Category: Utopia

  • How We Can ALL live a Life of Luxury on Earth — Without Breaking the Planet

    How We Can ALL live a Life of Luxury on Earth — Without Breaking the Planet

    From Excess to Access — A glimpse into the next Paradigm where Abundance, Technology, and Wisdom unite to create a world that works for everyone.

    Imagine a world where every human being lives in comfort and beauty.

    Where homes are energy-self-sufficient, food is fresh and locally grown, transport is clean and free, and no one worries about bills, borders, or basic survival.

    It sounds like a dream — but it’s only our outdated economic system that makes it seem impossible.

    The Myth of Scarcity

    We’ve been raised to believe there’s not enough for everyone — not enough land, not enough jobs, not enough “money.” Yet the Earth is overflowing with resources.

    We have enough sunlight striking the planet each hour to power civilization for a year. We produce 43 kg of food per day per person per year. But most is wasted to create profit. We have enough empty homes to house every homeless person several times over. Enough food to feed everyone — if we stopped throwing away most of it.

    Scarcity isn’t a natural law. It’s a policy decision.

    Scarcity is an artificial outcome of a system that rewards hoarding and punishes sharing — where competition, debt, and profit come before cooperation, dignity, and Life itself.

    The Real Meaning of Luxury

    Luxury today is marketed as excess — yachts, jets, and exclusivity. But true luxury has nothing to do with waste.

    Real luxury is freedom from stress, clean air, time to create, connection, and purpose.

    It’s walking barefoot on living soil, sleeping in peace, eating food you can trust, and feeling as part of something larger than yourself.

    When we redefine luxury from excess to access, the equation changes completely.

    A world where everyone has access to clean healthy water, sustainable energy, creative tools, and regenerative design is not only possible — it’s inevitable once we stop measuring life in old outdated currency.

    The Paradise Is Already Here

    There are over 100,000 tropical islands on Earth — from the turquoise lagoons of the Pacific to the coral-fringed coasts of the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.

    Humanity has more than 620,000 kilometers of coastline, much of it pristine and uninhabited. There is, quite literally, enough paradise for everyone.

    If we organized wisely, each of us could spend a good part of our year on a tropical beach, sipping an umbrella drink served by elegant solar-powered robots. If that’s what we wanted.

    And there would still be plenty of room — because people are beautifully different. Not everyone wants a Mai Tai under the palm trees. Some prefer mountain air, snow, forests, deserts, or bustling creative cities. The abundance of this planet includes the diversity of our dreams.

    The Tools Are Already Here

    We already possess everything required to build this world: renewable energy, 3D-printed housing, circular materials, global knowledge sharing, and AI-assisted logistics that can map and manage resources with stunning precision.

    What we lack isn’t technology — it’s alignment.

    A willingness to use these tools for collaboration instead of competition.

    The shift is from ownership to stewardship — from “mine” to “ours.” When resources become a shared inheritance instead of private property, abundance stops being an illusion.

    A Glimpse from the Future

    In Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, Benjamin Michaels wakes to a world that has made this transition.

    Money no longer exists. The Natural Exchange System ensures that everyone’s needs are met intelligently and sustainably. Cities of Light shine as living ecosystems — where architecture, art, and nature merge.

    It’s not a utopia. It’s simply what happens when humanity grows up — when we stop surviving and start thriving together.

    The Invitation

    The new world isn’t waiting in the future; it’s waiting in us.

    Every act of sharing, repairing, planting, and caring moves us closer. Every moment we choose collaboration over competition, we bring a fragment of paradise into form.

    We can all live a life of luxury — not by taking more, but by realizing we already have enough to share with everyone.

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    🌍 Discover how humanity awakens in a world beyond money.

    Read Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity and join the movement toward a world that truly works for all. Ebook is only $4,99

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  • The World Is Waking Up — Are You…?

    The World Is Waking Up — Are You…?

    Our “Only for the Brave” campaign just ended — and it outperformed expectations by more than 102%! It was a so-called Blaze campaign where WordPress share a post to many more potential readers than I have on my blog.

    This  meant thousands of new readers across the world have now seen the call to challenge their beliefs — and many have joined the journey.

    For me, this milestone isn’t just about clicks or stats. It’s about connection.

    Every person who paused to look, to feel something, to wonder if a better world is possible — that’s one more spark of awareness lighting up the collective mind.

    If you didn’t get the ebook during the super-low promotion, don’t worry — it’s still just $4.99 on all ebook platforms. That’s less than a cappuccino for a story that invites you to imagine what life could look like beyond money, fear, and limitation.

