Category: Utopia

  • The Insanity of Humanity

    The Insanity of Humanity

    This might be the most important article I have ever written.

    A Russian drone has reportedly killed three civilians in Ukraine after using artificial intelligence to select its own target.

    Read that sentence again.

    The Terminator

    A human being programmed and  launched the weapon and gave it a general mission. But according to investigators, the drone then navigated and selected the precise object it would attack without further human intervention. It appears to have targeted propane tanks at a petrol station in Zaporizhzhia. Instead, it struck beside an apartment building and exploded, killing three people, including a 19-year-old student.

    This is not a scene from The Terminator. It is not a warning from a dystopian novel about something that might happen fifty years from now.

    It has happened.

    Drones For Death

    We have entered an age in which machines are being given the authority to decide where lethal force will be applied. Software observes the world through cameras and sensors, compares what it sees with a programmed target profile, selects something to destroy and attacks.

    There may still be human beings behind the mission. Humans manufacture the drone, define the target category and launch the weapon. But at the decisive moment—when one object is distinguished from everything surrounding it and marked for destruction—the machine may act alone.

    This is a threshold humanity should never have crossed.

    Yet, instead of stopping the insanity, every major military power will now feel compelled to move faster. If one country develops autonomous weapons, another will say it must do the same for its own protection. If one side deploys a hundred, the other will need a thousand. The drones will become smaller, cheaper, faster and more difficult to detect. They will learn to coordinate in swarms, recognize increasingly complex targets and continue operating when communication with a human controller has been lost or jammed.

    The military justification will always be the same: if we do not build them, somebody else will.

    That is how insanity becomes policy.

    Where Does This End?

    We Must Stop it

    Where does an autonomous arms race ultimately lead?

    Does the country possessing the largest number of killer drones eliminate everyone it considers a threat and then live happily ever after without all the bothersome others?

    Of course not. After all, we are dependent on each other for survival on this planet. Even the most selfish and fearful leaders see that.

    But autonomous weapons will not remain exclusively in the hands of a few powerful governments. The essential components already exist within the civilian economy: processors, cameras, navigation systems, motors, batteries and increasingly capable artificial intelligence. As the technology becomes cheaper, versions of these weapons will spread to smaller countries, militias, extremist organizations, criminal groups and individuals.

    We must stop this before it is too late.

    Nobody Will be Safe

    Eventually, nobody will be safe.

    Political leaders can be hunted. Dissidents can be hunted. Journalists, scientists, engineers and activists can be hunted. A person may be marked because of a uniform, a vehicle, a telephone signal, facial characteristics or simply because an algorithm incorrectly decides that the person matches a target profile.

    Machines do not understand mercy. They do not recognize fear in another person’s eyes and lower their weapons. They do not see a wounded soldier and decide that enough people have died. They cannot refuse an immoral command because something inside them says it is wrong.

    They process information and execute instructions.

    A world saturated with autonomous weapons would not be a world controlled by one victorious superpower. It would be a world in which power itself had become uncontrollable. Nobody would necessarily know who launched a particular drone, who programmed it or whether its behavior had been altered. One automated attack could provoke another. Retaliation could begin before human beings even understood what had happened.

    Wars could escalate at machine speed.

    And these weapons would not necessarily remain on distant battlefields. The same systems could be used by governments against their own populations. A dictator would no longer need soldiers willing to fire upon their neighbors. Machines do not disobey, protest or experience remorse. A government controlling millions of autonomous weapons could make resistance almost impossible.

    This is not security.

    It is the automated imprisonment of humanity.

    No One Wins

    If these weapons ever become genuinely uncontrollable, they will continue killing until their targets disappear or the industrial systems supporting them collapse.

    Power stations will fail. 

    Transport will stop. 

    Food distribution will break down. Hospitals will become inoperable. People will be unable to gather, travel or work safely. 

    Eventually, most of the machines will also stop as batteries degrade, components break and replacement parts disappear.

    Human civilization and its killer machines may collapse together.

    That is the glorious destination of the arms race: humanity hiding underground while machines patrol the surface of the planet we ruined through our own fear.

    Kill or Create

    We have developed artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, global communications and extraordinary scientific knowledge. We possess technology that could help restore ecosystems, clean the oceans, cultivate food, construct homes and release humanity from dangerous and exhausting work.

    And what do we do?

    We teach machines to kill.

    This is the insanity of humanity.

    The Insanity of Separation

    But beneath this insanity, humanity is not insane.

    Beneath the fear, conditioning and the constant story of separation, there is an awareness within every one of us. In that awareness exists love, compassion, understanding and intelligence. It is the part of us that recognizes another human being not as an enemy, a competitor or an obstacle, but as another expression of the same life.

    A Ukrainian child, a Russian mother, an American soldier, a Chinese engineer and an Iranian farmer are not separate forms of life with different fundamental values. They feel pain. They experience fear. They love their children. They want to live.

    There are no Others

    We have placed a frightened layer over this awareness. The ego divides the world into us and them. From it’s fear it constructs nations, armies, threats and enemies. It tells us that we can achieve safety only by possessing greater destructive power than everybody else.

    Each side insists that it is merely defending itself. Each new weapon is justified as a response to the weapons of another. Everyone pursues security, yet everyone becomes progressively less secure.

    Now we are taking this ancient insanity and embedding it in software.

    We are giving fear cameras, wings and explosives. We are teaching artificial intelligence to recognize the enemies created by our own minds and destroy them with increasing efficiency.

    The machine has not invented separation.

    We have programmed it.

    The Other Direction

    The alternative is not to abolish technology. It is not to close every data center, abandon artificial intelligence or return to some imagined pre-industrial past.

    The alternative is to give our technology another purpose.

    The New Purpose

    The same machine vision capable of recognizing a military target can recognize plastic in the ocean, an animal caught in an abandoned fishing net, the first signs of a forest fire or a person buried beneath earthquake rubble.

    Autonomous machines can remove pollution, restore forests, repair infrastructure, cultivate food and monitor the health of ecosystems. Artificial intelligence can help humanity understand what resources exist, what people need and how production can be organized without destroying the living world..

    The Choice is Ours

    We can use artificial intelligence to compete more effectively against one another, or we can use it to build a civilization that works for everyone.

    We can automate killing, or we can automate caring.

    The technology is not making that choice.

    We are.

    A Message to World Leaders

    To every head of state—and especially to the leaders of the world’s military powers:

    Stop.

    Refuse to authorize machines to select and attack human beings. Begin immediate negotiations for a binding global prohibition against autonomous weapons. Establish meaningful human control over every use of automated lethal force.

    Do not wait for your rivals to move first, because they are waiting for you.

    Somebody must interrupt the logic of fear. Somebody must possess the courage to say that humanity will not construct its future upon machines deciding who shall die.

    True courage is not developing the most efficient killer drone. It is stepping out of an arms race when everyone around you insists that stopping is impossible.

    You are not protecting your people by creating a technology that will inevitably spread and eventually be turned against them. You are not building peace by removing human conscience from the decision to kill. You are not demonstrating strength by surrendering life-and-death decisions to software.

    This is one planet. 

    We share one atmosphere, one biosphere and one future. No country can make itself permanently secure in a world where everyone else lives in fear.

    The security of one nation cannot be built upon the insecurity of all others.

    Share Another Future

    I urgently beg you. 

    I insist.

    Please share this article.

    Share it not for me, not for a political party or organization, and not because I want to sell books. Share it because humanity urgently needs to recognize the choice now before us.

    Because the recent incident in Ukraine is not to be taken lightly. 

    We are close to the ultimate choice.

    The choice to perish as humanity or the choice to prosper together.

    So please send it to friends. Send it to journalists, researchers, engineers, politicians, military commanders, technology executives and heads of state. Translate it. Republish it. Discuss it. Challenge it if you must—but do not ignore the direction in which we are moving.

    Share not only the warning. 

    Share the possibility of another future.

    People cannot choose a possibility they have never been shown.

    If the only futures presented to humanity are endless economic competition, military supremacy, automated warfare and survival against one another, we will continue constructing precisely that world.

    We must make another civilization imaginable: a civilization based upon stewardship instead of ownership, cooperation instead of competition and intelligent access to abundance instead of an endless struggle for money and power. A world in which AI and robotics serve humanity and the whole living planet—not profit, domination, fear and war.

