Category: Nature

  • Why Waking Up Exists

    Why Waking Up Exists

    An article for new readers who might be interested in a better future for humanity.

    All my life I’ve had a strong urge to fix things.

    Gadgets and machines — and systems. Situations where people suffer even though, intuitively, it feels like they shouldn’t have to. That urge was always paired with something else: a deep concern for humanity, and a simple desire for everyone to be able to thrive.

    Over time, one pattern became impossible to ignore. Again and again, the limits to human well-being traced back to the same source: money. How much you had of it. Or didn’t.

    Everywhere I looked, money seemed to generate problems — inequality, stress, conflict, environmental destruction. Not because people were inherently selfish or cruel, but because the system itself was built on scarcity, competition, and exclusion.

    That realization led to an obvious but uncomfortable question:

    How do you fix a system that large?

    For a long time, I couldn’t see an answer.

    Then I encountered ideas that changed the frame entirely. The Venus Project had turned everything upside down. Instead of asking how to distribute money more fairly, they asked a different question altogether: Why is money there in the first place? What if, instead of managing prices and profits, we managed what actually exists — the planet’s resources, our knowledge and technologies, and our collective capacity to care for one another?

    This way of thinking removes money from the equation and focuses on something more concrete: what we have, what we need, and how we can organize society so that everyone’s needs are met within ecological limits.

    That shift fascinated me. Not as ideology, but as design. As engineering applied to civilization itself.

    TVP had been exploring and sharing these ideas for decades, often with little traction. Inspired by their persistence, I didn’t want to write a political program or a manifesto. I wanted to explore what such a world would actually feel like.

    So I chose fiction.

    I began writing a story about a contemporary man who wakes up in a future where humanity has finally reorganized itself around cooperation, stewardship, and shared abundance. A world where the central question is no longer who can afford to live, but how can we make life work for everyone?

    That story became Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Over the many years it took to write the book, new ideas naturally emerged — about technology, psychology, governance, ecology,  human nature, and the story of the novel itself. All of them were woven into the story, not as lectures, but as lived reality.

    Waking Up exists to explore a simple, unsettling question:

    What would the world look like if we finally designed it to work — for people, nature, and for the planet?

    If this question resonates with you, you’re already part of the conversation and I urge you to share this article.

    If you would like to read the result of all these years of writing, you can find the book HERE. I thank you.

    ⸻

  • From Supply and Demand to Demand and Supply

    From Supply and Demand to Demand and Supply

    For centuries, the dominant logic of our economy has been supply and demand.

    Seemingly they try to fulfill a demand. So, something is produced. Then demand is measured again — or manufactured — and price adjusts accordingly. If demand is too low, marketing steps in to create it. If demand is high, prices rise. Scarcity becomes profitable.

    This logic has quietly inverted the purpose of production.

    Instead of producing what people actually need, we produce what can be sold — and then persuade people they need it.

    The result?

    • Overproduction of the non‑essential

    • Underproduction of the essential

    • Rising prices on food, housing, energy, healthcare, and land

    • Ecological overshoot and pollution

    • Stress baked into the system itself

    The hidden flaw in supply‑first thinking

    In a supply‑first world, need is secondary to profitability.

    Food is destroyed to keep prices stable.

    Homes can stand empty while people are homeless.

    Water can be privatized.

    Scarcity can be engineered.

    All of this is considered rational — even responsible — within the logic of supply and demand.

    But rationality is not the same as wisdom.

    A simple reversal that changes everything

    Imagine flipping the logic:

    Demand first. Supply second.

    Nothing is produced unless there is a real demand for it. Which of course is impossible within today’s logic and monetary system.

    And whatever there is a demand for will be produced — as long as:

    • it stays within ecological limits

    • it does not come at the expense of other people

    • it does not damage future generations

    This is not utopian.

    It is simply mature.

    What demand actually means

    In today’s system, demand is distorted by:

    • unequal purchasing power

    • artificial scarcity

    • advertising pressure

    • survival anxiety

    A demand‑first future assumes something radically different:

    That basic needs are already met.

    When people are not forced to compete for survival, demand becomes clearer, calmer, and more truthful. People ask for what they actually need — not what they fear losing status without.

    So what is “need”?

    Need is not limited to bare survival.

    It includes basic needs — food, shelter, water, healthcare, self-realization, safety — and the things people genuinely want once those basics are secure.

    Need emerges wherever a conscious, informed desire exists.

    For example:

    If a group of people want Coca‑Cola, then there is a demand — and meeting that demand becomes a legitimate task.

    In a demand‑first system, the question is not whether something should exist, but how it can be produced responsibly:

    • within ecological limits

    • without exploiting people or ecosystems

    • without externalizing harm to others or the future

    If those conditions can be met, production makes sense.

    If they cannot, the demand itself becomes a conversation — not a market opportunity.

    This shifts production from manipulation to dialogue.

    Needs are no longer guessed at, manufactured, or monetized.

    They are expressed — and answered. People ask for what they actually need — not what they fear losing status without.

    Production as response, not manipulation

    In a demand‑and‑supply world:

    • Production responds to lived needs, not speculative markets

    • Supply chains become adaptive instead of extractive

    • Waste collapses because excess production disappears

    • Prices lose their coercive role and fade from relevance

    Production becomes a service to life — not a mechanism for profit extraction.

