Global or local? THPVP: a vital regeneration

A practical example

The clock strikes 1967, I have just been elected head boy at an elite boarding school and am travelling to the first district head boy conference, leaving of the privileged cocoon behind and venturing into a completely different world of ideas, in which there is talk of democracy, equal rights, participation, Benno Ohnesorg, Rudi Dutschke, Habermas, the Vietnam War, revolution, awakening, a new era, and so on.

Within a few hours, I was infected by the virus of world improvement, an affliction that has not left me to this day, even if today it is no longer about improvement, but about salvation, and above all about understanding the world.
After returning to my elitist enclave – which seemed to collapse in the following years, the Dutschke assassination, Bader-Meinhof etc. – even my later first great French love was enthusiastically involved in the Paris May of 1968 … I became a black sheep. I can still see the astonished looks and the shaking of heads when I cheerfully announced that we now wanted a student council.

I instigated a small, local protest action that died out as miserably as all the “revolutions” and protests that flared up around the globe in the decades to come, calling for change.
And went into inner emigration, from which I only awoke when I was finally able to leave the institution with my A-levels in my pocket.

From trauma to dream

The trauma of the powerlessness I had experienced now gradually began to transform into a dream of another world, which turned me into a nomad – as Bruce Chatwin says, the original human form of existence. This wanderlust made me travel once around the globe and several times to India, visit cultures and world views, roam through fields of knowledge and philosophies and repeatedly seek out encounters with seekers who had cast off the familiar, crossed borders in the unknown … and provided me with completely different, strange and sometimes “crazy” explanations of the world.

Meanwhile, the “Old World”, which had given me a bloody nose as a schoolboy, was not idle. The reaction of the political and economic forces in control of the West to worldwide protests such as those against the US Vietnam War and to alternative lifestyles such as the hippie movement fuelled by new music was … fascinatingly efficient.

While I was trying my hand at local politics in Munich and in this context, too, was once again committed to co-determination, was involved in citizens’ initiatives that opposed undesirable municipal developments (and were even successful at times, for example in the “rescue of Nikolaiplatz”, which has remained undeveloped even today, almost 50 years later) … on the other side, in the large transnational corporations, in the state apparatuses and in the international organisations created after the Second World War, a huge learning and reaction process was taking place. It was a process that later became visible under the term globalisation, but was much broader and more far-reaching in scope, encompassing and changing human existence and the biosphere in all its dimensions … and steering it onto a self-destructive path, at the end of which we now stand before an abyss.

Globalised aberrations

The main driver in this development process, which had a global impact on people’s living conditions and the biosphere, was a general striving for standardisation and regulation in conjunction with public relations. Initially, this was primarily about optimising supply chains and productivity for large companies and their unhindered access to the world’s markets – or, without euphemisation, exclusively about maximising profits, because the WEF narrative of stakeholder capitalism or green acronyms such as ESG and SDG had not yet been invented.

Naturally, globalisation could not be achieved without corresponding agreements and influence within international financial organisations such as the BIS, WTO, World Bank, IMF or UN agencies such as the WHO and FAO.

In these parallel processes of strategy and policy development, the official international organisations were then joined by private players such as the Bilderberg Conference, the Trilateral Commission, later the World Economic Forum, better known as the WEF, as well as philanthropic foundations of families and individuals. The latter, with its diverse cast of actors from business, politics and also intellectuals, scientists, technicians and creative artists, assumed the function of hinges or membranes through which the Old World was able to shape political, social, economic and cultural relations according to its perception of reality.

 

Albert Einstein’s law

Why am I describing this?

Well, on the one hand, it is about the continuation and perfection of a cartel-like, elitist governance system, which I already criticised rather intuitively as a student, motivated by personal freedom and political, today I would say: ontological, reasons. Today, the old world of yesteryear has recreated itself more profitably, more comprehensively and more mercilessly.

On the other hand, it is now obvious that this global system, its basic assumptions about life and driving mechanisms, is leading humanity to suicide by destroying the biosphere (or mutual nuclear extinction) – whereby the quality of life of the majority of humanity plays only a marginal role for this transhuman guidance system.

Why is that?

The proclaimed goals are quite different. Why is this global governance alliance not capable or willing to protect the biosphere, avoid wars and enable the majority of people to live in dignity using the means of a highly developed science and productive economy, with sophisticated government, political and media control mechanisms and despite thousands of well-meaning agreements between the world’s “leaders”?

I think that there is certainly an awareness of the problems, but the practised and conceived tools and solutions are unsuitable. Today, it is even believed that a major reset will solve the problems by expanding and intensifying uniformity/standardisation, regulation and control. By placing the management of the control system in the hands of a small, select group of trained and like-minded “global leaders”.

