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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.
What makes a government “sustainocratic”?
A sustainocratic government is one that is willing to participate in purpose driven local multi-disciplinary teams without any more authority than facilitating regional development of sustainable human progress. For many governments today this would mean an overall transformation by stepping into the pack instead of the old dominant regulatory role. This transformation is necessary to pick up the challenges that human kind faces and that are shown through the appearance of all kinds of crises.
This is the comparison between traditional (current) and sustainocratic governance:
Transforming from one governance to the other needs others to become participatory too.
Most governments today are of the traditional type. In a money driven society the institutional interests have become so fragmented into isolated self-interests that all pieces of a society live a life of their own. This results local social consequences that need to be attended by the local governance in a reactive way. Local government uses taxation and debt to finance itself. Such governance feels powerful in its regulatory and controlling authority with a risk avoiding service to its population. This type of governance has become very vulnerable due to its disconnection from an evolutionary reality which develops beyond its control due to open borders and globalization of financial interests. Just the measures that fit the local consequences are within its span of control at the expense of its limited sources of financial income. This is explosively dangerous. Governance has nothing else to draw from then regulation, financing the growing consequence driven government dominated institutions (health care, police, expensive infrastructures, etc) through distribution and consumer growth while watching its society deteriorate.
Urgent need for change
In an open border, globalized world, such governments are vulnerable for any influences from elsewhere. Self interest does not lead to any partnership among governments as all search ways to keep up their necessary level of income at the expense of the others. Since local government income is dependent on levels of local consumption the stimulus is concentrated on keeping this in tact and growing, either through volume (automotive, food, energy, clothing, retail, logistics, etc) or through speculation (housing market, fashion, shortages in commodities, etc). This situation is unsustainable, resulting a ever growing public debt, internal instability, reduced government maneuverability, etc. Although powerful in regional regulatory dominance the governance has become ineffective, reactive and out of control. Such governance unavoidably leads to war and chaos, unless sustainocracy is applied.
The above suggests the urgent need of renovation of governance in an evolutionary sense. Sustainocracy is such next step in which regulatory dominance is transformed into facilitating partnerships through regional multi-disciplinary co-responsibility on human well-being issues. Key here is that governance assumes a territorial role of purpose driven technological and social innovation focused on sustainable local human progress instead of global competitiveness.
Self sufficiency
The most significant purpose of any community is to be as self sufficient as possible. Self sufficiency reduces the vulnerability due to the reduced dependence on others. Self sufficiency also requires the intense involvement of all local participants that shape and give content to the community. This is essentially what sustainocracy is all about: awareness, responsibility, participation and local wellness.
On paper this is easy to explain but how would one change a traditionally dominant regional governance into a facilitating sustainocratic partner? The logic maybe understood by local executives but the system is based on risk avoidance, regulation and control. Even if the executives wish to partner up in a sustainocratic processes they still face the need to involve their institutional structures too. Such structure is steered around the compliance of rules not bending the rules for progress. Executives run the risk of becoming non-compliant to their own systems of law. It is not simply a re-positioning of a business or letting a state go bankrupt. It means a totally new way of organizing society including jurisprudence. In a democratic society this can hardly be done because consensus is needed in a majority to make such drastic changes and such majority will never be found unless the society is in war or chaos already. Before that the conservative voices promising continuation of the past will always win from those who promise a better future.
Step by step
Governance cannot transform organically from traditional to sustainocratic. It would have to take the seat in the center of a sustainocratic process, relinquishing all its dominance. That is impossible to conceive in today’s reality. When government is willing to step into the pack with its territorial responsibilities and commitment, the pack will need to step up to take co-responsibility too. In an environment where the other social components have been living an independent, individualistic, self interested life, this is a new complexity to deal with. None of these parties can take over because it would make them dominant in the relationship which is not logical either. Co-creation and sharing responsibility hence needs to be placed with the context of a new, modern cooperative entity. This entity is independent and represents the purpose of the venture. Various purpose driven entities can be established in this way uniting the influence and authority of the four pillars of society (government, business innovation, science/education and the local civil population) around a single complex purpose for local self-sufficiency.
Experimental starts
In Holland I started sustainocratic ventures like that on a local for local basis. The first one is AiREAS, using air (environmental) quality measurements, related directly to human health, as trigger for social and demographic innovation. This is unique in the world. In the process of setting up this cooperative venture we needed to attend all the above transformative challenges. It is only succeeding because of the commitment of highly qualified people at the center with me and within the institutions that need to be involved. The intensity of the process from fragmentation to holistic cooperation is huge and vulnerable along the entire way because of the negative forces of individual institutional self interests fighting it continuously. It is a chicken and egg situation where partners are willing to join if governance is willing to step down and join the group based on equality rather than dominance. The only way governance can do that is by letting go of its financial control system over public means, providing cash to the sustainocratic venture with a demand (reciprocity) of shared result driven responsibilities.