    ✨ Waking Up isn’t just a fantasy. It’s a reflection of what humanity could become when trust replaces trade, and creativity flows freely again.

    order now

    The world is waking up.

    One reader — one brave soul — at a time.

  • What Is Actually a Gift Economy…?

    What Is Actually a Gift Economy…?

    Clarifying the Language of a New World

    Through the years, many terms have tried to describe humanity’s longing for a system beyond money — a world built on trust, collaboration, and natural balance.

    Words like Gift Economy, Local Exchange Trading System (LETS), Resource-Based Economy (RBE), and Natural Exchange System (NES) all point toward this awakening, yet they mean different things. Much of the confusion comes from how we understand one simple word: exchange.

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    Gift Economy — The Heart of Giving

    The Gift Economy celebrates generosity and connection.

    It’s about giving without expectation, trusting that what you contribute will circulate and return in another form, another time.

    Its strength is emotional and spiritual — the feeling of community that grows when we stop measuring and start caring.

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    The Transitional Bridge

    Before moneyless systems could be imagined on a large scale, communities experimented with alternative currencies.

    LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) created local credits for goods and services — one person’s debit was another’s credit.

    Time Banks traded hours instead of money — one hour of help equaled one hour owed.

    The eko-currency of Findhorn is to boost local trade, keep money circulating within the community, and provide low-interest loans to community projects, creating a stronger, more resilient local economy.

    All of these were inspiring steps away from national currencies and toward cooperation, yet they still relied on trading — a measured give-and-take, recorded somewhere. Still quid pro quo. They loosened the chains of money somewhat but didn’t yet dissolve them.

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    RBE — The Macro Framework

    Jacque Fresco and later Peter Joseph proposed the Resource-Based Economy as a scientific redesign of global society.

    Here, technology and data guide production and distribution according to human and ecological need, not profit.

    It’s the macro-level architecture of a sustainable civilization — the structural intelligence behind abundance.

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    NES — The Natural Flow

    The Natural Exchange System (NES) brings the heart of the gift economy together with the structure of the RBE.

    In NES, exchange doesn’t mean trade — it means flow.

    Nature itself is a vast exchange system:

    trees give oxygen and receive carbon dioxide, insects collect nectar and pollinate plants — yet no one keeps score.

    This is exchange without accounting, reciprocity without debt.

    NES mirrors that same principle through intelligent coordination: a world where resources and services move where they’re needed, guided by transparency and awareness rather than price or profit.

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    How NES Works — An Example from the World of Waking Up

    In the society portrayed in the novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, everyone contributes according to what feels most natural and fulfilling for them.

    Someone who loves to cook opens a restaurant.

    Another enjoys the rhythm of conversation and service, so they take orders and deliver meals.

    No one in that community particularly enjoys cleaning tables or doing dishes — so those tasks are handled by robots and intelligent machines.

    NES is a system, like nature, where every part does its thing and is fulfilled in doing it.

    Thus, the reward is in the task itself — not in any external monetary lure, but in the joy of meaningful contribution.

    Everywhere, the same principle applies:

    • People do what brings them joy and meaning.

    • Technology quietly fills the gaps where human interest doesn’t reach.

    • What needs doing simply gets done.

    There are no wages, no hierarchy, and no unemployment — because the motivation isn’t survival or profit, it’s purpose.

    That is the essence of NES: a natural coordination between human passion and technological assistance, producing abundance through harmony, not hassle.

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    Trading vs. Exchange

    The difference between trading and exchange is subtle yet profound.

    Trading is conditional — an “if–then” relationship: I give if you give – quid pro quo. It is measured, recorded, and bound by the fear of scarcity. There’s always an expectation, an invisible balance sheet where value is compared, debts are created, and equality must be restored through reciprocal repayment.

    Exchange, in its natural sense, is something entirely different. It’s not calculated; it’s circulatory. In nature, all parts contribute to the whole without question — no one keeps track. It is a flow, not a deal. When humans live by natural exchange, giving and receiving become part of the same movement, and the joy lies not in what we get, but in the aliveness of participation itself.

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    The True Gift Economy

    If the Gift Economy is the heart,

    and the RBE is the brain,

    then the NES is the living organism where both unite — the true gift economy, not symbolic or experimental, but natural.

    No credits, no tokens, no trade — just conscious flow.

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    In Summary

    • Gift Economy – the feeling of giving and trust.

    • LETS / Eko/Time Banks – transitional models still based on accounting.