    Somewhere within every government, military institution and technology company are human beings who still possess conscience and compassion. They must hear from us before fear makes the decision for them.

    One article will not stop the machinery of war. But silence guarantees that the machinery will continue.

    We do not need every human being to awaken at exactly the same moment. We need enough people to speak, share and demonstrate another direction. We need enough people to insist that the future does not belong to fear. We need enough people to remind those in power that there is still something within them deeper than the frightened voice demanding more weapons.

    Humanity Stands at a Threshold

    Down one road, nations surround themselves with increasingly autonomous instruments of death until every human being becomes a potential target and the entire planet becomes a battlefield controlled by machines.

    Down the other road, we recognize that there are no others. 

    We allow the intelligence, compassion and awareness within us to determine how our technology will be used. We stop preparing to destroy one another and begin building a world in which everyone can live.

    This is not a distant philosophical choice.

    It is happening now.

    Please Share

    Please carry this message as far as you can and as high as you can. Let it reach people with the power to change our direction. Let it remind them that another future remains possible.

    We cannot base humanity’s future on killer drones.

    Humanity thanks you.

  • How Many Rules Do We Really Need?

    How Many Rules Do We Really Need?

    Ask Google what morality is, and you get this definition:

    “Morality is a system of rules and values that helps people decide what is right and wrong. It guides how we treat others and shapes our personal and social character.”

    It sounds perfectly reasonable. In fact, it probably describes rather accurately how our civilization has approached morality for thousands of years.

    We obviously need a system.

    We need rules.

    We need values telling us what is right and wrong.

    We need something outside ourselves to guide our behavior.

    But in the movie K-PAX, Prot offers a radically different proposition.

    Prot is a psychiatric patient who claims to come from a planet called K-PAX. When his psychiatrist (Mark) discovers that K-PAX has no laws, the obvious question follows: how do people know right from wrong?

    Prot’s answer is wonderfully simple:

    “Mark. Every being in the universe knows right from wrong.”

    Put these two ideas beside each other and the difference is profound.

    One says we need rules and values to help us decide what is right and wrong.

    The other says we already know.

    So which is it?

    And if Prot is right, how many rules do we actually need?

    Morality

    Perhaps morality isn’t fundamentally a system of rules at all.

    Perhaps what we call morality is something much deeper.

    Awareness

    If you truly experience another being as another expression of the same life you are experiencing, do you really need a rule telling you not to hurt them?

    If you are fully aware of the suffering your actions cause, do you need a law to explain that causing suffering is wrong?

    If you truly understand your dependence on the biosphere around you, do you need a moral doctrine telling you that poisoning the water you drink, destroying the soil that feeds you and destabilizing the climate you depend upon might not be a particularly good idea?

    The important distinction is that this awareness does not necessarily have to be taught.

    It may already be there.

    Look at very young children before we have had much opportunity to teach them about economics, status, careers, property or social hierarchy. They certainly aren’t perfect little saints. They can be demanding, angry, impulsive and completely absorbed in their immediate needs and wants.

    But they can also display astonishingly spontaneous empathy, affection and concern for another being.

    Perhaps children don’t gradually acquire some mysterious moral substance as they grow older.

    Perhaps something else happens.

    Layers accumulate.

    The Ego

    We learn that this is mine.

    That is yours.

    We learn status.

    We learn comparison.

    We learn competition.

    We learn that some people have more and others have less.

    We learn that having more can make us important.

    We learn that losing what we possess can make us vulnerable.

    And gradually the separate self becomes enormously important.

    In a way, the monetary system reinforces the ego.

    But the ego did not begin with money.

    Human beings were territorial, possessive, competitive and violent long before anyone invented coins, banks or stock markets.

    Money didn’t create the ego.

    If anything, the causal relationship originally ran in the opposite direction.

    Money had its conception in the ego.

    Once I perceive myself as fundamentally separate from you, a trading system makes perfect sense.

    I have something.

    You have something.

    If you want what I have, I don’t simply give it to you, because then I will have less.

    So you give me something in return.

    Eventually barter becomes cumbersome, and we invent something vastly more practical: a commonly accepted representation of value that can mediate exchange.

    Money.

    It was ingenious.

    It allowed increasingly complex civilizations to coordinate exchange among millions and eventually billions of people who didn’t know or trust one another.

    But something fascinating happened along the way.

    The system that emerged from the ego began reinforcing the ego itself.

    The Feedback Loop

    As more and more of human civilization became organized around money, ownership and trading, people increasingly had to behave according to that logic.

    Accumulation became security.

    Possession became status.

    Competition became survival.

    More became success.

    Other human beings became not only friends, lovers, relatives and neighbors, but serfs, kings, queens, customers, competitors, employers, employees, landlords, tenants, creditors and debtors.

    And because access to almost everything required money, participation wasn’t optional.

    You could be the most generous person in the world and still need money for food.

    You could believe deeply in sharing and still need to pay your rent.

    You could hate competition and still have to compete for a job.

    You could care enormously about the environment and still participate every day in an economy structurally dependent upon consumption and using polluting vehicles.

    The system didn’t create the ego.

    But it exercised it.

    Rewarded it.

    Normalized it.

    Expanded it.

    And eventually the relationship became a feedback loop.

    The ego helped create the monetary system.

    The monetary system strengthened the ego.

    Generation after generation grew up inside that loop until eventually we began mistaking the behavior it produced for our fundamental human nature.

    Humans are selfish.

    Humans are greedy.

    Humans will always compete.

    People won’t contribute unless they are rewarded.

    Nobody will share unless they get something in return.

    Without ownership, nobody will take care of anything.

    Without the threat of punishment, people will simply do whatever they can get away with.

    Maybe.

    But there is another possibility.

    Perhaps we have spent so long looking at humanity through the system we created that we have forgotten what lies underneath it.

    Helping Strangers

    Because underneath all of this, something stubbornly refuses to disappear.

    People love unconditionally.

    People care.

    People help strangers from whom they will never receive anything in return.

    People risk their lives for other people.

    People give away their time.

    People comfort someone who is suffering.

    People rescue animals.

    People create music, art, dance and literature without knowing whether anybody will ever pay for it.

    People care for children and elderly parents without issuing invoices.

    We do these things every day.

    And very often there is no transaction whatsoever. And no laws or rules telling us to do it.

    Perhaps these aren’t exceptions to human nature.

    Perhaps they reveal it.

    Perhaps beneath the egoic layers of separation, possession, comparison and competition is an awareness that never disappeared.

    Our True Core

    Not something that needs to be manufactured.

    But something that needs room to emerge.

    And from that perspective, humanity’s problem begins to look very different.

    Maybe we don’t need to somehow manufacture eight billion better human beings.

    Maybe we need to stop constructing civilization in ways that continually bring out the worst in the human beings we already have.

    Waking Up

    This is fundamental to the future civilization I describe in Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Humanity did not suddenly become a different species.

    Nor did some enlightened government impose a new moral code on everyone and finally teach humanity how to behave.

    Humanity woke up.

    Not completely. Not magically. Not overnight.

    But enough.

    Enough people began seeing through the layers of separation we had constructed around ourselves.

    Enough people began recognizing that humanity wasn’t billions of independent economic units competing against one another.

    We were one species.

    On one planet.

    Dependent upon one biosphere.

    Sharing one future.

    And as that awareness began shining through, the civilization built by the ego started looking increasingly absurd.

    Why were humans competing for resources they could manage cooperatively?

    Why were abundant things artificially restricted because somebody couldn’t afford them?

    Why were enormous amounts of resources wasted while other people went without?

    Why were we destroying ecosystems upon which all of us depended because destruction could sometimes be more profitable than preservation?

    Why were billions of people spending their lives trying to acquire enough money to gain access to resources that already existed?

    Why had we organized the resources of an entire planet around ownership and exchange rather than intelligent stewardship and access?

    Why did we go to war for these resources when we could just as well optimize all resources to work for everyone?

    The answers increasingly came back to the same thing.

    We had built civilization around separation.

    And once humanity became sufficiently aware of that, we could begin building something else.

    The Other Loop

    This is where system change and inner change become inseparable.

    Humanity had created the monetary system partly from the ego, and the monetary system had subsequently strengthened the ego.

    But the same feedback mechanism could operate in another direction.