    Technology makes this possible

    For the first time in history, we can:

    • measure real demand in real time

    • coordinate production globally

    • model ecological impact before acting

    • distribute without intermediaries designed to skim value

    The barrier is no longer technological.

    It is only conceptual.

    From fear to trust

    Supply‑first systems are built on fear:

    What if there isn’t enough?

    What if someone else gets more?

    What if I lose?

    Demand‑first systems are built on trust:

    We produce because someone needs this.

    We stop when the need is met.

    We respect planetary boundaries.

    This is not about controlling people.

    It is about listening to them.

    The quiet shift already underway

    We already see early signals:

    • on‑demand manufacturing

    • local energy production

    • open‑source collaboration

    • cooperative housing

    • circular design

    These are not anomalies.

    They are previews.

    A world that finally makes sense

    A civilization is mature when it no longer needs scarcity to function.

    When demand guides supply — instead of supply manipulating demand — production aligns with reality rather than fighting it.

    This is not the end of provision.

    It is the end of distortion.

    And it may be one of the simplest ideas powerful enough to change everything.

    If this perspective resonates, please share this article.

    You can explore this vision through story in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

  • The Clean Slate

    The Clean Slate

    Yes, there is huge inequality in the world. And yes, many people therefore argue that we should tax the rich more heavily, believing that this would somehow even things out.

    The problem is that this treats inequality as a mistake of the system — when in fact it is a requirement.

    The monetary system itself needs differences to function. Money only has value because it is scarce, unevenly distributed, and hoardable. If everyone had enough, money would lose its value. So taxation doesn’t fix the problem — it merely tries to soften the sharpest edges while keeping the underlying rules intact.

    That’s why the same problems keep returning.

    The True Face of the system

    Look around.

    We see a world where a tiny number of people accumulate staggering wealth while billions struggle to meet basic needs. Not because there is a lack of resources, but because access is filtered through money.

    We see products deliberately designed to stop working long before their real lifespan is over — not due to technical necessity, but because continuous consumption is required to keep profits flowing. This requirement of the system is of course devastating to the whole planet, causing resource depletion, pollution and climate change.

    We see poverty described as something that is “systemically entrenched” — an almost accidental admission that the problem isn’t individual failure, but structural design.

    These are not isolated issues. They are different expressions of the same logic.

    The wasteful system

    When a system produces inequality, waste, and scarcity as normal outcomes, trying to fix it with the same rules is like rearranging furniture in a house that is on fire.

    Redistribution debates miss the deeper question:

    Why is access to life’s essentials mediated by money at all?

    As long as money remains the central organizing principle, someone must lose so that others can win. Someone must be excluded so that value can exist. Someone must go without so that hoarding makes sense.

    Starting from a clean slate

    Yes — proposing a world without money and ownership sounds drastic.

    But here’s the real question:

    Why do we keep assuming that a centuries‑old system designed for scarcity, competition, and limited information should govern a planet with global awareness, real‑time data, automation, and unprecedented technological capacity?

    Imagine this instead:

    Humanity as one family arriving on Earth together — like a modern Robinson family, but on a planetary scale.

    No inherited privileges.

    No historical debts.

    No artificial scarcity.

    Just one planet, shared by many species, mankind as one of them.

    With today’s technology, we could design a system that takes everything into account:

    • the limits of nature

    • the needs of ecosystems

    • the well‑being of every human being

    • long‑term planetary sustainability

    In such a system, ownership becomes unnecessary. Stewardship replaces possession. Access replaces accumulation.

    From spoiled brats to a global family

    Our current behavior often looks less like civilization and more like a family fighting over toys in a burning house.

    We fight over borders, resources, money, and status — while having more than enough knowledge and technology to ensure a dignified life for everyone.

    A clean slate changes the game entirely.

    No one owns the planet.

    No one owns life’s essentials.

    No one hoards while others starve.

    Not because of moral superiority — but because the system no longer rewards that behavior.

    The real question

    So the question isn’t whether a clean slate is too radical.

    The question is this:

    How long can we keep pretending that patching a broken system will somehow turn it into one that works for everyone?

    Maybe it’s time to stop fixing.

    And start designing. From a clean slate.

    ⸻

    If this perspective resonates, I urge you to share this article..

    Do you want to experience how life in an optimized world can be? If so, explore the story and vision behind this in the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

  • This Land Was Made for You and Me — And Why We Forgot

    This Land Was Made for You and Me — And Why We Forgot

    When Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” it wasn’t meant as a patriotic sing‑along. It was a quiet protest.

    One of the verses that later disappeared tells the real story:

    As I went walking, I saw a sign there,

    And on the sign it said “PRIVATE PROPERTY.”

    But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing —

    This land was made for you and me.

    That line doesn’t celebrate a nation. It questions a system.

    Because the idea that land can be fenced, owned, and withheld from others is not ancient or natural. It is recent — and costly.

    ⸻

    Before land had owners

    For most of human history, land was not owned in the modern sense.

    Indigenous societies across the world understood land as something you belong to, not something that belongs to you. Communities stewarded territories collectively. People used land, cared for it, moved with it’s seasonal rhythm — but did not sell it as an abstract asset.

    Land was identity, ancestry, responsibility.

    When Europeans arrived and asked, “Who owns this land?”, the question itself often made no sense. There was no word for ownership as exclusion. What existed was use, care, and shared obligation.

    This wasn’t naïveté. It was systems literacy before the word existed.