    • RBE – the framework for global coordinated abundance.

    • NES – the integration where nature’s effortless exchange becomes humanity’s way of life.

    They’re not competing ideas but evolutionary steps in remembering how to share — moving from measured trade to natural flow, from scarcity to trust, from economy to ecology.

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    Written by Harald Sandø, author of Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity,

    a novel exploring a future moneyless society guided by trust, collaboration, and natural exchange.

  • What If the Great Reset Meant the End of Money?

    What If the Great Reset Meant the End of Money?

    How a global choice could dismantle debt, dissolve ownership, and awaken a new kind of world that truly works for all…

    From Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset:

    The Great Reset Initiative is an economic recovery plan proposed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[1] The project was launched in June 2020, accompanied by a video message from the then-Prince of Wales, Charles.[2] Its stated objective is to support recovery from the global pandemic in a manner that emphasises sustainable development.[3]

    At the time, WEF chairman Klaus Schwab outlined three core components of the initiative: advancing a “stakeholder economy“; building in a more “resilient, equitable, and sustainable” way using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics; and “harnessing the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

    More money

    We keep hearing the same prescription for humanity’s problems: more money.

    More stimulus, more redistribution, more investment. But pouring money into a broken system doesn’t heal it — it only deepens the cracks.

    Think of it this way: if the plumbing in a house is rotten, pumping in more water won’t quench anyone’s thirst — it will just flood the basement. Our economic “plumbing” is money itself: designed around debt, scarcity, and competition. Adding more of it cannot save us.

    That’s why the only real solution is not more money, but no money at all, as explained in this article: https://wakingupstory.com/2025/09/can-more-money-save-the-world/

    🚨 Imagine the Headline

    “World Economic Forum, World Bank, and All UN Member States Announce End of Money. Global Transition to Resource-Based Collaboration Begins Today.”

    No more credit cards. No stock market. No loans to repay. No one rich. No one poor. Or maybe, all of us rich…?

    Impossible? Perhaps.

    But let’s allow ourselves, just for a moment, to imagine:

    What if the Great Reset was not just a patch on capitalism — but the end of it?

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    🩹 A Patch on a Broken System

    The original Great Reset, proposed by the World Economic Forum in 2020, aimed to “rebuild a better capitalism” after the COVID-19 crisis. It focused on:

    • Greener investments

    • Stakeholder capitalism

    • Tech-driven inclusivity

    But in truth, it was never a revolution. It was a renovation — an attempt to make an outdated house look livable, without changing the foundations. Basically only fix the bad plumbing with gaffer tape and paint the walls of the dilapidated house.

    The money system — with its built-in inequality, debt traps, and growth addiction — remained untouched.

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    🌍 The Real Reset: Ending Money

    Now imagine that the global powers finally admit the truth:

    That money itself is the bottleneck, not the solution.

    And instead of continuing to tweak the system, they agree to let it go entirely.

    Here’s what would need to happen:

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    🔓 Step 1: Cancel All Debt

    All of it — personal, corporate, national.

    Because you can’t erase money while still demanding its return.

    Creditors and debtors alike would be liberated in a single global breath.

    This is not fantasy. Ancient societies did it — from Mesopotamian kings declaring debt jubilees, to Solon’s Athens shaking off burdens, to the Biblical Jubilee. Even in modern times, Germany’s post-war debt was forgiven. It has been done — just never at global scale.

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    🛑 Step 2: Abolish Ownership and Markets

    • Stock markets shut down permanently.

    • Private land ownership is retired — land becomes held in trust for all.

    • Intellectual property is replaced by open-source collaboration.

    Instead of selling value, we share stewardship.

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    🛠 Step 3: Launch a Global Resource Network

    A new Earth Operating System is activated:

    • Global maps of resources, needs, and capabilities

    • Distribution of essentials (food, water, medicine, energy) without payment

    • A digital interface where people contribute skills, ideas, and labor by choice — not for wages, but for purpose

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    🧠 Step 4: Rewire Our Minds

    This may be the hardest step.

    We’ve been conditioned for centuries to think in terms of:

    • Scarcity

    • Competition

    • Survival through earning

    But without money, we’d learn to think in terms of:

    • Abundance

    • Collaboration

    • Belonging

    At first, it would feel like freefall.

    Then, perhaps, something deeper would awaken.

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    🌱 From Profit to Purpose

    What happens when we no longer work to survive?

    We may finally begin to live to express, to love, to contribute, to create.

    To restore the planet.

    To heal ourselves and each other.

