Basic Principles of a Globally Agreeable Economy
in Harmony with the Laws of Life 

1. The global situation:

To begin my reflections on an economy that is in harmony with the laws of life I summarize the most essential thoughts of Edward Goldsmith about the global situation which he described so impressively as the editor of the “Schwarzbuch der Globalisierung” (Blackbook of Globalisation) in the last chapter. 

In 1995 when  the World Trade Organisation WTO was founded at the so-called Uruguay circle to become the most important instrument of globalisation, one told the people that globalisation would happen to the benefit of all creatures on earth. Many believed in that since the reasoning seemed to make sense and globalisation was “in the air” (e.g. as a consequence of the Internet), seeming to be the next step in the development of humankind. It is a fact, however, that the gap between poor and rich has been continuously growing since then, the environment has been polluted worse than ever before and criminality, unemployment, mal-nutrition, homelessness and diseases keep growing and growing.

This is mainly due to the fact that most local economies broke down under the pressure of globalisation. Hardly any former subsistence economy can survive under the competitive pressure of multinationals; no third world country can in fact develop under the conditions of the IMF and the World Bank. With the increasing disappearance of local autonomies also the social holding together of tribal societies (amongst the indigenous peoples) and  communitarian entities in the countries of the western world disappeared. Their traditional social functions ceased to exist which causes huge problems e.g. in the caretaking for older and sick people, increased criminality etc. Well, globalisation has an answer to this problem, too: privatisation of all the social functions which had so far been carried out by the existing communitarian entities. Since these social services have to be paid now, however, the costs of living of almost all people increased, with the exception of a few rich people who make money with this system. Simultaneously something like an atomisation of the society starts; i.e. the complete privatisation and lastly the isolation of the individual.

Just a hundred years ago the social functions where still carried out by big families,  communities or parishes. Within these communitarian entities people produced the necessary food mostly by themselves, as well as the clothes; they reared the children and took care of the old and sick ones and kept up the social order (also jurisdiction). This “social economic system” worked almost entirely without money! It based on the “social capital” of communities and communitarian entities.

Globalisation transformed all social activities into commodities; they are privatised, i.e. given into the hands of multinationals, in a way that they can be globally marketed and negotiated. This process, however, isolates these activities form their natural social context, i.e. they are de-humanised. 

The same thing globalisation does to the social bonds it also does to the ecological bonds in the natural biotopes and cycles. At an increasing rate highly complex ecosystems are destroyed in favour of low-complex monocultures and artificial natures are created (mono-cultural agriculture, over-dimensioned water reservoirs, greenhouse effect, change of the world climate etc.).

In one sentence: Globalisation replaces the social services of the local communitarian entities by the global money economy and the natural function of the biosphere by a  technology which doesn’t agree with nature.

This process also bases on the increasing dissolution of local communitarian entities (big families, tribal communities, parishes) into the mutilated form of the nuclear family. They are no longer autonomous social and economic unities and this de-roots the human beings fundamentally from their meaning of life. Also the term of democracy is mutilated when the original social entities discontinue to exist. Nowadays, political decisions are even no longer taken by the individual states, but they were discarded with the installation  of the WTO, of international trade agreements etc. an “de-facto world government” (WTO, G-8-summit meetings, Davos etc.) who takes its decision according to the will of the multinationals. 

Consequently a real democracy bases mainly on the re-introduction of local and economic autonomy. This includes the rooting of the people with the place where they live, the production of their food, their clothes and their houses. It also includes the re-integration of the human beings into the natural ecological systems they live in and the autonomous administration of their resources (land, water, air, animals, plants, ...). “Only if and when this whole community is healthy also its members can remain mentally and physically healthy in a sustainable way.“ (Wendell Berry, based on Edward Goldsmith). Only this way it will also be possible to let the environment sustainably be what it is: the elementary basis of our life which keeps us alive. The local economic systems must take care to administer the energy and the resources in a sustainable and covering way. Also the caretaking for the needy ones (sick or old people, ...) must be re-integrated into the local social systems.

Diseases, unemployment, decreasing purchasing power, increasing criminality, all caused by globalisation, and the de-rooting of the people provoke a negative economic spiral where the costs for the elimination of these problems continuously rise while the necessary money is in fact available to ever less people. Consequently, the globalised way of economy will at last destroy itself because it destroys the basis of the life of the people who are supposed to carry it. 

Many people will have to learn again how to survive outside/beyond the globalised economy. Autonomous communitarian entities will have to emerge which take the fulfilment of their needs of living back into their own hands. Those communitarian entities will not “develop backwards” though, all the more they will make use of the natural inventions of our times as for example the decentralised production of energy, the insights of modern ecology, nature-harmonious building, alternative medicine etc.