    ⸻

    Enclosure changes everything

    Once land becomes private property, a chain reaction begins:

    1. Exclusion — someone is now outside the fence

    2. Scarcity narratives — “they want to take what’s ours”

    3. Defense structures — borders, armies, enemies

    And then comes the final step we rarely name:

    Young boys are recruited to defend land they will never truly own.

    Nationalism provides the emotional cover. You are told you are defending the nation, the flag, the people. But underneath the symbols, wars are still about territory, resources, and power.

    Private ownership doesn’t just divide land. It divides humanity.

    ⸻

    Guthrie saw it clearly

    Woody Guthrie performed with a guitar carrying the words:

    THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS

    He didn’t mean violence. He meant clarity.

    Songs, stories, and plain truth kill fascism by removing its disguise. Fascism thrives when people are taught to defend systems that quietly exclude them.

    Guthrie looked at hunger beside abundance, fences beside empty land, relief lines in the shadow of churches — and asked a simple question:

    Is this land made for you and me?

    That question is still unanswered.

    ⸻

    What’s different now

    For centuries, exclusive land ownership was justified by scarcity:

    • not enough food

    • not enough space

    • not enough coordination

    • not enough trust

    Today, that justification is collapsing.

    In a high‑tech world:

    • land can be mapped, monitored, and protected without being owned. It is mapped to the responsible stewards instead.

    • cities can take less space while offering more quality of life

    • ecosystems can be restored alongside human flourishing

    • abundance can be designed instead of fought over

    The technical reasons for exclusion are disappearing. What remains are habits, power structures, and fear.

    ⸻

    Returning forward

    This is not about going back to the Stone Age.

    It is about returning to stewardship, supported by modern tools.

    Indigenous cultures had the ethic right.

    We are finally approaching the technology needed to scale it.

    A future where land globally is shared, optimized, and cared for changes something fundamental:

    • there is nothing to conquer

    • nothing to hoard

    • nothing to defend from “others”

    When land stops being a weapon, war loses its fuel.

    ⸻

    Maybe the world is waking up

    An awakening isn’t learning something new.

    It’s realizing that something outdated no longer makes sense and remembering the original value.

    More people are quietly seeing that:

    • idle land beside homelessness is a design failure

    • destroying ecosystems to signal success is irrational

    • sending children to die for abstract ownership claims is obscene

    Woody Guthrie wasn’t dreaming of the future.

    He was reminding us of something we forgot.

    This land was never meant to be owned.

    It was meant to be shared.

    And for the first time in history, humanity may actually be ready to design a world that reflects that truth.

    ⸻

    If this perspective resonates, please share it. Stories are still the most powerful machines we have.

    And if you want to read a full story from a world where humanity has adopted this view globally, follow the former billionaire Benjamin Micheals in Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

  • The Global Family

    The Global Family

    We are all brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons.

    Not metaphorically. Not only spiritually. But literally.

    Modern science confirms what intuition has always whispered: all human beings descend from the same small ancestral family. Long before nations, borders, currencies, religions, or ideologies, there was simply family. Humanity did not begin as competing tribes or opposing camps. It began as people caring for one another in order to survive.

    What we call division today came much much later. 

    For most of our history, cooperation was not a moral ideal — it was a practical necessity. Family bonds expanded into clans, villages, and cultures. Over time, as populations grew and resources were unevenly distributed, systems emerged to manage complexity. Some of those systems brought stability. Others slowly replaced trust with control, kinship with contracts, and belonging with alienation.

    Somewhere along the way, we forgot something fundamental.

    The idea of a global family is not a new invention. It is a remembrance.

    In today’s world, we often speak about humanity as if it were an abstraction — billions of strangers divided by borders, interests, and identities, trading time and resources with money, and not seeing any other possibility. Yet at the smallest scale, humanity already functions without money, ownership, or coercion: within families. Families share. Families care. Families contribute according to ability and receive according to need, not because a system enforces it, but because relationship makes it natural.

    This is the seed

    When families expand their circle of trust beyond blood alone — into communities built on cooperation, contribution, and shared stewardship — something remarkable happens. The logic of family begins to scale. These are what I call Cities of Light: communities that function like extended families rather than competing units.

    And when such families and communities spread across regions, cultures, and continents — not through force, but through resonance — a quiet transformation occurs.

    The global family emerges.

    Not as a centralized authority.

    Not as a uniform culture.

    Not as a political project.

    But as a living network of families across Earth recognizing one another as kin.

    This is the complete realization of the brotherhood of man — not as a slogan, but as a lived reality. A world where diversity is preserved, individuality flourishes, and cooperation replaces fear as the organizing principle of society.

    The global family does not erase differences. It contextualizes them. Just as siblings can be different yet belong to the same family, humanity can remain diverse while acting in shared care for one another and for the planet that sustains us.

    Seen this way, the future does not require humanity to become something new.

    It requires us to remember what we already are.

    If this perspective resonates with you, please share this article, as the more people can imagine a better world, the bigger chance we have of actually getting there.

    And since you’ve read this far, you clearly enjoy reading, and I hope you enjoy this as well. And if you’d like to experience a full story from a future world like this, you can find the book Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity HERE.

  • The Meta‑Crisis — And the World That Could Come After

    The Meta‑Crisis — And the World That Could Come After

    We hear the word crisis so often that it has almost lost its meaning.

    Climate crisis. Economic crisis. Political crisis. Mental‑health crisis. Energy crisis. Trust crisis.

    But what we are actually facing is something deeper and bigger — a meta‑crisis.