Investing in change rather than maintenance
The financial commitment of using public funds from local taxes to invest in purpose driven ventures with the local population as beneficiary in wellness, is of course common sense. Yet traditional governance invests billions in maintaining an obsolete system, neglecting the building up of local for local self sufficiency. With only a fraction of all the investments that have disappeared into sustaining banks and bankrupt governments sustainocratic ventures would have already changed risk into sustainable local stability.
It is of course in the interest of a few people to keep a financial dominance out of self interest but common sense, and the availability of sustainocracy as new way of solving key human issues, will get a bottom up movement going starting primarily in the smaller urban centers where human interaction between institutional powers and civil entrepreneurship is still fairly close. State governance will change bottom up, peacefully if central governance is willing to let go of its financial dominance and dependencies, allowing things to happen for the sake of long term stability. Else populations will demand attention forcefully like they did in Egypt, Libya, etc. This is not necessarily done through acts of war or civil uproar. It can equally be done by demanding liabilities and responsibilities through the wisdom of the crowd and claiming constitutional human rights where they are being violated by money based governance that causes inequality, poverty, hunger and criminality. Social media are becoming a strong alliance of people demanding openness and transparency from governments. In many places in Europe and the rest of the world we see governments giving back regional development to their own people. In this peaceful process we observe that population can perfectly well carry the responsibility, especially when ventures are co-creative and partnered up by institutional interests together with creative local entrepreneurship focused on local wellness.
“Can do” needs the freedom of purpose driven ventures without the burden of old financial blockage. Taxation creates no value, creativity does, especially if directed at common human interests with involvement of all.
AiREAS is the first sustainocratic venture in the world
The biggest entrepreneurial challenge ever
Entrepreneurship got a special status about 300 years ago when industrialization took over from specialized individual craftmanship. We can distinguish four phases since then:
1. Product manufacturing and sales
2. International growth and cost optimization
3. Marketing on sentiments
4. Speculation on shortages
The first three phases brought us consumer wellness and a transfer from global agricultural to industrial and logistic processes around retail. They all built up towards the fourth phase (making money without doing anything other than keeping wealth away from others) which brought us finally the crisis situation today. The fourth phase could not exist without the preceeding three.
For 300 years morality has followed the industrial era through the development of a care taking government (education and health regulation) to counter the greed and self interest of industrial kingdoms. Wars have been faught and political systems developped with left and right wing challenging each other through argumentation. Constitutions were written for human rights and governance while economic systems grew causing concentration of humankind in urban megastructures.
The phase of speculation finally unified greed up to a clear break up of human balans. The ecological and social consequences were so large that a fifth entrepreneurial phase announces itself. It is an entrepreneurial phase that does not just affect business but also governance, education and the individul awareness. behavior and mentality. In fact, the fifth phase is not a linear continuation of the former four, it is the very first post industrial and post economic phase announcing the global transformation.
Entrepreneurial phase 5 is dedicated to save humankind within its natural habitat.
This phase I refer to as sustainocracy, the compulsory focus on the sustainable preservation and continuation of the species.
It is a complicated phase because it ends a periode of perceived global luxury to replaced it with the indvidual and collective need to take responsibility. It puts the world upside down for most people and institutions. The phase is therefor preceded with a large period of overall political, executive and public negation which will cause death and disaster beyond any historic precedence. Those who are to blame will still be alive when all this happens and judgment day will surely confront them publicly in due time.
This entrepreneurial spirit of the fifth phase is however already building up throughout society, as my AiREAS venture (air quality, human health and city design) shows. It is not just individual anymore but also affecting the motivation of the large powerblocks of current humankind. These many people who use their personal motivation also in their institutional jobs to make a difference, have reached the point already of enlightenment and personal commitment to a new future. Sustainocratic processes lead the way, even if they are still small, fragile and extremely localized. Step by step these purpose driven ventures based on phase five of global entrepreneurship will build up enough power to break through the lethal dominance of the speculants of phase 4.
No institution can start a new world unless they are invited and willing to change
Important for everyone is to recognize and understand phase 4 and the transformative phase 5. Then the process will only speed up reducing the potential human suffering of phase 4 to an absolute minimum. Anyone can become a phase 5 entrepreneur. And when you do you’ll become aware that there is a lot of entreprenerial work to be done as simply everything made and organized by human beings needs to be changed. It will keep us passionately occupied for centuries to come.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 