Level 4 Sustainocratic Regional Development

Abstract

In autumn 2015, we were surprised by two different but highly significant signs of support for our method of working.

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In autumn 2015, we were surprised by two different but highly significant signs of support for our method of working:

• 1. The French multinational VINCI Energies gave AiREAS the European VINCI partnership award for innovation ,

• 2. The research company VentureSprings positioned AiREAS at the level of a peer 4¹ regional development, the highest evolutionary level, in their report on Smart City initiatives in Eindhoven.

The combination of these two recognitions was a decisive factor for our plan to expand our sustainocratic format throughout the world. Sustainocracy was no longer considered a form of abstract idealism but rather a practical reality, not a revolution in the name of a ‘different society’ but an evolution towards a new, modern reality. Evolution is less confrontational than the disruptive change of a revolution and shows a pattern that we also can relay back to the Kondratiev sinus of economic evolution following the industrial revolution. The Kondratiev cycle had already been related to my cyclic pattern of human complexities , including a powerful reference to the musical string theory of Pythagoras and Galileo Galilei, with a clear link to the behavior of the entire universe. Human behavior in a free biological environment bonds in the same way that DNA molecules connecting to produce living structures do. Often, as a result, human beings remain trapped in old bonding systems and cannot connect to other energies to which they feel attracted, unless they free themselves first. This type of bonding into new value-driven communities has a different energy than that displayed by economic hierarchies and activities. They are parallel types of universe that interact but don’t mingle. That explains why economic lifestyles could become dominant at the expense of life on Earth. The system lacks the natural emotional and spiritual bonding mechanisms of awareness and choice that unite people.

The first economic boosts in the world were generated by new technologies applied to mobility and infrastructures, allowing globalization of industrialized trade to take place. The subsequent boosts were related to the petrochemical influence on productivity through plastics, electricity and individualized automotive abilities. Finally, the IT infrastructure of the internet and integrated communication facilities, making information accessible to the entire world, formed a bridge to the current situation of a strong global psycho-social evolution , the collective positive disintegration² that communities now go through.

In 2008, we could only speculate as to what would bring about the new Kondratiev peak, even though we ourselves had already experienced the deeper awakening of our individual awareness. The mainstream society was still managed by the old economic reality, which was kept alive through unjust capital injections. On the one hand, such injections were counterproductive, because they interrupted the natural cyclic pattern of renewal and kept the obsolete structures going for a while longer. The prospect of crisis would only get deeper and harsher as the consequences of the old global mismanagement of the political and economic hierarchies continued. On the other hand, it offered the opportunity for any alternative ideological and evolutionary patterns, such as Sustainocracy , to become more robust through experimentation, the grouping of new age initiatives and improvement of the argumentation through the build-up of proofs of concept. When disaster eventually strikes (again), then the alternative will have matured enough for sustainable progress. Evolution then becomes a genuine executive leadership choice.

The disaster of a crisis is now, however, not just economic, but also humanitarian and ecological. Numerous incidents around the world show that humankind is on the verge of collapse due to its own mismanagement and abuse. Entire cities have become vulnerable due to the effects of climate change and pollution, combined with the historical demographical positioning of the conglomerations around trade. The dependence on financial instruments and focus on hierarchies of materialism did the rest.

The major problem that cities and regions face is the hierarchical structure of our communities. The human motivation to be part of a community is generally limited to self-interest around economic facilities, social securities and services provided by cities. The general mental distance of any given population from our natural core values of life is unsustainably huge. We have grown used to relating to the dead things of materialism that surround us in abundance and to which we have given more value than our own potential creativity and the development of life. Our natural creativity, which made us stand out as a species with the ability to govern our needs through productivity and planning, has made us the 6th cause of a mass extinction of life on our planet since its birth, as we described at the beginning of this book.