    To explore what it means to be human, beyond transactions.

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    ✨ The Great Awakening?

    Maybe the Great Reset, as originally conceived, was not the end goal…

    …but just the final stall of an old engine, sputtering before it dies.

    The true reset — the great awakening — might come not when we save capitalism, but when we let it go.

    “We didn’t collapse,” they will say.

    “We evolved.”

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    📖 Want to See How This World Might Look?

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity is a visionary novel that dares to imagine a planet where money, ownership, and competition are relics of the past — and where human beings live, love, and thrive in freedom.

    👉 Order your copy today and explore the world beyond money.

    ORDER HERE.
  • President Trunk Endorses “Cities of Light” After Reading Visionary Novel

    President Trunk Endorses “Cities of Light” After Reading Visionary Novel

    I was musing with ChatGPT about what might happen if my book Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity suddenly jumped from 6 sales to 600 million. Things escalated quickly… and somehow we ended up here:

    President Trump Endorses “Cities of Light” After Reading Visionary Novel

    Washington, D.C. — In what commentators are calling “the most unexpected ideological shift in modern history,” President Donald J. Trump has publicly endorsed Norwegian author Harald Neslein Sandø’s groundbreaking novel Waking Up and its vision of Cities of Light — sustainable, post-monetary communities designed to free humanity from debt and exploitation.

    Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump declared in his trademark style:

    “Look, folks… I’ve read a lot of books. The best books. People always tell me I don’t read, but I do — I read this one. Waking Up. Incredible. Really tremendous. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. It opened my eyes, okay? Opened my eyes. We don’t need all the debt, the fighting, the nonsense. We need Cities of Light. We’re gonna build them — and they’ll be beautiful, believe me. The best Cities. Everyone’s saying so.

    Money? Forget it. We’re moving past that. This is about people, about love, about the future. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Harald’s a genius.”

    The announcement shocked political analysts, who have long considered Trump a staunch defender of capitalism. Social media instantly lit up with memes under the hashtag #TrumpEnlightenmentTilt, while even late-night hosts admitted they were “lost for words.”

    For Sandø, whose novel recently surpassed 600 million copies sold worldwide, the statement was both surreal and inevitable:

    “From six to six hundred million. No in between. The world has already woken up.”

    If you’re wondering what this is all about you can order the book here and find out…

    ORDER THE BOOK

  • Can More Money Save the World?

    Can More Money Save the World?

    We think that money is the solution to everything. Pouring more of it over problems should make them go away, right?

    A Billionaire’s Promise

    When Bill Gates pledged to give away 99% of his fortune — over $200 billion — to be spent by 2045, headlines called it one of the greatest philanthropic commitments in history. Health, hunger, education, climate: the problems are massive, and Gates believes that with enough money, the right science, and smart management, they can be solved.

    But can they?

    The Promise of Money

    At first glance, it’s hard not to be impressed. $200 billion could vaccinate entire regions, build schools, fund green energy projects, and support struggling farmers. Money, in this sense, looks like a universal key — a tool that can unlock progress wherever it is directed. That’s the belief that fuels philanthropy on this scale: the more dollars we mobilize, the faster we can fix the world.

    The Contradiction at the Core

    Yet beneath the surface lies a contradiction too big to ignore. If money created these problems, can money really be the solution?

    Poverty Is Built Into the System

    Consider poverty. Philanthropy can deliver food, medicine, or shelter to people in need — and it does save lives. But poverty itself is not a shortage of money; it is the direct result of how money organizes society.

    Money only works when it is scarce. If everyone had an abundance, it would stop functioning altogether. Its value comes from the fact that not everyone has it, and that you must trade your time, labor, or resources to get it. If everyone suddenly had “enough,” prices would simply rise until scarcity returned.

    In other words, poverty is not a tragic accident of the system — it is a requirement. For money to keep its value, some people must always be excluded. The system itself ensures that wages are kept low, debts are enforced, and resources are concentrated, not because there isn’t enough food, housing, or energy, but because without inequality, money itself would collapse. Wealth and poverty are not opposites; they are two sides of the same coin.

    Climate Change and Profit Logic

    The same is true of climate change. Gates has invested in carbon capture, nuclear power, and green innovation. But climate chaos is not only an energy problem — it is a system problem. Our economy thrives on extraction, waste, and endless growth. Injecting more money into cleaner versions of the same system does not change its core logic: profit above planet.

    The problem is not that we lack the technology to live sustainably, but that our economic model rewards short-term gain and punishes restraint. As long as money drives the logic, even philanthropy cannot stop industries from consuming the Earth in pursuit of growth.