    Awareness could create a different system.

    And that system could create conditions in which awareness was no longer constantly buried beneath fear, competition and scarcity.

    If your access to food, shelter and healthcare doesn’t depend upon defeating somebody else economically, one enormous source of competition disappears.

    If resources are stewarded rather than owned, accumulation loses its meaning.

    If access replaces exchange, another human being no longer needs to become a source of income before cooperation makes practical sense.

    If production is organized around actual human and ecological needs rather than monetary return, waste stops being economically useful.

    The new civilization doesn’t force people to become less selfish.

    It stops constantly rewarding selfishness.

    It doesn’t manufacture compassion.

    It stops creating so many conditions that suppress it.

    It doesn’t teach humanity some entirely new morality.

    It allows something already inside us to become visible again.

    The feedback loop reverses.

    Ego created a system that strengthened ego.

    Awareness creates a system that strengthens awareness.

    And perhaps that is what awakening really means.

    The Rules

    Would such a civilization have no rules?

    Of course not.

    Human beings still need coordination.

    We need to agree which side of the road to drive on. Aircraft need communication procedures. Buildings need engineering standards. Computer systems need protocols. Shared resources need systems for determining how they are used.

    Awareness cannot always tell you whether everyone should drive on the right or the left.

    Those aren’t moral rules.

    They are practical agreements.

    The more interesting question is how many rules we need to prevent ourselves from harming each other.

    How many rules against exploitation do we need when there is nothing to gain from exploiting somebody?

    How many rules against theft do we need when access has replaced ownership?

    How many rules against fraud do we need when there is no monetary advantage to obtain through fraud?

    How many environmental regulations do we need when humanity genuinely understands that destroying the biosphere means destroying the foundation of our own existence?

    Maybe the highest form of civilization isn’t the civilization with the most sophisticated system of rules.

    Maybe it is the civilization that needs the fewest.

    And that brings us back to Prot.

    “Every being in the universe knows right from wrong.”

    Maybe he wasn’t talking about laws at all.

    Maybe he was talking about what remains when enough of everything we have piled on top of ourselves has fallen away.

    Not morality imposed from outside.

    Not obedience.

    Not fear of punishment.

    Awareness.

    And perhaps the great task facing humanity isn’t to learn what is right and wrong.

    Perhaps, somewhere underneath everything else, we already know.

    We just need to wake up.

    Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity is a story about what might happen if humanity did exactly that.

    A hundred years from 2015, Benjamin Michaels wakes into a civilization that has left money, ownership and competition behind—not because humanity was forced to become something different, but because we finally became aware enough to build a world reflecting something that had been inside us all along.

    Discover his story

    Maybe the future isn’t about becoming better human beings.

    Maybe it’s about remembering who we are.

  • Just for the love of it

    Just for the love of it

    A friend of mine in Norway runs a small music blog called Volum11.no

    No Corporate Backing

    The name itself is a little music joke. It comes from the rockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap, where one of the musicians proudly points to his amplifier and says, “This one goes to 11.” It’s exactly the kind of reference only a true music enthusiast would choose.

    He has no sponsors. No corporate backing. No business plan.

    He simply listens and writes.

    He writes about old albums, new albums, forgotten artists and modern classics. He dissects production techniques, musicianship, lyrics and atmosphere. But he also digs into the lives of the artists themselves—their childhoods, the bands they formed, the musicians they collaborated with, are influenced of and the creative journeys that shaped their music.

    Reading his articles feels less like reading reviews and more like traveling through music history.

    And he does it simply because he loves music.

    Not because anyone told him to.
    Not because the government assigned him to do it.
    Not because there is huge money in it.

    But simply because he loves it.

    Reading his articles feels less like reading reviews and more like traveling through music history.

    Why Work?

    This made me think of a chapter I recently read in Robin Everett Cox’s excellent book What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money: Why We Need a “System Upgrade”.

    The chapter is called “Why Work?”, and it asks one of the most fundamental questions of all.

    Why do we work?

    Many would say, “because we need money”. And that wouldn’t be wrong of course. In the context we are in.

    But Robin points to the remarkable response during the COVID-19 pandemic in England, when millions of people volunteered to help total strangers without expecting anything in return. According to Patrick Butler, writing in The Guardian:

    “In the space of a few weeks of corona virus lockdown England acquired a million-strong network of social volunteers – surpassing demand and prompting speculation: is this a new sign of social solidarity, and can the newly acquired community spirit survive?”

    Robin then writes:

    “It is inherent to volunteering that volunteers don’t receive payment for their time. As author Sherry Anderson said, ‘Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.’ Putting a price tag on their labour not only negates their status as volunteers; some studies suggest that, when offered a financial reward, they are inclined to work less and with markedly less enthusiasm.

    In short, money can undermine our ‘intrinsic motivation’ to work.”

    — Robin Everett Cox, What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money

    That paragraph stayed with me.

    Our Intrinsic Motivation

    “money can undermine our ‘intrinsic motivation’ to work.”

    Really?

    If so, perhaps we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question for centuries.

    We’ve built an entire civilization around the assumption that money is what motivates people.

    Without money, people wouldn’t work.

    Without salaries, nobody would contribute.

    Without financial incentives, civilization would collapse.

    But is that really true?

    Volunteers Helping Strangers

    When I look around, I don’t see a world driven only by money. Of course, I see people work for money, but that is only because we live within a monetary system that demands money for almost everything. But if there wasn’t any money in the first place, I think we would still work just as much. But for different reasons. Even in today’s world I see lots of work being done for reasons other than money.

    I see volunteers helping strangers.

    I see parents dedicating countless unpaid hours to raising children.

    I see programmers building free open-source software that powers much of the internet.

    I see people contributing to Wikipedia.

    I see neighbors helping neighbors after floods, fires and earthquakes.

    I see people restoring old cars simply because they love them.

    I see gardeners spending weekends growing flowers and vegetables.

    I see musicians playing, improvising and composing music.

    Artists painting.

    Writers writing.

    Dancers dancing.

    And then I look at the work people actually get paid to do.

    The Salary is Not the Dream

    Many farmers don’t become farmers because they’re chasing wealth. They genuinely love farming. They love being outdoors, working with the seasons and watching life grow from the soil.

    Many builders love construction. They enjoy seeing something tangible rise from an empty plot of land. Something useful. Something needed.

    Many teachers love watching children discover something new.

    Many nurses love caring for people.

    Many security guards and police officers genuinely enjoy being of service and helping others feel safe.

    Many engineers love solving problems.

    Many scientists love discovering how the world works.

    Many chefs love cooking.

    For countless people, the salary is not the dream.

    It is simply what allows them to continue doing what they already love.

    Of course, not everyone has their dream job. Many people work in jobs they would happily leave tomorrow if they could.

    But perhaps that, too, tells us something.

    Whenever people have the opportunity, they usually try to move closer to what genuinely interests them.

    They change careers.

    Start businesses.

    Study new subjects.

    Write books.

    Learn instruments.

    Travel.

    Volunteer.

    Create.

    Because something inside them keeps pulling them toward meaning.

    Toward curiosity.

    Toward contribution.

    Toward joy.

    Maybe that’s what it really means to be human.

    Maybe we are not naturally lazy beings who must constantly be bribed into contributing.

    Maybe we are naturally curious beings who want to create, build, care, discover and share.

    If that’s true, then perhaps the real purpose of a civilization should not be to figure out how to coerce people to work.

    Perhaps it should be to make it as easy as possible for people to do what they genuinely love.

    But no, no. We have to buy, sell, compete, extract, consume, argue, earn money, go to war, hoard more, stress more, go bankrupt, start all over again and constantly tricking each other into buying as much as physically possible. 

    Imagine what humanity might become if that was not our starting point.

    But rather: A civilization where people aren’t asking:

    “How can I make a living?”

    But instead:

    “How can I best contribute?”

    Maybe that’s not an impossible dream.

    Maybe we already see glimpses of it every single day.

    In volunteers.

    In artists.

    In teachers.

    In farmers.

    In builders.

    In musicians.

    Reward

    There is another assumption buried deeply within our economic thinking: that human beings need to receive something from somebody else in return for everything they do. A reciprocal service.

    Money.

    A favour.

    A product.

    A service.

    Some kind of trade.

    Otherwise, why bother?