    A meta‑crisis is not one problem. It is a web of problems, all feeding each other. Climate breakdown accelerates economic instability. Economic insecurity fuels political polarization. Polarization erodes trust. Loss of trust paralyzes collective action — which in turn worsens climate breakdown.

    Each crisis amplifies the others.

    This is why so many solutions feel ineffective. We keep treating symptoms in isolation, while the underlying system continues to generate the same outcomes.

    ⸻

    A System Under Strain

    Our global system was built for a world that no longer exists.

    It assumes endless growth on a finite planet.

    It rewards competition over cooperation.

    It measures success in money rather than wellbeing.

    For a long time, this system appeared to work. Supermarkets were full. Technology advanced. Comfort increased — for some.

    But the costs were externalized.

    Onto other people.

    Onto future generations.

    Onto nature itself.

    Now the bill is coming due.

    The meta‑crisis is not an accident. It is the predictable result of a system designed without regard for ecological limits, psychological health, or long‑term resilience.

    ⸻

    A Question We Rarely Ask

    Most discussions stop here — with warnings, statistics, and projections of collapse.

    But there is another question worth asking:

    What if humanity acted in time?

    What if we recognized the pattern early enough?

    What if cooperation replaced competition as our default?

    What if technology was used to restore nature and free humans — not to extract more from them?

    What if we acknowledged something even more uncomfortable:

    That the problem was never a lack of solutions — but a lack of alignment.

    Because the truth is this:

    We already have the tools.

    We already have the science.

    We already have the productive capacity to meet everyone’s basic needs.

    We know how to generate abundant renewable energy.

    We know how to automate dangerous and repetitive labor.

    We know how to design cities around people instead of profit.

    We know how to produce more than enough food — sustainably.

    What stands in the way is not technology.

    It is the system we organize ourselves by.

    A system that requires scarcity to function.

    A system that turns necessities into commodities.

    A system that measures success in money rather than human and ecological wellbeing.

    Some visionary projects — such as those exploring resource‑based economies, like The Venus Project — have long argued that a resilient society would require something radical:

    Not reforming the monetary system — but replacing it.

    In such a model, resources are treated as the shared inheritance of humanity.

    Production is guided by real needs and ecological limits, not profit.

    Technology becomes a tool for coordination, not control.

    This is not science fiction.

    It is a different set of rules applied to capabilities we already possess.

    So the real question becomes:

    If the solutions exist — what would the future look like if we actually used them?

    ⸻

    A Thought Experiment

    So what would the world actually look like if we implemented all of this?

    If we treated the planet’s resources as a shared inheritance.

    If production was guided by real human needs and ecological limits.

    If a global, coordinated, resource-based economy replaced the monetary system.

    If technology was used to liberate time and creativity, not monetize it.

    What would daily life feel like?

    How would cities function?

    What would people do with their lives when survival was no longer the primary concern?

    One way to explore that question is through story.

    That is exactly what Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity does — through the eyes of Benjamin Michaels.

    Benjamin comes from our world, at its peak – 2015.

    He was not a rebel or an outsider.

    He was a billionaire — someone who had mastered the old system. But suffered from incurable cancer. He chooses cryogenic preservation of his body in the hopes of waking up again to being healed and continue expanding his empire.

    When he wakes up one hundred years into the future, he is shocked to learn about the new moneyless world and expects collapse, chaos, or authoritarian control — the futures our imagination keeps returning to.

    Instead, he finds something else entirely.

    A world where people are thriving.

    A world where basic needs and wants are guaranteed.

    A world where cities are designed around human wellbeing and ecological harmony.

    A world where cooperation is not idealism, but infrastructure.

    Benjamin doesn’t just hear about this world.

    He walks through it.

    Questions it.

    Resists it and almost helps destroying it.

    But slowly begins to understand how humanity stepped back from the brink and started prospering.

    ⸻

    Not Utopia — But Maturity

    This future is not perfect.

    Nature still has momentum.

    Old damage still needs healing.

    Human emotions are still human.

    But the underlying rules have changed.

    Fear is no longer the operating system.

    Scarcity is no longer artificially enforced.

    Survival is no longer the primary driver of human behavior.

    The story does not ask us to believe that humans became saints.

    It asks a simpler question:

    What happens when humanity grows up?

    ⸻

    Why Stories Matter

    Facts inform.

    Stories transform.

    We already know the data.

    We already know the risks.

    What we lack is a shared image of a future worth moving toward.

    That is what the novel,Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity explores — not as prediction, but as possibility.

    Not as ideology, but as a thought experiment and inspiration grounded in existing technology, systems thinking, and human values.

    ⸻

    The Quiet Invitation

    The meta‑crisis is real.

    But collapse is not the only ending available.

    Another path exists — one that does not begin with revolution or force, but with understanding, imagination, and cooperation.

    The question is not whether such a future is guaranteed.

    The question is whether we dare to imagine it — and then start acting as if it were possible.

    ⸻

    If this article resonates, please share it.

    Because the more people start to imagine this future the bigger chance we have of actually getting there.

    And if you want to explore one possible answer to the meta‑crisis through story rather than theory, Waking Up is available now.

  • Climate Change Is the Symptom — Not the Disease

    Climate Change Is the Symptom — Not the Disease

    In the UK this week, spring flowers were reported blooming in January.

    Not in a greenhouse.
    Not as a freak anecdote.
    But across regions — measured, recorded, and described as part of a trend.