    Power and Inequality

    And then there’s power. When one man, no matter how well-intentioned, can decide how hundreds of millions of people will live, we face another paradox. The very act of giving away billions reinforces the inequality it claims to fight.

    We still live in a world where the fate of the poor depends on the choices of the ultra-rich. This is not justice — it is benevolence within the boundaries of a system that demands inequality to exist. Charity may soften the edges, but it leaves the structure untouched.

    The Scarcity Trap

    As mentioned above, there is the deeper truth of money itself: it only has value when it is scarce. History shows us what happens when everyone suddenly has “enough.”

    In Weimar Germany in 1923, and again in Zimbabwe in the 2000s, governments flooded their economies with banknotes. Very quickly, everyone had them — bundles, wheelbarrows, even trillions of dollars in salaries. But prices rose just as fast, until the money became worthless.

    Or take a thought experiment: tomorrow, every person on Earth receives ten million dollars. At first it feels like paradise, right? — no one is poor, no one needs to struggle. But within days, no one will grow food, clean streets, or drive buses. Why would they? Prices for essentials skyrocket, demand outstrips supply, and within weeks the “universal millionaire” dream collapses. The currency itself becomes meaningless, and people return to barter or invent a new token of scarcity.

    The logic is unavoidable: money only has value when NOT everyone has it. Its purchasing power depends on someone else not having it. If everyone did, it would be impossible to buy or sell anything at all.

    This is why poverty never disappears in a money-based system. It isn’t a flaw to be fixed with more philanthropy. It is the very mechanism that keeps the system alive.

    Treating Symptoms, Not the Cause

    So while philanthropy can ease suffering, it cannot cure the disease. It can treat symptoms, but it cannot touch the root. More billions will not change the fact that the monetary system itself depends on exclusion, competition, and scarcity. And we are talking about THE MONETARY SYSTEM here, not capitalism, socialism or any other -ism. As long as the basis is money it will always be like this.

    A Glimpse Beyond Money

    And this is where fiction becomes a mirror.

    In the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity, Benjamin Michaels opens his eyes in a world one hundred years in the future. He expects the familiar battles of wealth and survival. Instead, he finds something shocking: money itself is gone.

    The Human Shock of Abundance

    At first, his instincts betray him. He looks for a wallet, wonders who is profiting, suspects that someone must be in control. But slowly, the reality dawns: the old logic is gone. Here, life is organized not by money but by access, collaboration, and care.

    Two Paths Forward

    And so the real question emerges: if this world is possible in fiction, why not in reality?

    Bill Gates believes more money can save the world. But what if the opposite is true? What if the world can only be saved when money itself is no longer the measure of value?

    Philanthropy looks noble, but it is still locked inside the paradigm that created the problems. Ben’s awakening suggests another path: one where humanity organizes around need, not profit; where innovation is driven by curiosity, not patents; where survival is a birthright, not a market exchange.

    The Choice Before Us

    Imagine if even a fraction of Gates’ billions were not used to patch up the old system, but to prototype the new — communities, technologies, and models of living that no longer depend on money at all. The change would not just be charitable; it would be transformational.

    So we return to the question: can more money save the world? Or will we only truly wake up when we dare to imagine a future beyond money itself? If you want to experience a world of abundance without money I invite you to read the book:

    ORDER THE BOOK HERE

  • Humanity Is Waking Up – But What Does That Really Mean?

    Humanity Is Waking Up – But What Does That Really Mean?

    When I say “humanity is waking up”, it’s not just a hopeful slogan. It’s an observation, and perhaps even a prophecy. But waking up to what? And in what way?

    At first glance, it might not look like humanity is waking up at all. The news screams of wars, corruption, inequality, and ecological collapse. We seem to be racing faster and faster toward the abyss. And yet, beneath the noise, something else is stirring.

    Waking Up to the Fragility of Earth

    We are beginning to acknowledge that our planet is not an endless resource but a delicate web of life. Fires, floods, extinctions, and climate chaos force us to recognize that humanity is part of this web, not separate from it. In response, more people embrace renewable energy, regenerative farming, and circular economies. It’s slow, uneven, but real.

    Waking Up from the Illusion of Scarcity

    Money has long dictated who eats and who starves, who thrives and who suffers. But a growing awareness tells us that money itself is an invention—an artificial system of scarcity. The real wealth of the world is abundant: food, energy, creativity, love. Movements for sharing economies, cooperatives, and even resource-based visions show that alternatives are possible.

