Degrowth

I don't understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.

A few days ago, I was walking with a friend, which is how I think most of my posts come about. We talked about energy (I'm writing about that right now as well), The Green Deal and Degrowth.

We can hardly find an area of life that is not dominated by the growth imperative. An explicit demand for ever greater and faster activity underlies all productive sectors, from the volume and speed of products to be produced to the sale to us the consumer.

The logic of growth has been embedded in our areas of life, which formerly did not have much to do with productivity or efficiency, such as public health, education, care, the arts or quite banally our well-being and happiness. Here we quickly end up with topics like Green Growth, we had talked about this together with Thomas Schindler (thomas.cr) once in a FullCircle format and he also writes on the topic of well-being as a growth index on his newsletter.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is a common denominator for judging the success of public policies and the performance of governments. The idea of growth, as I will like to use it, goes beyond simply showing an increase in GDP. Growth here takes place in terms of money flows, financial assets and transactions, capital accumulation; in terms of aggregate material throughput, infrastructure, desirability, efficiency, and productivity. Ethan, as well as Thomas and I, define other forms of capital here, but I won't go into them today. I had also written something similar entitled "The Economy of Wellbeing."

GDP growth is only a small part, of a broader socio-economic process of expansion and increasing human control over nature and over each other. Growth is a culture that can be seen, touched and felt. It is reflected in modern iconic architecture, in the taste of industrially produced food, in the speed at which students must graduate from university, in the degrees required to maintain privileges between and within countries. Growth is armed by (techno)science and technology and fueled by labor markets and cheaply acquired natural resources, often based on histories of war and colonization.

This sociocultural dimension of growth has been uncritically overlooked for too long. This is perhaps why it was (and still is) expected that failures of growth would be cured with more growth. Whether in borrowing, natural resource extraction, or new infrastructure, growth has been the primary tool for addressing inequality and unemployment. It is promoted equally by those who call for austerity and those who advocate Keynesianism. The end result, however, is the same. Problems are shifted or distorted in space and time, while social conflicts (described in "Weltschmerz," among others) and ecological crises intensify. As early as the 1970s, André Gorz argued that the point is not to consume more and more (i.e., to achieve a "steady state"), but to consume less and less, because even zero growth, which keeps current consumption levels constant, leads to rapid depletion of resources. This is the "stage" on which the degrowth slogan operates. It was first used explicitly as a slogan by activists in France and southern Europe calling for a downsizing of material capacity. One of its main goals was to expose and challenge the imperative of growth as a commonly accepted social goal. Since then, degrowth has become a field of research and a framework that encompasses a broad vocabulary of meanings. Niko Paech also writes a lot on this at the University of Jena, he just uses the term postgrowth for it. This article takes this further by looking more explicitly at climate change, its impacts and policy responses (There was also a lecture on this by Niko Paech on January 25th).

Putting the term in context, degrowth should be understood as a strategy for sustainability, since economic growth is environmentally, socially, and even economically unsustainable. However, the degrowth debates began precisely as a response to the prevailing sustainability or "sustainable development" discourse. The idea of a virtuous win-win triangle in which the environment is protected, equity is promoted, and growth is perpetuated, is strictly rejected by degrowth theory and research. The starting premise of degrowth is that growth-based development is not sustainable, and the question is how to make the necessary degrowth socially sustainable.

What does degrowth actually mean?

Degrowth, contrary to what the term might suggest to the uninitiated, is not a technical term in economics that means the opposite of growth or setting prices so that the number of resources decreases. In a "post-degrowth" scenario, if we bothered to quantify the changes in the outdated GDP indicator, they would be negative. But to peg and understand degrowth only in terms of GDP metrics is clearly a misinterpretation of the nature of the term. While degrowth denounces GDP growth, its focus is on changing context and units of measurement. Societies embarking on a degrowth course would need new metrics that are more nuanced and diversified. This is not to say that the thorny goal of reducing consumption is not present in the Global North. It is at its core. However, it is driven by principles of political organization in the spirit of caring for the commons, voluntary simplicity, and joyfulness (rather than top-down GDP shrinkage). Establishing and redesigning institutions that enable societies to do without growth (in a broader sense than GDP) is at the core of the pursuit of degrowth.