This amplified anti-globalisation movement, this „party of the communities“ will at first have little money and power but in the course of time the number of their members will necessarily increase more and more. „if such a party came to power, it could develop and realise coordinated strategy for a less painful transition towards the kind of society and economy which will be able to offer our children some future on this threatened planet earth“ (Wendell Berry, based on Edward Goldsmith).

2. Basis Ideas about a New Economy

In the autonomous communitarian entities which are to be found, (we call them „healing Biotopes“ or Peace Vilalges“) the people re-learn to become aware of the sources of their cosmic origin, to get to know these natural resources of their lives more deeply, to protect, to honour and to sustainably consolidate them within themselves. Such places need a completely new perception of the economy of life.

Where can we find clues for this new perception? Economy we normally define as the teaching of the economic relation amongst human beings. If we were to not freely invent these relations but to understand them from our source, as the evolutionary beings we are, we arrive at the following term of ecology: the teaching of the co-operation of the living creatures. There is also an economy in nature and this economy has been developed during millions of years in the course of evolution: Wouldn’t it be recommendable for us to take this kind of economy as an example in order to develop an economy for humanity? 

What are the basic principles of ecology, however? How do living beings organise their co-habitation naturally and together with the surrounding nature in order to built small but stable biotopes and stable cycles in the bigger dimension?

Some of these basic principles are:

-          Building up of systems with a maximum complexity to reach utmost stability.

-          Climbing up towards systems of ever higher order levels by means of this increasing complexity.

-          To reach this all systems of nature are systems which are open towards the whole – and not closed up systems.

-          They dispose of a high degree of decentralisation and job-sharing.

-          Symbiosis: mutual support by means of exchanging “waste products” which are nutrition for others.

-          No equivalence of giving and taking but building up the biggest possible energy, information and material cycles for the best possible sustention of all participants.

-          Adjustment of the living being to the individual environmental conditions (flexibility). 

Without these “mechanisms” of evolution a constant upward development of this life on earth wouldn’t have been possible at all.

The ecology, which evolved in this process as the interplay of the living beings amongst each other, itself developed certain economic basic principals and basic structures: 

-          The building up of self-sustainable systems or biotopes (autonomy);

-          The building up of ever bigger networks of interplay up to the development of a communitarian atmosphere as the living condition for all living beings.

-          The biotopes work predominantly in a decentralised way and based on the division of labour, whereby their members mutually accomplish and foster each other by means of their individual special qualities;

-          Nature doesn’t know “waste“;

-          “Trade“ doesn’t follow the pondering between what one member is giving and what it receives from the whole – each member automatically gives all it/s/he has to give;

-          In case one of the members is lacking something anyway, it is flexible enough to adjust to the new conditions – it mutates.

A new economy of the human beings, which follows these principles, is first and foremost an economy of giving. Georges Bataille developed this economy when he realised that the sun is the biggest giving organ of our original cosmic space. It gives itself without limits and enables the development of any life on our planet. But also the living creatures themselves give away everything they don’t need for themselves. And due to the grown  global field of ecology they receive everything that they need for their living. It is this basic principle of giving because of which Jesus could say the following sentence with scientific precision: “See the birds under the sky, they do not seed, they do not harvest and yet their heavenly farther feeds them anyway. It is not a biblical miracle but the result of a millenniums long evolutionary process. Only when the ecological cycles of nature are destroyed to such an extend as they have been by the human beings to date can this statement become problematic for a living being. It is not the fault of evolution, however, when animals die of thirst or hunger in the desiccated zones of Africa but it is the deed of the human being who decided to act consciously or unconsciously against nature.

In the first place the economy of nature is thus the unconditional giving of all that is not needed for survival.

Secondly it is also the building up of sufficiently complex, well reflected systems of self sustainment and lasting sustainability. Autonomy is a paradigm that guarantees the survival of biotopes.

In the same way decentralisation and work sharing are essential features of a functioning biotope each member of the biotope “knows” exactly what it has to do, what it has to give, and what it needs from the whole, what it is and with whom or what it is symbiotically connected.

It doesn’t charge up its giving and taking in the direct sense; what we call money doesn’t exist in nature in this way. All the same there is something like an “economic consolidated balance sheet“, a “general gross product“ of nature, and they are rather positive since the development of life so far has always been going forward, towards ever higher complexity, towards the building up of an ever growing general balance of “inner” energy and consciousness on earth (Teilhard de Chardin). 

Lets try to become fully concrete: A new economy of humankind bases on the giving interplay of autonomous centres. Lastly, money will discontinue to exist, even as a means of exchange or payment, for there is nothing that ought to be paid.