    Waking Up to Our Shared Humanity

    Borders, races, religions, and ideologies divide us only on the surface. More people are realizing that beneath those layers we are one family. The rise of movements for global justice, equality, and indigenous wisdom signals this deeper recognition, even as old systems of control cling tightly to their power.

    Waking Up Spiritually

    Most importantly, humanity is waking up to something deeper than politics or economics. We are beginning to remember who we really are: not isolated egos, but expressions of one consciousness. This awakening shows itself in the longing for connection, the spread of meditation and inner practices, the search for meaning beyond possessions.

    Spiritually, this awakening means:

    • Realizing that love and compassion are not luxuries, but the very fabric of life.
    • Seeing that the ego’s chase for power or security cannot bring peace.
    • Trusting a deeper intelligence—whether we call it God, Source, Spirit, or simply Life—that guides us when we listen.
    • Recognizing that our thoughts and choices shape reality, and that we are co-creators of the world to come.

    The Tension of Our Time

    To say “humanity is waking up” does not mean everyone suddenly becomes enlightened. It means more and more people are questioning the illusions, breaking free of fear, and daring to live differently. But as this happens, the old system pushes back. That’s why our time feels so turbulent—both abyss and awakening accelerate together.

    This is not failure. It is birth.

    A Call to Each of Us

    If humanity is waking up, it’s not an abstract idea—it’s a personal invitation. Each of us is part of this shift. We can choose to close our eyes, or to see clearly. To cling to separation, or to live in connection. To act from fear, or from love.

    The real question is not “Is humanity waking up?” but “Am I waking up—and how will I live that awakening?”

    A Mirror in Story

    This is also the journey at the heart of my novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. In the book, Benjamin Michaels awakens in a future awakened society that has left money and fear behind, learning step by step what it means to live in connection, compassion, and trust. His shock, his doubts, and his eventual transformation mirror the path we are all walking now.

    Reading his story is not just entertainment—it’s a glimpse into what our collective awakening could look like, if we dare to imagine it and live it together.

    👉 Get the book here and be part of the story of humanity’s awakening.

  • How Bad Is It, Really?

    How Bad Is It, Really?

    We go about our daily lives as if nothing is wrong. The sun is shining, sometimes it rains, and life goes on. Maybe a storm hits the news, a wildfire burns somewhere, or a flood takes a village—but then everything seems to return to normal. Shops are full, cars drive by, flights leave on time. So we ask: how bad is it, really?

    The Reality Beneath the Surface

    When we look closer, the picture changes.

    • Eroded Land: In the American Midwest, decades of industrial farming have stripped away rich topsoil. Heavy plowing and chemical fertilizers have left the land fragile, so fertile soil washes into rivers after heavy rains. Scientists warn that U.S. farmland is losing soil up to 10 times faster than nature can replenish it. In parts of Spain, desertification is advancing so fast that villages are being abandoned, orchards dry out, and the land turns to dust. And in the Amazon and Southeast Asia, clear-cutting vast areas of rainforest leaves bare earth that quickly erodes when the rains come. Once the trees are gone, the land often dries out completely—lush ecosystems collapsing into desert-like landscapes within years.

    • Ruined Rivers: The Colorado River once carved canyons and nourished ecosystems all the way to the sea. Today, it is drained to irrigate thirsty crops like alfalfa and cotton in the desert—fields planted because they are profitable, not sustainable. In many years, the river fails to reach the ocean at all. The Ganges River, sacred to millions, is choked with untreated sewage and factory runoff. Factories dump toxins because it is cheaper than cleaning their waste.

    • Vanishing Waters: The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, has been drained almost dry to irrigate cotton fields for global export. What remains is a toxic desert, scattered with rusting ships where fishing towns once thrived.

    • Poisoned Lands and People: In the Niger Delta, oil companies found it more profitable to let pipelines leak than to fix them. Vast swamps are now covered in oil slicks, rivers are poisoned, and entire communities are left with dead fisheries and unsafe drinking water.

    • Oceans and Reefs in Peril: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a swirling gyre of plastic waste twice the size of Texas—kills turtles, whales, seabirds, and fish. Microplastics are now found in human blood. Meanwhile, the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching again and again. Fossil fuels keep economies “growing,” but rising ocean temperatures are turning coral wonderlands into white graveyards.

    • Toxic Air: In Delhi, the air sometimes rises to 20 times above safe levels. Children grow up with reduced lung capacity just from breathing.