Degrowth is the synthesis and the new mental and political space that opens up when confronting growth. It does not simply mean "less," but a social metamorphosis. Which ties closely to further cultural changes (Game B scenarios). Degrowth shifts attention from expansion to redistribution and equity in societies. This implies not only a reduction of societal metabolism, but the production of a new metabolism with different functions and forms of organization. Here the social limits of growth are crucial. In a world of "Porsches for all," a Porsche would no longer be a "Porsche" but a boring car that no one would want. Even if biophysical resources were not a constraint, economic growth would never satisfy everyone's desire for status. Goods that lead to a higher position are a function of growth and constantly change with it.

Degrowth confronts productivism both culturally and economically, pointing to the myopic, normative, and simplistic representation of humans as self-interested utility maximizers. More than anything, it strikes at the theoretical heart of economic models of representation in which utility is reduced to consumption, markets are seen as the single best way to allocate resources, and efficiency (in production) is an end in itself. Much of the literature that does not explicitly address degrowth, however, shows that human rationality is limited and markets tend to crowd out friendship, gift, and altruism. Alternative forms of circulation, through which goods and services are exchanged reciprocally at the community level or between communities, without markets, prices, and the calculative logic of profit, have existed and continue to exist in some less visible parts of society. Unlike a market economy, participation in a gift economy develops a pride in, if not - a joy in giving, even if it means entering into a chain of compulsory returns or collective dependency. Again, degrowth is a tapestry woven within a framework of multiple complementary threads or ideas that collectively converge into something greater than their sum. At its heart is the well-being of society. Based on the idea of friendly togetherness, it implies an appreciation of each other's presence within an event, activity, work, or place. Illich (1978) defines it as the "individual freedom realized in personal interdependence as an intrinsic ethical value." Conviviality is neither efficient, nor time-saving. Conviviality in technological terms implies the use of tools that are easy to use and repair, reliable, durable, openly accessible, multi-purpose, recyclable, socially and environmentally friendly, and above all, allow for "graceful play" in personal relationships (Illich 1973).

Democracy, or some form of government, is another central concept in the degrowth web. According to Illich (1978), justice and power grow simultaneously only up to a threshold. Beyond this threshold, capital and (authoritarian) power grow at the expense of justice. The more centralized a system is, the more it needs experts and bureaucrats to manage it; these would then appropriate an ever larger share of society's surplus. Growing energy wealth therefore leads to a more unequal distribution of control over that energy and societal surplus. A true participatory democracy of truly equals can only exist in a society with low and distributed energy consumption. This is also true in reverse - participatory democracy creates the conditions for convivial technologies. Degrowth is thus conceived as a deeply democratic process based on inclusivity and the search for solutions among diverse actors in the spirit of a society that continuously builds, evolves, and transforms its own institutions.

Importantly, degrowth builds on a critical reflection and historical charging of the concept of "development." This idea of development places countries on a ladder, with the types of societies produced in the West being the ones at the top that others must emulate. The ideology of development can best be illustrated by the shifting of titles, with most colonizing countries being labeled "developed" while the colonized countries (or their indigenous populations) - "developing". A lifestyle based on ever higher levels of material consumption (or development) has been built, generalized and introduced as a common mental infrastructure. This infrastructure continues to reproduce itself even after its original trigger has been displaced. Based on these ideas, degrowth is the gradual, public, and participatory deconstruction of the "mental infrastructure" - concepts such as "development" and "progress." However, this does not mean replacing them with new, unquestionable paradigms.

Degrowth in the North, then, need not translate into more growth in the South. Growth leaves its footprint on the landscape of the Global South, consisting of small stores and textile factories, deforestation and erosion, strip mines, landfills of electronics, chemicals and ships, or monoculture fields of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and global commodities. Degrowth is a call for an end to this environmental colonialism. As Martinez-Alier argues back in 2021, the degrowth movement in the Global North is the natural ally of the environmental justice movement in the Global South. Indeed, degrowth calls for opening up space for the South to find its own paths to the good life or "buen vivir." This certainly implies thriving health care, quality education, access to land and food sovereignty, democratic governance and participation, self-sufficiency, and protection of human and nature rights. While growth is not a necessary condition for any of this, it could be the deconstruction of development thinking.