But the catastrophes of environmental destruction, global warming, impoverishment and conflicts cannot be averted by “more” of what we have, but will only be accelerated and exacerbated by “more”. Because, as Albert Einstein once aptly put it, “you can never solve problems with the same mindset that caused them.”

We cannot simply save the world in the same way that we are ruining it!

We cannot simply continue to exploit Africa, for example – e.g. disposing of our waste there or producing new electronics for “green” energy technology by mining rare earths in the Congo – and save the planet at the same time.

A radical new beginning

Finally, a few figures on the use of resources that have convinced me that humanity has embarked on a path of madness, that a radical rethink is necessary:

• The global military expenditure of the world’s states to kill people amounts to around 3+ trillion (3,000,000,000,000,000) US dollars annually (!)
• Global spending on medical and pharmacological care for people amounts to USD 10+ trillion annually
• Global spending on government/bureaucratic systems to manage and control people $30+ trillion annually
• Every year, 70+ billion animals are killed for human consumption, whose food is grown on 70% of the planet’s agricultural land, generating a turnover of 1 trillion US dollars
• The market capitalisation of the 100 largest companies in the world amounted to more than USD 35 trillion in 2021
• Elon Musk of all people is/was/is the first US dollar trillionaire in history … sic!

It is unavoidable: We have to start again, rethink 50,000 years of human history, find out “where we took a wrong turn”.

If we do not dedicate ourselves consistently and with all available resources to this research and try to develop a new philosophy of science, a new theory of human consciousness/mind and a new valid theory of life, we are lost.

We need a new way of thinking, indeed we need a new concept of thinking that leads to new best practices that are embedded in a new relationship to reality.

A way of thinking that is able to create a credible, comprehensible narrative with which we can become aware of the fragmentation of our perception and recognise its limitations and inherent contradictions or paradoxes.

In order for humans to live meaningful and fulfilled lives on this planet, we must be able to agree on a valid answer to the question that is recognised in all political systems, cultures and ethnic groups:
“What does mean to be human? Where is humanity placed in the cosmos and how are humans embedded in the biosphere with trillions of fellow creatures of all sizes and structures, which are even at home within us, which we inhale and exhale with every breath, without which we cannot live?”

The Human Purpose Village Project (THPVP)

It was against this backdrop that the concept of the Human Purpose Village Project emerged, which combines the aspects of a good life on a village scale, a research lab or an experimental field and, to a certain extent, the aspect of an ark.

A project that points beyond itself and dreams of a mosaic of local projects (“I have a dream”) that are inspired by a common idea. Today, the earth and societies must seek the cure in small-scale and diversity, not in a single solution that is disseminated, but in a globally networked ecosystem of related, intelligent solutions, each unique in its place, as Charles Eisenstein has put it.

The Human Purpose Village Project aims to develop the resilient framework conditions and structures on which these questions can grow and unfold in order to reap the fruits of the answers that create the feeling: “As humans, we know why we are here and why we do what we do”.

The Human Purpose Village is the place where normal social, cultural, economic and communal life takes place. In which a village community goes about its normal everyday life, but also utilises the available resources for self-development and self-exploration and participates in the research projects and instruments in a feedback process.

With its scientific, research and educational infrastructure, its forward-looking architecture, village culture, technology and its human and economic-financial resources, the Village is in an intensive exchange with the surrounding existing systems and fulfils a catalyst function for them.

The realisation

The realisation follows the biological principle of grafting, i.e. the creation of the external structures uses the conventional economic, financial and constructional processes of real estate development such as company formation, financing, investment capital, land acquisition, planning, value creation, marketing, sale, etc.

The realisation is in the hands of a competence-diversified, high-calibre, international project management team, which is supported by a scientific advisory board.

For the first Human Purpose Village, an environment that offers the most favourable conditions possible for a prototype in terms of climate, geographical location, biosphere (fauna/flora), geopolitical situation, historical and cultural heritage, infrastructure and economic development makes sense.

The last human

When philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche 150 years ago contemplated the “last human” and where we would end up if we carried on as before (and we have carried on), he had Zarathustra, the mystical ancient Persian philosopher – who demanded that the world must be based on truthfulness and whose teachings on good thinking, speaking and acting laid the foundations for our current idea of ethics – speak the following sentences:

“Woe! There will come a time for the most despicable human being, one who can no longer despise himself. Because he thinks he can do anything, that he has morality, violence and the law on his side.”

“It is time for humans to set themselves a goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. Its soil is still rich enough for this. But this soil will one day be poor and tame, and no tall tree will be able to grow from it …”

… if we don’t start now …