 4. This is already developing for many years, reaching a new climax now. The previous climax was worldwar II, a war after which human rights and diplomacy was anchored in the human societal development showing the first glimps of phase 4 emerging, however wrongly interpreted as a (financial) cost of phase 3 instead of a new way of life with a new narrative and social structure. The new narrative is emerging now as a shared responsibility, not a hierarchy. It is however the hierarchy that refuses to let go of its phase 3 dominance and mindset. The fight between hierarchical self interests and human rights is not battled anymore in the field with arms. It is developed through justice, the development of ethics and the deployment of phase 4 as a choice, as a best practice proyection, an open space for shared responsibility and cocreation of shared values.
During May 2021 our communication and seeding vehicle, the World Happiness Bird, we decided to experiment with the diversity of media to spread our narrative of equality, purpose and cocreation through positivism, togetherness and shared wellness. We will look out for and create our own best practices within phase 4, to share with the world and within our growing global phase 4 community. You are welcome to join our efforts, as a person, as an institution or sum of all, and share the narrative if you sense it to be yours too.
The narrative can be expressed through art, songs, music, cooperative ventures, local initiatives, expressions, videos, an whatever means….shared to engage and inspire…… Below we express ourselves through the basic principle of Sustainocracy, our phase 4 community expressed as ventures such as AiREAS, FRE2SH, School of Talents & Wellness, COS3i, etc…
Integral Ecology and Sustainable Business
With thanks to Laszlo Zsolnai and Ove Jakobsen I was invited to participate in the publication of this valuable book published through Emerald Publishing. My contribution is about the Participation Society, an analysis of the evolution of our societal structures and the emergence of taking responsibility together as citizens and policy makers when dealing with our core human and natural values.
The entire publication: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/book/10.1108/S1572-8323201726
My chapter on the Participation Society: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S1572-832320170000026013
The evolution of society through Sustainocracy displayed at city hall Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2016
It may seem a paradox to show an emerging, new governance and societal interaction model in the midst of the 160 year old party political democratic system of the city hall of Eindhoven. But that is what evolution is all about. The symbolism of progress, even if the new replaces the old, simply because it is better suited to address the challenges of our era, is worth contemplating with joy and sense of opportunity and faith. Just look at the pictures below. On the wall we see the portraits of all mayors of the city of Eindhoven since 1850. They look over the exposition as a reflective token of the evolution of time, from the military uniforms of a non-disputable hierarchy, up to the new era, on a new wall, of the emerging participation society…..
Our demonstration was simple. A table at the center of the exposition remained empty, symbolizing the challenge of dealing with reality without prejudism, hierarchies, stacks of money or power positions. We place the core human and natural values on this table as defined in our new democracy referred to as Sustainocracy. Together with the four pillars of any society (government, citizens, scientific knowledge and innovative entrepreneurship) we look at our reality from a core values perspective and define our priorities for changes together. Visitors could experience such values driven interaction by simulating it using their own local priorities and issues of great concern.
Around the table, in the hall we then show some of the spin-offs of such innovative drive, each changing our society and its functioning while inspiring the world through its cocreative progession and measureable results. This was the layout of the central table and the surrounding spin offs.
The city council room was left aside as a symbol of the past in which party politics and economic priorities took our attention away from our core values. A new center of debat had emerged, the sustainocratic, multidisciplinary table of shared responsibilities…..
During the 9 days of exposure we received over 1000 visitors from our own citizen’s collective and from many other local and international communities. These visitors from across the world joined our sustainocratic table and got inspired to take the ideas home with them. We organized a civilian participation debat in the council’s room. This also evolved with international presence (Spain, Turkey and Afganistan). Six points of attention were joinedly defined and drawn up as a manifest to our community level 4 leadership (awareness driven eco-system) to enhance our progress even further:
- Acknowlegde and value social entrepreneurship,
- Find ways to make the huge impact social entrepreneurship indexed and measureable,
- Engage citizens to the core values at city neighborhood level
- Dare to be ambitious when dealing with the core values. The silent majority needs to be considered in the progressive plans, not just the strongly heared conservative voices,
- Involve the younger generations through participative learning processes,
- Exchange inspiration, experiences and best practice among the other communities in the world which too are engaged in this evolutionary challenge…..
Many visitors reacted both suprised and committed: “It exists, you are showing it here in Eindhoven, so now we want this too!”
Dutch Design Week 2017 goes global. Contact me by reacting to this blog if you want to engage with Sustainocratic progress and join this week in october 2017 with innovative initiatives, seminar or congress participation, etc.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 