    But perhaps the answer is staring us in the face.

    The reward can be in the task itself.

    The musician doesn’t necessarily need somebody to reward her for playing music. Playing music is the reward.

    The gardener doesn’t need somebody to compensate him for tending his garden. Watching it grow and enjoying the fresh air and nature can be the reward in itself.

    The farmer can experience enormous satisfaction from seeing the first shoots emerge from the soil.

    The builder can stand back at the end of the day and look at something that didn’t exist before.

    And my friend doesn’t spend hours researching the history of musicians and writing articles for Volum 11 because he expects somebody to give him something of equivalent value in return.

    He enjoys doing it.

    The reward lies in doing what you love.

    There can also be another kind of reward—one that doesn’t require a direct exchange.

    Think again about those volunteers in England. They weren’t thinking, I’ll help this particular person today as long as this particular person promises to repay me tomorrow.

    There was no contract.

    No invoice.

    No balance sheet.

    Perhaps many simply understood something much more fundamental:

    We all benefit from living in a society where people help one another.

    I contribute when I can. Someone else contributes when they can. And when I eventually need help, likely somebody will be there for me too.

    Nobody has to keep score.

    That isn’t really trade at all.

    It is participation in a society in which people contribute because they care about what they are doing—and about each other.

    GROJ

    This is an idea I played with in my novel Waking Up.

    In the future civilization Benjamin Michaels awakens to, money has disappeared. But the people jokingly say they still have a “currency”.

    They call it GROJ: Gratitude, Love, Joy.

    It is a rather peculiar currency.

    You can’t put it in a bank.

    You can’t hoard it.

    You can’t accumulate enough of it to become a billionaire.

    In fact, GROJ works almost exactly opposite to money.

    The more you give away, the more you get.

    Help somebody, and you may receive gratitude while experiencing the joy of having helped.

    Create something beautiful and share it, and that joy can spread to other people and come back to you in addition to the joy you felt when creating it.

    Give love, and you may find yourself surrounded by more of it.

    Nobody needs to keep score.

    Maybe this is the kind of reward we have underestimated.

    Not everything valuable needs to come back to us as payment or ROI.

    Sometimes doing it is the reward.

    Sometimes giving it away is the reward.

    And sometimes the richest person in the room might simply be the one experiencing the most gratitude, love and joy.

    In people like my friend in Norway, quietly writing article after article about music…

    Just for the love of it.

    A World Like That

    What if we actually had a world like that? Where everyone only did what they genuinely loved doing?

    In the novel Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity, the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in a world exactly like that. And through his eyes you can get a glimpse into that world too.

    Discover his story

    Further reading:

    Robin Everett Cox – What Comes Next? Volume 1: The Illusion of Money: Why We Need a “System Upgrade”

    Volum11 – https://www.volum11.no

    Harald Neslein Sandø – Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity

  • The Permanent Civilization

    The Permanent Civilization

    Most great civilizations in history has been temporary.

    The Egyptians believed their civilization would endure forever. The Romans thought the same. So did countless kingdoms, empires, and nations throughout history.

    Yet most of them eventually declined, fragmented, or disappeared.

    Perhaps the most dangerous assumption we make today is that our own civilization is somehow different.

    We tend to think of modern civilization as permanent. Money and ownership has lasted for generations and seem to last forever.

    But will it?

    Our economic system depends on endless growth on a finite planet. Our political systems struggle to solve increasingly global problems. Our industries consume resources faster than nature can regenerate them. Climate change, ecological degradation, resource depletion, and geopolitical tensions all raise an uncomfortable question:

    Are we building a civilization that can last?

    Or are we simply living in the latest chapter of another temporary one?

    The First Permanent Civilization

    For the first time in history, humanity possesses something no previous civilization ever had.

    A full global view.

    We can communicate instantly across continents. We can monitor weather systems from space. We can track resources, production, transportation, and consumption in real time. Artificial intelligence is rapidly increasing our ability to understand complex systems and coordinate information.

    The technical ability to manage a global civilization is already here.

    The challenge is no longer primarily technological.

    It is human.

    The question is not whether we can coordinate.

    The question is: coordinate toward what?

    Defining Success

    Before we can create a permanent civilization, we must decide what success actually means.

    Do we want everyone to have access to food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education?

    Do we want to preserve the ecosystems that support life?

    Do we want future generations to inherit a thriving planet?

    Do we want to reduce unnecessary suffering?

    Do we want peace and cooperation to become easier than conflict and competition?

    Most people, regardless of nationality, religion, or political belief, would probably answer yes to all these questions.

    Perhaps humanity already agrees on far more than we think.

    Our disagreements often concern methods rather than goals.

    And perhaps the greatest challenge facing humanity is not a lack of technology, resources, or intelligence.

    Perhaps it is simply that we have never clearly defined what success for humanity actually looks like.

    Human Hubris

    But even if we solve our environmental and economic challenges, another question remains.

    What about us?

    History is filled with examples of civilizations that were not destroyed by a lack of resources, but by arrogance, corruption, tribalism, greed, and the concentration of power.

    The Romans had resources.

    Many empires possessed advanced technologies for their time.

    What often failed was not the physical system, but the people operating within it.

    This does not mean human beings are flawed beyond repair.

    It simply means that human beings are human.

    A permanent civilization cannot depend upon perfect people alone.

    It must be designed to remain healthy despite imperfect people.

    The goal is not to eliminate human hubris.

    The goal is to prevent hubris from gaining enough influence to threaten the entire civilization.

    Decentralized but Coordinated

    This may be one of the most important lessons humanity has yet to learn.

    Power concentrated in one ruler, one party, one corporation, one ideology, or one elite group eventually creates risks for everyone.

    The larger the concentration of power, the larger the consequences when mistakes are made.

    A permanent civilization would likely require a different approach.

    Not centralized control.

    Not chaos.

    But decentralized management combined with global coordination.

    Local communities understand local needs.

    Regions understand regional challenges.

    At the same time, humanity increasingly possesses the ability to coordinate knowledge, resources, and information globally.

    A neighborhood can make decisions about its own affairs.

    A region can manage its own resources.

    A global network can provide information about planetary systems, resource availability, ecological impacts, and long-term consequences.

    The result is neither a world government nor a collection of isolated groups.

    It becomes a living network.

    A civilization where decisions are made at the lowest practical level while knowledge is shared at the highest possible level.

    Councils Instead of Rulers

    If humanity wishes to create a civilization that lasts for centuries or millennia, we may need to move beyond the ancient model of rulers.

    The challenge is not finding the perfect king, president, emperor, billionaire, or political party.

    Humanity has spent thousands of years trying that approach.

    The challenge is designing systems that remain stable and flexible regardless of who occupies a particular position.

    One possible path is a network of councils operating at neighborhood, community, regional, national, and global levels.

    Not rulers.

    But

    Direct democracy.

    Collaborators.

    Stewards.

    Combined with transparent information systems and advanced AI capable of analyzing consequences and identifying risks, such a structure could provide continuous feedback and self-correction.

    Humans would continue to provide wisdom, creativity, compassion, and values.

    AI would provide analysis, memory, modeling, and perspective.

    Together they would create a civilization that learns rather than commands.

    The Great Awakening

    Yet no system alone can guarantee permanence. A permanent civilization ultimately requires something deeper.

    A shift in consciousness.

    Not necessarily toward a particular religion, ideology, or belief system.

    But toward a broader understanding of who we are.

    For most of history, survival encouraged us to think in terms of tribes, nations, classes, religions, and competing groups. Money, ownership and property was inherited through generations. 

    Conscious Awareness

    Perhaps the next stage of civilization requires us to think as one human family. And create a new form of inheritance. An inheritance where conscious awareness is inherited. The conscious awareness that we are one global family trying our best to survive on this planet forever.

    Not because we become identical.

    Not because we lose our individuality.

    But because we recognize our shared destiny.

    The atmosphere belongs to all of us.

    The oceans belong to all of us.

    The land belong to all of us.

    The future belongs to all of us.

    A civilization that intends to last forever must care about people it will never meet and generations not yet born.

    Self-Correction, Not Perfection

    Perhaps the secret of a permanent civilization is not perfection.

    Perfection does not exist.

    Perhaps the secret is simply self-correction.

    A civilization humble enough to admit mistakes.