Regional territorial management is based on the leadership of political and economic drivers that are consistently permitted to rise above universal ethics at the level of the citizenry. The economy of growth has become a norm, attached to the trade of death instead of the facilitation of life. Consequences such as health problems, behavioral disorders, pollution, and catastrophes are addressed as a costly problem to be remediated without any proactive actions that might avoid the humanitarian and ecological drama in the first place. The combination of generalized public apathy and reluctance with money- and power-driven political structures and fragmented, financially-measured responsibilities shows that we have reached an impasse that will be difficult to break through. This societal structure is not just obsolete; it is lethal, simply because no one can be pinpointed as being ultimately responsible for this disaster. In the end, it is our species as a whole that is responsible, but no one in our current context of societal complexity feels this pressure, passing the buck to others in the process. Democratic choices have mutated into an outsourcing mechanism of self-interest that has established a hierarchy around organized greed and power. In this field of perceived reality, change is not welcome.

7.1 Laudata Si

The drawing shown below, of the hierarchical structure between motivation, steering and ethics, was inspired by a theological and philosophical explanation after the publication by the Catholic Church of Laudata Si, by theologian and professor of philosophy and systematic theology, Eduardo Echevarria.³ While the call for responsibility from Pope Franciscus I appeals on the motivational level through the meaning of ‘Laudata Si ’ (‘Praise be to you’) for the care of our common home, this is a significant step away from the hierarchical positioning of the church for over 2000 years.

In the tradition of hierarchies, the lower level represents the immense mass of people who have a low degree of awareness or even consciousness. They are being guided by those who are illuminated (priests), while the layer of ethics is in the confinement of God, interpreted by the directive of the human representatives who steer the people. This type of powerful organization has been copied by industry and is still in use within large multinationals and governments. Instead of guidance through the interpretation of God’s message, it becomes political and economic. While there is room for reflection on the interpretation of morality (God’s creation of life) in the church, there is none in the money-driven realities that worship the economized trade and possession of dead goods. Inspired by this ancient hierarchical structure, combined with my own awareness of psychosocial processes fostered in my work with STIR, and with knowledge of the same transition shown in the Kondratiev evolution, I modified the drawing in the following way:

The industrial hierarchies considered the development of knowledge at the motivational level to be important for enhancing their productivity. Education focused on cognitive issues, such as basic knowledge of language and calculus, within the normative of obedience to directives. Infrastructures were needed for the logistics of producing and moving goods, and this became the driver behind the Kondratiev cycles of economic peaks. The workforce was contracted to remain obedient to the industrial hierarchy in exchange for a salary and education. This educational requirement was taken over by the first constitutions to install the ‘learning obligation’ through the development of a school system based around the same principles of obedience and material cognitive knowledge.

People started to learn to read and write, gaining access to the wisdom of both the churches and the industrial economic processes. The reading of books by the population developed into the power for self-reflection , which brought people into direct contact with their own perception and confusion of moral responsibility . The psychosocial (r)evolution had started, awakening people to their own confusion concerning what life is all about and bringing them to the quest to understand right and wrong (Dabrowski’s positive disintegration) at a personal level without the indoctrination of a church around guilt or an economy around debt.

Meanwhile, the globalization of industrialized processes had trapped humankind in a flow of blind self-interest , expressed in the desire to possess objects that give us a feeling of identity and differentiation. All attention had been taken away from life itself, away from the adaptability and creativity based on our core values of living life. The human world had entered into a devastating competition for resources in the name of sustaining the economies of trade and the individual desire to “have”. The industrial and economic hierarchies became dominant at the expense of global life and moral education. The church and its indoctrination tended to disappear as humankind found satisfaction in self-interest and a perception of abundance , not realizing that this abundance is based on producing death, not life. Within my own lifetime, the world population rocketed up to the astonishing amount of 7 billion people, further growing to 9 billion. This combination of factors has brought us to a point of singularity which will invariably lead to a generalized collapse.

But this collapse has only to do with our materialism , not our original free human spirit. As this happens, our wit and creativity in regard to life is once again stimulated, developing a movement for change that has already crossed over the chaos the materialistic focus, allowing us to let go of that while concentrating on life. The human spirit follows natural patterns between relaxation and stress, as we have seen in our medical research into heart rate variability . But our economy only follows the single pattern of relaxation and has no mechanism for stress other than its own collapse. To compensate for this, a dual economic system needs to be put in place, one of both transaction (relaxation) and transformation (stress), representing continuous interaction within a community that can keep it alive and progressive. The next comparison shows how the human body works and how the economy could work in the same manner.