    The same reports note that the UK has just experienced its warmest years since measurements began in 1884.

    This is not speculation.
    It is observation.

    Plants do not follow politics. They respond to temperature. When ecosystems start behaving out of season, it tells us something fundamental has shifted.

    This is climate change in its early, quiet form.
    And if left unchecked, it does not stop here.

    From Climate Change to Possible Collapse

    Climate change is not just about warmer weather or uncomfortable summers.

    Left unresolved, it can lead to global ecological collapse — not the end of the planet, but the breakdown of the living systems that support food, water, stability, and human cooperation.

    This is the point where climate change stops being an environmental issue and becomes a civilizational one.

    Nature stops buffering our mistakes.
    Ecosystems lose resilience.
    And societies built on constant growth and consumption begin to strain and fracture.

    The Real Cause

    At the root of this lies one dominant driver:

    systemic pollution.

    The largest source of pollution is not individual behavior.
    Not culture.
    Not human nature.

    It is the economic system itself — a system that requires endless extraction, growth, consumption and combustion in order to function.

    A Measure of Success?

    As long as success is measured in money, damage that does not appear on balance sheets becomes invisible.

    When profit depends on extraction, extraction continues.
    When growth is mandatory, limits are ignored.

    Burning fossil fuels is not an accident of this system.
    It is a requirement of it.

    No offset, no efficiency gain, no future technology can change that physical reality while the underlying incentive structure remains the same.

    The system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

    A Precedent We Forget: The Ozone Layer

    We have faced a planetary threat like this before.

    In the late 20th century, scientists discovered that human‑made chemicals — CFCs — were thinning the ozone layer. The result was direct and measurable harm: more ultraviolet radiation reached the surface, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts, and damage to ecosystems.

    The response was decisive.

    CFCs were identified as the cause and phased out globally through the Montreal Protocol. Not adapted to. Not offset. Stopped.

    And once the cause was removed, the ozone layer began to recover.

    This matters because it proves something essential:

    When humanity identifies a root cause and removes it, planetary systems heal.

    The difference today is not physics. It is scale.

    CFCs were a side branch of the economy.
    Fossil fuels are the cornerstone of the entire monetary system.

    That is why climate change has been harder to confront — not because the solution is unclear, but because it challenges the very system that runs our world.

    Can We Stop It at All?

    This is the question people are often afraid to ask:

    Can we actually stop this — not slow it, not manage it, but stop the collapse trajectory altogether?

    The honest answer is:

    Yes.

    But only if we are willing to stop absolutely all pollution.

    Not symbolic reductions.
    Not offsets.
    Not promises for later.

    All pollution.

    And that immediately reveals the deeper truth.

    Stopping all pollution means stepping beyond an economy that depends on pollution to survive.

    It means letting go of a system built on endless competition, extraction, consumption and growth — and replacing it with one aligned with life.

    This is not a technical leap.
    It is a systemic one.

    Which means we have to not only change one part of the economy like we did to fix the ozone layer, we have to change THE WHOLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM ITSELF. 

    An Awakening — Not a Dystopia

    In the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, the future is not a dystopia where climate change ran rampant and humanity collapsed into endless struggle.

    It is the opposite.

    At a certain point in future history, humanity experienced an awakening.

    Not a mystical event — but a moment of collective clarity.

    Humanity stopped asking how to dominate, outcompete, or survive at someone else’s expense.

    And started asking a radically simple question instead:

    Why not just be friends?

    Why fight over resources on a shared planet?
    Why organize society around fear, scarcity, and competition?

    Why not simply collaborate — and create the best possible world for all life?

    That shift changed everything.

    Once the incentive to compete and extract was removed, pollution stopped at the source.

    Climate change no longer dominate daily life.

    Not because it was ignored — but because its cause was removed.

    In Waking Up, the future is calmer.
    More humane.
    More cooperative.

    Climate change is not the story.

    It is what stopped being the story once humanity chose to grow up.

    Follow Benjamin Michaels

    Through the eyes of Benjamin Michaels, you are invited to step into that future — not as fantasy, but as a plausible consequence of choices we could still make. It is not too late.

    👉 Follow Benjamin Michaels into that future in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Because the world does not need more dystopias.

    It needs a vision of what becomes possible when humanity finally chooses cooperation over destruction. If this resonates with you, please share this article. And to get more, subscribe to the newsletter below…

  • Culture vs. Money — What Came First?

    Culture vs. Money — What Came First?

    Watching Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted travel through Galicia Spain, harvesting percebes from wave-beaten rocks, bidding on fish at early-morning auctions, and cooking food rooted deeply in place, a simple question naturally arises:

    Would people still do all this if there were no money?

    It’s a fair question — and also a revealing one.

    Because what we are actually watching in Galicia is not an economy.

    We are watching a culture.

    Culture came first

    Fishing cultures, farming cultures, herding cultures, food cultures, craft cultures — all of them existed long before the modern monetary system. People did not begin fishing because of auctions. They did not start making cheese because of profit margins. They did these things because:

    • it was who they were

    • it was how knowledge was passed down

    • it created belonging and pride

    • it connected them to land, sea, and community

    • it gave meaning to daily life

    • it gave them food on the table

    Money arrived later. Much later. And when it arrived, it wrapped itself around these activities as a coordination layer — not as their source.

    Money coordinate — it does not motivate

    We often confuse coordination with motivation.