    Wise enough to learn from them.

    Flexible enough to change before those mistakes become fatal.

    A civilization that never assumes it has reached the end of history.

    A civilization that understands it is always evolving.

    Because the moment a civilization believes it has become perfect, it stops learning.

    And the moment it stops learning, decline begins.

    The Balanced Civilization

    The permanent civilization may not be humanity’s most powerful civilization.

    It may be humanity’s most balanced civilization.

    A civilization where power is distributed, knowledge is shared, resources are managed intelligently, and no individual or institution can accumulate enough influence to threaten the whole.

    A civilization based on stewardship rather than ownership.

    Collaboration rather than domination.

    Long-term thinking rather than short-term gain.

    Perhaps humanity’s greatest achievement will not be artificial intelligence, fusion power, space travel, or even reaching the stars.

    Perhaps our greatest achievement will be creating the first civilization in history that can truly go on forever.

    A civilization capable of enduring not merely for centuries, but for countless generations to come.

    The Permanent Civilization.

    A civilization designed not simply to survive.

    But to thrive.

    Forever.

    ⸻

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, humanity has just made this transition and discovered what becomes possible when we begin to see ourselves as one global family. 

    The bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in this future after 100 years of cryonic sleep. He was trying to escape his cancer in 2015, and hoped to wake up again continuing the expansion of his empire. Imagine his surprise when there is no money in the world anymore…

    You can discover his whole story here if you like.

    If this vision resonates with you, please share this article. The conversation about humanity’s future belongs to all of us.

  • The Most Important Choice

    The Most Important Choice

    In several interviews over the years, Elon Musk has suggested that a future without money may one day become possible, and maybe even inevitable.

    He has argued that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence and robotics could create such extraordinary abundance that money might eventually become unnecessary. He has also repeatedly praised The Culture, Iain M. Banks’ celebrated science fiction series about a highly advanced civilization where artificial intelligence manages an economy of abundance and money has disappeared altogether.

    That is a remarkable thing to hear from the richest man on Earth.

    Here is someone who has built some of the world’s most valuable companies, accumulated immense wealth, and mastered today’s monetary system better than almost anyone else alive. Yet he openly entertains the possibility that money itself may not be a permanent feature of civilization. Maybe it’s just to sound interesting. Who knows?

    But why Elon Musk says it or is right is almost beside the point.

    The truly interesting question is whether we are prepared to follow that line of thought all the way to its conclusion.

    Human Economy

    The monetary system humanity has created has been built around people.

    People own land, businesses and resources. People work for wages. People buy and sell. People borrow money and repay loans. People invest, consume and pay taxes. Money is not simply coins, banknotes or numbers on a screen. It is the accounting system for billions of human interactions taking place every single day.

    Now imagine a future where artificial intelligence and robotics gradually perform most of the productive work.

    The machines build the houses, manufacture the products, grow the food, transport the goods. They maintain the infrastructure. They even design the next generation of machines.

    The more capable the technology becomes, the less human labour is required.

    But. Machines do not earn salaries. They do not buy groceries. They do not take out mortgages. They do not pay income tax. They do not participate in the monetary economy in the way people do. And they never will.

    If the productive activity that once belonged to billions of people is increasingly carried out by machines, then the foundation upon which today’s monetary system was built is fundamentally changing.

    Without economic activity from people, there will be no monetary system

    Thus, our problem is not merely an employment issue.

    It is a civilization issue.

    Follow Through

    This is where I think the conversation usually stops.

    We hear that artificial intelligence will create abundance.

    We hear that robots will do the work.

    We hear that people may receive a universal basic income.

    Then the discussion ends.

    But surely that is where the discussion should begin.

    Where does that income come from?

    How does a monetary system continue functioning if fewer and fewer people participate in the productive economy?

    What happens to wages?

    What happens to prices?

    What happens to ownership?

    What happens to profit?

    What happens to money?

    Every one of these questions is connected to every other.

    You cannot remove the human foundation from a system that has always depended upon human participation without asking whether the system itself is still appropriate.

    Perhaps Elon Musk has already followed this chain of thought all the way through.

    Perhaps he hasn’t.

    I honestly don’t know.

    But humanity eventually will have to.

    Our Choice

    Technology will not answer these questions for us.

    Artificial intelligence may create extraordinary abundance, but it cannot decide how civilization should organize itself once that abundance exists.

    That decision belongs to us.

    Perhaps we will find a way to preserve some form of monetary system.

    Perhaps we won’t.

    What matters is that we consciously examine the possibilities instead of automatically assuming that yesterday’s solutions must also be tomorrow’s.

    Throughout history, humanity has continually modified the monetary system. We have moved from barter to coins, from coins to paper money, from paper money to digital banking, from national currencies to cryptocurrencies.

    Every generation has tried to improve the system it inherited.

    Perhaps artificial intelligence will allow us to improve it once again.

    Or perhaps it is inviting us to ask a much more fundamental question.

    After all, regardless of the benefits money has brought, it has also been intertwined with poverty, inequality, debt, financial crises, exploitation, corruption, pollution, wars over resources and environmental destruction. It has been one of humanity’s most powerful inventions, but also one of its most troublesome.

    So if technology eventually gives us the opportunity to build a civilization beyond artificial scarcity, beyond involuntary labour and perhaps even beyond money itself…

    Wouldn’t it be prudent to at least explore that possibility instead of desperately trying to preserve a failing system at all costs?

    That may be the most important choice humanity has ever made.

    ⸻

    The Future

    In the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, Mankind has already made that choice, continuing civilization without a monetary system and instead created an optimized world providing a high degree of abundance for everyone on Earth. The former billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in this world after one hundred years of cryonic sleep, only to discover that money and ownership no longer exist and that his dream of expanding his empire has become meaningless.

    Now imagine if that billionaire had been Elon Musk…

    Discover the story…

  • Ecosystem or Egosystem?

    Ecosystem or Egosystem?

    From Nature’s Balance to Human Separation

    Nature spent billions of years creating an ecosystem.

    Humanity created an egosystem.

    The Web of Life Without Ownership

    Look closely at the natural world. 

    Forests, rivers, oceans, insects, birds, bacteria, fungi, and mammals all participate in an intricate web of life. Countless species compete at times, cooperate at others, and continuously recycle the same resources over and over again. The system itself has no concept of ownership. No tree claims the sunlight alone. No river demands payment for its water. No forest builds fences around the rain.

    The Rise of the Ego

    Then came us.

    Gifted with extraordinary intelligence, imagination, and self-awareness, we also developed something else: the ego. The persistent feeling that we are separate from one another, that survival depends on securing more than everyone else. The fear of not having enough. 

    Gradually, the ecosystem became an egosystem.

    From Stewardship to Ownership

    Instead of saying, “There is enough for all of us if we care for it wisely,” we began claiming pieces of the Earth as our own. We built fences, borders, and walls. We fought over land, minerals, water, forests, and eventually even ideas.

    Ownership replaced stewardship.

    Trading replaced sharing.

    Competition replaced cooperation.

    Money became the language through which access to the Earth’s resources was decided.

    The Birth of the Monetary Mindset

    The monetary system did not emerge in a vacuum. It emerged from minds that increasingly viewed the world through separation rather than connection. Once enough people believed that “mine” mattered more than “ours,” a system built on ownership, trade, and accumulation became almost inevitable.

    Living Inside the Egosystem

    Today we still live inside that egosystem.

    We measure success by monetary wealth rather than well-being. We compete for jobs, status, and possessions while surrounded by astonishing technological and natural abundance. We have learned how to produce enough to feed billions, yet millions still go hungry because access depends more on purchasing power than on human need.

    The Ego in Action

    The ego continues to shape our world in subtle and obvious ways. Nations arm themselves not only for protection, but out of fear of losing power. Corporations prioritize profit over planetary health, extracting resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate. Individuals compare, compete, and consume, often chasing identities built on status rather than substance.

    We see it in conflicts that could have been avoided through cooperation and communication. In food wasted while others starve. In oceans filled with plastic while we continue to produce even more. In the relentless pursuit of growth, even when that growth undermines the very ecosystems that sustain life.

    A Different Question

    Nature asks a different question.

    Can the whole system continue to flourish?

    Our egosystem asks another.

    How can I get more?