This is exactly the message and promise of the peer 4 level of regional development and the Sustainocratic multidisciplinary way of working. Globalization of materialism comes to an end and the localization of living mechanisms of co-creation are developed out of human self-preservation . This has huge implications for our societal formats . Peer 4 Sustainocracy helps this evolution forward, avoiding the collapse by creating a new workable format using the positive elements of the old system and adding new mechanisms of life.

7.2 The Big Turnaround

The regional executive is forced to step aside as large chunks of society start taking responsibility themselves, through the guidance of their own perception or interpretation of core human and universal values. Additionally, the credit crisis demands reactions beyond the political and economic hierarchy. The population starts demanding space to develop their new reality, as we have seen in Egypt and the so-called Arab Spring.⁴ On many occasions, the old hierarchy tries to keep itself intact, even at the expense of civil war or regional genocides. In nature, we see that a heartbeat elevates out of control, up to the level of a heart attack, if not compensated with rest through respiration and recovery. Death is then a serious possibility. Analogously, the economy will not survive if not oxygenized with fundamental innovation for change.

In certain cultures, the executive and the population become partners in seeking sustainable progress together. That is what occurred in Eindhoven with AiREAS. AiREAS created a new Kondratiev energy, a new social economic resonance . This compensates for the old, singular one.

Such events have everything to do with the people involved. In some cultures, the hierarchy of power is so demanding that a sustainocratic partnership is out of the question. In others, like in Eindhoven, both those at the executive level and the academically-educated population related more to shared authority and responsibility than to a systemic blockage maintained out of accumulated self-interest and manipulated directives . In our first publication, we already explained at great length the process of moving from individual to collective awareness and the complex process of letting go of old formats for the sake of sustainable progress. In practical reality, this means that regional development must also undergo a transformation. But essentially, it evolves. We are not really looking at a big turnaround but merely the acceptance of diversity into our societal and economic reality, a natural, self-aware interaction between stress and relaxation.

7.2.1 4 Levels of Regional Development

When we look at the development of cities over time, we can see many different types of motivator that have gotten a population to gather in close proximity to each other. The protection from hostile attacks by other groups was one such clear motivator, as was the existence of a marketplace for the trade of goods, such as at regional crossroads or in harbors. In all cases, the first level of regional development was the deployment of a basic infrastructure. This could be in the shape of a marketplace, a place where ships could dock, roads, etc. Housing facilities for those who remained around the facilities and actions were a logical consequence. As communities grew more complex, the infrastructures needed to integrate in order to optimize space and resources. The local human motivation of self-preservation was always the driver for this clustering, never core sustainocratic values . Why was this? Because our awareness had not yet reached a point of understanding. There was plenty of space to grow, and enough from which to take. This is not the case anymore.

As such, we learned to value dead products and imaginary financial resources more than life. The products became commodities with which we could show off status and wealth. Cities became conglomerates of the exchange of goods and public events. The impressive growth of cities over time, especially over the last few decades, shows how much time the local executives had to spend developing the first and second infrastructural layers of their regions. In the following videos, one can get an idea of the expansion of such places, which now house many millions of residents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WGPvWPpey8&list=PLzYZm159uzQNc7H5UCCXHx4c4TKdCeaNt.

The combination of an influx of people and the mentality of survival in an era of greed for those who had to deal with the city’s financial reality made cities a hotspot of vulnerability , pollution and all sorts of illegal (and legal) criminality. The need for regulation and control was already visible in the early 19th century, but became even stronger when the consequences developed exponentially. With regulation and control, we see government grow in the responsibility and costs needed to address both infrastructure and behavior at the same time. Level 3 (Smart City ) hence became an instrument for government officials to further extend their control systems and try to let technology help in planning the city’s short- and long-term evolution. Cities had become very vulnerable due to their dependence on resources from outside the city itself that were only accessible through the power of the concentration of wholesale and the availability of money. Basic needs such as food, water, building resources, energy supplies, etc., all became economized, while jobs in the city mainly related to the distribution of goods, semi-government (education, police, health care, maintenance, infrastructure, control) and real estate. Increasingly, people were entertained with events and kept docile through social securities . At the same time, in many large cities, sub-communities developed within the chaos of poverty, greed and indifference, forming ghettos and social inequality.