    Auctions, prices, bids, and markets help coordinate distribution under scarcity. They do not explain why people go out into dangerous seas, master difficult skills, or continue traditions that take decades to learn.

    Those motivations are older and deeper:

    • identity

    • mastery

    • contribution

    • respect

    • continuity

    • love of the craft

    Remove money, and the need for coordination remains — but the reasons for doing the work do not disappear.

    What disappears without money — and what doesn’t

    What disappears:

    • artificial scarcity

    • speculative bidding

    • over-extraction for profit

    • middlemen extracting value

    • pressure to work dangerously because of debt

    What remains:

    • fishing

    • cheesemaking

    • farming

    • cooking

    • skill and pride

    • reputation based on excellence

    • rituals, festivals, and traditions

    In fact, many cultures would function better without monetary pressure distorting them.

    Coordination without coercion

    In a post-monetary world, coordination would be based on:

    • real needs instead of price signals

    • logistics instead of competition

    • reputation instead of wealth

    • cooperation instead of bidding wars

    People would still want good food, beautiful craft, and skilled work. They just wouldn’t need financial scarcity to decide who deserves access.

    Play survives economics

    Interestingly, some old systems might even survive — but as play.

    Mock auctions, ritualized bidding, historical reenactments, and LARP(Live Acton Role Playing)-like traditions could remain because humans enjoy drama, ritual, and performance. The difference is simple but profound:

    No one’s survival would depend on winning the game.

    The deeper misunderstanding

    The hardest idea for many people to release is the belief that:

    “Without money, nobody would do the work.”

    But this is contradicted every day by:

    • parenting

    • art

    • volunteering

    • caregiving

    • community building

    • cultural preservation

    Humans are not motivated primarily by money.

    We are motivated by meaning.

    ⸻

    Pono — An Example of the Future That Already Exists

    Watching Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted again. In Hawaii this time there are several quiet moments that say more about humanity’s future than a thousand economic theories. Not because Hawaii is unique or superior — but because it preserves something that exists everywhere, once you know how to see it.

    Ramsay learns to make a knife from a Hawaiian knife smith. No factory. No production line. Just hands, fire, steel, patience — and pride in the craft.

    Earlier, he is introduced to pono by a local chef. Hawaiian culture becomes the lens here — not as an exception, but as a clear example of something fundamentally human. He visits coffee farms where every single bean is hand-picked — not because it is efficient in monetary terms, but because care, respect, and right relationship matter.

    That moment already carries the essence of pono.

    Then the thought arises naturally:

    If this knife smith were not paid for his knives, would he still make them?

    Anyone paying attention already knows the answer.

    Yes.

    Craft does not originate in money

    People like this knife smith do not exist because of money. They exist because of:

    • curiosity

    • mastery

    • identity

    • interest

    • the simple joy of doing something well

    Money comes later, as a translation layer — a blunt instrument used to move objects through a system that no longer trusts relationships.

    Take money away, and the craft does not disappear.

    What changes is how the craft flows.

    Without money, distribution becomes personal

    If the knife smith were not selling knives to an anonymous market, he would still make them — but he would make them for someone.

    A fisherman.

    A cook.

    A farmer.

    A neighbor.

    Each knife would have a face attached to it.

    Each knife would have a story.

    The question would no longer be:

    What can I get for this?

    It would become:

    Who is this for, and what do they need?

    That is not sentimentality.

    It is precision.

    Fewer knives, perhaps — but each one more exact, more fitting, more meaningful.

    Pono as systems intelligence

    In Hawaiian culture, pono means balance, right relationship, and corrective harmony — not moral purity or rule-following.

    The hand-picked coffee beans matter here. Not as a luxury product, but as a signal: how something is done matters as much as what is produced.

    An action is pono if it restores balance:

    • between people

    • between people and land

    • between effort and need

    The traditional Hawaiian ahupuaʻa system worked this way. Resources were not owned, priced, or extracted for growth. They were stewarded as flows — from mountain to sea — with the understanding that excess in one place meant harm elsewhere.

    That is not nostalgia.

    That is systems intelligence.

    Culture precedes money — and survives without it

    Fishing, farming, cooking, building, teaching, caring.

    These activities existed long before money — and they continue today wherever culture is allowed to breathe.

    This quietly answers the question critics always ask:

    “But why would people do anything without money?”

    Because they already do.

    You just have to stop filtering reality through price tags.

    Money did not create meaning.

    It replaced relationship with abstraction.

    Culture outlives systems

    Economic systems rise and fall.

    Cultures endure.

    Galician fishers will still fish.

    Not because of auctions.

    But because it is who they are.

    And once that is truly understood, the idea of a good life without money stops sounding radical — and starts  sounding natural and deeply human.

    ⸻

    If this way of thinking resonates, the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity explores what happens when humanity organizes around cooperation, culture, and care instead of money — and reveals that the future we imagine may already be quietly alive among us. Dive into the story through Benjamin Michaels, the lost billionaire waking up in a future like this.

  • Maybe There Is Still Hope…?

    Maybe There Is Still Hope…?

    It’s hard to believe in human nature these days.

    Countries invade each other. Wars rage. Civilians suffer. Ecological warnings grow louder. Artificial intelligence accelerates faster than our ethics. Even the future itself feels fragile — as if it could tip in the wrong direction at any moment.

    More and more people quietly ask the same question:

    Will humanity even survive?

    And if we do — will it be worth surviving?