    Signs of Awakening

    And yet, something is changing.

    Across the world, signs of awakening are emerging. People are beginning to question the assumptions that built the egosystem. Movements for peace, sustainability, and social justice are growing and have been doing so for decades. Communities are rediscovering cooperation, and work together to grow healthy food. Renewable energy is replacing fossil fuels more and more. Forests are being restored. Cities are being redesigned with nature in mind.

    More and more individuals are recognizing that personal well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of others, or from the health of the planet itself.

    The Great Shift

    This is the beginning of a shift.

    Not a sudden revolution, but a gradual remembering.

    A remembering that we are not separate from nature, but expressions of it.

    A remembering that true security comes not from accumulation, but from collaboration and connection.

    Returning to the Ecosystem

    Perhaps the greatest transition humanity will ever make is not from one technology to another, nor from one political ideology to another.

    It is from the egosystem back to the ecosystem.

    Not by abandoning civilization, but by bringing civilization back into harmony with the living world that made it possible in the first place.

    A New Way of Living

    When we finally understand that we are not owners of the Earth but rather temporary stewards of it, everything changes.

    In that awakening, the world begins to transform. Systems once built on competition evolve toward collaboration. Resources are managed for collective well-being rather than individual gain. Technology is guided by wisdom, not just profitability. The boundaries between “mine” and “yours” soften into a shared sense of responsibility.

    The World We Can Create

    This is the world imagined in the book Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    A world where humanity has remembered its place within the greater whole.

    A world where the egosystem has given way to an ecosystem of consciousness.

    Perhaps humanity’s future depends on nothing less than this choice. Choose to continue the egosystem until we perish or choose to turn completely back to the ecosystem… 

    Follow the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels when he wakes up after 100 years in cryostasis, only to find a world that has embraced the ecosystem. The egosystem he relied on of money, trading and ownership is gone. His dream of expanding his empire is shattered, but maybe a new dream is born in him…?

    Discover his story

  • The Death of Money

    The Death of Money

    It’s an almost apocalyptic title.

    The kind of title that immediately makes you think of empty supermarket shelves, closed banks, worthless banknotes and a world descending into chaos.

    Because if money dies…

    …what happens to us?

    The Book

    That is the question at the heart of The Death of Money, a fascinating book by economist, investment banker, lawyer and bestselling author James Rickards(74). Throughout his career, Rickards has advised governments, major financial institutions and even the U.S. defense and intelligence communities on financial risk, economic warfare and the international monetary system.

    When someone with that background writes a book with a title like The Death of Money, it is worth paying attention.

    Reserve Currency

    Rickards argues that the international monetary system has become increasingly fragile. The U.S. dollar has served as the world’s reserve currency since the end of the Second World War, becoming the foundation of international trade and finance.

    Confidence

    But that foundation rests on something surprisingly fragile.

    Confidence.

    The only value money possesses comes from only this one thing: 

    Our confidence in it.

    Not from gold.

    Not from silver.

    Not from the numbers displayed in our online bank accounts.

    Not even from the paper it is printed on.

    Confidence.

    That is all.

    The moment that confidence disappears…

    …so does the value of the currency.

    That simple observation changes everything.

    Growing debt, relentless fiat money creation, financial crises, geopolitical tensions, currency wars and increasing challenges to the dollar all place pressure on that confidence. Rickards argues that if confidence in the dollar(or other currencies for that matter) is seriously undermined, the consequences could spread throughout the entire international monetary system because no obvious replacement is waiting in the wings.

    Whether or not every prediction unfolds exactly as he expects is almost beside the point.

    His book forces us to confront a question most of us never ask.

    What happens if that confidence is lost?

    The Warnings

    Rickards is far from alone.

    For years, warnings have come from every direction. The LaRouche movement has long argued that the financial system is fundamentally unstable. Mainstream economists warn about unsustainable debt. Investors warn about bubbles. Governments quietly prepare for financial crises. Newspapers speak of inflation, banking instability, currency wars, de-dollarization, recession and geopolitical conflict.

    Different people describe different threats.

    Different people propose different solutions.

    Yet beneath all the disagreement lies the same uncomfortable feeling.

    Something doesn’t feel right.

    Something feels increasingly fragile.

    Perhaps that explains why The Death of Money resonates with so many readers.

    It gives a name to a fear that many people already carry.

    The Disaster

    Now imagine the warnings are right.

    Not every detail.

    Not every prediction.

    But the central concern.

    Imagine confidence suddenly evaporates.

    Banks close.

    Markets crash.

    Currencies collapse.

    Savings lose their value.

    Governments panic.

    Television screens fill with the words nobody ever wanted to hear.

    Financial collapse.

    Currency collapse.

    Economic emergency.

    The death of money.

    Fear spreads around the world.

    Because for centuries we have quietly come to believe that money is civilization itself.

    Without money…

    there is no food.

    No products.

    No joy.

    No work.

    No fun.

    No future.

    No survival.

    One question suddenly becomes more important than every other.

    What shall we do??

    The Illusion

    Will we die??

    No.

    Because money has never fed anyone.

    Money has never grown a single grain of wheat.

    Money has never purified a single drop of water, or made it rain.

    Money has never generated electricity.

    Money has never built a home.

    Money has never healed a patient.

    Money has never made a movie.

    Money has never created wealth.

    People do those things.

    Nature provides the resources.

    Technology transforms those resources.

    Human knowledge makes it all possible.

    Money has only organized access to them.

    It has only kept score.

    Somewhere along the way we forgot the difference.

    We stopped seeing money as a tool.

    We started seeing it as reality itself.

    Money became sacred.

    Question governments and people will argue with you.

    Question capitalism and people will argue with you.

    Question socialism and people will argue with you.

    Question banks and people will argue with you.

    Question money itself…

    …and many people think you’ve lost your mind.

    That is how deeply the illusion has taken hold.

    The Reality

    Imagine every currency disappeared tomorrow.

    What would actually disappear?

    Would the forests disappear?

    Would the rivers disappear?

    Would fertile farmland disappear?

    Would power stations disappear?

    Would hospitals disappear?

    Would engineers suddenly forget how to build?

    Would doctors suddenly forget how to heal?

    Would farmers suddenly forget how to grow food?

    Of course not.

    The real wealth of humanity would still be here.

    The Earth would still be here.

    Its resources.

    Its ecosystems.

    Its energy.

    Its knowledge.

    Its technology.

    Its people.

    Everything that actually sustains life would remain.

    Only the accounting system would have disappeared. And instead of the very unfair accounting system based on confidence in money, our accounting system could simply be based on confidence in each other, technology and Earth itself. Confidence that the Earth provides, technology can optimize and distribute it, and confidence in our own conscience, only taking what we need.

    Money has never been wealth.

    It has only represented wealth.

    The map is not the territory.

    The receipt is not the meal.

    The price tag is not the product.

    And money is not wealth.

    A New World

    James Rickards asks us to contemplate the death of money.

    I think he is asking exactly the right question.

    Because once we stop asking how to save money…

    …we can finally begin asking how to organize the real wealth of this planet directly.

    How do we organize food?

    Water?

    Energy?

    Housing?

    Healthcare?

    Education?

    Knowledge?

    Technology?

    Without depending upon an accounting system whose only value comes from our collective confidence in it.

    If confidence is what gives money value…

    …perhaps confidence itself is the real currency.

    The only remaining question is where humanity chooses to invest it.

    In paper.

    In numbers.

    In financial markets.

    Or in ourselves.

    In science.

    In technology.

    In the Earth.

    In stewardship instead of ownership.

    In the extraordinary abundance of this planet.

    And in each other.

    Maybe the death of money is not the death of our world, but rather the birth of a new one…

    And this world is exactly the one explored in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity. It is a novel, not describing yet another post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but rather a future protopia, a world that that works for all and is constantly being improved.

    Join the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels as he wakes up one hundred years into the future expecting to expand his empire.

    Instead, he discovers something he never imagined possible.

    Money is gone.

    Ownership is gone.

    Yet humanity has never been wealthier.

    Not because it created even more money.

    But because it finally learned to organize the real wealth of the Earth itself.