Financially, a city needs huge amounts of money to develop, and this money comes from taxes, government services, sales of property, etc. But this is often not enough, and financial debt grows exponentially. Speculation develops into inflation , which becomes known as the economy of growth. This growth can then be taxed again, giving the relative impression that the city is getting richer, but at the same time, both the costs of society and moral (and real) poverty rise even faster. In reality, the region gets poorer and poorer, but the story is told differently by political and economic interests. It finally becomes important for the city that responsibilities be shared. In Eindhoven, after the recognition of vulnerability due to the dependence on large industries that had moved into low wage areas, the idea of the Triple Helix developed. The Triple Helix involves the three pillars of the old money-driven society: government, education and business development. These enter into cooperation in an attempt to optimize local resources, develop innovations together and implement Smart technological solutions to manage the city effectively. The human being is still out of the picture, as real estate, speculation and technology prevail.

7.3 Primary resource of a city

In all this evolution , there is a strong segregation between dead, hardware-oriented capitalism and the soft, humanitarian and ecological balance in the region. Cities had become enormous mountains of concrete, glass and cement, with huge levels of pollution that created human and environmental health hazards and destroyed productivity, as well as landscapes. Health care can flourish, but the anthropocene is well on its way. Poverty starts to rise and so does the discomfort of heart, lung and vascular problems, together with behavioral disorders such as ADHD, dyslexia, burnouts, autism, etc. The economic system uses the planet and humankind for economic growth at the expense of death. When looking at the presentations of Smart Cities, they will invariably deal with housing, infrastructure, technology, mobility , ICT, etc., but never with the primary resource of a city: the creative, self-aware, healthy human being.

7.3.1 The Choice

At the level of a Smart City , a choice appears. When applying smart technologies, what use do we give to the outcome and data? Do we use them to facilitate the executive system for the benefit of expensive bureaucratic regulation and control? Or do we involve the core value, the human creative power of the city, to deal with the challenges that we face? When we decide to do the latter, we enter into a new era, that of the participation society , a Sustainocracy , in which core human and natural values lead, triggering creativity and finding unprecedented innovative solutions for local resilience , self-preservation and wellness.

The rules of interaction at level 4 are totally different from what we experienced up through level 3. In the center of the open space in level 4 (the grey smiley in the drawing above), we bring together the 4 core stakeholders of a region, the fragmented institutionalized essentials of a human life: awareness, territory, creativity, knowledge and behavior. [AU: That’s 5 things.] The core values of life become key, not the system nor the dead materialism . Our institutions become instrumental for serving life, instead of producing death. This places totally new demands on institutional and personal leadership , as we have seen throughout this book.

• The local government becomes a facilitating partner to its own population and eco-system,

• The local population becomes the primary resource for sustainable progress through value-driven creativity, co-creation and productivity,

• The local entrepreneurship becomes innovative within 4× profit dynamics as a partner towards a higher purpose other than product and service delivery,

• Education and science become servants in applying knowledge through participation processes, capturing and safeguarding new knowledge in the process.

The values created are shared, not accumulated individually.

7.4 The Sustainocrat

Key to this evolutionary process of reassembling the fragmented human characteristics of the old structure is the figure of the Sustainocrat . He or she is a representative of human life and its core values, independent of the systems and hierarchies. Without such a connecting individual, the multidisciplinary groups would become subject to the hierarchy of the territorial executive and ruled by the tradition of political and economic interests. When such an executive decides to work on the core values directly, they automatically come into conflict with the reigning materialistic interests. We have seen politicians get into severe trouble when trying to challenge the system from within. We need the leadership of such authorities, yet cannot sacrifice them to idealism. We have to find ways to use their personal awareness and empower their position by taking change outside of the system and then bringing it back in again. The afore-mentioned STIR loop holds the solution.