    These are not isolated accidents. They are signs of systemic breakdown.

    Why Is It Like This?

    The logic is tragically simple.

    • Profit over Planet: The Colorado is drained not by mistake, but because crops for export bring in money. The Ganges is polluted because cleaning up waste eats into profit margins. Much easier and cheaper to dump it into the Ganges. The Aral Sea disappeared so cotton could be sold worldwide. Oil continues to pour into the Niger Delta because safety measures cost more than they earn. Coral reefs bleach because burning coal and oil remains profitable, heating the planet and the oceans.

    Profit over People: While rivers dry and forests fall, millions of children go to bed hungry every night. In parts of Africa, families struggle to find enough food, while at the same time billions of dollars’ worth of grain are fed to livestock or wasted to keep prices stable. Extreme inequality means that a tiny fraction of humanity lives in obscene luxury while entire communities lack clean water, education, and basic healthcare. The system is designed to serve profit first, even when it means children starve while supermarket shelves in wealthy countries overflow.

    • Growth at Any Cost: Governments measure success in GDP, not in clean rivers or healthy soil. Every factory, every shipment, every barrel of oil counts as “growth,” even when it subtracts from life itself. We are locked in this mindset. We have to make money. At any cost, it seems.

    • Externalizing the Costs: Pollution is free. Companies dump waste and pocket the gains, while nature and communities pay the price.

    • Consumer Culture: Our throwaway economy thrives on constant demand for more—fast fashion, gadgets, cars, and single-use plastic. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one inevitable result of this model.

    All of these examples—rivers, seas, reefs, people, air and land—are chapters of the same story: a system that rewards taking without giving back. A system that liquidates the Earth for short-term profit.

    Is There Any Hope?

    After seeing this, it is natural to ask: is there any solution? Or is it already too late?

    What if… it isn’t?

    What if humanity suddenly decided that enough is enough? That we will no longer sacrifice the living Earth and poor people for profit? What if we chose, together, to protect and optimize this planet so that humans, animals, and all of nature could thrive here—side by side, in balance?

    What if the same intelligence, creativity, and technology that once exploited the Earth were redirected to heal it?

    This is not fantasy. It is a choice. Humanity could decide tomorrow to change course. But this would mean a radical change. Ending the root cause of all of this: 

    The Monetary System. 

    But, but, how can we? We need it to live! What about jobs and income and everything?? Understandable arguments.

    But there is a way. We could end the monetary system and still thrive on planet earth. We could live without money and trading and instead focus on healing the planet and ourselves in the process. We could in fact, with the technology we have available today, build a paradise on Planet Earth. A world that works for all living beings.

    And that is exactly what has happened in Waking Up. When billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in a world without money and trading, he is at first shocked, desperate, and lost. But then he realizes: this was the best decision humanity ever made. To stop the destruction. To stop chasing endless profit. To build a society where people and planet thrive together.

    The book is fiction. But the question is not. 

    Would you like to be inspired and get lost in how this future world would actually feel like to live in? If so, I invite you to read the book. You can get it here:

    ORDER THE BOOK HERE

  • Are you a stupid robot?

    Are you a stupid robot?

    Bureaucracy: Turning People into Robots

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    “Bureaucracy turns people into stupid robots.”

    It’s a harsh observation — but one many of us have felt. How often have you tried to solve a simple issue with a company, a hospital, or a government office, only to be met with rules, forms, and polite but powerless employees who cannot actually help?

    It isn’t the people themselves who are “stupid.” Most of them are intelligent, kind, and capable outside of their bureaucratic roles. But the system they work within forces them into patterns where initiative is punished, compassion is inconvenient, and common sense is overridden by procedure.

    Endless examples

    We all know the feeling:

    • Healthcare: filling out five different forms with the same information, only to be told one signature was in the wrong box.

    • Taxes: an ever-expanding jungle of regulations, where even professionals struggle to keep up with yearly changes.

    • Immigration offices: endless queues, contradictory answers, and documents that expire before the next appointment becomes available.

    • Corporate customer service: agents reading from scripts, unable to deviate even when the solution is obvious.

    • Elderly care in Sweden: in 2025, the family of 94-year-old Gunnar in Sunne reported that home-care services failed to deliver meals for six days in a row. Staff said they were unaware of the task — a tragic example of how a simple “oversight” in a bureaucratic chain can leave a vulnerable man hungry, confused, and at risk.