    Perhaps the death of money will turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to humanity…

    Discover his story

  • Imagine a World…

    Imagine a World…

    Imagine a world…

    Without taxes, loans, debts, mortgages, interest payments, lawyers, insurance premiums, financial stress, inflation, recessions, unemployment, politicians, election campaigns, lobbying, corruption, inequality, homelessness, most crime, pollution, environmental destruction, deforestation, collapsing ecosystems, biodiversity loss, species extinction, depleted soils, plastic-filled oceans, fossil fuel dependency, planned obsolescence, overconsumption, food waste, resource scarcity, hunger, preventable disease, child labour, exploitation, economic insecurity, war, refugees, nuclear weapons—or  money.

    At first glance, it sounds like fantasy.

    A paradise that could never exist.

    But before dismissing the idea, let’s take another look at that first paragraph.

    So Called Life

    Every month, you work hard, only to watch a large part of your salary disappear before you have even had the chance to decide what to do with it. Then come the bills. The mortgage. The rent. The electricity. The insurance. The phone. The internet. The car. The unexpected repair. The next tax payment. Another reminder. Another deadline. Another expense.

    You finally find the home you’ve always wanted.

    The price is more than you will earn in decades.

    So you borrow.

    Not for a few months.

    Not for a few years.

    For decades.

    Thirty years of monthly payments. Thirty years of hoping life doesn’t suddenly change for the worse. Thirty years of knowing that missing enough payments could cost you the very place you call home.

    You wake up when the alarm rings.

    Not necessarily because you are inspired by the day ahead.

    But because the bills are waiting.

    The mortgage is waiting.

    The tax office is waiting.

    Life has become a long chain of financial obligations.

    For many people, stress becomes so normal that they no longer even recognize it as stress.

    They simply call it life.

    Promised Solutions

    Meanwhile, political parties promise solutions. Elections come and go. Governments change. Policies change. Yet the underlying problems somehow remain. Society continues arguing over how to manage the system instead of asking whether the system itself could be  different.

    Around us, inequality keeps growing. Some accumulate wealth beyond imagination while others struggle to afford housing, healthcare or even enough food. Entire families work full-time and still live from one payday to the next.

    At the same time, the natural world quietly pays the price.

    Ancient forests disappear.

    Wetlands are drained.

    Topsoil—the thin living skin that feeds humanity—is steadily eroded.

    Rivers are polluted.

    Oceans fill with plastic.

    Coral reefs bleach.

    Fish stocks decline.

    Insects vanish.

    Birdsong grows quieter.

    Species that evolved over millions of years disappear forever.

    The climate becomes increasingly unstable while our economic system continues demanding more production, more consumption and more growth.

    And then there is war.

    Cities reduced to rubble.

    Children growing up surrounded by explosions instead of playgrounds.

    Families fleeing with nothing but what they can carry.

    Entire generations scarred by conflicts they never chose.

    Most of us have become so accustomed to all of this that we rarely stop to ask a simple question:

    Does civilization really have to work this way?

    Because every civilization is designed. More or less.

    Every economic system is designed. More or less.

    Every institution is designed. More or less.

    And what is designed can also be redesigned.

    Every great leap in human history first existed only in someone’s imagination.

    Every bridge.

    Every airplane.

    Every computer.

    Every spacecraft.

    Someone dared to imagine something that many believed was impossible. Yet, we have gone to the moon, invented the internet, aviation, nanotechnology, wireless communication and much much more.

    So why shouldn’t we dream just as boldly for humanity itself? For our future?

    Imagine Another Kind of World

    A world with intelligently optimized management and sharing of Earth’s resources.

    A world with a system designed to create more peace, more food, more health, more joy and more prosperity than humanity has ever imagined.

    A world where homes exist to be lived in instead of traded.

    Where technology removes unnecessary work instead of threatening people’s livelihoods.

    Where food production is optimized to nourish everyone while restoring the ecosystems that sustain us.

    Where energy is clean, abundant and designed around the long-term health of the planet.

    Where science, artificial intelligence and automation continuously improve transportation, healthcare, education and manufacturing—not to maximize quarterly profits, but to maximize human and ecological well-being.

    Where stewardship replaces ownership.

    Where collaboration replaces ruthless competition.

    Where sharing replaces unnecessary trading.

    Where success is measured not by how much one person accumulates, but by how much humanity and nature flourish together.

    It sounds like an impossible dream.

    But then again…

    Nothing has ever changed until someone first imagined that it could.

    That is the invitation of Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    Not to escape reality.

    But to imagine a civilization whose foundations are designed for something entirely different:

    Not endless accumulation.

    But lasting prosperity for all.

    Not profit above all else.

    But the flourishing of humanity and the living world together.

    The billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in exactly this world after 100 years of cryonic sleep, hoping to expand his empire into the future. Imagine his surprise when he finds a world without money that works for all instead…

    Discover his story

  • The Problem with Money

    The Problem with Money

    Most people think the problem with money is that they don’t have enough of it. And it is needed for almost everything. 

    We spend most of our lives trying to earn it, save it, invest it, borrow it, and protect it. Governments want economic growth. Companies want higher profits. Individuals want larger salaries. Everywhere we look, the answer seems to be the same:

    More money.

    If people are struggling, we need more money.

    If businesses are struggling, we need more money.

    If economies are slowing down, we need more money.

    Money has become the universal solution to almost every problem.

    But what if the problem with money is not that there is too little of it?

    What if the problem is that we have misunderstood what money actually is?

    Money is not food.

    Money is not water.

    Money is not energy.

    Money is not housing.

    Money is not healthcare.

    Money is not wealth.

    Money is simply a symbol that represents wealth.

    And once we understand that distinction, two fundamental problems become impossible to ignore.

    Problem #1: More money does not create more resources

    Imagine that every person on Earth woke up tomorrow with twice as much money in their bank account.

    Would there suddenly be twice as much food?

    Twice as many houses?

    Twice as much fresh water?

    Twice as much farmland?

    Twice as much energy?

    Twice as many doctors, teachers, engineers, and builders?

    Of course not.

    The amount of real wealth on Earth would remain exactly the same.

    Not a single additional resource would have been created.

    This is because money is not the thing itself. It is merely a claim on the thing.

    The real wealth is the food, the water, the energy, the housing, the technology, the knowledge, and all the natural resources that support life.

    Creating more money does not automatically create more of any of these.

    In fact, the opposite often happens.

    More money encourages more consumption.

    More consumption encourages more production.

    More production requires more extraction of resources.

    The result is a faster depletion of the very wealth upon which our lives depend.

    Yet we continue to act as though creating more money somehow creates more wealth.

    It doesn’t.

    If humanity printed ten trillion dollars tomorrow, the forests would not become larger.

    The resources would remain exactly as they are.

    Money can only redistribute claims on wealth.

    It cannot create wealth by itself.

    Problem #2: Too much money reduces the value of money itself

    The second problem is equally important.

    Money is strange because the more of it we create, the less valuable it becomes. The fact is that money only has value if there isn’t too much of it. Imagine you had a yearly income of 10 million dollars every year after tax. Sounds wonderful? You could buy everything you want. Now imagine everyone else also having the same income. What would happen if? Prices would rise accordingly and inflation would skyrocket. A bread would no longer cost 3 dollars, but probably closer to 300…

    When money is created faster than goods and services are produced, inflation follows.

    Prices rise.

    Purchasing power falls.

    The numbers in our bank accounts may become larger, but those numbers buy less.

    In other words, creating more money will actually make money itself less valuable.

    The proposed solution to a lack of money is often more money.

    Yet too much money weakens the value of money.

    This creates a bizarre situation.

    We are constantly chasing larger numbers while the meaning of those numbers gradually declines.

    People demand higher wages because prices have increased.

    Businesses raise prices because costs have increased.

    Governments inject more money into the economy because it needs “stimulation“. 

    And the cycle continues.

    The irony is that if money truly were wealth, creating more of it would make everyone richer.

    But because money is only a symbol of wealth, creating more symbols does not increase the wealth itself.

    The Great Confusion

    Perhaps the deepest problem with money is that we have confused the symbol with reality.

    We talk about wealth when we often mean money.

    We talk about prosperity when we often mean financial growth.

    We talk about economic success while paying less attention to the condition of the real world beneath the numbers.

    It is a little like mistaking a map for the territory.

    Or a menu for the food itself. 

    A map can be useful.

    But nobody can eat a map.

    Nobody can drink a menu.

    Nobody can live inside a map.