The transgression of environmental limits has led to an increase in environmental conflicts worldwide. Degrowth starts from the idea that environmental conflicts are embodied visibly or invisibly in most objects and spaces. People in the North are rarely keen on "toxic tours," spending a day at a landfill, a mining site, or walking for hours along a highway, and are never personally confronted with the uprooted communities or eroded mountaintops that necessarily accompany corporate growth. The distancing between the impacts and the goods bought and used has given rise to the environmental justice movement. At the same time, the information overkill about the environmental and social conflicts taking place around the world has little impact on the individual lifestyles of those at the end of the commodity chain until it is felt, marveled at, and experienced with the eyes, hands, and skin. Degrowth is about living and feeling the ecological conflicts, whether on a neighborhood or international level. It is a call to relocalize our impacts and bring ecological and social conflicts (back) to our backyards, where they can be resolved equitably and democracy becomes possible.

Changing Perceptions of Life

Without water, our planet would be one of the billions of lifeless rocks floating endlessly in the vastness of the inky-black void.

– Fabien Cousteau

I have perceived the ocean and their energy here in a way that I have not before. At moments, the energy of the water flows through me and I get a deep connection to something ancient.

We have lived in harmony with the rhythms of the planet for the majority of our species' two-hundred-thousand-year history, anchoring our identity firmly in the physical world around us. Our surroundings not only served as a physical orientation for us, but also as a spiritual compass from which we began to explore our developing sense of self. This self-awareness was based on the fundamental understanding that our survival was dependent on maintaining a close connection with the life force that surrounded us. To gain access to the knowledge of how everything in our world was connected, we needed to nurture our relationship with our environment.

It was impossible to understand predators or prey without first understanding how they related to the world and within the world. We had to be aware of how these relationships changed in response to the shifting moods of our shared environment. Separating life and environment in any way would have been both counterintuitive and counterproductive. The sunbathing lizard and the sunburned rock, the spawning salmon and the milk-swimming river, the swimming fish and the raging ocean were all part of the same life process. To be self-aware meant to recognize and know oneself in the totality of life around one, rather than imagining oneself outside and separate from the world. Knowledge that has been passed down from indigenous peoples to the next generation for thousands of years, we destroy with a wink.

We have largely lost this sense of "embeddedness" in our modern cultures, and we now regard it as a naive belief system of indigenous cultures that gives power and soul to inanimate objects. Western scholars refer to this worldview as "animistic," and it is based on a philosophical tradition founded by Plato in the 4th century BC. He was one of the first to express the idea that the power of creation exists outside of the material world, establishing the concept of an eternal heavenly realm superior to the earthly body.

Although he advocated for the human intellect as the path to the divine realm, he also saw the world as a living embodiment of creative power, imbued with soul and agency. "This world is indeed a living being endowed with soul and intelligence... a single visible entity that contains all other living beings," he writes in one of his most important texts, the Timaeus. This was later translated into Latin as the "soul of the world," anima mundi. Plato thus experienced the world as a sentient, living whole, paving the way for Christianity - and later the scientific revolution - to separate and elevate man above the rest of life.

But, even before Plato, we began to distance ourselves from the close relationship with place that had sustained us for so long. Agriculture and farming created a schism between humans and the superhuman world. Whereas the entire land was once alive with its own history, we now imposed our will on certain areas, tamed the rocks and soil, and domesticated the plants and animals. The land beyond our fences became a threat, full of untamed forces ready to infiltrate our newly perceived security. We now had two relationships with our surroundings: the security and predictability of our enclosures (the places under our control) and the wilderness beyond. As our dominance spread across the land, the wilderness receded and with it our connection to the anima mundi, the living soul of the world.

The scientific revolution introduced a new element into this growing chasm: the concept of the world, indeed the entire universe, as a vast machine whose workings can be understood using René Descartes' new scientific method of reductionism. Descartes' belief that any phenomenon can be understood by studying its constituent parts separately extended even to living animals, which he saw as nothing more than complex machines devoid of feelings or souls. The later success of Isaac Newton's reformulated differential calculus in predicting the trajectory of moving bodies like planets seemed to confirm this notion of a mechanistic universe that can be understood and eventually controlled by objective measurement and mathematical reason.