Executives that are invited to the value-driven co-creation tables cannot stay away as change occurs there. If they decide not to participate, they remain part of the problem rather than becoming part of the solution. This leads to a self-selecting process. Organizations that have no interest in change, nor the core human values, remain anchored in financial engagement while change occurs elsewhere. They have a tendency to disappear when change gets injected back into the system for the purpose of resolving the issues that upset the system in the first place.

Executives that step outside their financial engagement in order to commit to value-driven co-creation get the opportunity to look at their own organizations and the impediments to sustainable progress that the structure creates. Real leadership is then shown not only through proactive participation in producing change but also in removal of the obstacles that stand in the way of change. The position of such an executive in both environments becomes a transformative key. For the individual, this is a safe path, because obstacles are challenged using arguments based on proof, including expected results when complied with. There is no personal ideology anymore, but rather a core value-driven progress with practical instruments for change. Anyone in the old system who stands in the way of the progress of life can be dealt with through existing legal systems that claim human rights with respect for the integrity of life as their guiding principle.

For large enterprises, the challenge is to look at their participation in regional value creation as a feeding system or their own sustainable innovation platform. Rather than positioning their business on the side of economic growth through the massive exchange of materialistic instruments in a highly competitive environment, they can position themselves as catalysts for value-driven change with 4× profit expertise in those areas where 4× profit is also penetrating the local culture. This occurs everywhere around the world, often starting where the needs are most pressing and communities are small enough to enact level 4 co-creation.

The most important effect of stepping up to level 4 multidisciplinary co-creation is the gradual appearance of the column of values that acts as a bonding mechanism between all participating parties. The old materialistic playing field had exactly the opposite column, producing segregation and disunity all of the time. This segregation and distrust requires extensive mechanisms of rules, contracts and control, while level 4 multidisciplinary unity can function without all those mechanisms. In AiREAS, no one is contracted nor hired; all interact on the basis of confirmed talent, expertise, equality , commitment and trust .

On a social level, this type of involvement was perfectly possible with people whose reciprocal wishes were related to other values (such as food, energy, electronics, housing, etc.) than those captured by economic steering (money alone). We have shown that those other values were related to participative education (persuasive communication, Erasmus+ ), awareness and lifestyle (backpack, POP1 ), authentic value-driven entrepreneurship (APP, Hackathon , ILM , ICT) or governance in transition (saving money, producing better cohesion , reducing structures, empowering authority, etc.). To access the masses, however, we need to introduce new value systems that can replace the old and be accepted by the providers of basic needs or at least involve those basic needs in the chain of value creation. People relate to their surroundings out of self-preservation . While the old economic system became corrupted and obsolete, it will remain alive, despite everything, until an alternative is accepted with which everyone can resonate. This alternative can be the direct involvement in producing one’s own needs (such as FRE²SH ) or developing a new intermediary value system for sharing true values (such as the AiREAS coin).

In conclusion, the local deployment of level 4 regional development triggers the productivity of the population, but needs to be dealt with in a ‘fair share’ way through commitments, true values and reciprocity . A vibrant community is the result of passion, creativity and liveliness developing. People become aware of safe abundance through circular economies and social cohesion. Money is simply a means, just like natural resources, knowledge and creativity. The end result has to be harmony and wellness based on respecting the core values while eliminating greed and self-interest through the provision of co-created abundance for all.

The dialogue and societal rituals change as this new resonance with core values becomes accepted. This evolution can be detected everywhere. Even powerful forces that tend to try to disrupt harmony out of self-interest gained from chaos face a robust system that can protect itself from their attacks.

7.4.1 Wrapping Up

As a result of this POP exercise centered on air quality, health and lifestyle with civilian involvement and persuasion techniques, we learned a lot. We have tried to express this in this brief. Many people became involved, and they too, in reality, are the co-authors of this work. We write history together as Sustainocracy unfolds itself in front of us in the form of level 4 regional development, featuring much better perspectives for sustainable progress than where we have come from. We learned to put human complexity, personal motivation and reciprocity delivered by the surroundings with which we interact into perspective, whether it is within a money-driven hierarchy or a natural value-driven system. From an anthropological point of view, we see that humankind has the opportunity to evolve from a competitive species that produces its own chaos at regular intervals to a species that generates harmony, cohesion and symbiosis with its environment in the interest of wellness for itself.