    In this climate, hope can feel naïve. Trust can feel irresponsible. Believing in a positive future can seem almost delusional — like wishful thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence.

    And yet.

    Maybe there is still hope anyway.

    Not the loud optimism that pretends everything will be fine. But a quieter, more grounded hope — one that exists despite fear, not because fear is absent.

    The Fear of the Future

    We are living inside a collective anxiety about what comes next.

    Climate collapse. Political extremism. Technological power without wisdom. Economic systems that demand endless growth on a finite planet. It’s no wonder so many people feel that humanity is on borrowed time.

    From this perspective, believing that we can survive — let alone create a better world — sounds naïve.

    But maybe that’s the wrong conclusion.

    Because fear has a way of shrinking our imagination. It convinces us that what we see now is all that’s possible. That conflict is inevitable. That cooperation is fragile. That humans, when pushed, will always choose destruction over care.

    History tells a more complicated story.

    Yes, we are capable of immense harm.

    But we are also capable of extraordinary adaptation — especially when old systems break down. Maybe that is even the core feature of human nature? Adaptation? Because, if it is something humanity has done over millennia it is this, adapt.

    Naivety Is Not Weakness — It Is Strength

    But today we’re taught that trusting others in dangerous times is foolish. That skepticism equals intelligence. That cynicism is realism.

    But cynicism is easy.

    Distrust is easy.

    Closing your heart when the future feels threatening is the most understandable reaction in the world.

    What’s hard — and therefore strong — is to stay open while fully aware of the risks.

    The person who dares to trust in dire times is not ignorant.

    They are courageous.

    That kind of naivety is not blindness. It’s a conscious choice to refuse fear as a governing principle. It’s choosing connection over armor. Imagination over resignation.

    Anyone can assume the worst.

    It takes strength to believe something better is possible — and to live as if that belief matters.

    Why Literature Still Matters

    Positive literature doesn’t stop wars.

    It doesn’t dismantle failing systems overnight.

    It doesn’t save the world by itself.

    But it does something quieter — and more essential.

    It keeps the inner flame alive.

    Stories, novels, and reflections remind us who we are beneath conditioning and trauma. They stretch our sense of what’s possible. They keep the future from collapsing into inevitability.

    A single book won’t change the world.

    But books change people.

    And people — slowly, unevenly, imperfectly — change the world.

    Even cheering each other up matters. It’s not trivial. It’s resistance against despair. It’s a refusal to let fear become the final authority.

    Imagining a World That Works

    This is where the novel, Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, begins.

    Not with the assumption that humanity is doomed — but with the question:

    What if we survive?

    And what if, after everything we’ve been through, we finally grow up as a species?

    The story follows a contemporary man who wakes up into a future where humanity has grown up and moved beyond money, war, and fear-driven systems — not because humans became perfect, but because they were forced to face the consequences of the old world and chose differently.

    It’s a work of speculative fiction — but also an act of trust.

    A trust that humans are capable of learning.

    A trust that cooperation can replace domination.

    A trust that naivety, in the deepest sense, might be our greatest strength.

    Keeping the Door Open

    Maybe hope doesn’t arrive as a solution.

    Maybe it arrives as a story that refuses to give up on us.

    Or a sentence that lands at the right moment.

    Or the quiet realization that believing in a positive future is not weakness — it’s an act of courage.

    If nothing else, literature keeps the door open.

    So that if humanity does make it through —

    the light is still on.

  • What System Comes After the Monetary System?

    What System Comes After the Monetary System?

    For centuries, the monetary system has been treated as inevitable.

    Not perfect, not fair, not even particularly rational — but unavoidable.

    Every serious discussion about climate change, inequality, war, sustainability, or wellbeing eventually reaches the same unspoken conclusion:

    We are sorry, but we have to continue with the system we have.

    The question that is almost never asked — or answered — is the most fundamental one:

    What system comes after the monetary system?

    Because, clearly, we need a change.

    But to answer that, we need to stop arguing inside the current framework and instead look at systems themselves: how they arise, how they function, and how they evolve.

    ⸻

    Three systems, clearly distinguished

    Humanity currently operates at the intersection of three fundamentally different systems. Understanding their nature is the key to understanding what comes next.

    1. The Monetary system — an artificial system

    The monetary system is not natural.

    It is a symbolic coordination system invented by humans.

    Its defining characteristics are:

    • money as a proxy for value

    • prices as signals

    • growth as success

    • scarcity(with abundance for a few) as a requirement

    • competition as a driver

    It does not measure wellbeing, ecological health, or long-term balance.

    It measures monetary activity. 

    This is the one thing it does very well.

    That does not make it evil — but it does make it blind.

    ⸻

    2. The Planetary system — a natural system

    The Planetary system is the opposite.

    It is Earth’s biophysical reality:

    • ecosystems

    • climate

    • soil

    • oceans

    • biodiversity

    • feedback loops

    It operates without money, ownership, prices, or growth imperatives.

    Its defining features are:

    • balance

    • regeneration

    • circular flows

    • natural limits

    • real, physical feedback

    The planetary system does not negotiate.

    It responds.

    ⸻

    3. The Humanitary system — a natural system with humans consciously included

    The Humanitary system represents a qualitative shift.

    It is also a natural system, but one where humans no longer act as an external, extractive force. Instead, human activity becomes consciously integrated with planetary reality.