So now we had not only drawn a line between biological life and the non-living environment, but we had also redefined life as sentient and animate human life surrounded by all other life that was neither sentient nor animate. In a strange way, we then reunited non-human life and its non-living environment by giving it a name - Nature. Of course, not all Western thinkers held this view. Even among scientists - including Charles Darwin - there were those who found the idea of a world in which humans were the only sentient beings deeply disturbing. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, however, it seemed that the physical world could indeed be controlled and exploited for the sole benefit of mankind through the rapid development of technology and the use of increasingly powerful machines.

The only place that still seemed beyond our reach was the wide open ocean. Somehow the ocean beyond the near shore still held the mystery of the unknown, the untamable. In this context, it was still alive to us, capable of exerting its free will on anyone who dared to step onto its vast body. Survival depended on the intimacy of our relationship with her rhythms and changing moods. The mariner who neglected this relationship would soon find the ocean a cruel and heartless mistress, while those who paid attention understood that she had no favorites and dispensed neither punishment nor reward, but welcomed everyone at their own peril.

But as the 20th century progressed, even the vastness of the ocean became subject to our relentless pursuit of dominion. Our new oil-driven technology not only opened the entire ocean to exploitation, but also drove a stake into the heart of this last bastion of our connection to the anima mundi.

What is truly sustainable?

What I always notice when we talk about sustainability is that some of it is not sustainable. Therefore, I try more and more to use the term regenerative.

My objective in this article is to study the history of the terms sustainable and sustainability, as well as the various definitions published thereby offering a set of five axioms to help clarify the characteristics of a sustainable society.

"That which can be maintained over time" is the essence of the term sustainable. This implies that no long can be maintained and will cease operating in any society or aspect of a society that is unsustainable.

It is likely that no society can be preserved forever: astronomers assure us that the Sun will have boiled away in several billions of years, and life on our planet will be finished. There is a great book called “After Collapse”. Sustainability is therefore a relative term. The lengths of previous civilisation, from several hundred to several thousand years, seem to be a temporal frame of reference. A sustainable/ regenerative society would therefore be able to remain in the future for several centuries.

In recent years, however, the word "sustainable" is often used only generally and vaguely to refer to practices that are considered more environmentally sound than others. The word is often used so unscrupulously that environmentalists and others advise that it no longer be used. However, I believe that the concept of sustainability, if we are to make some effort to define it clearly, is essential to understanding and solving our species' environmental dilemma. The only question is whether we haven't already corrupted the word and therefore need to form a stronger narrative.

How did the word come into being?

In fact, many indigenous people's viewpoints and traditions have incorporated the basic concept of sustainability; the heads consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation.

In 1712 German forester and scientist Hannss Carl von Carlowitz conducted the first well-known European sustainable use in the book Sylvicultura Oeconomica. Later, French and English foresters adopted trees as a way of 'sustainable forestry yields.'

Later, the Swede Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt had formulated a series of paraphrases for a sustainable society. It goes like this:

1. Nature's functions and diversity are not subject to increasing levels of substances extracted from the crust of the Earth to make a society sustainable.

2. Nature's functions and diversity will not be systematically subject to an increasing amount of substances manufactured by society in order to be sustainable in society.

3. Natural functions and diversity are not systematically impoverished by physical removal, over-harvesting or other forms of manipulation of ecosystems so that a society may be sustainable.

4. People are not systematically undermining their ability to meet their needs in a sustainable society.

Five self-evident truths of sustainability

I have tried to find points for myself that best define sustainability or regenerative to find out for projects or topics if it is something that is still relevant for a future in 100 years. I have formulated five self-evident truths of sustainability as a contribution to this continuous refinement of the concept. I have not introduced new notions to any of the axioms in essence; my objective is simply to distill and put in more precise and easier to understand ideas that have been proposed and explored by others.

I had the following criteria:

A statement must be able to be tested with the methodology of science to qualify;

Overall, there must be a minimum (no redundancies) of truths to define sustainability;

They must, at the same time, be sufficient, leaving no glaring breakthroughs and layers should be formulated.

First

Any society that continues to use critical resources in an unsustainable manner will collapse.

Exception: A society can avoid collapse by finding regenerative substitute resources.

The exception has a limit: In a finite world, the number of possible substitute resources is also finite.