    And let’s not forget those inside the machine. The poor bureaucrats employed to enforce all this red tape often suffer just as much. Many start with the desire to help people, only to find themselves trapped in rigid job descriptions where their humanity is suppressed. They are measured by compliance, not compassion. Their creativity and common sense are sidelined by “the system.”

    And if the system itself makes a mistake? Then the chaos is endless. Culture has reflected this again and again:

    • The film Brazil — a single typo mixing up the names Tuttle and Buttle leads to the arrest and death of an innocent family man.

    • Kafka’s The Trial — bureaucracy becomes a faceless nightmare where no one knows the rules, and no way out exists.

    • Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams brilliantly satirizes bureaucracy on both a small and a cosmic scale. Arthur Dent’s house is scheduled for demolition by British officials to make room for a local motorway. Moments later, the Vogon bureaucrats arrive and demolish the entire planet Earth — also to make way for a motorway, in this case a galactic hyperspace bypass. The parallel shows how bureaucracy, whether petty or planetary, can be absurdly destructive when carried out without humanity or common sense.

    These stories are funny, dark, or tragic — but they all point to the same truth: bureaucracy, when left unchecked, becomes absurd, inhuman, and destructive.

    The myth of “reducing bureaucracy”

    Politicians in every country have promised to cut red tape. They digitize forms, launch “one-stop portals,” or talk about “simplifying procedures.” And yet, somehow, the pile of rules keeps growing.

    Why? Because bureaucracy is built on control. Each reform adds another layer meant to fix a flaw in the last one. Instead of removing complexity, the system multiplies it. Digitalization often makes it worse: now you don’t just need the right paper — you also need the right password, code, or app that doesn’t crash.

    The result is the same: people acting like robots, following instructions instead of solving problems. And so do the workers themselves, who end up enforcing rules they know are senseless. Both sides — citizen and employee — are dehumanized by the same machinery.

    Is there an alternative?

    The world of Waking Up imagines a very different approach. In this future, bureaucracy is not replaced by more rules, but by intelligence — human and artificial — working together for the benefit of all. Instead of forms and signatures, advanced systems understand your needs directly and provide what is necessary without obstacles.

    Imagine a society where resources are allocated transparently and fairly, not through applications and waiting lists, but through real-time understanding of needs and availability. Where people are empowered to act with compassion and creativity, because the “system” is designed to support human flourishing, not stifle it.

    In such a world, no one has to play the role of the robot. Technology serves humanity, not the other way around. Bureaucracy, as we know it, simply disappears.

    A new dawn is possible

    This isn’t just utopia on paper — it’s the vision explored in Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. A novel about transformation, healing, and the possibility of building a society where bureaucracy is no longer needed.

    Follow Benjamin Michaels as he awakens into a future where healing, cooperation, and human connection replace the cold machinery of bureaucracy.

    👉 Step into his discovery of a world without red tape — and imagine how it could change our own.

    👉 If you’d like to dive deeper into this future without red tape, order your copy of Waking Up here.

    ⸻

    ORDER BOOK
  • Sameness vs. Oneness – A Deeper Kind of Unity

    Sameness vs. Oneness – A Deeper Kind of Unity

    (This article continues the reflections from my previous piece on “Sameness” and dives deeper into what true unity might mean.)

    In The Giver, society enforces peace by removing differences. Emotions are dulled, individuality is erased, and sameness becomes the guiding principle. No differences, no conflict. But also—no freedom, no creativity, no love in its true form. It is unity through control.

    The question is: is that the only way to achieve peace? Must harmony come at the price of conformity?

    In Waking Up, the vision is the opposite. Here, peace comes not from control but from trust—trust in human beings, trust in life itself. At first glance, that might sound dangerous. Won’t total freedom lead to chaos? But it doesn’t, because the foundation is not outer sameness, but inner Oneness.

    If we define ourselves as small, separate selves, then differences appear threatening. But if we expand our definition of Self to include everyone—to realize that we are all expressions of the same spirit—then harming another is as unthinkable as your right hand stabbing your left. Outer diversity becomes beautiful, not dangerous, because underneath it we are the same life, the same consciousness.

    So there are two kinds of unity:

    • Sameness through control (The Giver): “Let’s remove differences so we won’t clash.”
    • Oneness through spirit (Waking Up): “Let’s embrace differences, knowing we are already One at the core.”

    One narrows the self until nothing sticks out. The other expands the self until everyone is included.

    And that is the key: true peace doesn’t come from making people the same—it comes from remembering that, at the deepest level, we already are.

    ✨ If this vision resonates with you, dive deeper into Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. Order your copy here:

    ORDER BOOK

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