    In this system:

    • wellbeing replaces profit as the primary measure

    • contribution replaces competition

    • access and stewardship replaces ownership

    • regeneration replaces extraction

    This is not ideology.

    It is systems alignment.

    ⸻

    The key shift: the ecosystem becomes the economic system

    Today, the word ecosystem almost exclusively refers to ecological systems.

    In the Humanitary system, the meaning expands:

    The ecosystem becomes the economic system.

    Not metaphorically.

    Literally.

    Human resource flows begin to behave like natural ecosystems:

    • resources circulate like nutrients

    • waste becomes input

    • diversity creates resilience

    • balance replaces growth

    • feedback is immediate and real

    The economy stops being an abstract overlay and starts behaving like a living system.

    Once this is seen, it becomes difficult to unsee.

    The next system will not be communism, socialism or capitalism. It won’t even be the monetary system.

    ⸻

    The Natural Exchange System (NES)

    If the ecosystem is the economic system, how does exchange actually work?

    This is where the Natural Exchange System (NES) comes in.

    NES is neither a market nor a centrally planned economy.

    It is applied ecology.

    ⸻

    Exchange without trade

    One of the deepest assumptions of the monetary system is that exchange requires trade — that value must be priced, negotiated, balanced, or repaid.

    Nature shows us otherwise.

    In a natural ecosystem:

    • nothing is traded

    • nothing is paid back

    • nothing is accounted

    • nothing is owed

    Yet everything that needs to happen, happens.

    Plants produce oxygen without expecting carbon dioxide in return. 

    Animals and humans already do the same only opposite. Breathing in oxygen and out CO2.

    Bees pollinate without invoices.

    Trees share nutrients through fungal networks without bookkeeping.

    Predators regulate populations without moral judgment.

    Exchange exists — but not as transaction.

    Not as trade.

    It exists as participation.

    ⸻

    NES as human participation in a living system

    The Natural Exchange System follows the same principle.

    In NES:

    • humans contribute based on interest, ability, curiosity, and context

    • fulfillment comes from the activity itself, not from reward

    • resources flow according to real needs, not purchasing power

    Technology help where it is needed

    • coordination emerges from awareness, not accounting

    People do what they are naturally drawn to do —

    because doing it is meaningful, satisfying, or joyful.

    This is not hypothetical.

    It already happens wherever money is absent:

    • parenting

    • caregiving

    • art

    • open-source software

    • community help

    • volunteering

    • emergency response

    NES simply removes the artificial constraints that prevent this logic from scaling.

    ⸻

    No accounting needed

    Accounting exists to manage scarcity, distrust, and misalignment.

    In a functioning ecosystem:

    • scarcity is physical, not artificial

    • trust is implicit in interdependence

    • alignment is enforced by feedback, not punishment

    In NES:

    • resource availability is sensed directly

    • needs are visible, not hidden behind prices

    • overuse is corrected by real-world signals

    • contribution is self-regulating, not coerced

    Just as no forest needs a ledger,

    a mature human ecosystem does not require accounts, balances, or reciprocal payment.

    ⸻

    Motivation without reward

    A common concern is: “Why would anyone do anything?”

    Nature answers this clearly.

    Species act because:

    • it is their nature

    • it sustains the system they depend on

    • it feels right within their role

    Humans are no different — when freed from survival anxiety and artificial scarcity.

    In NES:

    • work is not forced

    • contribution is not moralized

    • rest is not punished

    • creativity is not secondary

    People choose what they contribute —

    and are fulfilled by the contribution itself, not by compensation.

    That fulfillment is the signal.

    The ecosystem responds accordingly.

    ⸻

    Exchange as flow

    The core shift is simple:

    • Monetary system → exchange as transaction and trade

    • Natural Exchange System → exchange as flow

    Nothing is traded.

    Nothing is paid back.

    Everything moves.

    Resources circulate like nutrients.

    Skills circulate like energy.

    Care circulates like water.

    Once exchange is understood this way, the question is no longer

    “How do we replace money?”

    but rather

    “Why did we ever need it in the first place?”

    ⸻

    A system of systems

    The Humanitary world is not a single mechanism.

    It is an interconnected system of systems, all behaving ecosystem-like:

    • Resource systems — food, energy, materials

    • Information systems — sensing, feedback, coordination

    • Social systems — care, creativity, contribution

    • Governance systems — councils, transparency, resonance

    Each system:

    • adapts locally

    • cooperates globally

    • responds to real-world signals

    No growth mandate.

    No artificial scarcity.

    No central authority.

    ⸻

    Why the monetary system cannot evolve into this

    The monetary system cannot simply be “fixed” into an ecosystem because it violates ecosystem logic at its core:

    • it rewards accumulation

    • it requires scarcity

    • it externalizes damage

    • it measures symbols instead of reality

    In nature, any subsystem that behaves this way is eventually corrected.

    What we are witnessing today — ecological breakdown, social stress, political fragmentation — is not a failure of humanity.

    It is a system mismatch.

    ⸻

    What comes after the monetary system

    The answer is not another ideology.

    It is not socialism, communism, or a greener version of capitalism.

    What comes after the monetary system is a living system — one that behaves like nature itself.

    A Humanitary system, where the ecosystem is the economic system, and exchange follows natural laws rather than artificial symbols.

    When that happens, humans stop being a disruptive force on Earth —

    and become a regenerative one.

    ⸻

    If this resonates and you would like to read an inspirational story about a contemporary man who wakes up in a world like this, the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity is for you.