A society that uses resources sustainably may collapse for reasons beyond its control (for example, as a result of an overwhelming natural disaster or conquest by another, more militarily formidable and aggressive society, to name just two possibilities), so it cannot be said that a sustainable society is immune to collapse unless many more conditions for sustainability are met. First argument focuses on resource consumption because it is an important, quantifiable, and, in theory, controllable determinant of a society's long-term survival.

Second

Population growth and/or increases in resource consumption rates cannot be sustained.

For many decades, the world's human population has been increasing, and this trend has clearly continued to the present. How can we be certain that it cannot be sustained indefinitely? Simple arithmetic can be used to demonstrate that even small rates of growth, if sustained, add up to absurdly large—and clearly unsustainable—population sizes and consumption rates.

Third

To be sustainable, renewable resource use must occur at a rate less than or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.

Renewable resources are finite. Forests can be over-cut, resulting in barren landscapes and a lack of wood (as happened in many parts of Europe in previous centuries), and fish can be over-harvested, leading to the extinction or near-extinction of many species (as is occurring today globally).

Fourth

To be sustainable, the use of nonrenewable resources must be declining at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.

The rate of depletion is defined as the amount extracted and used in a given time interval (usually a year) expressed as a percentage of the amount left to extract.

There is no such thing as a sustainable rate of use for any nonrenewable resource. However, if the rate of use declines at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of depletion, the society's reliance on the resource will be reduced to insignificance before the resource is exhausted.

Fifth

Sustainability necessitates the reduction of substances introduced into the environment as a result of human activities and their rendering harmless to biosphere functions.

In cases where pollution from the extraction and consumption of nonrenewable resources has been increasing at an increasing rate for some time and threatens the viability of ecosystems, the rate of extraction and consumption of those resources may need to be reduced at a rate greater than the rate of depletion.

Pollution should be reduced if explanations 2 through 4 are followed. Nonetheless, these conditions are not always sufficient to avert potentially collapse-inducing impacts.

It is possible for a society to cause serious pollution by wasting renewable resources (the use of toxins in agriculture polluted streams for decades), and such consequences must be avoided. Similarly, especially in densely populated areas, biological wastes from humans can cause serious environmental problems; such wastes must be properly composted.

However, in the present situation, where the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources have been increasing for some time, leading to levels of pollution that threaten the basic functions of the biosphere, heroic measures are required. This is true, of course, for greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, especially as a result of the use of the non-renewable resource coal and soon rare metals used for solar panels and batteries; it is also true for the hormone-like petrochemical pollution that inhibits the reproduction of many vertebrate species. To begin with, simply reducing coal consumption by the global coal depletion rate would not suffice to avert a climatic catastrophe. The rate of coal depletion is slow, but the climate impacts of coal combustion emissions are increasing rapidly, and annual reductions in those emissions must occur at a rapid pace if ecosystem-threatening consequences are to be avoided. Similarly, in the case of petrochemical pollution, simply reducing the dispersion of plastics and other petrochemicals into the environment by the annual rate of depletion of oil and natural gas would not suffice to avert environmental harms on a large enough scale to threaten ecosystems and human societies. If a reduction in emissions or other pollutants can be obtained without a reduction in consumption of non-renewable resources, such as by using technological means to capture polluting substances and sequester them harmlessly, or by limiting the production of certain industrial chemicals, then a reduction in consumption of such resources need only occur at the rate of depletion in o However, society should be extremely skeptical and cautious of claims that untested technologies can safely sequester polluting substances for extremely long periods of time.

Will local, national, and international leaders ever formulate public policy based on these five assumptions? Clearly, policies requiring an end to population growth—and possibly even a population decline—as well as a reduction in resource consumption would be unpopular, unless the general populace could be persuaded of the importance of making its activities sustainable. However, if leaders do not begin to follow those points, society as a whole, or at least some aspects of it, will undoubtedly collapse. Perhaps this is enough motivation to overcome the psychological and political barriers that would otherwise stymie efforts toward true sustainability.

A PLAN FOR HUMAN KIND AND THE EARTH'S HEALING

For a long time, I have been looking for a plan that could support us to heal ourselves and our planet. Unfortunately, there is no one plan, like always there will be many things we have to do.