At this point we have arrived where the economy of life on earth assimilates to the actual essence of love. In the end the one who loves doesn’t ask what s/he gets in return either. When there is resonance in love – and love always bases on a certain resonance – we will receive what we are searching for or what we need. Right now or later. The question is merely about how wide or how big one can see and sense/experience the surrounding of one’s own power of love. In a community carrying a Healing Biotope love always happens under a clear vision and on a higher order level; she is “like a fireball” and wants to be passed on, the same way the sun gives away its light and its warmth. 

“You cant buy love; but once you will have become intelligent it will be given to you.“ (Freely based on Zarah Leander.)

When we re-learn to give ourselves and to allow ourselves to be given presents in the area of money or else in the area of our workforce we will also learn this again in the area where it seems most difficult to us: i.e. in the area of love. Giving love, love which gives from the abundance of the heart: That’s true affluence and that’s certainly also a part of the inner target gestalt of every human being. 

One more thing about the parallelism of economy and love: the human economy we know makes the cycles of giving and taking very small. As a rule two people negotiate with each other what they consider to be equivalent; giving and taking have become the private issue of a small mental cycle – exactly like in love, too. The way human beings act in the area of love and the way they act in the area of money is lastly exactly the same since our habits in the area of money are a result of our experiences in the area of love. In the end the  decisive question in both cases is in how far do I trust in the spiritual guidance in my life i.e. in how far do I dare to integrate myself into the bigger cycles of the universal existence of our self.

Once we will have reached the very ground of our anchor and love the question of economy will have (dis)solved by itself: why shouldn’t we freely give everything to a world whose self and whose essence we love? The building up of Healing Biotopes is a first start in the creation of such a world on the small scale. Thus the internal economy of a Healing Biotope will be characterised by the idea of communitarian property (i.e. the communitarian abolition of private ownership). At first, this refers to all the possessions, i.e. mainly: the appreciation and thus the caretaking and the maintenance of the terrain, buildings and its infrastructure. Gradually, it also refers to all services, though, which all the members will do for the community without being paid for them, for the communitarian entity takes care of the needs of all its members. 

Historical insertion: In the history of our project we received almost all the financial means as donations/gifts, and we are very grateful for that. We call this economic principle "spiritual economy" because in this context money flows along certain spiritual lines of sense and not along the normal equivalents. To go for this kind of economy requires a considerable portion of faith and trust, of course. We did that in our project from the very beginning on and experienced a lot of miracles in the same way we caused miracles for others, too.

3. The Transition:

During the time of transition from the normal towards the fully communitarian economy (and the final complete abolition of money on a global scale) the individual communitarian entities could set up internal money systems, a so-called parallel currency besides the existing monetary system, to reward the services of the individual members of the community; thereby an internal, communitarian “ring of barter” with an own currency is introduced.

What would be interesting as a next step is the extension of this parallel currency to the continuously growing network of developing Healing Biotopes, Peace Villages, and other communities or interested individuals. An ever bigger “ring of barter“ would grow, within which the different products and services could be “traded”. Nowadays, such “rings of barter“ already exist in manifold ways. A united “council” of responsible people of those rings would be needed to communicate about the matter and its practical feasibility.

At present, the question of the legal ownership of Healing Biotopes and Peace Villages can only be clarified by founding non-profit foundations or associations. Only these kinds of institutions are based on the supra-personal aspect of possession. Healing Biotopes or Peace Villages shouldn’t belong to someone personally but the should be worldwide foundations (or associations) excluding the possibility of interventions by local/regional or national authorities though. They ought to be “non-profit, independent states” created by the UN where the members can autonomously decide upon there issues.

Since the legislative regulation of foundations and associations are in the hands of the individual states appropriate foundations or associations should be founded in each country where the people who are cooperating in the building up of a common network live. Thereby, also a growing legal network would develop and be a basis of the worldwide project of the healing Biotopes.

4. Closing Words

Once more: the notions of economy that we create for ourselves are characterized by our experiences in love.

When love couldn’t grow any longer the thought of revenge and destruction against anything that exists came up automatically, driven by the drive of survival. This is why our environment is so destroyed.

When love couldn’t grow any more to give away itself nature and its evolution started to be rejected. The idea of “private”, of private property, came up not only regarding one’s own wallet but also regarding all the gifts (resources) of planet earth. This is what we experience to be globalisation, nowadays.

When love couldn’t grow any more people started to calculate, started to reckon: how can I get or make the best out of everything for myself now: ensuring myself, buying insurance for myself, and how can I tailor my private happiness out of everything? This was the beginning of the human being fearing the human being, of the human being dominating the human being.

When love can grow again, however, when Healing Biotopes in this sense, which will restore the original trust into creation and into the love of people for me, exist again - then I will no longer reckon, I will no longer calculate; then, I will fully dedicate myself to the development and the blossoming of more such places on this planet for my benefit and the benefit of all I love.

Rainer Ehrenpreis, Tamera, January 2004