    Likewise, money can be useful.

    But money itself cannot feed us, shelter us, heal us, or sustain us.

    Only real wealth can do that.

    And true wealth is not found in bank accounts.

    True wealth is clean water.

    True wealth is fertile soil.

    True wealth is healthy ecosystems.

    True wealth is knowledge.

    True wealth is healthcare.

    True wealth is housing.

    True wealth is community.

    True wealth is meaningful relationships.

    True wealth is time.

    Perhaps humanity’s future depends on recognizing the difference between the symbol and the reality.

    Because once we do, we can stop asking how to create more money and start asking a far more important question:

    How do we create and manage real wealth for everyone?

    ⸻

    Call to Action

    Can you imagine a world that no longer measures success by money?

    A world where the goal is not endless economic growth, but the intelligent management of resources, the well-being of people, and the health of the planet itself?

    What if humanity eventually realized that creating more money does not create more wealth—and that true wealth has been here all along?

    This is exactly the question explored in the novel Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.

    The book follows Benjamin Michaels, a billionaire from our time who awakens one hundred years in the future to discover a world that has moved beyond money, profit, and artificial scarcity. A world built around cooperation, stewardship, advanced technology, and the shared prosperity of our planet.

  • The Emerging World

    The Emerging World

    Long before a new world appears in reality, it first appears in the imagination. In the minds of people.

    Every great transformation in human history began this way.

    Someone imagined a possibility that did not yet exist.

    A different society.

    A different relationship with nature.

    A different way of living together.

    Today, millions of people are beginning to imagine such a possibility once again.

    Not because they have all agreed on a political ideology.

    Not because a government told them to.

    But because they can sense that humanity is capable of something better. A world that works for all.

    That is why a new world is emerging.

    But how does real change really happen?

    Outside-In or Inside-Out?

    Most of us have been taught to think that change happens from the outside in.

    We elect new politicians.

    We pass new laws.

    We create new institutions.

    We reform old systems.

    The assumption is that if we change the structures around us, people will change as a result.

    And there is truth in that. The system we live within definitely shapes our behavior. The incentives, rewards, pressures, and expectations around us influence how we think and act every day.

    But the change that is now emerging must first begin within the hearts and minds of people.

    Why?

    Because this is not a change that can be forced from the outside.

    That would contradict the very purpose of creating a world that truly works for everyone.

    A peaceful world cannot be coerced. A mature world cannot be imposed. A world based on cooperation cannot be forced through coercion.

    A world that works for all requires that we solve our differences through clear, open, honest, and mature communication. Not like children fighting over toys and being told by their mother to stop fighting.

    The next step in human history must come from within.

    It must come because we have matured enough to see that there is a better way.

    Just as the system of today often reinforces competition, greed, envy, fear, and egotistical behavior, the system of tomorrow—created from an awakened understanding—will reinforce natural sharing, caring, stewardship, communication, and cooperation.

    The systems we create reflect the consciousness from which they emerge.

    That is why the emerging world must begin within us before it can appear around us.

    Seeing the Future

    Before any great change becomes reality, it first appears as a vision.

    Before the abolition of slavery, someone had to imagine a world without it.

    Before women gained the right to vote, someone had to imagine a world where they could.

    Before environmental protection became mainstream, someone had to imagine that humanity could live in harmony with nature.

    Every civilization begins as an idea.

    Every city begins as an idea.

    Every invention begins as an idea.

    And every new world begins as an idea.

    The question is not whether we can build a different future.

    The question is whether we can first imagine one.

    And perhaps that is exactly what is happening today.

    More and more people are beginning to see a possibility beyond the world we inherited.

    A world where humanity lives in peace with itself.

    A world with clean air, clean water, healthy food, restored ecosystems, and technologies designed to support life rather than exploit it.

    A world where abundance is shared rather than withheld.

    A world that works for everyone.

    Once seen, it becomes difficult to unsee.

    Beyond Politics

    This is where I part ways with much of traditional politics.

    Politics generally seeks to change society from the outside in.

    Change the government.

    Change the laws.

    Change the economy.

    Change the people.

    But a truly new world cannot be imposed into existence.

    It cannot be legislated into existence.

    It cannot be forced into existence.

    A world based on cooperation, stewardship, peace, and abundance can only emerge when enough people genuinely want such a world.

    That change begins within human beings.

    Not within institutions.

    Not within governments.

    Within us.

    The emerging world is therefore not political in the traditional sense.

    It is cultural.

    It is psychological.

    It is a shift in consciousness.

    Traditional politics often asks:

    “How do we change the world?”

    The emerging world asks:

    “How do we change ourselves so that a different world becomes possible?”

    Signs of the Emerging World

    Many people imagine that a moneyless world must begin with the collapse of the current system.

    I am not convinced.

    What if the new world is already emerging within the old one?

    Look around.

    People share knowledge freely through open-source software.

    People contribute to Wikipedia without expecting payment.

    Communities create gardens, repair cafés, and tool libraries.

    Millions of people volunteer their time to causes they believe in.

    Gift economy groups exist all over the world, sharing freely things they have in excess.

    I know this because I started one myself more than a decade ago:

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/GiftEconomy

    Thousands of people have joined it over the years. Every day, useful resources flow from people who no longer need them to people who do.

    No prices.

    No profit.

    No transactions.

    Just people helping people.

    These initiatives are not the final destination.

    But they may be signs of where humanity is heading.

    They are small glimpses of a different logic.

    Not ownership.

    Not accumulation.

    Not competition.

    But sharing, stewardship, and cooperation.

    Building Tomorrow from Today

    This does not mean we must wait for the current system to collapse before we can begin.

    In fact, the opposite may be true.

    Many of these initiatives already exist without funding, marketing, political power, or institutional support.

    They emerged because people saw a better way.

    Imagine what could happen if some of them received support.

    Not because money is the foundation of the new world.

    It is not.

    The foundation is people, understanding, cooperation, and shared purpose.

    But resources can help ideas spread.

    Resources can help successful experiments grow.

    Resources can help communities connect and learn from one another.

    In this way, the current system may unintentionally help create its own successor.

    Not through revolution.

    Not through conquest.

    But through the gradual emergence of something better.

    A better world does not need to defeat the old one.

    It simply needs to demonstrate that it works.

    The Seed of a New Civilization

    People often ask how a moneyless world could ever be created.

    Perhaps they are looking at the tree and forgetting the seed.

    A seed does not look like a tree. Quite the contrary, it looks small and insignificant.

    Yet everything the tree will become is already present within it.

    The same may be true of the future.

    Before there can be new communities, there must be a new understanding.

    Before there can be Cities of Light, there must be people capable of imagining them.

    Before there can be a new civilization, there must be a vision of one.

    That is why books, conversations, ideas, and inspiration matter.

    They plant seeds.

    The physical structures come later.

    The real transition begins in the minds and hearts of people.

    Why I Wrote Waking Up

    This is the reason I wrote Waking Up – A journey towards a new dawn for humanity.

    Not to present a political program.

    Not to tell people what to think.

    But to offer a vision.

    To ask a simple question:

    What might humanity look like if we actually succeeded?

    Not if one nation conquered another.

    Not if one political party defeated another.

    Not if one class triumphed over another.

    But if humanity itself matured.

    If we learned to live together.

    If we learned to care for each other and for the planet that sustains us.

    The purpose of the story is not to predict the future.

    It is just to help us imagine one.

    Because before we can build a better world, we must first be able to see it.

    When the Future Begins

    The emerging world will arrive because a growing number of people begin to see a different possibility.

    They begin to understand that humanity shares one planet.

    They begin to understand that our futures are interconnected.

    They begin to understand that cooperation can achieve what competition never could.

    From that understanding come new behaviors.

    From new behaviors come new communities.

    From new communities come new structures.

    And from those structures emerges a new civilization.

    The transition does not begin in parliament.

    It does not begin in a City of Light.

    It does not begin in any physical structure at all.

    It begins in the minds and hearts of people.

    That is where every new world has always begun.

    And perhaps that is why the emerging world is already here.

    A sprout not fully formed.

    Not yet visible everywhere.

    But emerging quietly within millions of people who have seen the possibility of something better and have begun moving toward it together.

    Please share this article if it resonates.Because that is how the emerging world spreads.

    👉 Discover the story here.