A friend and I are fans of the "Tesla" model. You develop a prototype, which you can show as a showcase project and then adapt to others. Similar to my article Charter Cities for Cities. My Theory is about why and how only a few specialized centers/ cities around the world, known as Healing RegenTopes (tried to use the word BioTop to become more regenerative, not sure if it makes sense - let me know), are capable of replacing the existing informational field of fear and violence with a new, globally effective informational field of trust and cooperation.

How can these regional regenerative tops have a global impact? The answer can be found in the nature of holistic systems, the functions and parameters of which are described as: It is not how big and strong these local centers are (in comparison to the existing apparatus of violence), but how comprehensive and complex they are, how many elements of life combine and unite well in them, that is critical to their success. Evolutionary fields develop according to the “success of the most comprehensive,” not the “survival of the fittest.” Otherwise, no new development could take hold, because everything begins “small and inconspicuously”. There are similar projects all over the world (Civium, Pirate Academy, Rainbird Earth, Regen Village, GRC, Motherland, etc.).

What exactly is a Healing Regentop?

A Healing Regentope is a future society model. The Healing Regentopes plan is based on building a model of a new society before it can be applied on a large scale, similar to how a new prototype is first developed in a laboratory.

The global problems that currently lead to war all over the world will be solved or in the process of being solved in a future culture of peace. Healing Regentopes are thus locations where these solutions are created. The findings must be generalizable and accessible to anyone who seeks them. Healing Regtopes are organized in such a way that the various solutions can be linked to each other until the overall solution image becomes visible.

To make things clearer, I've divided the overall solution into several components:

• the material foundation of life

• the social foundation of life

• the mental-spiritual foundation of life

To begin a nonviolent future, humanity requires new responses in all three of these areas. There are a lot more, but I thought it is easier to focus on a few.

The Material Foundation

The problem of the material basis of life manifests itself in the global scarcity of water, food, and energy, as well as their unequal distribution. Desertification, famine, and peak oil are just a few manifestations of this scarcity, which stems from humanity's fundamentally flawed relationship with the earth, water, and nature. The necessary correction consists of developing human-made systems that are compatible with nature's inexhaustible systems and energy sources.

The solution, in particular, lies in the establishment of decentralized, regionally self-sufficient, water-rich, and sustainable centers capable of housing thousands of people. With the help of Water Retention Landscapes, permaculture, peace gardens, and new energy technologies that work according to the laws of life, insufficient numbers, these centers will be able to supply all of humanity with sufficient food, energy, and fresh drinking water within a few decades. They heal all of nature's ecosystems and living beings at the same time. The conflict between economic growth and environmental protection is resolved.

New energies are more based on the "line of tension" than on a breaking resistance. They link the new centers to the sun and the universe's everlasting energy sources. There is no struggle for resources. We are currently covering the field of energy through Nextness and have had some good discussions with researchers here.

Just yesterday I had an investor meeting with a young company that can manufacture products such as palm oil or other substances from yeast in the laboratory. Doesn't that sound great?

The Social Fundament

All societies have destroyed their social foundation. The ability of man to live in peace has been lost. From the smallest marriage and family systems, all the way to global crisis and wars, fear, alienation and lack of confidence lead to insolvent conflicts in all systems. The latent readiness for violence can be used for wars and cruel confrontations at any time.

Healing Regentopes illustrate how cooperation and trust can be developed permanently and structurally by creating new habitats. This change is not (only) caused by individual therapies or admonitions. It is the social being who determines awareness. The higher level of order at which previously insoluble conflicts can be resolved is the new type of socialization. In these new communities, human beings support and assist others and their neighborhoods not because they follow an external moral command, but because they realize that all life belongs to the great family of life to which they also belong.

The reconciliation of the sexes is central to building trust. As long as there is war in the love, there can be no peace on earth. The men-dominated patriarchal society must be transformed into a way of life in which women and men reconnect and apply their sensual knowledge to the future culture of the men and women's partnership.

The Spiritual and Mental Base

Today the struggle against the mental-spiritual basis of life is perceived in such subtle and comprehensive ways. We only see their consequences like religious wars, domination and subordination structures, psychological deprivation, and blocked anger to self-destruction. Mankind lost its true religious and ethical anchor.

To get back from this exile, we must take a new view of the world and study an early trust theory, which can open up the human heart again. In this learning process, people who no longer subject themselves to punishing authorities will develop autonomously, self-confidently. These persons have developed and are therefore incorruptible a strong human core. They make life and protect it wherever they are, their sacred authority itself.