The danger we face is that the results of new economic boosts, as the result of focusing on value creation in a self-resilient community, will eventually be taken over by the singular financial hierarchies in an attempt to maintain the status quo of growth. By creating a dual value system, we can counteract this and also establish an economic yin-yang that will keep a watch out for when imbalance is generated. The search for balance will be permanent, while we accept instruments of growth, collapse and renewal as part of our regional eco-system.

In reality, we created a new infrastructure on top of the old mechanisms of regional development. This infrastructure makes visible the invisible and interacts with human motivators rather than hierarchical control mechanisms, releasing new powerful energies for creative power. This resonates with values other than those of economics, producing a new human world with which to interact. We have produced a workable choice between one system that produces sustainable progress and one that does not. All this is available for other regions to use, reducing the vulnerability of communities quickly and developing them into resilient co-creations of wellness and progress.

7.4.2 Final Conclusion

One of the objectives of the POP was to see if we could create a working format for the purpose of eventually involving 4000 local civilians in a medical investigation. The answer was yes from a working format perspective. However, finding 4000 individuals for medical research proved to be very complicated when dealt with as a fragmented scientific goal. When dealt with within the scope of AiREAS, that of a participation society that needs constant feedback on health and environmental quality in order to make innovative choices, it is, indeed, possible. The research and feedback is then integrated into the overall structure of core values (the Health Deal) , with a tremendous amount of sub-objectives marked on its roadmap, each affecting human well-being in one way or another.

Repeating the POP medical and lifestyle research in blocks of 40 participants, connected to each value-driven context along the roadmap, we can reach 4000 and many more for both research and the effort to get all those participants to become pioneers and partners in progressive cultural changes. But before we can do this, a new social and economic commitment needs to arise.

Impact of the POP project on social participation in 2015/2016

Research context	Direct participants (ps + res)	Medical research?	Prime objective	Media Exposure
Axians App	150 + 19	No	Persuasion for expansion	Yes, paper, radio
POP 1	32 + 10	Yes	Medical and Lifestyle	Yes, local paper
Backpack	12 + 11	Yes	Lifestyle and Exposure	Yes, local paper, TV
Marathon	32 + 9	Yes	Persuasion and Medical	Yes, papers, TV, radio
Hackathon	15 + 24	No	Persuasion for expansion and Innovation	No
Erasmus+	120 + 12	No	Persuasion for expansion and Lifestyle	Yes, local papers
Total	361 + 75			>500K local people over 12 times Worldwide: millions of people through open access publications and presentations

The reach of the POP persuasion was much larger than anticipated and much more cost effective as well. We became aware that our exposure to pollution is caused by both lifestyle and our socio-economic context. Our medical research has shown that the negative effects of pollution are largely reversible. Lifestyle can be addressed through awareness programs and persuasive communication. But the socio-economic context requires a commitment from new leadership to put health development before money dependence. The old socio-economic dependence has led many self-aware people to feel blocked in their freedom to address their own health issues due to the economic pressure exerted by the old paradigm. Our POP ends here, with an invitation to the regional, national and global community to embrace their own evolution and accept that value creation and consumption go hand in hand, just like our respiration and heartbeats . If we balance stress and rest in our systems in a natural way, both our economies and our human wellness will be boosted. We will enter a new phase of humankind, one that can last many thousands of years with a stabilized population of around 10–12 billion individuals living in harmony with our planet Earth. The people of this generation will make that difference through the self-aware choice we have. If we don’t, we will choke, as nature has taught us. Only health in life survives, always, with or without us.

In the annex, we summarize this POP research as a global recommendation to reach out to each other in a Global Health Deal . The city of Eindhoven and the Province of North Brabant in the Netherlands mark the civilian and directive precedents. This is not a business deal; it is one of shared responsibility , one that can unite us throughout the world, as it has in our small but growing world of AiREAS and sustainocratic processes.