Next Manifesting Steps

First, it is necessary to create a global information field. It is important worldwide to know the idea of curing Regentopes, the way of life they represent, the basic ideas, and partial solutions that have already been found and can be generalized. This knowledge is then irretrievable. New information is needed for Earth!

Second: The spread of the idea itself will lead to the establishment of stations and so-called 'model universities' all over the world that incorporate both ecological and technological knowledge and intellectual as well as social know-how to develop working communities. This process of global networking by mental, spiritual, human, and ecological formation is supported by several organizations already.

Thirdly, until the "model universities" take up that task, I (and others) will be the principal educational center. The already emerging model of self-sufficient living needs to be supported, the training facilities expanded, the scholarship Fund maintained, and practical education sites established.

Do you know someone who wants to work on this?

Malte

Shaking is a Tension Trend that everyone will benefit from

Sharing some experience with you

If you remember my article how to prepare for 2050, I believe in order to solve the problems in our world, we must detach ourselves from our traumas. A few weeks ago I came across TRE. Something I can only describe as unbelievable, after all the years of meditating, breathing exercises, and more, this was a special experience after a while.

So here we go. Have you ever experienced an unexpected shock, tension, or nerve attack and find yourself trembling uncontrollably? It happened to me several times: once I remember when I was 9 or 11 years old and was taking the test and my legs start shaking. I remember that moment very deeply. If I remember, it was especially in stressful situations. Shaking, on the other hand, has never happened to me as anything other than a sign of utter fear. It turns out that it can be beneficial and is gaining popularity as a form of therapy. So for example in other forms like in Qi Gong, gentle shaking is a way of transforming stress into vital energy. So I was already somewhat familiar with this shaking.

However, the claims that a specific shaking therapy known as TRE (Trauma Release Exercise), can transform the way we handle stress, particularly old and accumulated baggage radically, fascinate me. We all can feel how stress builds muscular tension patterns in the body, like your stomach, jaw, or shoulders. It can lead to pain (back sickness is a prime example) and it can influence our behavior – wrath, anger, or even more severe things such as self-damaging. It is said that TRE works by changing our system and freeing us from default stress patterns that have been established to protect us. It is called 'trauma protection.' But we don't have to break us, but we can't stop hard life events.

What is TRE?

Trauma and tension release exercises are a few simple exercises that trigger a natural shaking reflection in the body. Shaking can unleash long-lasting tension patterns and encourage new connective feelings and ease. Shaking is the central nervous system's novel stimulus. New, safe and curious stimuli can encourage learning and growth. Trauma psychology is a complex and relatively straightforward physiology. Trauma fixes old parts of the brain on 'fight or flight' or 'freeze' defense cascades.

TRE® is a safe and natural process to reboot reflexes.

TRE is a simple group of exercises to help reset central nervous system reflection and habit. When we have tension and trauma, the old parts of the brain become tightly tightened, ready to fight or fly or freeze the body, into defensive strategies. TRE is a secure and simple way to release stress and wake your body up.

It works by deliberately enabling that unintentional shaking, to discharge stress and balance the system – a sort of factory reset, if you like, that we have all been through in times of terror. This is what all mammals, except us, do because we know how to control it. We all saw antelopes escaping from a predator's jaws, picking up, having a good shake then acting as never before. They're over it. They're over it. Dogs are also shaking to calm down. We are the only species that bottles everything up and prefers to be "stuck against life," We just have to be a little more "mammal" to learn.

The shaking is a reboot that can be used to tell new, safe stories that don't need to arm themselves old-fashionedly, between your mind and body. To benefit from TRE, you don't have to have a specific trauma, and many of us don't know how or why we are responding to stress as we are. The good news is that it really doesn't matter. TRE tells us that we're not mad bad or ruined, be it anxious, depressed or overwhelmed.

I think we're not connected enough to our bodies and too much in our heads. This would seem to be supported by the popularity of awareness, which helps us to link up with the present rather than old stresses.

For me, the experience was magical. I shall persist, however; it will relax, it will be easy, it will be mindful and progressive and it will be good for my meditation and yoga practices. It is very easy to know that I can bend against stress with some easy exercises.

Here is a great video: