[Note: As the war in Ukraine broke out, I was in the process of writing a series of weekly articles that explore visions of societal development beyond the liberal capitalist democracies. I am now continuing that thread, no disrespect meant to the realities of the war and its victims.]

Protopia and the Metamodern View of Class

Can class society and its inequalities, its mechanisms of “stratification”, truly be transcended — or is the vision of the classless society a distraction that puts us at odds with social reality, ultimately always leading to oppression?

If “Protopia”, as previously discussed, is “the conceptual device that gathers the multiplicity of utopian dreams into coherent and actionable frameworks for increasing the self-proving cycles of society” — where does the Protopian mind reasonably stand on the issue of class? Is the classless society more than a utopian dream, more than a potentially dangerous distraction to be discarded? Is Protopia “a classless society”? Or does it, with liberalism, tolerate class distinctions that arise over time?

Maybe the last few questions contain too much baggage of the Modern world and its structures of political thought. Perhaps the question is not one of “class against class”, nor “class or nationality”, nor even “are class differences justified” — but, rather:

• How can class relations be optimized for human thriving?

The question sounds heretical, even to their own writer. It sounds callous, even cruel, and yet strangely naïve at the same time.

To the Modern mind, class was either the fundamental source of ills in society (socialism), a necessary evil (liberalism), or even a strange boon as differences of wealth and power seem necessary for the flowering of arts, palaces, cathedrals, and other aesthetic wonders of civilization (conservatism: we go to the Louvre and Versailles for beauty, not to a grey social-democratic Scandinavian suburb, right?). In more recent and extreme versions, class has been viewed as the sole, fundamental identity of any group (communism), as a dangerous and illusory distraction from our “true” belonging to nations/race/caste (fascism), or, with intersectionality, as one dimension within a larger matrix of unjustifiable inequalities, thus often a category oppressing and silencing demands for social justice between genders, ethnicities, and so forth.

Still, let us linger on this seemingly heretical question for the duration of this article. I have increasingly come to view it as the properly updated question of class — the “metamodern” version of the question of class.

In brief, I should like to first pick apart the very concept of “class” as we habitually approach it, and then reexamine how it can be put back together in a way that brings a new, wider meaning to the term; one that allows for greater agency in the face of inequalities, offering aspirational venues for desirable future societies.

Going Beyond the Current Left

“Protopian societies should actively and deliberately cultivate institutions (“collective habits”) that cut through all forms of inequality and mitigate them at the level of their root causes.”

Since the days of real communist experiments, the ideal of the classless society has smacked of hypocrisy and oppressive top-down social engineering. But it is a dream that ever beckons the Left, that always highlights the absurdities and ethical failures of everyday life, that helps us to ask the simple, naïve questions of why. Why do some people clean the toilets of others for small fractions of their incomes? Why are there beggars and homeless people? Why are there billionaires with unreasonable levels of influence and status? Why are glamorous restaurants and hotels catering to the few while so many others suffer on their very doorsteps? It firmly guides our gaze towards recognizing the injustice of the imbalance between Global North and Global South, between the 10% and the 90%, the 1% and the 99%, not to mention the 99.9 vs. 0.1, and onwards to yet more ghastly revealing fractions of wealth distribution decimals.

At the same time, this dream has arguably (almost certainly) led people to try to force social dynamics upon societies that in practice have arguably hurt more people than they have helped. Communist societies achieved relative levels of socio-economic equality, but only by curtailing freedoms and trampling human rights — often with significant murder rates and death tolls.

The most common response on the Left to this history (and the “black book of communism”) is to challenge the narrative that classlessness has truly been tried but failed. Communism was an oppressive deviation, we are told, of the correct vision of a democratic socialism, where the people together can decide what to produce, how to work, and how to distribute the spoils. “Socialism has never been tried” is a lead theme here. And, it is claimed, the viable socialist experiments have all been thwarted and sabotaged by malicious capitalist powers. True socialism, the argument goes, remains a real potential, and it is yet to be disproven as credible. Beautiful little sparks of true socialist society have flickered past but quickly been extinguished by all those who were scared to death by the prospect of lost privilege and power.

For many reasons that fall outside of the scope of this article, I do not find this Left narrative to be a plausible one. I believe that the Left is indeed still enthralled by a Modernist Utopia, as I defined the term here. I count myself among the people who feel that socialism, as it was conceived by 19th and 20th-century intellectuals, has inherent analytical flaws and suffers from what I call “game denial”. But there are, of course, fruitful currents of socialist thought and practice — some of which still merit further experimentation. The most compelling reincarnation of socialist thought today arguably revolves around “the commons” and “commoning” — issues that deserve their own article to be understood in the context of metamodernism and Protopia, but which I refrain from discussing here.

The fact that I view socialist romantics as misguided does not mean that I do not share their general concern with what sociologist Richard Sennett called “the hidden injuries of class”. Human relations, when mediated through and structured by excessive socio-economic class differences, are degrading to the human spirit and harmful to our psychological development. The research here is rather unanimous. Class relations foster more narrowly self-serving motives, distracting us from truly “wise” endeavors, while distorting our understanding of one another in manners that perpetuate the unjust treatment of so many. Income inequality is the greatest predictor of violence within societies. Simply put, class inequality is one of the great tragedies of life. As such, it deserves our attention and ethical engagement. Nothing about the rejection of socialist dreams and infatuations take anything away from that realization.

What, then, can be a way to approach the issue of class differences in a more sober, multiplistic, incremental, and “Protopian” view of society? How can this tragedy be addressed, its wounds healed, and more dignified human relationships be established?

I’d like to suggest three shifts of perspective in relation to how the category of “class” is understood. The purpose of this is to increase our shared capacity for cultivating greater equality, equivalence, and (as I shall discuss) equanimity in society — targeting the very roots of class society in an ever changing environment.

Hence, I hold that Protopian societies should actively and deliberately cultivate institutions (“collective habits”) that cut through all forms of inequality and mitigate them at the level of their root causes.

Let’s go through the three shifts of perspective.

Shift 1: View Class as Multidimensional (but beyond Intersectionality)

“So, intersectionality does begin to coordinate class relation with other vectors of inequality, yes, but it does not sufficiently get at the heart of how class inequalities reproduce and play out.”

Over the last few decades, many observers and critics have veered towards an “intersectional” view of inequality: class is one out of several orders of structural inequality (or “stratification”, a term that denotes society’s tendency to become layered into higher and lower strata). Thus a fuller analysis, the intersectional analysts argue, should include race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, functionality, discrimination against the neuro-atypical (ADHD and so on), postcolonialist distortions of social reality, even age group differences, perhaps adding other dimensions as needed. While each of these structures of inequality follow their own respective social logic (racism, sexism, and so on) and cannot be reduced to one another (you cannot “explain away” all racism with class differences, etc.) — they all interact. They “cut through” or intersect one another, creating a meshwork of inequality, hence the term, intersectionality. The biases present in language use, in popular culture, in norms of everyday life, in the labor market, in the judicial systems, all contribute to skewing the games of life in unfair and ethically unjustifiable manners — reproducing the stigma of underprivileged groups along with the privileges of the powerful. Related concepts are the Marxist movement philosophers Hardt and Negri’s “multitude” and “assemblage”: justice movements around the world are different but have significant overlaps — and their vast multitude needs to form a self-organizing assemblage, i.e. a complex meshwork where the many movements cooperate to achieve their goals, despite their differences.

While I do share this viewpoint to a significant degree, and I do concede that further work — both from activists and scholars— is always needed to push the envelope on social justice across its many dimensions, I also feel that the intersectionality framework is ultimately insufficient to fully capture the mechanisms at work in the reproduction of inequality. More specifically, even with greater racial, gender, and other forms of justice, life would still be dismally unfair: There is always another dimension along which some are empowered and others humiliated and undermined. The sources of inequality are legion.

It is also the case, as liberal and conservative critics of the radical tradition (that intersectionality stems from) have never been late to point out, that these frameworks always rely upon making the differences between categories of people (women and men, white and black, and so on) the focus of attention and contention. This can inadvertently charge such boundaries with yet greater antagonism and even lead to counter-reactions and misunderstandings. After all, if a person — or group of people — are accused of being racist or of misusing their positions of power, there is always the risk of this accusation being practically unactionable, diffuse, or even downright false. The accusations can be hard to understand or respond to, and thus breed frustration and resentment. In my earlier ethnographic work with police officers, I could quite clearly see that police officers — both of majority and minority ethnicities and genders — simply had no idea what to do with the sociological revelations of the discrimination that they indisputably all partook in, structurally speaking. The police officers thus shielded themselves by the enactment of an ironic or humorous distancing from what they felt was the “political correctness” of a general public they felt could not understand their unique position in society.

I don’t find this liberal/conservative response to intersectionality to be conclusive. For one, it fails to account for the very real grievances social justice theories and movements seek to address (while also failing to account for the epistemological grounds for why universities generally gravitate towards critical theory of different brands in the first place). Most importantly, the liberal/conservative mainstream criticism fails to offer a reasonable alternative for mitigating the many injustices that so many people keep experiencing in their own lives. It’s almost as if the liberal and conservative simply ask, politely or not, all of those uppity social justice proponents to shut up and sit down. Naturally, this also breeds antagonism, as the very real experiences and grievances of vast swathes of the population are not validated. If intersectionality sometimes fails in its sociological perspective-taking (it’s dismally poor at accounting for the life-worlds of designated “powerful” groups), its critics are certainly guilty of a corresponding mistake: They don’t see how their resistance to intersectionality invalidates the starkly felt grievances of many activists of social justice and it appears to shut the door shut to a more dignified and fair treatment. The proponents of intersectionality feel they are being deprived of their one chance of reasserting their dignity.

Naturally, this response further radicalizes social justice activists and scholars, which further antagonizes their detractors, and — voilà, culture wars spiral to the point of rioters barging through the front doors of the Capitol Building.

So, intersectionality does begin to coordinate class relation with other vectors of inequality, yes, but it does not sufficiently get at the heart of how class inequalities reproduce and play out. In crude sociological terms, one could say that intersectionality, through its focus on exceedingly wide and complex variables like race and sexual identity, offers a fairly limited understanding of the actual mechanisms of inequality — class included. For certain, Black people make less money than White people—but what does that mean? What is the chain of events or mechanisms that reproduce that inequality? Here, seeing how wealth or poverty (indeed, “class” in a wider sense) has many meanings, each with their own dynamics, is crucial. It is insufficient to study categories of people — we must also study the categories of wealth and poverty.

Rather than dismissing the intersectionalist perspective, I’d like to expand upon it by offering a complementary framework (as, in parallel, I have attempted to do on multiculturalism in another article).

I have previously suggested that inequality should be viewed across the distribution of at least six forms of capital that cut across all of the dimensions of intersectionality, but which still refocus on a widely and holistically defined notion of “class” as a kind of nexus for inequalities:

1. Economic inequality
2. Social inequality
3. Physiological inequality
4. Emotional inequality
5. Ecological inequality, and
6. Informational inequality

All of these vectors of inequality naturally have repercussions across the categories studied through intersectionality (health follows socio-economic class, physiological scars mark even the DNA of the downtrodden over generations, inhaled pollution is unequally distributed between White and Black US citizens, exposure to low-quality digital screen time is higher among Black and Latino children, and so forth).

Yet, just as importantly: If you consider all of these six dimensions, you gain a more holistic view of the reproduction of class relations in society. Think about it: If you could redistribute wealth to address economic inequality, but social inequalities (like status, networks, trust, and number of reliable friends) persist along with physiological, emotional, ecological, and informational ones — will not very real power and status differentials resurface again and again with all the tenacity of a whack-a-mole game? Will not the healthier, better connected, emotionally more nourished people with access to better environments and exposure to higher-quality information very easily reassert their dominance? Will not class reassert itself, also economically— along with structures of gender, race, and so forth?

Hence, a holistic view of class — indeed, an effective view of class — must work across these six vectors (or some corresponding multi-vector model). A Protopian society must cultivate institutions that carry forth strategies that counteract the mechanisms that perpetuate each of these forms of inequality. That would, to a significant extent, lead to a lessened emphasis on the categories of intersectionality, the “categories of people”. Rather, we would get one composite variable that we might term “deep class” — the class relation that matters the most in terms of how your life plays out.

Simply put, rather than focusing primarily on the “categories of people” in intersectionality, my suggestion is that Protopian societies should focus on the active mitigation of “deep class”-inequalities.

Shift 2: Know that Class Configurations Evolve with the Economic System

“Class exists. Class is real. Class is hard, material social reality. But it is just more mosaic than we have been accustomed to think of it.”

Many observers, Left and Right, have lamented the collapse of socio-economic class as the focal point of party politics in liberal (capitalist) democracies over the last few decades. Instead, issues of identity (across the categories studied under intersectionality) have increasingly taken a front seat. Nothing is more common than this complaint — while still being viewed a unique and incisive “back to basics” insight.

But none of the lamenters seem very keen on explaining why this major shift has occurred.

The explanation should be rather simple: Class relations of industrial capitalist society (working class, and so on), around which parties were formed, have come to less accurately describe the real life experience of people. And so, taking Sweden as an example, you have a higher percentage of low-income voters among the conservative Christian Democrats than among the socialist Left Party voters. Starker contrasts instead become visible between male and female, immigrant and non-immigrant voters, age groups, and so forth. Parties are formed around these categories more than around income levels. Cultural categories — or simply categories other than socio-economic class — have become the strongest axes of political organization.

This new state of affairs, in turn, can only be explained by a corresponding shift in class structure itself. Yes, income distributions certainly still exist. But they have become more complexly layered and intermixed. A person such as myself — a rogue scholar — oscillates between rags and riches, status and insignificance, precarious life conditions and advising people in big international institutions. So class, in an information society, becomes redistributed within a person’s life, over time, across multiple arenas. The monolith of class becomes fractured (paralleling, to a great extent, Andy Warhol’s proverbial 15 minutes of fame — he just forgot to add the equally ubiquitous “15 minutes of shame”).

And that’s just on the individual level: You have increasing difficulties to pin down the “class” of a family network, too. One family can include one teacher, two medical doctors, one nurse, one mailman, one in the upper echelons of international finance, one on disability pension, and one unemployed but highly intellectual type. Is it a middle class family? Will they have middle class values and vote middle class? Will they be having middle class conversations with one another about comparable metrics of success? Add to the mix that the same family can have different nationalities and that they have moved to different parts of the world where they compare differently to others in their environment. While there may be socio-economically discernable patterns to this family, it’s not a far stretch to guess that they won’t be voting in unison, as a certain “class”. it will even be difficult for them to gauge how to vote in the interest of their whole family network.

To complicate things, in societies of wide middle classes, people will even start to compete for the title of “working class” to appear more underdog, unique, and self-made — more deserving. This a funny reversal of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s observation in 1960’s France, that people use taste in consumption as a mode of “distinction” in class terms: people start performing realness, authenticity, simplicity in relief to the background of an imagined, large, colorless, and privileged middle class. People start vying for attractive class identities that aren’t always “upwards”.

I can partake in such self-definitions myself: Most people would probably view me as middle class, white, male, academic—but I’ve hardly ever had a job, I was born in a rough crime-ridden neighborhood with many immigrants, my family consists of people with different ethnic identities, many of which are working typical working class jobs, while many of my friends and much of my network belongs to “the creative class” and upper classes… I could go on. The point is: I will often feel more inclined to find ways of defining myself as something other than middle class.

Class exists. Class is real. Class is hard, material social reality. But it is just more mosaic than we have been accustomed to think of it. Like a piece of glass, it was shattered into a thousand shards which are then reassembled in a kaleidoscopic manner. This observation takes nothing away from the factual reality of increasing concentrations of wealth under information capitalism. Sharpened inequalities of wealth does not translate to clearer and more relevant distinctions and identities of class. These two realities easily coexist.

Rather than complaining that people have become inexplicably enthralled by “identity politics”, the productive response to this new reality would arguably be to understand it and to analyze which struggles and fault lines are now appearing in society. With the more holistic view of class outlined above, we can fairly easily resolve some of the conundrums that have haunted the public debate over recent years. For instance, are Trump voters “privileged” or not? In strictly economic terms, they are comparatively well-to-do on average, but in terms of “total capital” across the different vectors, they are falling behind other groups — which they experience as a loss of dignity in society. That’s arguably where much of their collective frustrations are coming from.

In other words, as Protopian societies will not be like the Modern mainstream, industrial, capitalist ones; they will not have the same configuration of meaningful class categories. I have formerly suggested the following table of evolving class relations:

We will refrain from discussing this table in detail, but let us note some of the features it suggests.

Societies have evolved through different forms of class logics. There’s not one logic that rules them all, because the main ways in which people trade, cooperate, and compete have evolved with technology and thus with the fabric of the economy. Hence the games of life have changed — but these games have never been eradicated.

Today we are barely finding our feet in the image- and sound saturated society of mass media — and thus, the mass-mediated image: think of Marilyn Monroe and we all see her before our inner eye; think of Charlemagne and the image is much vaguer. This is because we have all seen recorded and curated images of the construction “Marilyn Monroe”. After only a few generations of acclimatization to this new (Postmodern) world — we are now crash-landing into the internet society. Here, a new class structure begins to emerge, coexisting with earlier ones, but rapidly growing in significance. In this digital economy, one’s position within the flows of information and technologically mediated attention, of access to cultural capital, and of inequalities of emotional energy, begin to structure who is privileged and who isn’t.

As such, you begin to see what Kevin Kelly termed the rise of “netocrats” — the class of those who are made most powerful by advent of the internet. As such, you see a new axis of class relations, which in turn begins to structure other class relations. The underprivileged “consumtariat” are those who get stuck in “onlooker roles”, whose attention is guided and exploited by others, not least through what Shosana Zuboff termed “surveillance capitalism”. The new masters guide the attentions, the desires, the wills, even the inner worlds of the exploited. The exploited have their autonomy hijacked by attention-grabbing manipulation, by online addictions, by non-productive gaming, by political manipulation, and online pornography of sexualized or consumerized kinds. As such, the consumtariat are victimized by their very own participation in conspiracy theories and pseudo-scientific trends. One could hold that this constitutes a novel form of the Marxist notion of “false consciousness”: different kinds of pseudo-participation, of clicktivism, of depleted creative energy. They are stuck with low-quality information and low levels of attention control. (The political sociologist Brent Cooper’s Meta-Marxism seeks to answer to some of this viscous dynamic).

There is yet to emerge a good term for the “middle class” position in this new digital game of life. But we can see fairly clearly what the features of such an “informational middle class” might be: a level of knowledge about issues of integrity and privacy, of resistance to attention manipulation, and the resources to act to establish greater control of the technologically mediated interfaces to the world. This requires, most often, a certain level of education, better informed networks, and a capacity to create content that would entice and interest others. Much like the former systems of class, its stability largely relies on the size and strength of this middle class.

This is a different game — one that is thus far only very partially and provisionally represented in political self-organization. Under emergent metamodernity, the netocrats have had the first-mover initiative for a significant period of time, and have thus strongly established their position as masters not only of attention and information, but also of financial wealth. A structure of class struggle that stretches across the co-existing modern, postmodern, and metamodern economic realities is yet to be meaningfully established. As such, our political systems of representation falter and produce wide swathes of discontent demographics — fueling reaction, culture wars, and downright paranoia.

A Protopian society would have democratic institutions in place that do not conclusively remove these class differentials, but offers frameworks within which fruitful political organization becomes actionable while the awareness of the relevant class relations becomes established. Because these class relations are of another and more complex nature than those of industrial society, they will require more deliberative forms of democracy and networked governance.

The issue, then, is not to efface these class structures, but to create the frameworks of governance that would give the emergent classes sufficient self-awareness and capacity to self-organize for them to have a fighting chance of defending their interests. In the current state of the world, sadly, the netocrats have more or less free rain as their class-categorical counterparts are unable to defend themselves.

Shift 3: Evolve the Inner Dimensions of Class (along with Material Inequalities)

“A Protopian society should thus include mechanisms that soften the blows of inequality-as-it-is-felt-and-experienced, or even inequality-as-it-is-socially-constructed.”

To date, the only truly classless societies appear to be the ones that lack a significant accumulation of wealth and resources over time. Many (but not all!) hunter-gatherer societies tend to be fiercely egalitarian, with norms of resource sharing deeply engrained. Interestingly, experiments have shown, members of such societies tend to actually share less of their resources if they are finally granted the chance to eat a whole cake by themselves: it’s just that there is such a strong social pressure to share that they rarely get the chance to. As such, they keep the tendency to accumulate wealth in check — and thus benefit from having very low levels of inequality.

David Wengrow and David Graeber have shown in their recent book, The Dawn of Everything, that societies across history and the world have had many exceptions to the class structures and inequalities we today have come to take for granted. This echoes Frederic Jameson’s saying that “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (or, Ursula Le Guin’s famous quote to similar effect). The two Davids hold that much of the class inequalities of our day and age ultimately come down to a lack of sociological imagination: that we become too enthralled by our own narratives, ways of life, and excuses for society’s injustices to fruitfully challenge the status quo.

While I share in the Davids’ sentiment at a general level, I believe there is more to the dynamics behind class structures than a lack of sociological imagination. The question is, much as the Marxists held in their time, to understand the dynamics of stratification and class, and then to empower people to counteract the ills of these dynamics as effectively as possible.

The crucial aspect of this is to understand that class relations do not only play out economically and materially, but also psychologically, socially, and culturally. For instance: What does it mean to be “unemployed”? How will people conceive of this status; how will they rate themselves and one another according to the category of un/employment?

By widening the viable identities through which people can project a desirable “presentation of self in everyday life” (a term from sociologist Erving Goffman), the “social damage” of being defined as “unemployed” can be reduced. Simply put, if we have less disdain of the unemployed, we may end up enriching society immensely — empowering wide swathes of the population in the process. A citizenship and identity that include not only our role as an economic contributor could be established with a shift of norms in society: You are not just your job, “a banker”, but equally a responsible consumer, a participant in public discourse, a resource to your local civil society, and a reliable family member or romantic partner. Professional identity can be put in its proper place, dethroned from its identity-hegemony.

Here, we are moving towards deeper forms of “equity”. We are looking at equality not only “from the outside” (as a “social fact”) but also “from the inside out” (as an experience, as a psychological reality, phenomenologically). Whereas this “inner perspective” cannot replace the external, material one, it can and should certainly complement it.

A Protopian society should thus include mechanisms that soften the blows of inequality-as-it-is-felt-and-experienced, or even inequality-as-it-is-socially-constructed. The metamodern view of class holds that our previous notions of class have suffered from an “inner dimensions blindness”, which has limited our shared capacity to mitigate its harms as well as its mechanisms of reproduction.

This view holds that there is a progression of how deeply we analyze and respond to inequalities, previously discussed here:

• from equality, which is the struggle to reduce material inequalities across multiple vectors,
• to equivalence, which fosters a sense of felt and embodied sense of being a dignified member of society and viewing others with the same respect,
• to equanimity, which mirrors the quality of inner acceptance of ourselves, one another, and our inevitable differences of capacities, in effect reducing our very propensity to identify with arbitrary dominator hierarchies.

Simply stated, from the metamodernist perspective, it is insufficient to focus solely on material inequalities, as these result from deep dynamics that are to a certain extent beyond our collective control — and because people will still be hurt by negative comparison and judgment across more vectors than we can possibly account for or anticipate. Rather, to reduce the true harms of inequality and class relations, we can and must always work to create better psychological and social conditions for a lived and felt equality.

Institutions that function in this manner can include the spread of meditative practices that foster compassion, training in perspective-taking and empathy, and support structures for the cultivation of genuine self-esteem (which needs to rely much less on negative comparisons). The ultimate enemy, at this deepest layer of “equanimity”, are not the inequalities in and of themselves, but our psychological tendencies to compare with one another, to clamor for glamor, to disdain the grief-stricken and downtrodden. If we seek to counteract the injuries of “deep class” as discussed above, it stands to reason that the struggle for equality should also delve into the depth of the human soul.

Ultimately, one of the main reproducers of inequality is our tendency to view ourselves and one another through the goggles of arbitrary dominator hierarchies — or even to compare our strengths and weaknesses in the first place. One of the major feedback cycles of structures of inequality is arguably the stigmas that come with being underprivileged. To view ourselves and one another with a universalized sense of respect is thus a key tool to weakening the power of such downward spirals.

Protopian societies should thus include active and deliberate institutionalized strategies to increase not only material equality (e.g. across the six vectors outlined above), but also, and just as crucially, to increase the capacities of equivalence and equanimity within the population. In so doing, Protopia will arguably be better equipped to create also material equality, as people will view inequalities as less justifiable (or even desirable) in the first place.

—

Summary (and Considerations of Ukraine)

“While class cannot conclusively be done away with, transcended once and for all, people can always be empowered in a thousand ways to establish their dignity and defend their equal worth.”

I have thus suggested that Protopian society is not a “classless society” in the image of communist and socialist utopias. Rather, Protopia would be a society in which structures of class, and class relations, are managed and mitigated in a much richer and more multi-dimensional manner than what has been the case in any society to date. To approach this goal, I have suggested three perspective shifts:

1. that class is viewed across six dimensions rather than one,
2. that class is viewed as an evolving entity that requires new forms of governance to mitigate as its dynamics shift with techno-economic realities, and
3. that the inner dimensions of inequality are directly targeted as a key reinforcer of class stratification.

Protopia is a class-smart society: a society capable of reducing and mitigating the injuries of class with a wide and intricate battery of inter-connected institutional practices that are also sensitive to the categories studied by intersectionality.

As such, I still believe that Protopia has greater de facto capacities to reduce the suffering caused by inequality than was the case in communist countries. While class cannot conclusively be done away with, transcended once and for all, people can always be empowered in a thousand ways to establish their dignity and defend their equal worth. And that’s what we should aim for. The very category of “class” remains a moving target, and to respond to it productively means to cultivate frameworks that are themselves flexible and complexly adaptable to changing realities. Echoing how I put it crudely in the beginning: Protopia is a society that optimizes class relations.

To say something about how this interfaces with the current war in Ukraine, we could note that Russia’s invasion appears to be a conflict between nations and geopolitical interests (and that’s also true), but that the frustrations within Russia and Ukraine that have led up to the war certainly have a multi-dimensional “deep class” dimension. The informational poverty of vast swathes of the Russian population play a part, as does the lack of opportunities and self-respect that has driven many young men on both sides into the far-right groups that have been fueling the violence in the Donbass region. This is just to point out that, while international wars tend to make questions of class invisible, class relations are always present and part even of the grandest geopolitical happenings. Lest we forget.

The suggested view of class is, I believe, more in line with Protopia as being not a static vision of “the good society” (like Utopia), but rather a society with a dramatically increased capacity for self-assessment and self-improvement. It is a “relative utopia”, a vision not of a perfect society, but of a much better one; one that is Triple-E (Ecological, Equitable, and Effectively governed) — one that merits our hopes, dreams, and playful struggles even more than the static modern Utopia of a classless society.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

To the left, Paddington the Bear, voiced in Ukrainian by Volodymyr Zelenskyy before he became president of Ukraine. To the right, another kind of bear.

1. Russia must be beaten back — so crowdsource support for Ukraine without compromise!

Although balanced views of the situation are crucial, and frenzied tunnel-visioned warmongering against Russia may be lethal for all of us, there is very little reason to not take a strong stand for Ukraine in this conflict.

The Ukrainian President Zelenskyy asks of the peoples of Europe (and elsewhere) to push our governments in the direction of military, logistical, economic, and humanitarian support, while encouraging more direct citizen action as well. In some strategic countries, like Sweden and Finland, pushing for swift NATO membership may be in order. Pushing for powerful sanctions is crucial — and Switzerland’s support here may be especially important due to its central role in the global financial system. Of course, and unfortunately, European countries need to increase their defense budgets.

For companies, civil society organizations, and sports and culture, penalizing Russia — even if it might hurt some innocent people — can be crucial. The Russian government should not be able to spread the narrative that the war serves Russia’s economic interests or its prestige and honor on the world stage. This ranges from ice hockey, to figure skating, to soccer, to the Eurovision Song Contest, to film festivals, to World Taekwondo stripping Putin of his black belt in Judo. Last I heard, the cat breeders’ association joined the fray: Russian cats are being sanctioned! If we disregard for a moment that cat breeding is an unethical and exploitative endeavor, we can hear the meows for peace all the way from frosty Moscow.

If the Russian population feels that the war is disgracing their country and harming the economy, they are less likely to side with their government and begin to look for other positive national identities that can still honor their past, culture, and traditions. And there’s no lack of material to build on — Russia is one of the culturally most impressive societies on Earth! The motherland of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and so on, Russia is home to some of the best classical musicians on Earth; Russian ballet is world-famous, Russia is the world’s leading chess nation and it is one of the most victorious Olympic nations in the world. Russians have a strong presence in the natural sciences and have a long and proud tradition of space exploration. In short, there’s a lot to pick from; a lot of alternatives to military conquest and dreams of imperial expansion.

All of us foreigners can do something. From building domestic opinion in Ukraine’s favor to honoring and encouraging our suffering and frightened Ukrainian brothers and sisters, to helping and receiving refugees, to hacking Russian systems, to sharing useful information and perspectives in the information war, to challenging misinformation and showing little tolerance against the expression of apologist narratives (“but Ukraine has a Nazi problem!” and so on), to financially supporting Ukrainian war efforts, to creative little hacks that further pressure Russia (like uploading pictures of the war in Google maps in Russia, sending anti-war messages through Tinder with a VPN set in Russia, and so on), there is something for many more of us to do than we might think.

The aim remains to beat Russia back. The losses of a prolonged and lost war are immense (as discussed in the following points). The gains of a quicker and victorious defense of Ukraine are potentially enormous. So support the Ukrainian war effort and undermine the attacker on all fronts!

2. China is on the fence — so act now!

Given that China is biding its time and watching how events unfold, an immediate and firm response to the Ukraine situation is vital. It will decide how China acts in the near future, and thus possibly how the direction of the world system at large develops. From a Western perspective, the Russian situation is the pebble that can tip the world system in two very different directions.

Not only would a failure to defend Ukraine lead to Russia becoming a desirable and viable ally with whom an anti-Western and authoritarian alternative future can be built — but it would also embolden aggression against Taiwan and stoke Chinese unwillingness to compromise with democratic countries. It would, moreover, make it less appealing to its population to support a democratic route of the country’s development.

Even other powers, notably India, seem to be balancing between taking a stand and relativizing the war of aggression, which only adds to the same argument. Given that India is likely to become one of the superpowers of the 21st century, having it siding with the West could be decisive for the fate of our century.

Stalling or weak responses can and will be damned by history. As Lessig (as in Lawrence Lessig, a legal scholar whose work I truly respect) writes on the matter in a Medium post titled Crowdsourced War, if the sanctions are not sufficiently potent, the risk of spiraling into war with Russia actually increases, as “wannabe Churchills” will be able to argue for direct military interventions. Better to be tough and clear now, so that we don’t need to be shirky and hysterical in even more dramatic responses later on.

So, although the response to Russian aggression can and should be “crowdsourced” so that we cannot as easily be targeted by retaliatory measures and thus avoid escalation, that takes nothing away from the importance of acting immediately. That really goes for all of us.

3. Avoid a split into a new Cold War — by winning the war and causing regime change in Russia!

It is highly unlikely that the Russian regime will survive in its current form if it loses the war.

Think about the consequences if Russia would successfully capture and control Ukraine, and from there on secure its geopolitical and economic goals. When would the West be able to lift its sanctions? Not for ages. The world would effectively be split into two Cold War spheres of influence, where Russia and China would approach one another, which would further isolate them from the West and prop up their respective autocratic regimes. We would have a new Cold War, one that would in all likelihood last for decades.

In terms of climate change and other transnational “wicked issues” that require deepened planetary solidarity and mutual trust between cultures and countries, this would be nothing short of catastrophic. Tensions, militarism, fears, and short-sighted survivalist values around the world would be stoked for decades on end, and cosmopolitanism and cooperation would suffer. This would further inflame wicked issues that lie at the foundations of our global civilization and thus eventually increase the risk of rising conflict (a new World War, or just a hundred cruel proxy wars in Africa and elsewhere). Eventually, the risk of a collapse of the world system would increase from “significant” to “overwhelming”.

Here I am, just writing a Medium article about it, and it all somehow feels awfully petty in regard to the stakes at hand. But I really wish to stress this: the price of a new Cold War at this point in history is one that we simply cannot afford to pay. It must be avoided.

So “we” (feel free to exclude yourself from my use of “we” if you disagree with me) have to win the war — and fast. If we do, Russia will likely experience a regime change within some years (don’t forget that Russia is to hold a presidential election in 2024, or at least pretend to), and that could open the entire spectrum of possibilities to co-construct a more equitable, ecological, and effectively governed world order. A Moscow we could talk to, trust, and mutually demilitarize the world with — what a dream!

As Russia and international security expert Keir Giles argued in The Guardian already on February the 25th, Russia may now finally be in a position similar to Western empires (France, Britain) when they lost their status as colonial overlords — fairly late in the 20th century. They didn’t go down without a fight. It took harsh and humiliating defeats at the hands of colonial rebels reasserting their autonomy and dignity. But eventually, they (more or less) accepted their roles as “just another country” with no special right to dictate the fates of other nations. That needs to happen for Russia as well.

Another historical parallel: When did the two Russian Revolutions occur? In 1917 — at the hour of World War I, when the war had lost popular support and the economy was faltering. The German emperor sent Vladimir Lenin and stuffed his pockets full of money to go back home and revolt. The whole operation was a bit more successful than the German Emperor had anticipated (and his own government was toppled shortly after, in the German Revolution).

Now, this time, unfortunately, the Germans sent back the contemporary “Lenin” (opposition leader Alexei Navalny) a little too early, and he’s already in a Russian prison. Still, though, we may be seeing new turns of events here. Watch this development closely!

4. Avoid escalation into World War III — by supporting as discretely as possible!

To complicate things, direct military involvement in Ukraine by NATO and others to shorten the war might instead trigger a spiral of escalation, very possibly triggering a chain reaction that could only be described as World War III — expanding the war zone and prolonging and deepening the military conflict.

In a sense, given that the struggle playing out in Ukraine is already likely to affect the entire world, World War III could be thought of as already having begun. If the conflict escalates further, people will likely view the invasion of Ukraine as the beginning date of World War III. But there’s a great difference between a potential and theoretical world war with stakes as large or possibly greater than the two former ones (due to climate change and existential threats), and an actual, global, military conflict between the world powers. Many more countries would be invaded. The consequences would be devastating beyond comprehension.

I must admit that my initial impulse over the first few days of the invasion was to argue for NATO and allies to at least try to secure a “no-fly zone” in Ukraine’s skies, or to otherwise match Russian forces with an international peacekeeper presence. This was also what Keir Giles argued in his opinion piece: We have a duty to act, even militarily!

But I changed my mind, partly because it turns out that Russia is relying more on ground artillery than on bomber aircraft, partly because the escalation would arguably be much more dramatic if troops or aircraft were to enter Ukraine. Besides, the military support by means of lending aircraft and handing out weapons to the Ukrainians has thus far been effective (at least as things appear in Western media). This sanctions-based approach also seems to be the position of Barack Obama, with whom I now find myself agreeing.

So, yes, support vigorously. But do so as discreetly as possible, in a truly crowdsourced manner, to avoid escalation.

5. Avoid a nuclear war — by helping Russia to save face!

In the end, it is true that:

• Russia has a ten times stronger military than Ukraine (at least on paper).
• The Russian government (and the apparatus it relies upon and shares interests with) will be very desperate to not back down.
• Other countries are unlikely to directly intervene.
• Putin is threatening us with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Thus, a complete military victory by Ukraine is, after all, unlikely. Even with crowdsourced support around the world, even with a morale boost of the Ukrainians unparalleled in contemporary history (they know the whole world is watching them, and that they’re rocking our socks off; can you think of a better genesis of national cohesion and patriotic identity?), even with Russian logistical fiascos, even with collapsing public support for the government in Russia, it is a David’s fight against Goliath. In fairy tales, David always wins. In reality, this is less often the case.

It is probably true, as Yuval Noah Harari argues (also in The Guardian) that Putin has already lost the war in the larger scheme of things — politically speaking. But there is little comfort in that realization alone. It still means military defeat for Ukraine, a prolonged conflict, possibly bloody guerilla warfare, and an increasingly desperate Russian government — increasingly likely to “lose it” and start a nuclear war. When a house of cards collapses, when lies are exposed, when the posers accidentally reveal their underlying fear and weakness, it’s just never a pretty sight.

Where does this leave us? Well, we might, again, learn from history. When the Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939–40, in the so-called Winter War, the USSR suffered massive and humiliating losses because of the sheer logistical catastrophe of the operation. Finnish soldiers, camouflaged, shot the Russians as they tumbled slowly through the thick snow in the dense Finnish forests. In my family, we remember Eifel, a Finnish neighbor in the 1980s who fought in that war. More than four decades later, he literally cried at the thought of how many men he had mowed down. David versus Goliath was not pretty, even when David won.

What happened with the Winter War then? In fact, the Russians signed a peace treaty and were handed some new territories. On paper, in theory, in their own narrative, “they had won”. They had conquered new territory.

It’s the basic thing that sociologists of everyday interaction teach us: We all need to save face. My take on this is, thus, to try to help Putin and his administration save face by conceding some territories to Russia. It’s not like Donetsk and Luhansk or Crimea will be nice places for Russians and Ukrainians to live together after all of this is over either way. So, make a compromise: Hand Crimea and perhaps Donbas (Donetsk, Luhansk) to Russia. And open the canal down to Crimea, so that Russia can keep Crimea under tolerable circumstances, rather than having a perpetually drought-stricken peninsula on their hands.

Even with such concessions, the Russian government will still have lost so much in power and position that their days will likely be numbered. We just have to prevent the “wounded beast” from lashing out — nuclearly or otherwise.

Ending the war as soon as possible with a compromise that could give Putin a chance to save face and proclaim at least a superficial victory would not only lead away from the prospect of nuclear war. It would also shorten the conflict itself, which reduces the risk of further fires in the nuclear power facilities of the war zone (as was reported a few days ago in Europe’s largest facility).

I know compromise is hard. And not necessarily just. But, in the long run, the free world will win this either way. What needs to be prevented is for the tragic-comical implosion of the Russian Imperium to cause a corresponding nuclear explosion that consumes all the rest of us.

Patience and pragmatism will lead to the victory of justice.

6. There is no alternative to speaking to Putin!

In the light of what I have discussed in former points, it should be apparent that there really is no alternative to speaking to Putin (even if you cannot trust what he says).

Yes, by all means, the goal can and should be to remove his corrupt and criminal regime from the helm of Russia. And yes, Putin himself has pretty much served that up for us. And yes, speaking to Putin really is akin to bargaining with terrorists.

But there is no other way. The “World War III” scenario would perhaps end only when “Allied” tanks roll into Moscow and Putin is arrested. And, true, NATO and allies would win in the end. But that’s a terrible and terrifying scenario that involves unfathomable suffering and possibly a nuclear holocaust.

In the real reality that we are in, Putin is the guy to talk to. But the more we beat him back in Ukraine, the better “face-saving compromise” he is offered, and the quicker the war is brought to an end — the better the terms of that talk can be.

7. Mobilize the many small creeks!

A CNN poll shows that 87% of US citizens support sanctions, and 79% follow the conflict closely. Do that many Americans even know where Ukraine is on the map? A level of transnational engagement that is unprecedented in its strength shows that “the agency of millions” can make life very difficult for Russia and ultimately for its regime.

And here is the hopeful side of this: We can actually make a difference. Because every bit counts. Every little action — even going online and criticizing the war in 5-star reviews of Russian elite restaurants — matters. Make it entirely clear to Russia’s 144 million people that the rest of the world is finding this war unacceptable and disgraceful, and that their everyday lives will be made more complicated for as long as the war persists.

Individually, each Russian bears quite little responsibility for what their government does in their name. Collectively, however, the Russian people arguably do bear a great responsibility for accepting and condoning a crooked government. It is not wrong to make that responsibility felt, all the while assuring Russians that there can and will be a brighter future for them if they get rid of their government.

It is also important to make as many Russians as possible understand how profoundly their own country will be harmed if Putin’s war continues. The consequences for ordinary Russians are likely to become extremely severe if the war goes on for long. In a co-dependent world economy, you just can’t live as an economic, informational, and cultural pariah while keeping a large, costly war going. It’s one thing to have the living standard of an already impoverished peasant population decrease over time, but it’s a whole other matter when a comfortable modern lifestyle is taken away from people overnight. It’s going to be a tragic shitshow for millions of people.

Now, the key for all of us is to mobilize the small creeks of resistance and solidarity until there can be no misunderstanding: a bet on Putin’s war is not worth it. The longer you persist in the war, the greater the costs.

This coordination of the swarm, the many small creeks of a transnational public and civil society, could possibly spur the creation of a more self-conscious planetary “public consciousness” — and conscience — mediated through information technology. As many have noted, we didn’t react correspondingly to the horrors of the “more remote” and less black-and-white war in Yemen. Imagine if we would have. Imagine if the planetary public becomes skilled at mobilizing support and resistance to war, oppression, and suffering everywhere. The value of such a planetary civil society would be immeasurable— even in the face of issues like climate change. Mary Kaldor, the eminent peace worker and political scientist, wrote on the eve of the war (the 22nd of February) that a human rights perspective should be applied to the situation. I would respond that, for that to be a realistic prospect, the planetary public must first be successfully mobilized. And that’s where you, the reader, make all the difference.

If you are a Russian citizen somehow reading this despite all the information blockages set up by the government (as Putin’s sworn intellectual nemesis, Masha Gessen, describes in The New Yorker) please know that you are not alone. Millions stand with you. And remember these words from the Koran:

A man asked the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, “What is the highest form of jihad?” The Prophet said:

“A word of truth in the face of an unjust ruler.”

8. Counteract the global reactionary movement!

The Russian government has long been fanning the flames of European and other nationalist and reactionary movements and parties. As a response to the alienation felt towards social, cultural, and economic transformations, such worldviews have grown roots deep within the populations of most liberal democracies.

This has led to a number of undesirable dynamics in many democracies over the last decade: from culture wars and riots, to the loss of momentum for transformational solutions to climate change, to the loss of the public’s ability to organize around class interests, to grid-locked parliamentary situations, to Donald Trump’s train of maddening adventures in public life, to the rise of Nazi and violent insurgency groups (yes, also in Ukraine, but no, that’s not an excuse to invade the country), to harassment of public figures, to the cultivation of online conspiracy theories, to certain governments curtailing civic rights, to increased xenophobia…

These currents of European and American sentiment are, unsurprisingly enough, generally positive towards Russia’s government — and many reactionaries even view Russia as a beacon of traditionalism and decency. The “decadent liberal West” is an old trope, common pretty much to all autocracies (in the Stasi museum in Berlin, for instance, you can see DDR propaganda showing the ghastly Iron Maiden posters that Western kids worshipped in the 1980s). But the assertiveness of such autocracies on the international scene certainly encourages the growing nationalist movements within liberal democracies, while tilting developing countries in authoritarian directions. As is often noted, the “freedom in the world” index has now been in decline for 15 consecutive years.

Now is our chance to turn this trend. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine and the whole “Russia-is-so-realistic-and-rational-Real-politically-cool-and-it-stands-up-for-masculinity-and-truly-feminine-women” is curtailed and exposed for the incoherent bullshit it, in all honesty, is (with some partial truths, sure, but still, it’s bullshit) — then the lure and legitimacy of neo-reactionary movements around the world will take a serious blow. They’ll lose their shine. And the hearts of young men (and old, embittered ones) can slowly begin to take up more worthwhile causes. Maybe even Poland and Hungary would notice that alignment with democratic values isn’t such a bad thing. Turkey — who knows?

As things stand today, Russia props up corrupt governments in Africa: guns for mining rights and resources, the Wagner Group mercenaries doing the dirty work, no questions asked. If Russia’s current government loses its grip, we can turn the long tide of authoritarian development across the world, including inside the bastions of liberal democracy.

For the future of a non-authoritarian, post-Putin Russia, there can be few things as valuable as an independent Ukraine — a kind of cultural hybrid “West Russia”. A Russian bear, perhaps, but more Paddington-like (as I alluded to in the image above). It would serve as a bridge and melting-pot for the Russian-Orthodox and Western civilizations, while allowing the flexibility of multiple positive Russian identities. What the metamodern sociologist Brent Cooper discusses as “metanoia” (or “in-betweenness”) is increased in such liminal spaces, places “between worlds” — charged with greater emergent potentials. This is what network science calls the power of bridging nodes. This could be the future of Ukraine, spurring on a fascinating new role for Russia herself.

9. Use the momentum for deep energy transformation!

Just like the swift response to the covid pandemic, the Ukraine war shows that we can basically change the world overnight. This shouldn’t be forgotten in relation to climate change and energy transition to sustainable and renewable solutions.

Now that core world economies like Germany (and the EU at large) are prodded to start taking dramatic steps to sever at least some of their fossil dependencies, there is significant momentum to be used — and coordinated with the green strategies linked to covid stimulus packages.

This momentum becomes larger still if you consider that 1) countries and populations are now entering into “wartime economies” where the state plays a strong and active role as investor and leader of structural transformations, that 2) populations at large are mobilized and become prepared to make sacrifices for the common good, and that 3) a flood of transnational unity and sense of coherence has emerged in response to the war.

As argued in my last article, remember that this is also a war of survival of the Russian petrostate military-industrial complex — and that its decline would herald a strong advancement of the positions of the renewable energy economy and decentralized structures.

Russia, through its historical development, has veered strongly in the direction of centralized power (just look at the map of cities and roads centered like a spider web around Moscow!). The country has a strong state, a strong church, and strong families, but comparatively little in the way of “civil society” as it is understood in the social sciences. Hence, the road to a more democratic and decentralized Russia may be a longer and more painful one than for other countries. But the widespread resistance to the war within Russia itself, and the growth of political opposition and free press offer some seeds for a livelier Russian civil society upon which democratic institutions can be cultivated.

In a sense, the world would do Russia a favor by helping it decouple from its path dependency on the one-trick-pony fossil economy and the petrostate’s tendency to play geopolitical games (as, after all, oil and gas are geographical phenomena, more so than renewables).

10. Use the opportunity to establish transnational governance!

Ultimately, the world will continue to suffer from confusion and mayhem until a more coherent and solitary order of transnational governance is achieved. This is a topic I have researched and theorized over some years but I cannot give the topic justice here. Suffice to say that the post-WW2 institutions of the UN are increasingly dated and that the current forms of transnational coordination are insufficient.

If the larger community of nations manages to take a joint and coordinated stand against this war and defend democratic sovereignty, while spreading better governance and freedom to Russia, this could indeed serve as the seed for a new, multi-polar world order and thus for a deepening and redefinition of how societies around the world cooperate.

Part of this argument flows from a crass change in the balance of power: if authoritarianism loses its bastion on the northern hemisphere and one of its greatest worldwide agents, the world will likely become a more democratic and cooperative place. Maybe this time, the West would be wiser than to step on Russian pride and economy (which is what occurred after the Cold War), and truly include Russia and all of Eastern Europe as equals and friends. Western cultural arrogance has cost us dearly and I can only hope we’ve learned a lesson.

But another part of the argument, I believe, flows from a deeper and more universal place. Institutions change on rare occasions when momentous movements occur; movements that stir the souls of millions of people at the same time. If so many of us around the world feel that we took a stand against war, and felt empowered to act against it, and felt solidarity with new people that we hardly considered before, that may be such a rare moment — comparable to the days after the Second World War, when today’s world order was forged.

My hope is, ultimately, that we can avoid the Third World War, but still reap the benefits of moral growth that come from having dodged it together — while having stood up to tyranny.

And then, hopefully, we can begin to apply that new-won public conscience to the forgotten corners of the world where injustice and suffering have been allowed and disregarded for far too long. Ukraine is crying. But so is Yemen and many other places just as real and relevant.

Then again, I’m the hopeful sort. I believe that a sincerely-ironic geopolitics is both possible and necessary.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

1. Don’t mistake the West’s sociological failures for geopolitical weakness

NATO and the West has appeared weaker than they really are, geopolitically and economically speaking: with the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan (couldn’t even beat the Taliban, despite magnitudes greater military and economic might), unsuccessful interventions into Syria, a losing grip on influence over Africa, an internally quarreling EU, and internal culture wars leading up to the storming of Capitol Hill last year.

However, these failures are largely sociological failures, i.e. failures to understand and manage social and cultural forces, not signs of lacking economic and military prowess per se. Lack of sociological understanding has severely limited the capacity for the West, NATO, and the international community under Global North leadership to successfully intervene in different parts of the world, but it is still true that the collective powers of this larger network are much greater than those of Russia. And unlike targets like the Taliban hiding in vast mountainous terrain or goals like the creation of a new Iraqi state, Russia is a large target that can more easily and straightforwardly be resisted with conventional means.

Just for perspective, Russia roughly has a ten times larger defense budget than Ukraine, while the US defense budget in turn is about ten times larger than Russia’s, making up two-thirds of NATOs total. The NATO populations are larger, richer, better educated, and have better access to useful information (in a more “free information” system) than Russia, which means that they can find a myriad of ways of resisting even without engaging in a full-blown military conflict. So where ordinary citizens in the West are sending money and supplies, help to spread pro-Ukrainian information, hack Russian information infrastructure, boycott Russian commodities and some even join the Ukrainian army—ordinary Russians aren’t even told that there’s a war going on.

Russia is dwarfed in comparison with NATO and its partners: Russia has a population of roughly 144 million, 153 if you add its ally Belarus; NATO has 951 million, and if you add its European partners such as Finland and Sweden, and non European ones such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, it’s well over a billion — and then there’s the 40 million Ukrainians armed to their teeth ready to fight all incoming Russian invaders.

In economic terms, Russia’s economy is comparable to that of Australia (a country of 26 million), and highly dependent on the export of gas and oil, mostly sold to Europe — accounting for 30% of GDP and 50% of the government’s income. In comparison, the NATO countries make up more than half the world’s economy measured in GDP — and that’s without Japan, South Korea and Australia, the world’s 3rd, 10th and 13th biggest economies. Russia is number 11, just ahead of Brazil. Or was; after the Ruble hit the rubble last week, and with the continuation of the economic sanctions, it’s likely to be out of the top 20 this year.

In other words, the West looked weaker than it really is, which may have emboldened Russian aggression. As militaries are propped up around Europe in much larger economies and larger collective populations (with Germany taking a lead with major investments in its military that will give it the third largest military budget in the world, way ahead of Russia), the military advantage and initiative of an increasingly poorer and more isolated Russia quickly wane.

2. Russia looked stronger than it truly is

We have been accustomed to thinking of Russia as the heir to the USSR and leader of the Warsaw Pact, and thus as a dormant superpower. But since Poland, the Baltics, and other countries have switched sides, and the economic gap has widened, the new power relation between East and West has shifted far away from Russia’s interests.

In the late eighties, the countries of the Warsaw Pact had a population of roughly 400 million, versus NATO’s 600 million at the time. Its troops were based deep into Germany and Central Europe. As of such, the Cold War of the 20th century was a more equal confrontation than the one today between the 30 NATO countries (+ 20 or so strategic partners) and Russia and its Belarusian satellite.

Russia has impressed an image upon the world as an effective military force with its former successful operations in Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, and Syria. But the scale and nature of the current operation are different: Ukraine is geographically the second biggest country in Europe, with a population a little less than one third of Russia’s, and it appears that Russia intends to conquer the entire country — something it never even tried with the invasion of the small country of Georgia back in 2008.

The Russian system has a vast intelligence deficiency. Basically, there are poor feedback loops of information, as information flows are curtailed in a KGB style. Lower-ranking Russian officers work on a strong need-to-know basis and their narrative is dependent on the Russian propaganda apparatus, which makes it more difficult for them to self-organize in the context of complex operations and the situations that face them. Apparently, Russian soldiers haven’t been told where they’re going and what they’re going to do. Secrecy like that may be a virtue in the KGB, but having clueless soldiers on a battlefield is a big weakness in any army — especially if they are going into combat. From what I see, it wouldn’t be surprising if the average Westerner watching the news has a better understanding of what’s going on than low level officers in the Russian army.

There are also significant problems with the effectiveness of the Russian military apparatus. Here, the devil is in the detail: Yes, Russia has many tanks, artillery pieces, and aircrafts, but how effectively these can be used all depends on how well-oiled the entire apparatus is. And serious cracks are showing in the facade of how well this military operates in practice: Analysts have reportedly been “shocked” at what they observe. Russia has a lot of fighter jets, for example, but their efficiency is severely hampered by inexperienced pilots and lacking munitions. The same can be said about tanks running out of fuel. And if we are to believe the content of this article, Russian troops in Ukraine have even been overheard complaining about lacking logistical support and even been talking back emotionally against orders given. There are even reports of Russians sabotaging their vehicles to avoid going into battle.

Given that resistance to the war is strong even within Russia, the position of the Russian government is currently not a very strong one and is likely to grow as sanctions take their toll, possibly breaking the country’s economy— at least not in the long run.

3. Russia is to blame — but understanding it is crucial

Western media, and international media at large, do a fairly poor job at bringing nuance and understanding to the Russian side of this cruel equation. For instance, we are continuously informed about Ukrainian civilian losses, as well as Russian losses of military personnel, but the media is vague, silent, or unrealistic about Ukrainian military losses. We should have no illusions about the impartiality of reporting.

It stands to reason — and viscerally feel — that Russia is an unlawful aggressor in this situation. But to seek to understand Russia (and, in the longer run, even to accept and forgive) is not to condone the actions of its government. For citizens around the world, both of these traps must be avoided: A. relativizing and condoning a criminal war of aggression, and B. falling into a clichéd, black-and-white narrative that hinders productive measures and responses because there is no real understanding.

The better analysts, leaders, and the public understand the Russian side of the matter (not, note, its state-sanctioned propaganda, but the dilemmas faced by its people and leadership), the more hope there is for a shorter war and viable future relationship.

4. Putin is acting more “rationally” than it appears (but he is just about to lose it)

Much ink has been spilled to gauge the sanity or insanity of the autocratic Russian President. If you listen to some of the more astute analyses out there, it becomes clear that the Russian leadership are in a long-term decline and may feel that their hand is forced in the matter:

• If Ukraine joins NATO and the EU, with more than 40 million people switching sides, Russia will no longer be a geopolitical powerhouse. If Russia could add the former Soviet republics, Russia could double its population. And if they could submit the biggest of these, namely Ukraine, to Russian rule, the likelihood of the remaining ones following suit would be that much greater.
• If Ukraine joins NATO, and there is already an ongoing conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, the country could risk being attacked by NATO forces as “an attack on one is an attack on all”, and that would be from a very wide front of 2700 kilometers in Ukraine.
• Geopolitically, because of the large steppe that stretches from northern Europe and widens towards the Ural Mountains, Russia becomes harder to defend from Western attacks the farther its zone of military control is pushed eastwards. Ukraine joining NATO would more or less leave Russia at the West’s mercy.
• As long as Ukraine is not under Russian control, Russia loses income as it has to pay tariffs on gas pipes passing through the country.
• Ukraine has found its own gas deposits and could soon be a real competitor to Russia’s main income. And if all of a sudden there would be a democratic alternative to Russia’s gas, the West would be likely to trade with the former.
• Ukraine controls the water flow through a canal that goes down to Russian-controlled Crimea, and this region is so dry that its 2½ million inhabitants are currently a big economic drain on Russia, as Ukraine has refused to open the canal.

Taken together, the Russian leadership’s days are numbered if they do not seize control over Ukraine.

Of course, the truly rational course of action would be to peacefully dismantle the current rule, democratize the country, diversify the economy, and become a trusted member of the international community. But as the leadership is invested in the current imperial project and could suffer grim consequences if they lost power (due to corruption, crimes, and so forth), it is “rational” from their perspective to take the gamble and try to seize Ukraine.

However, as the situation becomes increasingly dire for Putin and his allies, we are seeing that emotional over-reactions and acts of desperation may increase, as telling signs of mounting romanticism and paranoia suggest.

5. Putin is acting more ideologically than we think

That there is a certain “rationality” in Putin’s actions does not preclude that these are also ordered according to certain earnestly held ideological sentiments.

One such source of ideological reasoning is the kinship and shared historical roots of Russia and Ukraine (Russia was in effect founded in Kyiv, and before the Soviet era, Ukrainians were even referred to as “little Russians”). This closeness and sense of shared belonging may cause Putin and many others to feel a sense of betrayal if Ukraine chooses a path that leads away from the Russian Imperium.

The second major ideological position is simply to view the Imperium (and its zone of influence) as inherent to the Russian national identity. Thus, upholding an order where this Imperium is maintained and strengthened is viewed as a natural duty of the leadership of Russia — and a sense of humiliation before one’s own people would be felt if the Imperium is weakened during one’s rule. For instance, Russian citizens largely supported the annexation of Crimea and reported feeling renewed pride as a result of it.

6. Putin has difficulties understanding democracy

One of the miscalculations of Putin’s decision to attack may have to do with the workings of democracy. The Ukrainian President, Zelenskyy, had dismally bad poll ratings just before the attack, and people were also expressing low trust in their country’s institutions — which may have given the impression that Ukrainians would accept or even support a toppling of its government: “a war against the administration, not against the people”.

Autocratic leaders generally have difficulties understanding the game boards of more democratic countries (just as people in democracies have trouble understanding the mechanisms of autocratic systems). While Ukraine is by no means a perfect democracy, it still leans strongly in that direction, and as such, it is quite natural for its people to dislike and distrust its current leader. In fact, that’s the whole point: in a democracy you’re free, if not even obliged, to complain about your leaders and swap them out at the next election. Democracies are imperfect and built on compromise and constant slight dissatisfaction. That does not mean that their peoples wish to topple the state and system as a whole! Apparently, Ukrainians turned out to be willing to sacrifice their lives to save their current freedoms and democratic rights.

In fact, one is reminded of Voltaire’s old saying: “I hate your opinion, but I am willing to die for your right to express it.”

7. Ukraine is not Iraq

While direct intervention into Ukraine by NATO and allies may risk too dramatic escalations of the conflict (see the next 10 points list I publish), the Western experience of failures in Iraq and Afghanistan does not translate well to the current situation.

Simply put: Our possibilities of doing good in this situation are considerably larger. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there were no functional systems and countries to “revert to” once their respective tyrannical leaderships were ousted. This led to the “sociological failures” I mentioned above. In this case, the situation is more comparable to that of Germany or Japan after the Second World War — there is a real country that can coalesce and thrive. Or, at least, the conditions for such a post-war revival appear to be much better.

Hence, supporting Ukraine, even militarily (if done prudently) is likely to be a productive and sustainable path for the country and the world around it.

8. The conflict is partly a climate- and water conflict

Interestingly, as is the case in so many matters these days, and as is so often overlooked, the Russia-Ukraine situation is partly aggravated by climate change.

Not only has climate change affected Russian crops and thus further destabilized the country’s exports of wheat to the Middle East, which contributed to spiking food costs in that region, and thus helped spark the Arab Spring and, thereby, the Russian intervention into Syria some years later — which built up momentum for a more confident and aggressive Russian leadership.

It is also the case that the perpetual drought on the Crimean Peninsula has arguably been caused by climate change, which has made Russia yet more eager to seize control over the canal that the Ukrainians have blocked since the annexation of Crimea.

This point is perhaps auxiliary, but important nonetheless as it helps to underscore that a world without climate security is more likely to spiral into a world of geopolitical insecurity.

9. The war stands between petrostate military-industrial complexes and renewable energy

Despite the above-mentioned damages to Russia by the hands of climate change, it is also true that Russia is the only major country that would actually benefit from climate change in the long term. Or, rather, the same may be true of Canada.

A warmer planet is one where the temperate zone on the northern hemisphere would climb further northwards, which would unlock untold areas of agriculturally viable lands within Russia, while making other countries more dependent on its exports. Considering that Russia has fewer large coastal cities, and that it is also too far away from the North Atlantic Gulf stream to feel the effects were it to stop (as one theory on climate change predicts), its position in the world would likely be strengthened by further climate change.

Given that Russia is more or less currently a petrol-state, and that there is a close connection between the fossil-fuel incomes and the military and a limited number of oligarchs, we can see that Russia is passionately unmotivated to seeing a transformation into a decentralized and renewable energy system around the globe.

If Russia loses some of its initiative on the fossil-fuel market, and other countries become less dependent on its exports, the current centralized power structure (a patrol-state military-industrial complex) would risk falling apart.

Thus, I don’t feel that it’s too far a stretch to claim that the current conflict is, more than incidentally, a struggle between the maintenance of petrol-state interests and energy transformation.

Interestingly, centralized power jives well with centralized political power, just as decentralized power grids open pathways for greater dispersion of decision-making. A post-petrol world is a freer world, which is worth striving towards, even if the end is not yet in sight.

10. No Liberal order — no Post-Liberal order, either

Lastly, let us simply note — all of us who believe in and work for developments of society that go beyond the Modern capitalist-liberal mainstream — that our dreams of an ecological, equitable, and effectively governed future cannot materialize if basic human rights and international law are curtailed. If big countries with big sticks can coerce smaller neighbors, if media is controlled and weaponized, if gangster-like oligarchies threaten security, poison opponents and put dissidents in jail, there will not be possibilities, freedom, and will enough to experiment boldly with what comes next in the evolution of human societies.

If we cannot sustain the liberal world order, we should not expect to be able to create new, post-liberal (post-capitalist, protopian, metamodern) world orders either. The current attack on freedom is decidedly non-liberal, but it has nothing to do with post-liberal potentials of desirable future societies.

Hence, even for die-hard critics of the Western mainstream and its institutions, it makes sense to stand with Ukraine, with the suffering of its people, and against unlawful state aggression.

The potential to find pathways ahead from the dead-end of our civilization dramatically decreases if Putin gets his way and gets to violently perpetuate a non-democratic petrol-state.

Hence, I suggest that we stand with Ukraine — not only for the sake of our brothers and sisters in that country, but also for the future of the world.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

In my book, Nordic Ideology, I outline six new forms of politics that I feel must become institutionalized parts of societies across the world for the core challenges of late modern life to be properly managed. One of these I call Gemeinschaft Politics — “Gemeinschaft” being a German word that sociologists use to denote the aspects of society that are not formalized into rules, regulations, and bureaucracies. It’s the informal weave of relationships in society: friendships, family and courting practices, inter-citizen trust and solidarity, religious, cultural, and ethnic or racial relations. It’s the politics of “fellowship” — the active and deliberate work to heal, develop, and improve upon such informal but crucial aspects of society.

In the book, I go on to outline a few positions on gender/sexuality as well as ethnic/racial relations in society. In the latter case, I suggest the following positions that I hold can be observed in societies across the world:

• Nationalism — the (purported) defense of the majority culture, race, and ethnicity at the expense of minorities and foreigners. To the extent that nationalism has more cosmopolitan aspects, it’s in the defense of the right to nationalist assertion across countries and cultures.
• Non-Nationalism — the emphasis on market solutions and integration between ethnicities through a liberal order that empowers people to get a job and achieve social mobility and new contacts across different groups in society. In its left-wing version, this position holds that inequalities of culture, race, and ethnicity are surface phenomena and are fundamentally distractions to differences of class, and that class should be re-focused as the real basis of social relations. To the extent that people are treated differently because of e.g. skin color, this can be explained by socio-economic differentials at a group level.
• Multiculturalism — (or, as I rebrand it in the book, Inter-Culturalism) which is the standard “progressive” position that takes up anti-racism, inclusion, the defense of minority rights, and the higher valuation of multiple ethnic groups and their contribution in terms of unique ways of life and perspectives. As championed by Canadian sociologist and philosopher Charles Taylor, this position holds that people don’t only have individual “liberal” rights, but also collective or social rights that pertain to their needs to live in and express their culture, not only at the level of token attires or exotified “ethnic” festival color explosions, but as a real and felt part of everyday life. This position tends to hold that diversity is in and of itself a good: the more of it, the better.
• Transculturalism — the view we shall be exploring here, and which I hold can and should be a part of an effective Gemeinschaft Politics. The transculturalist position holds that it is both true that diversity is good, that racism, inequality, and discrimination are real issues with their own respective (often postcolonial) historical roots, and that there are real problems of integration and inter-cultural relations, as well as real limitations to and problems inherent in the cultures of different ethnic groups and cultures in society. As such, it takes a transformational view on ethnic groups (whether these happen to be constructed along the lines of race, nationality, ethnic denominations, or religious practices) and holds them responsible vis-à-vis one another as parts of “the whole” of society that results from their interactions. This sometimes involves making a value judgment of or comparison between the ethical desirability of cultures.

It should be noted that these four positions largely line up around four different “value-memes” prevalent in late modern societies (value-memes being the overall structures of people’s values and ways of making sense of the world): Traditionalists tend towards Nationalism, Moderns (“mainstream people”) towards Non-Nationalism, Postmodernists towards Multiculturalism, and Metamodernists towards Transculturalism.

(My own version of understanding these “value-memes” are discussed in detail in my book, The Listening Society.)

I thus hold that societies need to increasingly cultivate and establish institutional practices informed by Transculturalism. This is in keeping with the idea that societies around the world would do well to develop more “metamodern” institutions in order to thrive and survive in the face of mounting disruptions that come with systemic shifts. Transculturalism is a social process (or set of social processes) that manages and develops the quality of ethnic and racial relations. If we seek to resolve the culture wars of today, Transculturalism is our best bet. If we seek to create harmonious relations between groups in society, Transculturalism, the same holds true.

In brief, it can be argued that Nationalism exacerbates ethnic division while only momentarily soothing the grievances of the in-group, Non-Nationalism fails to address ethnic realities and treats the issue with a naïve belief in the progress of society through economic transactions, while Multiculturalism leads to some inescapable paradoxes: More cultures are added and strengthened besides one another, but they fail to interact productively across their cultural divides, and the relativism of “you cannot judge one culture on the premises of another” leads to impasses when it comes to challenging and transforming cultures into better versions of themselves, with better interactions across cultures.

The Paradoxes of Multiculturalism

“Rather than reaping the richness of multiple perspectives, the political realm becomes increasingly charged with ethnic tensions, and ethnic divisions begin to infuse the party politics of formerly reasonably functional democracies.”

I should stay a little longer on this last point, the paradoxes of Multiculturalism.

One such paradox is the incompatibility of its two core positions: 1. More diversity is good, so adding more cultures is good, and 2. Cultures should be allowed to preserve themselves in their current form. On the face of it, both of these positions appear reasonable and honorable. But the moment that it is part of a certain culture to be intolerant of other cultures (which is arguably an aspect of all cultures to some degree), the two positions collide. The same thing occurs the moment one cultural practice somehow bothers and disturbs another one (and this also happens as soon as cultures coexist in the same spaces). A simple example: let’s say that one culture has another view on the role of women in society, and this leads to what is perceived as street harassments of women by gangs of young men from that culture.

Multiculturalism seems to be unable to resolve these paradoxes. If members of one culture begin to judge the practices of another culture, that is perceived as racism and condemned. When the first culture responds by defending and preserving its practices, that is perceived as chauvinism and nationalism (and perhaps, correctly so). What you get is an increase of quiet grievances and taboo topics, which results in the suppressed frustrations that play out in all arenas of society: the street, the workplace, the labor market, the housing market, in education. Segregation mounts and ethnic divisions are deepened. Rather than reaping the richness of multiple perspectives, the political realm becomes increasingly charged with ethnic tensions, and ethnic divisions begin to infuse the party politics of formerly reasonably functional democracies.

Ironically, there seems to be a “sociological wormhole” that leads right from the underbelly of Multiculturalism back to the dynamics of Nationalism — albeit in a situation when a larger and growing number of groups contend for power and recognition. Multiculturalism, and its many expressions, is a well-meaning but ultimately self-defeating way to approach the problem. In its admittedly commendable struggle against racism and structural inequality, it inadvertently breeds the very divisions and resentments it seeks to transcend.

Then again, perhaps the very most damning paradox of the Multiculturalist view becomes apparent if we situate it within a wider Postmodern project. This project includes such things as challenging the hegemony of white men, challenging toxic masculinity, of unearthing biases buried in our language — all of which are directly about transforming culture. Yet, if all cultures are to be treated equally and have the right to preserve themselves and define themselves as they wish, all such projects of critique and transformation would reasonably be off-limits.

The Multiculturalist “solution” to this problem is generally to hold the hegemonic culture (usually, Western, white, male, etc.) to a different and higher standard than other cultures (minority, indigenous, counter-culture, etc.) But this solution falls on its own rope: Implicitly, it’s treating one culture as superior, adult, and responsible, and another as inferior, child-like, and exempt from responsibility. In other words, Multiculturalism itself ends up being racist. And so, it’s not that surprising there’s a wormhole right back to Nationalism and Balkanization at the core of the Multiculturalist project.

Shifting Gear to Transculturalism

“Without each other, we are culturally blind. With the right processes — arduous as they must be—we can see our own cultures from the outside, and work to honor our respective cultural heritages by cultivating cultures that we are proud of and command the liking and respect of others.”

It is these paradoxes that must be addressed for the current societal impasse to be surmounted. The fundamental shift of perspective from Multiculturalism to Transculturalism is the following one:

• If cultures are to have the right to exist and gain recognition in an environment of other cultures that they interact with, they must also be charged with the obligation to develop and transform into versions of themselves that are — not subjected to, but — compatible with the other cultures.

In terms of majority cultures, this very often comes down to increased tolerance, inclusion, and acceptance. It comes down to curiosity towards “the other” and strong norms against discrimination, as well as increased self-awareness of how privileges can shape biases and prejudice. This is not to say, in the case of for instance Western majority populations, that self-defeatism and shame should become the norm, or that the cultures should cease to express themselves through traditions, customs, and values. It simply means that, in order for these cultures to live up to their own values, racism should be viewed as entirely unacceptable — and that histories of oppression (colonial, genocidal, or other) are owned up to. You have the right to express pride in your own culture, but also the obligation to embody the best version of that culture in a manner that respects other cultures. In other words, nationalist and chauvinist reactions must be questioned and condemned. On a day-to-day level, it’s not okay to refuse to rent your summer house family to another family-based only on their Arabic family name, for instance. Hence, real work with transforming dominant cultures and owning up to the postcolonial heritage must be worked with until the norms are conclusively shifted towards tolerance and inclusion. As argued in last week’s article, cultivating the psychological capacity for Acceptance among the population may be an effective lever to pull in this regard.

This struggle with postcolonial ghosts of Christmas’ past undeniably even has geopolitical consequences. If Western cultures retreat into Nationalism or default to Non-Nationalism (largely ignoring issues of race, still the majority position in Western cultures), this will only feed the revanchist tendencies of new global powers, from China, to India’s Hindu nationalism, to the public Russian support for Vladimir Putin’s warmongering. The Global South, in Africa in particular, is increasingly turning away from the West’s attempt to uphold a liberal world order, and often questionable regimes are colluding increasingly with the powers of Russia and China in what seems to be amounting to a new Cold War.

Simply said, Western cultures, in their failure to take up the obligations that come with their own values, are fanning the flames of hurt pride around the world, of peoples trampled over decades and centuries. Whereas the dark clouds on the geopolitical horizon cannot simply be reduced to this one issue, it is very likely a strong contributor to the situation. “We” Westerners need to evolve our cultures, swallow some pride (which is often disowned shame and guilt), and be humble towards the rich contributions of others. But the hurt pride of other cultures lives on even within our own societies — from the experience of being Black or Latino in the United States to being Arab or African in Europe, people are feeling downtrodden, and understandably so. When riots arise in our banlieues or ghettos, or when ISIS emerges as a specter of our cultural dynamics, we shouldn’t be so surprised.

For other cultures, the demands upon their evolution naturally vary from case to case. Indian culture has a grim heritage of the caste system, which is viewed as largely unacceptable in other parts of the world. Honor killings, antagonistic isolationism, and limitations on the freedom of women are unacceptable aspects of many Muslim communities in the West. In each of these cases, the answers do not lie in denial of one’s own heritage, but in creative redefinitions of the culture.

A similar position has been explored by the sociologists Michael O. Emerson and George Yancey in their 2010 book, Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach. While I don’t support everything in the book, and while the study they base their reasoning on is much too small and limited, I do feel that they capture something essential in their “mutual obligations approach”. Groups have a right to be mutually respected, yes, but they also have obligations towards one another. And those obligations can only reasonably be negotiated mutually. There need to be institutional practices that facilitate such mutual expectations of obligations to develop, to evolve, to transform. That is marital counseling functions, and cultures of the world are, in an interconnected world, stuck with one another. We’re collectively married, whether we like it or not.

Today, such institutional practices and skillsets of facilitation hardly exist. But it could certainly motivate people to change their own cultures and positions — in keeping with their own traditions and customs — if people see corresponding work to change on the other side. Again, just as the two individuals of a marriage are reasonably obliged to help both parties become the best versions of themselves, so cultures can and should be charged with the task to help one another improve, to live up to our own ideals, to become cultures more worthy of respect and recognition.

And that’s the real wealth of multiple cultures co-existing. It’s that each culture is a parallel perspective, a weird mirror through which we can see new aspects of ourselves. The promise is not perfect harmony or the resolution of all ethnic tensions. The promise is increased collective intelligence. As a global community, we’re ultimately lucky to have each other, even if it hurts, even if there are clashes and misunderstandings.

Without each other, we are culturally blind. With the right processes — arduous as they must be—we can see our own cultures from the outside, and work to honor our respective cultural heritages by cultivating cultures that we are proud of and command the liking and respect of others.

The Transcultural Arbiter: Three Concepts

“In summary, the idea is to treat cultures more like we treat people: not as monolithic and essentially fixed, but as responsible, responsive, and highly malleable.”

All of this leaves us with the question: On what grounds should different co-existing cultures reasonably negotiate their mutual obligations? Through what methods of discourse and facilitation? After all, if people’s very identities and psychologies are always layered within their own cultures, how then can a member of one culture ever pass judgment on the practices of another culture? Is slavery wrong — who’s to say? Is it wrong to burn the wife of a deceased husband alive at his funeral pyre — who knows, right? Female genital mutilation? Destroying the natural environment? Sacred child temple prostitution? It’s all being tried and tested under the sun, as we speak.

There are other questions to be answered, for sure, but this one seems first in line.

As a very first step, let us simply state that, on a trivial level, it appears fairly obvious that not all cultures in all times are equally good for human thriving, if that is taken as a universal goal of humans to live dignified lives. You have, for instance, in terms of indigenous cultures a wide range from peaceful and friendly ones to highly violent, aggressive, and “toxic” ones. Nor is every aspect of a certain culture equally good for the thriving of its members (or those of other cultures). Admittedly, the cultural relativism of classical anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas served as a vital counterweight to the horrors of European colonialism and paternalism — but in the context of today’s diverse cultural context of globalized societies, the cultural relativist stance leads to all of the impasses discussed above. Most notably, it precludes the capacity to critique cultures and thus to develop them. Such critique and development, in turn, need to rely upon the productive meeting and merging of cultures.

As such, the rights of a certain culture to preserve its way of life must be balanced against its corresponding obligation to interface reasonably well with its neighboring communities, as well as against the collective will of its members to be subjected to critiques of (what others view as) toxic dynamics that result in the oppression of its own members. In turn, the right to make reasonable demands on other cultures is won. The aim, then, is not to efface the crucial aspect of critique from cultures in the name of diversity and respect of inter-cultural boundaries, but to make use of the interactions between cultures in order to co-critique — empowering critical and silenced voices on both sides. Within every culture, the downtrodden, the “subaltern”, can find valuable allies outside of their own culture, to make their case. This holds true of women subjected to honor culture in Arab families, to Black communities in the US who can reveal that the white Western mainstream treats them and Native Americans with similar disregard, and for Dalits in India who can make use of international critiques of the caste system.

In summary, the idea is to treat cultures more like we treat people: not as monolithic and essentially fixed, but as responsible, responsive, and highly malleable. If cultures have deep historical roots that cannot simply be disregarded (and, as such, always have a resistance to change), they are also ever re-interpreted and re-enacted by their members — always in the process of being invoked and socially constructed by real people with real and often conflicting interests.

Especially if we hold that cultural transformations are necessary for the Modern world-system to transform to a sustainable and more humane Metamodern or Protopian system (or meta-system), we simply cannot afford a stance that precludes the possibility of cultures around the world to transform. Such transformations must find ways to honor traditions and ways of life, while still helping cultures to become parts of a greater whole — a whole that is not monocultural, but deeply diverse and still relatively integrated in a manner that allows resonance across diversity.

This, the “rules of engagement of cross-cultural development”, is a too complex issue to be done justice in a single article. But let me introduce three concepts to get us started: The Parallax View, The Cultural Hybrid, and Ethnic Inter-Creativity. Both of these hold within them great potential to unlock a more self-aware and co-creative relationship with cultures around the world.

• The Parallax View is the critical view of one’s own culture that comes from deeply immersing oneself in the perspective of “the other”. It is a form of “triangulation”, and so often requires not only the two meeting cultures to have facilitated meetings of negotiation, but also the presence of representatives of one or more other cultures who can comment upon the positions, critiques, and demands made by either side. As such, the self-critique within each culture is empowered and corroborated by the views of outsider observers. This affords stronger vectors of critique and cultural evolution on both sides — while balancing the demands in manners that attempt to counteract the power relations between the two cultures. The aim here is a kind of cross-cultural fairness or justice: that cultures are treated as equals, and thus that their members feel more respected and dignified, which allows for lesser defensiveness and greater openness to challenge own practices and biases.
• The Cultural Hybrid is the person who is deeply immersed in more than one (usually two) cultures and can thus serve as a bridge and interpreter during Transcultural negotiations. Often, they may have one parent from each of the cultures in question, or at the very least have lived in and identified with both of them. They thus feel responsible for and loyal towards both sides. Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, can serve as an emblematic example, here in the case of the intersection between Aboriginal and Australian (Anglo-Saxon) cultures. The Cultural Hybrid is thus an invaluable resource in cross-cultural development — in Transcultural processes. They are better situated than others to adopt The Parallax View of the interactions of cultures. Again, this underscored the profound value of deep inter-cultural interactions: without close relationships, fewer such hybrids are born and socialized.
• Ethnic Inter-Creativity is a concept I explored (albeit under different names) in my own earlier work with the role of race and ethnicity in police work. The idea is that members of one culture (usually the majority culture) should become as aware as possible of their own role of co-creating the ethnic identities of members of other communities, by virtue of how they interact with and treat them. People define their own ethnic and racial identities to a large extent by how they are met by members of other cultures. For instance, the treatment a minority group member receives by law enforcers that represent the hegemonic culture will lead to identifications with the own culture in more or less antagonistic terms. By extension, the same argument holds across all such interactions: Part by part, we shape how the culture of “the other” is expressed, which parts of it are emphasized, embodied, and enacted. This leads to greater self-reflection and to a greater sense of empowerment in regard to how “other cultures” play out in society. You come to realize that you have more power to shape how other cultures evolve than you might think, and you begin to take greater responsibility for how your own actions mold them.

Taken together, these are steps towards creating institutional practices that serve as a Transcultural Arbiter. One culture can never fully grasp and judge another culture. But this very paradox can be turned on its head and be made to work in favor of mutually desirable developments across cultures. Of course, the ideal should be to work towards cross-culturally universal values. But these “universal values” cannot simply be West-centric and Global North-centric “liberal” (Modern) values of human rights and individual expression. Rather the universality must be viewed as ever-open-ended, to be mutually explored precisely through the fault lines that cause tensions between cultures. Like in marital counselling, the tensions are hidden depositories of mutual insight and potential transformation.

An Example of Transculturalism: Mechelen

“Cultures are not static. They flow. They evolve. And if they have a right to exist as organic, living entities, it stands to reason that must also be held responsible as such.”

Mechelen is a Belgian town of some 80,000 inhabitants. In the early 2000s, the city had high unemployment, a large immigrant (mostly Muslim) minority, and high crime rates, with ethnic tensions as a result. This development was turned around with a comprehensive plan to adjust ethnic relations, which arguably serves as a case of Gemeinschaft Politics and Transculturalism. When ISIS exploded across Europe, Belgium had the highest per capita prevalence of people joining the organization — but Mechelen impressively had no recorded instances.

Under the leadership of Mayor Bart Somers, a program was introduced that took the following steps, in sequence:

• Restoring order through increased police presence in key areas, increasing the sense of safety.
• A wide public information campaign that set up a sort of “mutual obligations” social contract: Ethnic Flemish Belgians were asked to show tolerance to minorities but have zero tolerance of the discrimination of minorities, while minorities were asked to take steps to make their families conform with law and order.
• Middle-class families of ethnic Belgians were reached out to, one by one, in the hundreds, to get them to accept having their own children in the same schools as immigrant children, tackling each of their concerns with safety and quality of education on a case-by-case basis. This broke up the segregation and re-zoning of school districts that had accumulated, increasing the number of positive interactions between ethnic groups.
• Most controversially, perhaps, the Muslim youths of the municipality were all offered trips to Cordoba in Spain, where the Cordoban Caliphate of the 10th century has been a Muslim center of learning, science, pluralism, and tolerance of Europe in the Middle Ages. This thus tilts the expression of Muslim minority identities — towards pride, and also towards a real historical heritage of progressiveness and cosmopolitanism. Arguably, this was key to creating an alternative local Muslim identity, one that proved resistant to the lure of ISIS propaganda and chauvinism.

Simply stated, a rather advanced version of a “mutual obligations approach” was adopted over a number of years. And indeed, ethnic tensions were reduced, while still honoring the cultures and heritages involved. Mayor Somers was awarded the World Mayor Prize in 2016.

This is just one simple example of the potential inherent in the Transcultural stance. It’s not perfect and can certainly be critiqued. Much still needs to be invented by movement leaders, grassroots, and public officials on a case-to-case basis.

It stands to reason that Protopian and Metamodern societies would have advanced Transcultural practices as part and parcel of their institutional frameworks — combining these with facilitated processes of deliberative democracy (i.e. councils that discuss to reach mutual understanding of complex issues) with stakeholders from across sectors of society.

Simply put: Cultures are not static. They flow. They evolve. And if they have a right to exist as organic, living entities, it stands to reason that must also be held responsible as such. And they evolve together — depending upon the invaluable outsider perspectives of one another. Let us thus weave the best possible conditions for cultures to co-evolve into more ethical and universal versions of themselves, while still honoring their respective historical roots. That brings us beyond the impasses of Multiculturalism, and lands us in a co-creative space of Transculturalism.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

“Things die, which is to say that the feedback processes that flowed through them cease. And when things grow really fast—like our world system has—they often collapse more spectacularly, as well.”

Amidst the apparent turmoil of ongoing pandemics, climate disasters, and geo-political slides into what amounts to nothing less than a new Cold War, the world has slowly and quietly been warming up to a new political idea—an idea that I feel brings some light and hope to an otherwise daunting picture.

It’s that statistically speaking poverty and violence has decreased, globally, and faster than ever. Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling…

Nah, kidding. Got you, didn’t I? Not more of that awfully unidimensional thinking, thank you.

Yes, the global economic human system has grown according to its own logic, and that has brought boons and blessings to many. But the systemic problems we are facing are no figment of Facebook paranoia. The system cannot continue along its current trajectory and dynamics: It will increasingly fall apart.

And there really isn’t anything very strange about that: things grow, they blossom, cracks show eventually, the cracks grow until things decay, and at some point in space-time it all falls apart. Things die, which is to say that the feedback processes that flowed through them cease. And when things grow really fast—like our world system has—they often collapse more spectacularly, as well. Or at least the risk of doing so increases drastically. When I say “spectacularly” I don’t mean the Hollywood version thereof, just that we’ll be stuck in spectacularly dreary and complicated situations for a very long time and that the quantity of people who can live happily will decrease substantially.

But at the same time, living systems can “survive” in the sense that they can give birth to something new. They can transform. All life depends on change, on flow—societies and civilizations, too. On most occasions, survival means “just keep the flow going”—sometimes it means: mutate, shape-shift, burn the bridge behind you! We’re likely at such a point, as more indicators than I can list here show.

Inner Development Goals

“The transformation at hand is not merely technological, political, psychological, or spiritual—it’s all of these. But the spiritual and existential sides of it cannot be ignored.”

The view that many observers are coming to, often largely independently of one another, is that some kind of “phase shift” is required in terms of the ways our systems function. That is to say, we need to simultaneously shift how economies, cultures, polities, and also civil societies, media, and even information architecture function—so that the world at large (or the human systems interacting with the biosphere) begins to function in a manner that is capable of sustaining itself at least for an acceptable amount of time. And a very important part of that is to shift the psychology of each of us, our personalities or our “personal development” if you will—as well as the social psychology that plays out between us and shapes our lives.

The global shape-shift will involve new technologies, new ways of making decisions, new ways of creating and distributing goods and services, no doubt. But there needs to be a corresponding “mind-shift”. The transformation at hand is not merely technological, political, psychological, or spiritual—it’s all of these. But the spiritual and existential sides of it cannot be ignored.

Which brings us back to the “political idea” I was talking about:

• Could institutions be created to actively and deliberately support people’s inner development—so that each of us, on our own, becomes more likely to take up values, behaviors, and sentiments that are conducive to a thriving and sustainable world?

And that can only happen if everyone accepts Jesus Christ as their personal savior and submits fully.

Okay, kidding again. I’ll stop. Promise.

It can only happen if we start a serious and scientifically informed (but not scientifically reductionist!) public discourse on how such inner growth can be spurred in society, and about what such inner development may be taken to mean in the first place.

I have called this idea “the listening society”, because it would need to entail institutional and cultural frameworks that are much more attentive to the subtleties of human needs, desires, and ways of functioning and thriving (or suffering) than today’s modern societies.

With a somewhat different take you might call it Protopia (not Utopia) as I discussed in an earlier article, because it’s not “one idea of how a good society would work” but rather the cultivation of a tendency to manage the many complex issues of life, thus increasing the chances for thriving lives to emerge. If people function better in their own lives and relationships, it’s highly likely to have effects on how society functions and how well it can move through difficult transformations. Makes sense, doesn’t it, that societal resilience (to stagnation and collapse) should at least partly depend on the resilience of each of us as human beings? One million people over-reacting at the same time, or managing a conflict unproductively, or not taking responsibility for their emotions—of course it’s going to have aggregate effects! Justin Rosenstein’s One Project currently uses the word Protopia to weave together a greater whole from the many social innovators and problems solvers they can identify and support.

And you might call it, with yet another angle, Inner Development Goals (IDGs). That is, goals of “development that matters”—not the development of new and cooler furniture and gadgets (even if such things can also matter) but of things like the personal qualities, lived experiences, and relationships of real human beings. Those things also need investments in terms of time and resources. The IDG framework is still young and being developed and encompasses 23 “skills” divided into five categories: Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting. The “Being” category, for instance, would include such traits as Authenticity/Integrity, Presence (being able to be in the moment), and Self-Awareness. It’s all work-in-progress and needs to be funded, expanded, fleshed out, and experimented with—the IDG team are already working with Costa Rica at a government level to create an IDG strategy, and seem to be starting up in more countries.

IDG Framework Overview. Source: www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org

As you might have caught, the IDGs constitute a direct response to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. To simplify the argument here, it would be that attainment of SDGs would require a corresponding focus on the hitherto under-emphasized IDGs. And that requires some research and practice to get a handle on what good IDG projects might look like.

I’ve been thrilled with both the One Project and IDGs as they, in ways different from but related to what I myself imagined, have been pointing out and concretizing some of what I feel is the most hopeful and promising idea of our time. Both are young and experimental projects (and, full transparency, I have to various degrees been involved with both of them professionally), but they both share the basic impulse to work towards transition and transformation into sustainability not only by changing the external life conditions of people, but also by developing the inner landscapes of human experience itself.

The Master Variable: Wisdom or Acceptance?

“Wisdom tells us what we could’ve-should’ve, Acceptance tells us, with great precision what to do: first, accept the truth of the matter, regardless of what that truth may be.”

In this context, I’d like to make a suggestion about one particular quality of Inner Development that I believe is particularly important to achieve resilience, sustainability, and thriving in the world: Acceptance.

There are strong reasons to believe, I hold, that Acceptance may be the most efficient handle to cultivate in the population for driving meaningful inner growth in a cost-effective manner that still makes a difference in people’s lives.

We might compare it to another popular candidate in this context: the focus on Wisdom. I’ve always been skeptical of it, because it only truly functions “after-the-fact”, so to speak. Wisdom is a composite variable with several components that somehow together create a sum greater than its parts where you’re more likely to take good actions and feel okay yourself. The dictionary definition reads: “The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.” Now, the problem is that the jury’s still out on what’s true, right, or lasting in any one situation. So it basically comes down to wisdom = doing the right thing, whatever that might be.

You only know that in retrospect, if at all. Confronted with a tough real-life dilemma, you’re compelled to do something “wise”. So is it wise to show your righteous anger here, or to breathe and count to ten? Is it wise to suggest splicing a baby in two (as the symbol of wisdom, King Solomon, did when faced with two women who both claimed to be the baby’s mother, so as to see which one would decline it, and thus be the real mother)? What happens if both mothers are happy with the proposal to slice it in two—do you then change your mind, thereby undermining the weight of your future royal verdicts? We only know that Solomon is “wise” because the a posteriori (after-the-fact) story says he is. He might as well have been “idiotic evil” (to paraphrase Dungeons and Dragons). Splitting babies sounds a lot more like Caligula to me; saying crude shit you can’t back up sounds like Donald Trump.

Another example of how Wisdom is a posteriori: All those stories about how the Buddha turned nasty and unreasonable people around. The other person always stands corrected. What would have happened if one of the Buddha’s interventions or responses just didn’t work, if he didn’t “win” the confrontation? Would there then have been a story of Wisdom that included the Buddha being humiliated but then learning from his mistake and showing regret? In all of these stories, Wisdom seems to imply ending up on top somehow, if in a benign manner. It whispers of a “hail victory!”. The German phrase for which is Sieg Heil, by the way.

Now, compare that to Acceptance. Let’s conjure up a number of real-life dilemmas we’ve all been through and compare how Wisdom and Acceptance stack up in terms of their usefulness as an entry point into each situation.

• Your boss is abusive. Wisdom says “handle it well”; Acceptance says “accept the reality of the situation and make sure you soberly see your options in terms of what actions you can take, including accepting the level of difficulty, conflict, and risk of what you must do to change the situation.”
• You’re confronted with new ideas that challenge your worldview. Wisdom says “stick with the best worldview”; Acceptance says “accept the difficult emotions of confusion and ambiguity and accept the fact that it may take some time before your mind and emotions stabilize on a new set of assumptions in life”.
• You work towards some goal of social justice. Wisdom says “Do it in a manner that really works and that is good for others as well as yourself”; Acceptance says “accept that the world is not as you would like it to be, accept the reality of your emotions about that, accept that you cannot control very much, and then accept the responsibility of the task you’ve taken upon yourself.”
• You suffer from some mental illness. Wisdom: “Handle it well… But then again, a wise person kind of per definition isn’t mentally ill, so stop being mentally ill, and handle it well that you are…” [AKA syntax error!]; Acceptance says: “Hey, it’s okay to be mentally ill, either way, that’s now the reality of this moment and the cards you’ve been dealt, and if you don’t accept the truth of that, how will you be able to improve upon it?”
• We did something we really shouldn’t have. Wisdom: “Handle it well.”; Acceptance: “Accept that you did it, and accept yourself despite having made a mistake. Accept responsibility for it”.
• There are groups in society you find abhorrent and are in doubt whether or not to “tolerate” them. Wisdom says: “Be as tolerant as possible, but not more”; Acceptance says: “Accept that not everyone is going to be to your liking, and then accept the responsibility you have for protecting others from them.”
• You’re in great physical pain. Wisdom says: “Be wise about it.” Acceptance says: “Accept the sensations in your body, and then accept which level of acceptance you can muster, and this will actually reduce not only how much you suffer from the pain, but even the level of pain itself” (true story).
• Grief stuck in you that blocks your heart from feeling truly alive. Wisdom: “Be a wise person about your suffering.”; Acceptance: “Accept the numbness, and pain will emerge, accept that pain, and grief will emerge, accept the grief and rage will emerge, repeat through a looping roller-coaster, and one day you’ll start feeling something again, for good or bad. But at least you’ll be fucking alive. Then accept that.”
• Wisdom: “Be wise about it.” Acceptance: “Another one bites the dust. Pretty fly for a dead guy. Find your peace with the inevitable.”

I guess we could go on. The point is that, in pretty much any case I can think of, Wisdom adds nothing (and sometimes even detracts a bit) while Acceptance guides your steps and helps you figure out how to act in a productive manner. Simply stated, it appears to me that Acceptance is, as a guiding principle, wiser than Wisdom. It seems to actually work a priori, before the fact, which is to say that it seems to have predictive power on human thriving—causal power, which is the only power worth its salt. Wisdom tells us what we could’ve-should’ve, Acceptance tells us, with great precision what to do: first, accept the truth of the matter, regardless of what that truth may be. Reality as it is, not as we would like it to be.

The River that Connects the Creeks

“Acceptance, then, is simply the capacity of a mind/psyche/body to take in and process feedback data from the world without corrupting it along the way.”

And yes, Acceptance does seem to be correlated to human happiness, too. Likely, this has to do with putting our whole nervous system in a more relaxed and receptive mode to the experience of life, and to our own agency within. We accept the reality of something we cannot control but we don’t need to condone it. As such, Acceptance goes beyond tolerance. It is both deeper and more compassionate than tolerance—and it can help us discern when to tolerate and what to tolerate.

Tolerance, a highly celebrated virtue in liberal democracies, is overrated. Just consider what you’d prefer: a society where we just tolerate one another despite our flaws, or a society where we accept each other—including our less admirable sides. What would Jesus do?

• So basically, Acceptance in this sense is just our capacity to take in the truth of the matter in a given moment, to the best of our cognitive ability, while resisting the unconscious temptation to bargain with reality. It is what it is. It’s our relationship to the truth, however well we may approach. Or, as Gandhi said: Truth is God. That’s the core principle of Acceptance.

Think about it—Acceptance appears to be a fairly universal streak across psychology and self-knowledge:

• In a “Western setting”, we can see the Acceptance principle as central to Stoicism (but still overlapping, strangely enough, Epicureanism), in Existentialism (and thus in logo therapy), in Freudian psychoanalysis (the “catharsis” is fundamentally a quality of Acceptance), and from Stoicism to its modern version in CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—the most practiced and widely proven cost-effective treatment there is), and particularly the mindfulness-based versions thereof, leading up to DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which is the multi-modal heavy-weight cousin of CBT, more specialized on severe personality disorders and depressions), and popular tools in today’s landscape of social work and counseling, like ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) and Solution-Based Therapy (where you, first of all, use tools such as sliding scales to better accept the current reality of your situation without getting hopeless about it)… For all the drastic differences in Western traditions, Acceptance seems to run right through them all like more than a thread, more like a central river to connect all the creeks of human effort to cope with the world.
• In an Eastern setting, we have, perhaps most visibly and notably in the West today, the practice of equanimity in mediation such as Theravadan (Buddhist) Vipassana, which explicitly teaches that the other dimensions of practice (concentration/absorption and subtlety of awareness) are only fundamentally valuable as auxiliaries to equanimity. And equanimity is just another word for Acceptance, if you think about it. Theravada Buddhists will also meditate on rotting corpses to accept death and transience. If you venture into more far-out stuff, like Tibetan tantric traditions, etc., you must face inner monsters with Acceptance for these to transform into pure light, as is depicted in Tibetan artwork of weird demon faces. You have the fakir traditions of the depths of Indian history. Why do you think they’re lying on spikes, if not to foster Acceptance? Or what about Daoism, where everything is about letting go, and letting things flow—is that not fundamentally a teaching almost entirely devoted to Acceptance?

If you’ll allow me a few more archetypal excursions. Truth is God, and the submission to God just means accepting the truth of the matter, resisting the temptation to unconsciously fight reality itself by entering into some magical deal with the devil. The devil, like Goethe’s Faust, will offer you power over reality, but violate reality itself—which casts you into illusion, ultimately isolating you from shared reality, from others, and that ultimately leaves us burning in hell.

You have the same scheme among psychonauts—i.e., psychedelic explorers: You are faced with frightening visions and the Abyss, but if you go through it and accept it, you reach therapeutic or cathartic results. Forgiveness and redemption come within reach, leading to increased peace of mind.

Acceptance, then, is simply the capacity of a mind/psyche/body to take in and process feedback data from the world without corrupting it along the way. It’s opening the doors of perception (echoing The Doors, who echo Aldous Huxley, who echoes William Blake).

In a world where things only interact causally, by touch within any of the fundamental “fields” that the standard model of physics holds to correspond to the four forces of the universe (although a fifth one has recently been suggested) perceiving means interacting with. And so, the spiritual quality of Acceptance will likely affect every aspect of a person’s interactions with the world, all subtle phenomena arising within the experience of their own mind and body included.

And thus, if we carry that argument to its conclusion, it is likely almost always in our own interest that others we interact with are as accepting as possible. And it’s most often in our own interest that we ourselves manage to accept the reality of what is.

The argument could be expanded substantially from here on (going into the nature of “reality” in the empirical, logical, ethical, and social sense and how Acceptance plays out differently but still works across all of them).

Facing the tough stuff—let it be said once and for all, that staring into the abyss with Acceptance is the very opposite of complacency. The whole “selling your soul to the devil” looks like a cool rebellion on the face of it—but it’s actually the opposite. It’s just synonymous with not accepting what is and going with it. That’s complacency, because it leaves reality to be participated in and shaped by others than yourself.

Take MASSIVE ACTION!

“I’m not saying that Acceptance is one ring to rule them all. That would be too strong an assumption. I’m saying that, as a start for cultivating a more listening society, Acceptance is a good bet at this point.”

If I had to choose between Acceptance and NFTs or the best of the cryptocurrencies, I’d have to go with Acceptance. It’s just a better investment. Cryptos won’t help me that much on my deathbed. Acceptance will.

Now, the really good news is that Acceptance can be practiced. That’s basically what you do in Vipassana 10-day retreats (but then you also have to put up with Goenka’s rather offensively dumb brainwashing on video while you’re spending the whole days making yourself suggestible; it’s a package deal, but you can go for free). It’s what you do in all of those therapies I mentioned, one way or another. Many of them work, to a large degree, because of Acceptance. My favorite is probably DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and it has a whole modality on increasing your “distress tolerance”—one of the most important parts of the therapy. And the most important part of increasing “distress tolerance”? You guessed it.

Look down the list of the 23 skills listed in the IDGs (Inner Development Goals) in its early attempt to gather what should be emphasized by such programs—humility, perseverance, trust, and so forth. If I’m not mistaken, pretty much all of them seem to be closely connected to Acceptance—and, notably, by far the most of them seem like they would be explained by Acceptance rather than be a factor in explaining it. But may the truth on this be researched and cleared up, so we’ll know better. And may we all accept whatever that truth might be.

I’m not saying that Acceptance is one ring to rule them all. That would be too strong an assumption. I’m saying that, as a start for cultivating a more listening society, Acceptance is a good bet at this point. It appears to be a viable pressure point in the psycho-social weave of society.

Let us try to cultivate Acceptance and evaluate the results. I don’t mean in a half-assed manner—I mean, let’s take massive action. Let’s invest millions of “man-hours” and clever minds and good hearts to figure out how Acceptance can grow in the general population, in the hearts of each of us. Let’s see if it really is the elixir of a good society.

There are, namely, things coming our way we’ll have to try to accept. Getting good at accepting seems like a good idea to create resilience—i.e. the capacity to bounce back when life hits us up with new surprises.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

“With a sweet twist of irony, Graeber and Wengrow may have failed to rewrite human history, but inadvertently offered an understanding of our own time—and the future landscapes of cultural evolution.”

How utterly and awfully wrong they are, David Graeber and David Wengrow, in their recent book, The Dawn of Everything—which is widely (and wildly) hailed as nothing less than a rewriting of all-of-human-history-as-we-know-it. It’s somewhat disconcerting how easily and eagerly the intellectual public swallows a book’s conclusions if they are only served with a spoonful of enticing story weaving, numerous examples, and some rebel edge.

Yes, the book is a genuine masterpiece in more manners than can be listed here. But its undeniable merits do not detract anything from how dismally mistaken its core premises are: that society and culture have not developed in discernable stages and that social reality has been freely invented and randomly experimented with throughout history. If only we dared dream—the authors maintain—if only the powers-that-be did not shackle our sociological imagination, we could create the world in a new multiplicity of beautiful social realities.

As nice as all of that sounds, it’s just not how social reality has functioned throughout history. For all the exceptions that the two Davids find to the rule of the large, over-arching, developmental patterns of world history, they forget something very basic: that the cases-in-point are far more numerous, and do not require the turning of every stone of archaeological details to spot. No hunter-gatherer society ever invented an alphabet and started writing books on metaphysics and law, none of the great civilizations of the ancient world ever started something akin to the Scientific Revolution, and never did anyone before the 20th century come up with anything resembling contemporary queer feminism.

Cultural history has in fact developed through discernable stages, through six different meta-memes. These do leave a lot of leeway for human inventiveness—but that ingenuity is always structured along a certain generator function at the core of culture. That’s why, for instance, Egyptian art and architecture looked roughly the same for more than a millennium, or why Precolumbian Mesoamerican artifacts are fairly easily recognizable as such. That’s why each tribal, indigenous society develops its own aesthetic forms and costumes, but they still remain distinct from one another. “Cultural forms”—to use Michel Foucault’s old expression—emerge in discernible patterns.

I return to Graeber and Wengrow in detail in my upcoming book, The 6 Hidden Patterns of History— we shan’t stay on the topic now. Here, I just want to point out the following:

• In equal measure as with which the Davids are mistaken about the past(yes, cultural history really did develop in discernable stages), so they may very well have hit upon an understanding of social reality that correctly describes the future. We may be nearing an inflection point in history where stage theories actually lose their relevance—and in which the sociological imagination truly can design reality; indeed, a situation in which society itself must be “designed for chaos” if it is to survive and thrive.

And yet, paradoxically, this very fact (i.e., that we may, as an emerging planetary system of interconnected cultures, now be stepping off the ladder of stages of cultural development that until now has meaningfully described how history functions) makes the understanding of the developmental stages of society yet more crucial. They help us understand the “order within the chaos”—like in chaos mathematics, the study of how apparent “chaos” emerges from a deterministic order.

With a sweet twist of irony, Graeber and Wengrow may have failed to rewrite human history, but inadvertently offered an understanding of our own time—and the future landscapes of cultural evolution.

My suggestion is that we view the cultural history of humanity as a form of “chaotic system”—as understood by chaos mathematicians. From that vantage point, it can be stated that we are, with yet another ironic twist of fate, determined to develop towards unpredictability—towards “chaos”: i.e., towards a cultural state of affairs sensitive to “initial conditions”. This, incidentally, brings forth the conditions of freedom to shape our culture that Graeber and Wengrow so astutely intuited in their reading of world history. Freedom grows from the barrel of what chaos theorists call “sensitivity to initial conditions”.

The strange fact is that there are incredibly profound and mysteriously detailed similarities between:

1. on one hand chaos theory, and
2. on the other hand, the theory of the stages of cultural development (the so-called meta-memes, i.e. the overarching patterns-of-patterns within which human cultures have developed.)

To introduce this idea, let me take a proper detour into the basics of chaos theory and one of its key innovators: the physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum. It takes a bit of cognitive weight-lifting, this next part of the article, but I assure you it’s worth the lift.

Feigenbaum’s Constant in Chaos Theory

“Feigenbaum found that, across all different equations of such feedback systems, the ratio between when one bifurcation occurs, and the next one, is constant: it’s 4.669 201 609…”

The Feigenbaum Constant is roughly 4.67. It’s one of those numbers that go on and on into more decimals, like π (Pi) or e—so-called “transcendental numbers”. With a few more decimals, it looks like this:

• 4.669 201 609…

Roughly 4.67, then. What does this number describe?

In 1975, Feigenbaum (and two French scientists, Coullet and Tresser, who made the same discovery pretty much simultaneously) noticed, that there is a pattern to how feedback loop systems shift between phases.

Such systems are based on a feedback mechanism. They all work “fractally”, in that they repeat the same function again and again, on the result of the former iteration. In the 1970s, it was already well known that such systems, mathematically speaking, go from stabilizing on one single number, to stabilizing around an oscillation between two numbers, to an oscillation between four numbers, eight ones, and so on.

If you increase how high the “input variable” is (for example, as in the most classical example, how quickly rabbits breed minus how often they die), “the system” (of numbers of rabbits from year to year) starts behaving differently; it shifts between different “phases”:

• With a low “input variable” (relatively slow breeding), the rabbit population will stabilize as a constant number from year to year, regardless of how many rabbits were there initially. If there were many, they will die off and stabilize; if there were few, they will breed until the same number is reached. The system has a stable attractor point. It’s like a rubber band: after we’ve stretched it (or even tried to compress it), it goes back to one size, one “equilibrium state”. See image below.

Screenshot from Veritasium YouTube channel. The system stabilizes on one and the same value (on the right). The left side plots the different points at which the system stabilizes.

• With a higher input variable, the rabbit population will start oscillating from year to year. When the rabbits become too many, some will die, and when they are few, there will be more opportunities to multiply, becoming many again. But regardless of how many rabbits there were initially, the system will settle on a certain oscillation between two specific values. This is an oscillating attractor point. See image below.

Screenshot from Veritasium YouTube channel. Oscillation on the right, bifurcation on the left. The left side plots the different points at which the system can stabilize, either into a stable attractor point or into an oscillation between two values.

• From there on, if you increase the input variable again (reminder: how quickly the rabbits breed minus how often they die); i.e. if you “supercharge” the system further, the system goes through new phase shifts: settling on oscillating attractor points with 4 values, then 8 values, then 16, onwards. You have “period doubling”. With every phase shift, it doubles, it branches off. That’s why you call each such shift a bifurcation. You need to increase the input variable by less and less for each new bifurcation to emerge. (Bifurcation is not the same as “oscilliation”; a bifurcation is a shift of how the system oscillates once it has hit its attractor point.) See image below.

Screenshot from Veritasium YouTube channel.

• After about seven bifurcations (as you “supercharge” the system more and more), the system’s properties change more fundamentally: It stops settling around an oscillation at all, and enters a state of chaos. Here, the number of rabbits (or whatever else the system describes) begins to vary seemingly erratically from year to year (or other time period described). It appears random (indeed, equations like these are used to simulate randomness when a computer is told to generate a random number). Now, even if, theoretically speaking, this chaos is determined (that is, for a certain value of the input variable, you can calculate the erratic leaps of future rabbit population values for all years to come), in practice it is not determined: Because, even if you change the 100th decimal of the input variable, the system will soon produce radically different values. This is what is meant by “sensitive initial conditions”. This is the whole “butterfly effect” thing we’ve all heard of: the change of one little, itsy, bitsy thing can have dramatic effects on how the system as a whole behaves later down the line. See image below.

Screenshot from Veritasium YouTube channel. As you can see, if you supercharge the system enough, it explodes into chaos.

The example here was about rabbit populations, where you “supercharge the system” by increasing how quickly they breed minus how often they die, but this pattern (one stable attractor, then two, four… until boom, chaos!) has been observed to emerge in fluid dynamics as the temperature increases (that being the “input variable” in this case), in the light sensitivity of eyes in humans and salamanders, in heartbeat fibrillation (where you can then use chaos theory to know how to bring the heart back to a steadier rhythm), the rhythm of dripping faucets has period-doubling with increasing flow rate, until it reaches chaos (yep, try it at home, folks!)…

Like the Golden Ratio, this is one of those seemingly magical patterns of nature. It’s a universal. It’s the stuff of minds blown to cosmic smithereens. It’s a source of that sense of awe that science alone can bring, and which, in its own way, arguably matches the rapture of religious experience.

Now, then, what in this pattern does the Feigenbaum Constant—4.67—describe? Feigenbaum found that, across all different equations of such feedback systems, the ratio between when one bifurcation occurs, and the next one, is constant: it’s 4.669 201 609…

Let me restate that:

• Every new bifurcation comes faster than the last one. How much faster? 4.67 times faster.

That is to say, you only need to increase the “input variable” (rate of rabbit breeding/death, water flow rate, temperature, or whatever) one 4.67th of the amount to reach the next bifurcation. The bifurcations come faster and faster—as you can see in this diagram. That’s what Feigenbaum discovered, making his constant worthier of a tattoo than most symbols.

To the left, Mitchell Feigenbaum, to the right, awesome tattoo suggestion.

But wait a minute—wouldn’t that mean that the period-doubling gets ridiculously rapid after a few doublings?

Yes, exactly.

So, after about seven period-doublings, this dynamic peters off, and the system reaches a new state: chaos!

You climb a ladder of predictable intervals (although the distance between the steps gets shorter each time, the shift that occurs is the same: a doubling of branches), in a predictable universe; one of determined numbers that simply follow from what you have already defined and stated—but the ladder collapses around a certain point, its predictable steps disappearing into infinity.

And you step off the ladder—into chaos.

(If my way of explaining didn’t do it for you—some of which is with my own words and simplifications—you can try this explanation on the Veritasium YouTube channel. It’s wonderful. My own introduction to the topic was via Santa Fe Institute professor Melanie Mitchell’s brilliant book, Complexity.)

Okay—fair enough. There is a universal, tattoo-worthy, pattern out there in the natural sciences that describes the behavior of chaotic systems. What on earth does that have to do with any theory of evolution through stages of cultural history—the so-called meta-memes? And does it suggest anything about the times we live in, anything about what visions of the future we should reasonably be striving towards? And how does it comment upon Geaber and Wengrow’s point of view?

Ladies and gents, esteemed non-binaries—I give you The Three Striking Resemblances Between Chaos Theory and Cultural Evolution.

Are these striking resemblances merely coincidental? You take a look and be the judge.

First Resemblance:

The Meta-Memes Follow Feigenbaum’s Constant

“It has been noted by many observers that each metameme emerges about five times faster than the last one.”

The seven meta-memes (i.e., the stages of cultural logics or “generator functions” of societies) are, as I discuss in my upcoming book, The 6 Hidden Patterns of History:

1. Archaic (I usually don’t count this one, hence speaking of “six patterns”.)
2. Animistic
3. Faustian
4. Post-Faustian
5. Modern
6. Post-Modern
7. Meta-Modern

(Hereafter, hyphens are ditched, so I’ll be writing “metamemes”, “postmodern”, etc. That’s how you normally write them; it’s just for a bit extra clarity that they’re first introduced with hyphens.)

Understanding each of these metamemes is a whole discipline of scholarly study in and of itself—or, rather, a trans-disciplinary field. But they can be intuitively understood as a major correction of the old and outdated division of history into Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and so on. They are, more along the lines of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, based around information technology, and how each such form of communication has properties that crystallize as particular societies and civilizations throughout history and geography.

Roughly, it can be stated that each of the metamemes corresponds to a revolution of the communicative technology of society.

1. Archaic—Simple spoken language.
2. Animist—Abstract spoken language, and images and sculptures that represent what they look like.
3. Faustian—Images that represent something else than what they look like: symbols for simple written messages and basic accounting.
4. Postfaustian—Writing in abstracted texts, such as literature and algebra.
5. Modern—Printed texts (printing press, standardized alphabet and spelling, “codex” books, newspapers, mass distribution).
6. Postmodern—Transferred images and sounds (printed images and photographs in magazines, books and newspapers, gramophone records, radio, cinema, television, “simulacra”).
7. Metamodern—the Internet, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, and onwards.

The emergence of the Archaic metameme presumably coincides with the appearance of what scholars call “anatomically modern human beings”. (Here “modern” simply refers to “anatomically similar to today”, not in the Modern-with-capital-M in the metamemetic sense “linked to Modern society and its specific way of functioning”.) If these people were like us physiologically, more or less, it means they also had a genetic predisposition for language. Human babies, for instance, begin to “speak” or try to converse long before they’ve learned their first word. Hence, something we could recognize as a spoken language in the specifically human sense likely coincides with the emergence of Homo Sapiens (there are, naturally, many meaningful ways to describe and study non-human animal languages, see e.g. When Animals Speak: Towards an Interspecies Democracy by Eva Meijer).

The date for that emergence keeps getting pushed back with new paleontological or archeological findings. We’ve gone from habitually claiming that it’s 200 000 years ago towards somewhere closer to 250 000, or even 300 000 years ago. The Archaic metameme is thus around 200–300 k old.

The emergence of Animist cultures (in all of their variation and complexity, which indeed seem to have increased over the millennia, today’s tribal hunter-gatherer societies being more distinct and unique than those of, say, the Ice Age) seems to be linked to the so-called “cognitive revolution” of circa 70k to 30k years ago. This coincides with the most significant “recent” wave out of Africa 70k–50k years ago and the emergence of art around 50k years ago. In the archeological records, the appearance of artworks of various kinds, be it carved figurines, cave paintings, or whatnot, is quite sudden and explosive after 50 000 BCE, indicating that some revolutionary cultural and cognitive development had taken place. Within a comparatively short period, a few thousand years that is, the world was teeming with artistic human expression. Hence, I would claim that it’s relatively safe to say that from about 50k years ago you have something that could meaningfully be described as the Animist metameme; a distinct departure from the way humans had lived before.

The following metameme, Faustianism, is linked to settled agricultural civilizations—but not reducible to it. In one form or another, such polytheistic warrior societies cropped up without necessarily being based on agriculture and/or pastoralism. The ruins of Göbekli Tepe in Southeastern Anatolia are a good example of monolithic architecture, a typical Faustian feature, built by hunter-gatherers. The earliest facets of Faustianism thus emerged prior to the agricultural revolution and this metameme is thus about 10k to 12k years old.

Postfaustianism, linked to the emergence of the traditional world religions and major world civilizations of the so-called “axial age”, is about 2.5k–3k years old. This is what is usually referred to as “traditional” or sometimes “premodern” society as we generally imagine the conditions of life in Europe, the Middle East, and China before the industrial revolution.

The Modern metameme emerges, if you dig to its roots, around the mid-1400s in the Italian Renaissance, i.e. between five and six centuries ago.

The Postmodern metameme emerges in the late 19th century (but, of course, comes to dominate society only much later), with a culture saturated with photographic images, and sounds which begin to form a shared layer of the social imagination (think of Marilyn Monroe—poof, we all get similar images, although none of us ever met her, and those images have little to do with the actual person).

The Metamodern metameme seems to be emerging as we speak. It’s the culture of digital society, where new social imaginaries are weaved by the imaginations of the many, for good or bad.

It has been noted by many observers that each metameme emerges about five times faster than the last one. In a very weird way, time (here being the input variable, or at least the one we’re noticing: there may be other some variable that simply increases with the passing of time in human culture), seems to become compressed as it progresses through the universe of cultural evolution.

“About five times”, aye?

Hmm, does it appear to be on the higher end of that (slightly above 5), or on the lower end (somewhat below)? Well, actually it seems to be somewhat below five times faster with each metameme.

But still more than 4.5 times faster…

Could it be… about 4.669 201 609 times faster? About 4.67 times faster?

Seems about right, actually.

But we’ll never know. Defining the metamemes and establishing precisely when fundamental cultural shifts emerged throughout history will never be an exact science and always remain open to different interpretations.

Still, it’s a strong hypothesis that the ratio between the emergence of each of the metamemes somewhat follows Feigenbaum’s constant.

Or to put it yet more briefly: Cultural development seems to follow Feigenbaum’s Constant, thus behaving like the bifurcation diagram I described above.

Second Resemblance:

Like “Period Doublings”, Metamemes Can Be Meaningfully Repeated About 7 Times

“Both the bifurcation diagram and the metamemes seem to meaningfully iterate 7 times, or just a little beyond, before “chaos” ensues.”

In chaos theory, the difference of the “input value” with which you increase the charge of the function so that the phase shifts is thus circa 4.67 times smaller for each step. The period doublings thus occur faster and faster.

In the most famous equation where this is true, the so-called “logistic map” (the model that tracks how many rabbits there are expected to be from year to year), you get the following sequence:

(Remember: the value we’re putting into this equation is how fast the rabbits breed minus how often they die.)

• If you put in a value higher than 1.0, the rabbits don’t just die off, but eventually reach some kind of equilibrium population other than zero.
• The 1st bifurcation happens at the value of 3.0. Once you put in a value equal to or greater than that, the population starts to oscillate between two numbers from year to year.
• 2nd bifurcation (to oscillating between 4 points) happens (this is what Feigenbaum calculated) at 3.44949.
• 3rd bifurcation happens 4.7 times closer to the last one, so around 3.54409.
• 4th one even closer, at 3.564407.
• 5th one, at 3.568759.
• 6th one: 3.569629
• 7th one: 3.569891
• 8th one: 3.569934
• “Infinitieth” one (the omega point): 3.569934…

So, if you increase the input variable in this equation (“the logistic map”) beyond 3.569934…, you hit chaos. This is the breaking point, where this system’s mathematical properties change. Sure, in theory, you can add more decimals in infinity around this point, always doubling the period but never hitting chaos. But that doesn’t seem to be what real-world systems behave like.

Notice the following: Because the distance is about 4.67 times closer to each next bifurcation, the distance between the later bifurcations becomes very small—eventually infinitesimally small, of course.

Beyond the seventh bifurcation, we’re talking small changes of the fourth decimal, and after the 8th bifurcation, you have to go beyond the sixth decimal to even notice the change.

The whole thing seems to collapse before it quite lands on the 8th bifurcation—or just after it.

Now, keep that in mind and think about the following progression of metamemes…

1. Archaic: a bit less than 250 000 years ago.
2. Animistic: about 50 000 years ago.
3. Faustian about 10–12 000 years ago.
4. Postfaustian: about 2500–3000 years ago.
5. Modern: about 600 years ago.
6. Postmodern: about 120–150 years ago.
7. Metamodern: emerges within a period of 30+ years, currently ongoing.
8. Whatever comes after Metamodern (the suggestions are many out there!)— emerges in about 6–7 years? Begins to sound more than a bit too weird, no?
9. A ninth metameme, whatever that might be called, emerges in less than two years (now we’ve entered the realm of the patently absurd).
10. A tenth metameme: a few months?
11. A few weeks!?
12. Days!?
13. Hours!??
14. You get the picture… Soon down to fractions of seconds. Huh?

There is just too much weirdness going down for that pattern to meaningfully hold up—up until the 7th, possibly the 8th, metameme.

Notice that I’m not applying the above model of chaos mathematics to the theory of metamemes: I’m just following the pattern discernable within the shifts of metamemes, historically speaking, to its own respective conclusion. And it seems to meaningfully hold only to the 7th iteration—possibly just a tiny little bit beyond.

It’s not that one logic is pressed upon the other: it’s that both phenomena behave in the same manner— feedback systems that reach a point of chaos on the one hand, and the cultural evolution of human history on the other.

As a brief side note, we may underscore that the metamemes seem to iterate 7 times also when it comes to what I call the layers of social emergence (a theory developed together with Johan Ranefors using his metatheory framework). These are: 1. individual agency, 2. group agency, 3. incorporated group agency (like companies and organizations), 4. systems and platforms, 5. Modern state institutions, 6. transnational cooperation, and 7. planetary coordination of all former layers. This is a longer discussion—suffice to say, at this point, that Metamodernity corresponds to the point where planetary coordination becomes both possible and necessary for all former layers to survive and thrive. I shall write another article on this topic—here it’s just to point out the seeming convergence around 7 metamemes in yet another way. Not more, nor fewer.

Both the bifurcation diagram and the metamemes seem to meaningfully iterate 7 times, or just a little beyond, before “chaos” ensues.

Chaos, in this sense, is anything but a ladder. But cultural development throughout history has followed what looks like a ladder—and that ladder ends mid-air; the ladder leads to chaos.

From this point of view, it appears that Metamodernity is emerging as we speak. Metamodernism is the last of the stages of cultural development (perhaps with a minuscule extra stage added at the very end of it). After that point, in the next few decades, we will need entirely different modes of thinking to properly describe the landscapes of cultural development. Stage theories were true, but they are running obsolete. They describe the past (and Graeber and Wengrow are simply incorrect in their refutation of them); they even describe the present and bring us to this very moment: but they do not meaningfully describe the future.

Please note that metamemes are not time periods: they are deep-seated patterns of information that structure the generation of culture. And so, several different metamemes always co-exist at any one time in history; they always overlap. Today, we still live in a largely Modern world-system, albeit with an influential fringe of Postmodernity. And within the Postmodern strata of societies, Metamodern fringes are cropping up—the fringe of the fringe, which still connects to the most central nodes and thus exerts great influence on the whole. And at the same time, billions of people still gravitate towards the traditional, Postfaustian metameme.

I hold, then, that while metamemes may soon be an obsoleted way of understanding development, it is absolutely crucial to understand the sensibilities, social logic, philosophies, spiritualities, and psychologies of Metamodernism—because this constitutes the starting range of humanity’s taking off into from “cultural history”, into chaos. And given that “sensitive initial conditions” matter when a system hits chaos, small differences can make all the difference.

Be the butterfly at the end of history—the difference that makes a difference.

The fact that we are at the very last stage of cultural development would suggest that cultural history is indeed nearing its “end”—but the opposite kind of end as Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”: not a static state of a predictable institutional order, but an end to all “staticness”, an explosion into unprecedented and unimaginable dynamism, more along the lines of the term the social singularity as intuited by my fellow interpreter of today’s world, Max Borders (who used this term in his book title, The Social Singularity, but filled it with a somewhat different meaning than the one I am proposing here). This state of chaos is unlikely to be meaningfully caught in any one historical narrative—and, in that sense, “history” will be over.

Or—more along the lines of what I have called, in my book The Listening Society, “the boom equation”. If so many things change so rapidly, affecting one another in a gazillion ways, what you get is simply: BOOM!

You just don’t know if it’s fireworks, atom bombs, or both.

At any rate—if this pattern holds, we should be reaching a point in history where “sensitive initial condition” become the rule: and thus Graeber and Wengrow’s anarchist intuition about our great degrees of freedom to invent and create social realities seems to become true. The emergence of virtual reality suggests that this could be the case—along with so many other new ways of technologically recreating lived reality and even biological life itself.

This leaves the question open—how do we wish to use the terms Metamodern/Metamodernity/Metamodernism? Are they simply the last stage of cultural evolution before it is no longer meaningful to speak of such things (and, as Wittgenstein quipped, we thereafter should remain silent on the topic)? Or should we use these terms to denote The Time Between Worlds (as one recent anthology on Metamodernism was titled), a window in which cultural evolution itself shifts gear and direction, and then as a word for the chaotic state-of-affairs that presumably follows? For my part, I think it’s more meaningful to do the latter. Metamodernism is the term for what happens when we jump off the ladder of cultural development, so to speak.

In any case, I hope that we can hereby bury all of these highly understandable but ultimately unfruitful attempts to define metamemes or stages of culture beyond the Metamodern. At most, you can add one stage, and it presumably emerges in the window of a few years, and presumably looks and feels a lot like Metamodernism (see next section, on the third resemblance, to see why).

In parallel to this discussion, it should be noted that many theories on adult development psychology have also described stages of development that correspond to the seven metamemes. With a few exceptions, however, these all tend to start getting eerily weird (and empirically very poorly supported) after whichever stage corresponds to Metamodernism in those models. As such, we can suspect that stage theories are less suited for studying the development of human personalities as well, after a certain point.

It seems as though, after this point, both in cultural and psychological development, the landscape of properties that follows is “out of reach” for a developmental perspective—much like the basic theories of physics only seem to apply to phenomena at certain scales. Some other perspective is needed to understand these fields of potential reality.

Let it be known that Hanzi Freinacht has hereby encouraged all to stop stacking stages on top of Metamodernism and corresponding stages in psychological development. Stage theories break down around this point. Stage-stackers be warned.

All said, cultural history itself appears to be at an end-point, and perhaps something else is beginning. Metamodernity is the phase shift into that new state of affairs.

The question is, of course, if there will be enough stability in the world for us to experiment—or, again, if that BOOM will just blow us off the map.

Still. It’s a thought that is as thrilling as it is terrifying. My suggestion is that we hold hands. And be careful about millenarian cults who prophesize an end of days and salvation for the few faithful (as these are having good days).

Let’s be honest, we can read some signs here, suggest some contours—but we don’t know what it means in practice. We are determined to move towards unpredictability.

Third Resemblance:

Although More Possibilities Arise, the Difference Becomes Smaller and Smaller Between Each Bifurcation/Metameme

“The difference between jungle-roaming hunters and gatherers and the Indus Valley urban civilization is huge. The latter looks, feels, sounds, and smells so differently that birds notice it from miles away. The shift from Postmodernism to Metamodernism requires a master’s degree in the humanities to even detect.”

The third point is a smaller one, but it’s a resemblance nonetheless. As you can see in the bifurcation diagram, every time there is a new bifurcation, you can notice two things:

• The number of possible values within the attractor point doubles (a wider range of possibilities emerges).
• The branching off is smaller with each step, i.e., its values oscillate comparatively closely to wherever the former oscillation broke up. Very simply put: Notice how the first arc you see is big, the next one is smaller, next one smaller yet, and so on.

The same holds true, to a large extent, for how metamemes emerge, evolve, and develop throughout history. Think about it—Animism has been going on for tens of thousands of years and has produced an absolutely stupefying array of cultural forms from all around the world; their masks, rituals, adornments, and crafts looking so vastly different from one another that it mirrors the creativity of nature’s own beauty. As argued in detail in ornithologist Richard O. Prum’s book, Evolution of Beauty, nature itself spirals off into chaotic emergence whenever feedback cycles of sexual/aesthetic selection come online. These selection feedback processes cannot be reduced to mere “fitness” or “strength”—they sometimes work directly counter to the logic of the survival of the fittest (shiny blue, sexy feathers can get you detected and eaten by predators, etc.). Likewise, Animist cultures developed aesthetic variations and uniqueness beyond any later metamemes.

With Animism, you have long stretches of divergence between its different cultural forms (awe-inspiring tribal expressions of human creativity)—but of course, also a fairly limited range of possible memetic combinations that can be created within each of these cultures (no theory of relativity and poststructuralist literary theory, etc.), as compared to later metamemes. (To be more precise: the possible combinations within Animism across the world are indeed infinite, but it’s an infinity that does not include many of the “sets of cultural phenomena” that are possible in later metamemes.)

Compare the great colorful difference between different Animist tribes to Postmodernism and its subsequent shift into Metamodernism. Postmodernism looks about the same across world cultures: its forms are more predictable, even if each individual Postmodernist commands greater freedom of creativity (a seeming paradox, isn’t it?). Then consider the short memetic distance between Postmodernity and Metamodernity: At Metamodernity, with the advent of the Internet, memetic creativity goes into some kind of wild hyperdrive—every person in the world becomes a creator as it were, and here I am, reading and ordering books on the web, creating bridges between culture, history, art, psychology, technology, information and chaos mathematics while speeding to New Retro Waves post-ironic 80’s-style electronica tunes in a flow of sheer digital-magic weirdness—all hooked up to one behemoth of planetary, digital, monoculture (Medium, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Wiki…). But even as the creative potentials are supercharged, every inch of this unhinged Metamodern creativity remains so utterly close to Postmodernism, that the expressions of the two metamemes are in fact indistinguishable from one another to all observers but the specialist experts. And so, Metamodern cultural theorists can tell you that South Park is Postmodern in its cultural DNA, but BoJack Horseman is Metamodern. They’re perfectly right, of course. But nobody else notices—or even cares.

Simply put, just as the shifts between bifurcation points become smaller and smaller in chaos math, so do the shifts between metamemes become subtler and subtler. The difference between jungle-roaming hunters and gatherers and the Indus Valley urban civilization is huge. The latter looks, feels, sounds, and smells so differently that birds notice it from miles away. The shift from Postmodernism to Metamodernism requires a master’s degree in the humanities to even detect.

This third and last resemblance between chaos theory and metamemes is a less central point, but I feel it’s still important. As you can see, it helps us to elucidate the contours of what I am beginning to believe (but it’s still just at the “strong hunch” level) is the path through the rabbit hole at the end of history, leading us into creative chaos.

It’s a strong hypothesis I hold, so to speak, with sincere irony—or with informed naivety.

Some Implications: Protopia Must Surf the Waves of Chaos

If the above line of reasoning, and the similarities observed, are more than a coincidental freak of the digital hive-mind, it follows that we may indeed be approaching some kind of “chaos” as a cultural planetary system.

We must thus collectively become better at managing complexity. We must cultivate institutions, the building blocks of our societies, which can react to the chaotic emergence that we can expect at this mysterious “end of history” we seem to be approaching—likely with hitherto unimaginably wild combinations of wonder and suffering as a result.

In last week’s article, I argued that “Protopia” may be to the Metamodern mind what Utopia has been to the Modern mind. If we take that concept at face value, it would follow that a society is “Protopian” to the degree that its institutions can manage to thrive in conditions of chaos.

This is a larger horizon to explore, naturally. But just to sound the starting gun on this one: What would politics look like, if it were sensitive to chaotic emergence, to sensitive conditions? What would the legal system look like? What would the economy look like?

Here, Graeber and Wengrow’s anarchist optimism seems sharply on point: Not only is “another world possible”. The continuation of the world as we know it—indeed, all of history as we know it—is impossible.

Famous Last Words

“If this “ladder to chaos” hypothesis holds some truth, “the dawn of everything” is not in the distant past, but on the brink of the future, starting right about now.”

As you have seen, I have needed to work by analogy to bring home this argument (that chaos and metamemes are lookalikes)—after all, the models of chaos mathematics describe oscillations between simple numbers (the so-called attractor points), and cultures can hardly be reduced to simple numbers.

But the analogy, I hold (and as readers will hopefully agree), is simply too compelling, and its implications too significant, to be ignored or cast off as a mere curiosity.

Indeed, sociology and social science have always drawn upon analogies from the natural sciences (from the mechanics of early sociology, to the statistics of chemistry, to information-, network-, and complexity- and chaos theory of our days). What I am doing here is no different—but do keep in mind that an analogy is and remains an analogy. The question is not if the analogy is perfect (it is not); the question is only if the analogy helps us to grasp society better than other, alternative modes of thinking. Not, then, if it’s “absolutely correct”, but if it’s “less wrong”.

If any entity such as “culture” is at all connected to the mathematical regularities of the universe, it would make sense that this connection looks more like chaos and fractals, and less than billiard balls or statistical mechanics and chemical reactions. Culture is more likely like something alive, creative, and unpredictable. If nothing else, it’s certainly based on iterations of behaviors, and should thus be a feedback system of sorts—which is what chaos theory describes.

We can thus view society as determined-but-chaotic. It’s not “mechanical” but it still is not entirely arbitrary, detached from the natural world and its laws. I feel, in a manner, that this view strikes a balance between Platonic theorizing (everything follows mathematical forms) and a social, embodied being-in-the-world (the world emerges and exists beyond any static patterns that happen to be described by mathematics). It’s a synthesis, in a way, between flow and stasis.

Even if the resemblances that the analogy highlights would be coincidental, the observations I have made on the side of metamemes still seem to hold up. Think about it—if the metamemes have accelerated through history, will there really continue to be new stages indefinitely, or are we nearing what is some kind of singularity coupled with “the limits to growth”, an inherent ceiling to the dynamic (as environmental scientist Vaclav Smil has claimed all systems are subject to in his book, Growth). Everything in the universe stops growing eventually—because it has to. Here, we thus have a view that seems to synthesize Smil’s sober view of the world with that of the prophets of The Singularity (from Ray Kurzweil’s tech version to Max Borders’ “social” version thereof) who believe in the wonders of exponentially.

We also thereby have a suggested synthesis between “developmentalists” (or stage theorists) on the one hand, and all of those observers who, on the other hand, strongly intuit that we must leave stage theories of cultural development behind to understand our time. Both are right in the light of what has been discussed—just perhaps in ways they themselves didn’t consider. Stage theory does hold up—until it doesn’t.

If this “ladder to chaos” hypothesis holds some truth, “the dawn of everything” (which is the title of Graeber and Wengrow’s new book) is not in the distant past, but on the brink of the future, starting right about now.

I thus invite Metamodernists and Protopians to jump off the cliff, into the unknown, hand in hand. Where the “strong men” of the world promise law and order, the Metamodern ironic prophets make no promises at all. But they extend an invitation—an invitation to step off the ladder of history and to live lives of chaos, as participants and co-creators of culture in the moment it happens.

Beyond history, there is an existential or spiritual calling—into the creativity of the eternal now—as time slows down and new event horizons open.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

“Protopia constitutes what I hold to be the best term for the massive set of interlinked projects of activists, thinkers, and practitioners around the world who seek to contribute to the necessary and desirable transformations of societies around the world.”

Intro: Utopia, Eutopia, and Protopia

Is it appropriate to be a Utopian these days?

Yes and no. Or rather, we may need a term that gathers bold dreamers, thinkers, and doers into an energized force for the necessary and timely transformation of societies around the world - but still avoids the pitfalls of 20th-century utopianism.

What, then, can be “better than Utopia?” It turns out that vast landscapes do indeed open up to us if we allow ourselves to ask that question.

Let us journey beyond Utopia.

Our first stop on this journey of the mind we can call Eutopia. But the journey continues farther afield - into what we may call Protopia. And strangely enough, Protopia is much closer to our reality than we think.

“Utopia” means “nowhere” and denotes a static state of cultural and political perfection: society when it has become as good as it possibly can get. As nebulous and dreamy as Utopia might seem, it always implies a certain attained perfection of society. As such, there is the “bad” now and the “good” future - and the path from darkness into light. It’s ideological in the negative sense of the word, i.e. tunnel-visioned according to a scheme of good and evil (today’s grim capitalism, tomorrow’s humane socialism; today’s cold, extractive materialism, tomorrow’s ecological coziness…)

“Eutopia” (if you read this article out loud to your kids, you’ll have to say “utopia-with-an-E” every time you pronounce it) is an increasingly popular neologism that seeks to replace Utopia; it means “the good place” (there’s even a Netflix comedy show with philosophical themes titled The Good Place, which arguably reflects this shift in our ways of dreaming up better worlds). Arguably, it suffers from similar problems as Utopia: it’s ultimately impossible, it’s static, and what you deem as “good” I might find “bad”.

“Protopia” is another recent term, coined by futurist Kevin Kelly and it is defined as the opposite of a “Dystopia”. In Dystopia, people are stuck in some kind of recurring pattern of suffering (like George Orwell’s “foot trampling a human face - for ever”, as in 1984). A Protopian society, then, is one where people are free from such gridlocks and can thus work actively to improve life. It’s a more carefully stated form of a dream of societal transformation: It doesn’t say that “everything will be good for everyone”; it focuses not on the state-of-things-at-a-given-moment, but on the possibility - the shared capacity - to move in mutually desirable directions. Simply stated, one could say that a Protopian society is one that has the capacity to become incrementally better as a result of the freedom of its members.

Utopia: Modern // Eutopia: Postmodern // Protopia: Metamodern.

Conceptually, we can connect Utopia to the “modern project”, i.e. to the growth of rationalism since the fifteenth century, Eutopia to the postmodern critique thereof, i.e. to the many ways that artists and intellectuals have picked apart the modern behemoth since the 19th century, and Protopia to what I call the metamodern synthesis (of modern and postmodern thinking) - and thus to the cultural currents that are growing in today’s digitized world.

I thus argue that Protopia, properly understood, is - somewhat paradoxically - the synthesis of “nowhereland” and “the good place”. I will start from Kelly’s way of defining the term, expand upon it, and invite people to take it up as a concept to carry our shared dreams all the way to fruition.

As such, Protopia constitutes what I hold to be the best term for the massive set of interlinked projects of activists, thinkers, and practitioners around the world who seek to contribute to the necessary and desirable transformations of societies around the world.

I have written extensively on such visions myself; often centering on the shift from a Modern to a Metamodern society. One way or another, I believe that idealists with vastly different projects are contributing to a Metamodern planetary society and its cosmo-local expressions across different world cultures.

This article is a call for Metamodernists (and similarly inclined people) to gather around the Protopian project (or set-of-potential-projects-to-be-discovered-and-enacted); a project that resides at the crossroads of fact and fiction.

Protopians of all walks of life —unite!

… But before that, let us properly define Protopia. The unity we speak of here is a fairly abstracted one: to be part of the same great shifting patterns of the world. To do that, we need to revisit Utopia and Eutopia.

Part 1: Modern Utopia

At the Right Distance from Nowhere

“The Prologue and the Promise” by Robert McCall (1919–2010). A mural commissioned by Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida.

Even long before Thomas More’s coinage of the term “utopia” through the 1516 “social-science-fiction” novel with that word as its title, utopias (by whatever name these dreams may have taken) have exerted an influence on the sociological imagination of people around the world: how could society be different than it is? Not just different. Radically, dramatically, breathtakingly different, for the better — in a manner that breaks out of the confines of ordinary existence and into the tremendous, that which lets the spirit soar?

“Utopia” was an astute play-on-words, a literary sleight-of-hand on More’s side: The word translates to “no place”. The perfect land of yonder was nowhere to be found. No doubt, More must have been inspired by the European “discovery” of America about two decades earlier: If there are indeed faraway lands on shores so different — could there be, under the sun, genuinely other ways of life, even of large-scale, urbanized life? Ways of life that would seem worthy of the human spirit and not just another grim parody of a society’s own values and goals?

Utopia: The farther away, the closer you get

“Utopia comes alive because of our distance to it”

We all have an inherent tendency to believe that great changes in ourselves, our archetypal “hero’s journey” of inner transformation, requires us not to look under the nearest rock or in the neighboring village, but travel to a faraway shore— be it the Far East, the vestiges of a glorious past, the rollercoasters of psychedelic weirdness, or mind-bending koans in the shape of quantum mechanical equations — for the transformation to occur in full and earnest.

We tend to believe that a more profound transformation requires a proportionally longer stretch of travel (and, of course, then “outer space is the final frontier”). By the same logic, More places his land of sociological perfection, Utopia, at the farthest reaches of the known world, so far away that it practically becomes “nowhere”. To be perfect is to be far away.

It’s not unlike women in early fantasy writers like J.R.R. Tolkien: the feminine appears as mysterious, pure, distant, ephemeral, light, and beautiful creatures, barely real at all but all the more wonderous for it. In writers on the other side of the spectrum, like Charles Bukowski (who probably met with a lot more women than Tolkien but perhaps under less emotionally nourishing circumstances), the feminine is flawed, dirty, horny, oscillating between the alluring and the repugnant, and always all-too-human.

No utopian dream is possible without distance: In film and literature, fantasy and social realism are each other’s opposites. Distance and utopia depend upon one another. Utopian projects all attempt the impossible: to place fantasy at the heart of the grueling complexities of an admittedly social-realist life, revolutionizing it by magically imbued technology, by fate or by faith, by revealing some kind of secret passage from the “ordinary world” of actual reality to the extraordinary realms of potentiality… Or — at the very least — enchanting an otherwise disappointing life with the sense of clarity and hope of what is, after all, truly possible.

In fact, Utopian dreams paradoxically seem to gain momentum from moments of social realism. From the plight of workers and peasants in destabilized and backward Romanov Russia, to the sparks of the fever-pitched communist frenzy of the Khmers Rouges as the guerillas were stuck starving, sweating, and malaria-stricken in the jungle, to the popularity of millenarian and Age of Aquarius messages among the discontents of today’s globalization — a harsh here-and-now has been fertile soil for a wonderous yonder-and-tomorrow.

Likewise, More’s Utopia would likely never have been written, had not the author found the institutions of his own day and age lacking. Again, Utopia comes alive because of our distance to it — of course, combined with the insight that the world is changing, which grants sense of possibility, an untapped keg of potential.

Such change can be circular (“after this Iron Age we shall enter a new Golden Age”) as is the case on the far-right political spectrum, or it can be one of progression into the unprecedented (“something will arrive after capitalism, something more worthy and humane!”), such as on the Left of the political imagination.

The nowhereland of Utopia thus grows from the very-here-and-now-land of “my life bloody sucks and yours probably does, too”. Through the suffering and belittlement of everyday life, there is, of sorts, a baptism of fire — one that leaves a pure but hardened kernel in the human soul: Life can be different; it must be. The current status quo is barbaric; viewed from a future vantage point, it would be criminal. It must be brought to an end — even if the path to toppling it is dangerous. And since society is changing, since it is going somewhere, the road seems to lead away from here and into the realm of what’s possible. The misery of here-and-now is a pointer towards the glory of yonder, of the future.

Utopia: Off with their heads!

“The more light, clear, and fever-pitched the Utopian dream, the darker and more abominable the deject seems to the Utopian mind — and the more murderous an undercurrent comes with it.”

Perhaps More never meant for his Utopia to be more than a parody-by-reversal of his Renaissance or Early Modern England — a looking glass through which the imperfections and unenlightened practices and norms of his society became apparent. Likely, More himself intended for the distance to be kept; his tone is hardly one of a fiery revolutionary. But already in his days, Protestant leaders were fanning the flames of peasant revolts against all authority on the European continent.

The longing for and premonition of Utopia seem to propel the human spirit to more than More’s wry commentary and critique of social irrationalities and injustices: these motives behoove us to dream, to create, to experiment, to rebel, to subvert, to start anew — but also to risk our lives… and those of others: to kill, to search and destroy.

Beyond More’s spirited novel Utopia, there are the real utopias; serious, entirely unironic attempts to defeat the mundane world we know and to somehow conclusively transcend it once and for all. At once unimaginably bold and vain, such intentions have animated humans in their worst and finest hours, often both at once. Oh, wet communist dreams of a just society! Oh, the elevated spirit of Rousseau, who first noticed that modern life needn’t be this way — that another world is possible! And this Enlightenment thinker was read religiously by the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the architects of The Terror.

The modern ideology of conservatism grew as a direct response in early 19th century Europe to the French Revolution and the utopian dreams of the time. The conservative mind points out — and really has a point in doing so — that all societies have grown organically and not according to schemes, never entirely according to the plan of an architect. Anarchists have their own way of saying something similar: If the project is to recreate society in the mental image of a few visionaries or leaders, it always leads to disaster. Our postcolonial heritage around the world is a case in point — certain plans of new societies and social orders have been pressed upon the world by Europeans, in turn destroying entire cultures.

Utopias have been based on spiritual premonitions gleaned from our peak moments and epiphanies, on rational calculations of what would make sense and should reasonably be within the realm of possibility — and sometimes Utopia is born at the strange crossroads between the religious and the rational: spirit and mind, magic and science, faith and social engineering. Utopian societies set up by Europeans in America always gathered around certain religious denominations — projects that to this day define American culture and its heritage in the birthing planetary culture of our day. Since Antiquity, hermetic and gnostic traditions have mingled with the sense of wonder that technology brings — the mystical with the rational, the ghost in the machine, what Erik Davies called the “trickster of technology” has beckoned us towards Utopia. In today’s world, this technologically mediated hope for a drastic transformation takes forms such as fully automated luxury communism and other visions of post-scarcity, the singularity, transhumanism, and the techno-libertarianism of hackers.

When utopian projects have been acted upon in reality, in real, historical, societies, they have inevitably collapsed — if not destroying their entire populations, at the very least ruining the institutions of society and causing great harm.

Perhaps most importantly — and I am far from alone in pointing this out — this is due to the static nature of Utopian visions: a destination describing how things should be arranged in society. Even more perniciously, there are societies — from socialist people’s republics to downright delirious cults — who declare themselves to be so well on the path to Utopia that they in practice already are the Utopian society; and hence, “nothing can be wrong with it”. But naturally— there is always trouble in paradise. And every such trouble must then be explained away with some exception (because, by definition, this already is the perfect society, right?): class enemies, contra-revolutionaries, traitors, unbelievers in our midst, dark cabals, conspiracies against the public! And what do you do with those? The Queen of Hearts has the answer.

So you can’t have Utopia without “the deject”. The stuff you’re getting rid of. The stuff you’re “throwing away” (that’s what the word “deject” implies). The more light, clear, and fever-pitched the Utopian dream, the darker and more abominable the deject seems to the Utopian mind — and the more murderous an undercurrent comes with it.

Utopia: It’s weaved into every modern person’s mind, Ever

“All said and done — Utopia is bound up with modernity itself. As long as the modern project exists, Utopia will keep beckoning, in spiritual, secular, or tech-spiritual forms.”

And this brings me back to the idea of Modernity and its inherent connection to Utopia. Modernity is, fundamentally, as I argue in my upcoming book The 6 Hidden Patterns of History, the principle of triangulation: comparing your viewpoint to mine, we can either verify or falsify my claims. This principle originates (pre-conceptually) in the arts of the Renaissance in Northern Italy of the fifteenth century: the arrival of mathematical correct perspective in paintings and illustrations. Here, the natural universe is torn away from the social or cultural world: The king is going to be smaller if he is “farther away” in the painting, even if he happens to be socially more important than other characters in the painting. Everything — and everyone — is placed within a 3D space with one disappearing point at the center of the painting.

Now, what I mean is that — in the mind of its followers and enactors — “Utopia” is such a “point towards which everything else seems to point”. Everything, including the picture of the here-and-now, is situated in space in relation to this point at an infinite or unknowable distance. The structure of the Modern mind itself thus implies some kind of Utopia, some kind of end-point, always present in the worldview itself— albeit one always disappearing into the distance.

Interestingly enough, then, even conservatives and anarchists — who are nominally critics of grad schemes — formulate utopias, as these ideologies are also spawns of Modernity. The conservative formulates the utopia of progress according to society’s already existing institutions (libertarians like Johan Norberg and centrists like Steven Pinker also represent similar views in today’s public debate), and anarchists formulate how people could collaborate their way into a society that is kindlier, more just, working in accordance to the shared will (and goodwill) of the many.

All said and done — Utopia is bound up with modernity itself. As long as the modern project exists, Utopia will keep beckoning, in spiritual, secular, or tech-spiritual forms.

But the modern project, of course, does not lead to Utopia. It’s a mirage. One that has been very understandable and perhaps historically necessary, but an illusion in the distance, no less. Rather, modernity with its “progress narrative” leads to its own demise — to civilizational collapse — due to inherent systemic limitations we shall refrain from discussing here. The striving towards Utopia only accelerates that process of decay.

A static vision of the future, of society perfected, cannot materialize. And the Modern mind, by its very way of structuring reality, drives towards this impossibility. Bold and adventurous as this striving is, it can only lead to collapse. Utopia always was, and always will be, a failure — a road to hell paved with good intentions, as the saying goes.

Part 2: Postmodern Eutopia

The Secret Corner Good Place?

A house in the self-governing anarchic commune Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark.

If Modernity, in its deeper sense, originated in the emergence of “perspective” in the visual arts, in the Renaissance paintings of Northern Italy — it only began to fully come into fruition around the early 19th century in Europe, with industrialization and the rise to prominence of the scientific-rational worldview. And, of course, with the Enlightenment beginning to shape society as a whole.

Eutopia: Two counterreactions to Modernity

“If Modernity tore nature loose from its social confines, then Postmodernity places the view on nature back into its social and cultural context — a context it never left.”

From around this time onwards — when Modernity was beginning to bloom in full — counterreactions to the Modern project started to appear. These reactions came from two distinct sources. One was the resistance of the colonized, of slaves, of indigenous peoples, of non-European civilizations and traditions around the world. New such sources of questioning, resistance, and attempts at redefining knowledge, reality, power relations, and nature itself have emerged ever since. In today’s world, for instance, Indian dalits struggle to influence the official definition of themselves on Wikipedia in an uphill battle against mostly white, Western, male experts, while indigenous tribes of the Amazon seek to protect their lands from extractive exploitation by international corporations. Following the postcolonialist feminist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, we can employ an umbrella term for this kind of counterreaction: the subaltern (although the term was initially coined by the cultural Marxist, Antonio Gramsci).

The other source of counterreactions grew from within Modern society itself — the impulse of Romanticism that reacted against the cold rationality of the Modern project (through literature, through paintings, through philosophical stances, and through social and spiritual movements) became the first in a long series of counter-cultures that came from the “most Modern” strata of society, often the most cultivated and educated. Indeed, many of these counter-cultures became so important that they flavored Modernity itself — just consider, for instance, the influence of the American Beat Generation on popular culture and thus on the Hollywood-saturated mainstream of Western culture and beyond. In a very general sense, there is thus an intimate connection between such widely disparate phenomena as Romanticism, socialism, feminism, anti-racism, expressionist and dadaist art, critical theory and sociology, and hippies: They all somehow grow from and react against the confines of that assumed 3D background space of Modernity and its purported sense of objectivity and implied directionality. That is why we can meaningfully understand these as expressions of the Postmodern mind — one that breaks away from Modernity and its static perspective where nature and culture are separate.

[Please note that I’m not using the term “Postmodern” in the conventional academic sense here, i.e. specifically relating to certain philosophical currents in the 1970s and onwards, but as a general structure of mind and society that emerges as a critique of Modern society, as discussed in my book, The Listening Society.]

If Modernity tore nature loose from its social confines (again, space itself, not social roles, define the perspective, and so the king will be smaller if he is farther away in the painting with a mathematical correct perspective), then Postmodernity places the view on nature back into its social and cultural context — a context it never left. After all — who’s looking? Whose gaze is it that describes reality in a certain way? The direction the gaze is looking will always define the direction, the horizon, the Utopia of this particular viewer. Does the photo realism and mathematical correct perspective of a Renaissance painting (and, by extension, of Newtonian mechanics, of the scientific method, of market liberalism and representative democracy) truly encompass the perspective of, say, arts and rituals in the Yoruba traditions of West Africa? Do not women, on average, think less spatially and more relationally than men — and if so, does this background assumption not subtly exclude feminine perspectives? We can call this second category, simply, the countercultural.

In many cases, these two currents — the subaltern and the countercultural— have intermingled and drawn upon one another. Sociological understandings of how knowledge is constructed in society (a countercultural understanding) have, for instance, benefitted from the outsider perspectives of Amazonian tribes (in Claude Levi-Strauss’ structuralist anthropology) and W.E.B. DuBois’ early studies of African-Americans. Conversely, today’s subaltern movements from different cultures gather around the ideas such as Multitude, i.e. the larger network of diverse social justice movements. Regardless of how they are combined, they all entail some kind of breach with the Modern project itself and its Utopia, its grand narrative(s). What you get instead is the search for the good life, for a better society, in the exception.

Eutopia: Breaking out of the Renaissance painting

“Where the Utopian sees a distance between the misery of here-and-now and the promised land on the horizon that seems to logically follow from the here-and-now, the Eutopian notices how close, how utterly present The Good Place already is, and how it needs only be revealed.”

In terms of societal visioning, of the release of the sociological imagination as a force for transformation, this shift from Modern to Postmodern worldviews entails a corresponding shift from Utopia to Eutopia — from nowhereland to “the good place”. The Postmodern mind holds that “the good place” is not somewhere distant, nor a static vision like Plato’s Republic: it’s here and now — but it is more contextual, more local, more momentary, more subversive. The Good Place is hidden in plain sight, as it were. You don’t get there by following the yellow brick road towards the static Utopian horizon, but precisely by breaking away from that “Modern 3D” framework altogether. Phonetically, Utopia and Eutopia sound the same — but the different spellings reveal a shift — away from the spatial journey to Utopia, and towards the perspectival sleight-of-hands that reveal the little Eutopias that were there all along; the worlds that were forgotten, suppressed, made invisible.

The Eutopian (not to be confused with the European or the Ethiopian — yes, I know it’s a weird term, bear with me) striving is, in a profound but difficult-to-spot manner, a direct reversal of the Utopian one: Where the Utopian sees a distance between the misery of here-and-now and the promised land on the horizon that seems to logically follow from the here-and-now, the Eutopian notices how close, how utterly present The Good Place already is, and how it needs only be revealed. Utopia feeds on distance, Eutopia on closeness: on that which was too close to be properly seen as long as eyes were staring into the distance.

And so Eutopia is sought in the commons (these solidary forms of economic organization that predate capitalism and exist in most traditional societies to this day), in the relative happiness of e.g. San hunter-gatherer societies, in different Shangri-Las of local communities of care in downtrodden neighborhoods, in solarpunk collectives, in the rugged camps of Occupy Wallstreet and the spirit that animates them. The Eutopian is convinced that if you look hard enough at foreign cultures and civil society, at the intellectual voices that are decidedly non-Western, non-mainstream, at the many movements of social justice around the world, at the most experimental communities of Kibbutzes and Mexican Zapatistas and the Kurdish Rojava and Spanish communist villages and experimental cryptocurrencies… then you’ll see it: a fleeting but all-too-real proof that another world is possible, a genuinely good place. Eutopia.

While the Eutopian avoids the grand schemes and fixed sense of direction inherent in Modern Utopia, there is a certain limitation to it: If “the good place” is always found in an exception, in the uniqueness of a situation, the Good Place is never successfully generalized and transferred across time, space, and cultural differences. The Eutopian reveals that ways of life already exist that are even preferable to whatever Utopia the masses of the Modern mainstream have been imagining — if only we can shift our perspectives and stop staring at that disappearing point in the distance. The Eutopian turns every stone, scours history, archeology, and anthropology to find glimmers of hope, and then beckons: if this was possible, imagine then what could be possible for all societies across the world, if only we escaped the shackles of our limited ideas of the world!

But, alas, the search for Eutopia never ends — it never settles, it never locks on target and builds momentum; it never starts the positive feedback cycle that marks the growth of all living systems; it never translates across different scales. Fireworks of enthusiasm spark, again and again, energizing Eutopians to believe that a great shift of perspective is coming, a new set of ideas, a new project, a new struggle, a new subtly exotified other in a distant village or rural land, in the favelas or banlieues. But for all the intimacy with indigenous wisdom, for all the experience in social justice movements, for all the studies of Eastern Traditions — the Eutopians never come up with solutions to the great challenges of the Modern project. To the Eutopian, it feels as though the great transformation is always just around the corner; and so the relentless search continues indefinitely.

Eutopia is necessary for our dreams of a better society to become multi-perspectival, inclusive, and integrative of many perspectives — but it ultimately asks the wrong question. It still looks for The Good Place. Certainly, depending on what criteria are being measured for, such “good places” do indeed exist in secret corners of the world, even if they are always bound within limited confines of space, time, context, and a limited set of criteria of how the “good” is measured. The problem is that Eutopia is always defined in opposition to whatever is perceived as Modern and mainstream — and, as such, it misses the mark on the greatest challenge of all: to find the generative conditions that increase the likelihood of many Eutopias across multiple contexts.

We all know we’re not headed towards a solarpunk world, or a techno-libertarian crypto world, or an afro-futurist world, or one run by cozy cooperatives — but the multiplicity of such Eutopias, and their interconnectedness, means everything. Together, a thousand such islands of new ways of life can be lifeboats for millions or billions of people — and together, they can redefine the way the planetary system works.

Part 3: Metamodern Protopia

 To Touch the Event Horizon

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

In its original, minimalist — and admittedly rather lacking — formulation by Kevin Kelly, Protopia is simply a term that denotes the gradual improvement of society over time, without claiming either perfection or the reaching of a point of stability. If we cannot allow ourselves to believe in a future paradise that has stabilized around a blissful state of affairs (Utopia), and we find it insufficient to look for those beautiful little exceptions of what life and society can be in certain regards under specific circumstances (Eutopia), perhaps we can more cautiously and realistically allow hope and faith in gradual but over time substantial improvements of society. As mentioned earlier, Kelly views such a capacity to improve as the true opposite of Dystopia.

That’s Kelly’s original take on the term, Protopia. We could stop there, but frankly, it’s not a particularly enlightening or inspiring prospect in and of itself. Still — it’s a helpful point of departure.

There are more and less generous ways to read Kelly’s take on Protopia. Naturally, if improvement is constant and there are never any setbacks, that’s also an unchanging state of affairs (like Utopia’s static vision)—the derivative of an even slope is still a line. If that’s how we interpret Kelly’s idea — as literally an improvement on key measures from year to year, indefinitely — it would be equally or more unrealistic than Utopia’s static “perfect world”. Likewise, this would mean that whatever direction in which society is “improving” needs to be constant and correctly defined for all time — that its direction can never shift. That is also untenable: The measure of a society’s “success” necessarily shifts over time, and thus the vectors of what is considered to be an improvement must shift as well.

At the very least, then, a more generous interpretation of Kelly’s Protopia — one that gives it more intellectual credit — would grant that it allows for society to fluctuate between good and bad periods, but that it has the capacity to shift into oscillations that, as a whole, are preferable to what existed before. There is improvement, but not necessarily every year. Rather, in the pattern of how good and bad events play out. And, of course, that a society’s way of understanding itself and what it means to “improve” things becomes “wiser” over time. If we use a convoluted term from philosophy, we could say that Protopia allows for authentic dialectics: for good and bad things, as interpreted from widely different perspectives of the good and bad, to emerge together in ever-surprising but ultimately non-arbitrary manners.

Or, another way to say it, drawing on the chaos theory tradition: Protopia is not the constant (linear) improvement of society from year to year, but an improvement of society’s “phase space”, i.e. a shift of which phases society can enter into as it evolves: desirable and undesirable phases included.

Let’s use the more gracious interpretation as we go on.

Protopia: Beyond Kelly’s original definition

“You start looking for the pattern that connects the many little Eutopias — The Good Place found in strange corners and exceptions — and in that pattern, you begin to see the vast field of potential of many different social realities that have been, that could be, and that should be.”

The correct synthesis of Utopia and Eutopia should be able to do more: It should inspire hope and spark the imagination beyond what reforms and gradual improvements can; it should bring a coordinating shared sense of direction for millions of unique but inter-related collaborators who are somehow part of the same societal transformation across sectors (tech, arts, spirituality, business, politics, movements, academia); and it should combine the sense of the tremendous, the open horizon of Utopia and the vision of a world so much better than all we have known, with the multi-perspectivalism and curiosity of the Eutopian search for the hidden-in-plain-sight beauties that we’ve looked past. In brief, it should be able to combine the best of both worlds while avoiding their respective pitfalls.

And so, if we are to mine the concept of Protopia for a deeper meaning — one that is worth rallying around across sectors and across projects, over different cultures, and across longer stretches of time — we may need to expand upon Kelly’s original formulation. I would claim, however, that the below suggested expansion carries forward the spirit of the original meaning, just adding more layers to it.

We are now thus taking a turn into the Metamodern: we must coordinate the sense of direction and progress of the Modern (Utopia) with the sensitivity and critical awareness of the Postmodern (Eutopia). Metamodernism is that which emerges from the skepticism of Postmodern skepticism. As Jason Ananda Storm has argued, the Postmodern mind is skeptical of everything but its very own skepticism. Once you begin you question your own skepticism, you come to embody the position of sincere irony, or informed naivety. That is to say, you begin to allow yourself to believe in grand schemes again, even if you know that your “Utopias” are fictional and possibly dangerous. There is a recognition that the lack of a great story to weave reality with, is just as dangerous. You start looking for the pattern that connects the many little Eutopias — The Good Place found in strange corners and exceptions — and in that pattern, you begin to see the vast field of potential of many different social realities that have been, that could be, and that should be.

So The Good Place does happen — but not arbitrarily. It happens given certain circumstances. It flickers past in history, in moments in our lives, in special places… But what then are the best possible conditions for the increased likelihood for such little Eutopias to emerge — always unique, always context-bound, always unexpected, by their nature impossible to predict? That’s the question. To the extent it can be said that we are still looking for a Utopia, a grand direction, it is the abstract direction that will create the greater number and intensity of little Eutopias flickering by in the cosmos.

That is Protopia: the non-arbitrary pattern that connects the multiplicity of Eutopias; it is the search for the conditions that generate Eutopias — i.e. the “generative conditions” of Eutopia.

This Metamodernist mode of seeing potentials in the world begins from studying the many possibilities, the Eutopias, each of which offers a unique perspective and critique of the status quo. But it doesn’t simply leave all of those Eutopias as disconnected fragments floating about in a larger void of meaninglessness. It lets the different Eutopias inform one another. It weighs and pits them against one another; it triangulates from their conflicting insights and ways of life — and as such it develops a context-sensitive form of utopianism, of dreamy faith. Or should I say: Protopianism.

With the Protopian stance, no compromise needs to be made: The faith, the zeal the revolutionary is there for the taking, but the path towards it is always by learning more, by listening in to the hidden potentials of everyday life that the multiplicity of human experience (and/or that of other lifeforms) offers.

Protopia: Another set of assumptions generate another set of futures

“Protopia is a “vision of visions”. It works not with one future, but with the entire event horizon of all possible futures.”

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Protopian activism requires some different basic assumptions about reality than Eutopian activism. In a sense, the Protopian vision breaks the one great taboo of the Postmodern mind: to order and organize different perspectives into a grander scheme. But it is no longer the scheme of a 3D world with a certain goal in the distance — it corresponds, rather, to folding through a fourth or even fifth dimension, showing how many different goals are possible, yet complexly interlinked on a more abstract plane of analysis.

It is a horizon opening up as the Protopian perspective unfolds, but not a singular horizon, but a multiple horizon. It is the horizon of the property space of all possible events — what one might term an “event horizon” (drawing and analogy to the warped space-time around a black whole, where time collapses so that all events occur simultaneously; a real cosmological phenomenon). Somewhat more poetically put — to be a Protopian is to try to touch the event horizon.

Hopefully, then, readers will agree that Metamodernism needs Protopia and vice versa, that the two concepts seem intertwined, and that the Metamodern mindset unlocks the great adventure of Utopian dreams, albeit in a space of playful experimentation with coordinating the many lessons that come from transcending and transgressing the limitations of Modern society and its trajectories. Let me simply end by highlighting a few key differences between the Utopian, Eutopian, and Protopian stances on societal transformation.

• The Utopian believes in progress. The Eutopian believes in critique and a rediscovery of simpler wisdoms and relationships. The Protopian believes that progress can be enacted by understanding how the many critiques and rediscoveries of wisdom are interconnected into a larger whole.
• The Utopian envisions a linear path towards a brighter future. The Eutopian believes that pearls of happy and sane society are found precisely by looking away from the trodden path. The Protopian envisions a non-linear pathway to a wider range of possibilities, a chaotic or strange attractor, which in itself constitutes the wider map of potential futures (or the “phase space” of society’s evolution), but where it is impossible to foresee which future will actually occur. So: from linear, to non-linear, to chaotic thinking.
• The Utopian is driven by sincere faith. The Eutopian is driven by an ironic distance to plots and plans and only trusts the genuinely surprising. The Protopian is driven by a sincerely-ironically held faith — not in the actual future (that may fly or fall, as things do) but in the potential of what marvels are always-already possible.
• The Utopian believes in the future. The Eutopian believes in alternate timelines. The Protopian believes that alternate timelines can and should be skillfully weaved into a multiplicity of beautiful futures — but that it is not determined that they will be. The Protopian relates to what we may call the “topology of timelines”.
• The Utopian believes that the games of life, competition, strife, pain, will wither away once Utopia is achieved. The Eutopian believes that a resting place is already available if we could only look away from the grand narratives that have enthralled us, that the games of life are actually only an illusion to awaken from. The Protopian believes that the games of life are real and just as hurtful as we experience them, but that they have been changed throughout history, they can be changed again, and they very likely will be at one time or another. The Protopian believes in Game Change and what I have formerly called “relative utopia” — if slavery did end and democracy did prevail, why shouldn’t corresponding leaps be possible in the future?
• The Utopian believes that the world gets better if people work to improve it. The Eutopian believes that people ruin the world more than they help it by all their plans, plots, and attempts at controlling everything. The Protopian believes that progress is inherent to the universe, but that it always comes at a terrible price — of new problems emerging, and of old beauties lost.

Consider the above list carefully before you get a tattoo.

In brief — let us tread the multiple but intrinsically interlinked paths to Protopia, while keeping an ironic smile at our own self-importance. Protopia is a “vision of visions”. It works not with one future, but with the entire event horizon of all possible futures.

We know it won’t work, that a thousand surprises will corrode whatever paths we may cut. But it is the very knowledge of certain failure that guarantees our non-linear victory and the emergence of Protopia in the world — that is to say, a real improvement over time. That’s why Protopia is more than a fairy tale.

And that’s a good enough reason for Protopians around the world to unite. The quality of Protopian unity is not that of the monolith, however, nor of the bundle of rods. It is the unity of mycelium: infinitely interconnected, always in flux, busy breaking down the dying while creating soil for the new to blossom.

—

Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian, and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

Seit der Veröffentlichung dieses Artikels hat der ZEGG öffentlich bekannt gegeben, dass sie bei Veranstaltungen bis auf weiteres nicht mit Go&Change zusammenzuarbeiten möchten. Zusätzlich haben sie die G&C-Gemeinschaft aufgefordert, den Link zum ZEGG von ihrer Webseite zu entfernen. In dieser öffentlichen Ankündigung werden viele der problematischen Praktiken von Go&Change, die im Folgenden erwähnt werden, angeprangert. Der ZEGG entschuldigt sich auch für die Art und Weise, in der meine Frau (damalige Verlobte) und ich aus dem Sommercamp ausgeschlossen wurden. Wir nehmen die Entschuldigung gerne an und freuen uns darüber, dass die Entscheidung getroffen wurde, die Zusammenarbeit mit Go&Change zu beenden. Die öffentliche Erklärung kann hier auf der Website des ZEGG nachgelesen werden: https://www.zegg.de/de/mediathek/news-archiv/1151-das-zegg-und-go-change.html

Alles begann mit einer Einladung zum ZEGG Sommer Camp 2021 in Bad Belzig in der Nähe von Berlin. Ich sollte dort einen Vortrag halten und mich an einer Podiumsdiskussion beteiligen, unter anderem mit einem sonderbaren Kollegen namens Felix Krolle.[i] Wäre ich etwas weiser gewesen, hätte ich nachgeschaut, mit welchen Leuten ich da auf diesem Podium sitze und welche Organisationen sie da repräsentieren. Traurigerweise war ich zu faul, um weise zu handeln.

Im ZEGG war ich schon einige Male vorher und fand diesen Ort stets wunderschön. Nach langen Aufenthalten im grauen, rauen Berlin glich das Ankommen im ZEGG dem Betreten eines kleinen Paradieses. Und an dem Tag, als ich ankam, ein sonniger Tag mit wolkenlosem Himmel, sah das ZEGG noch schöner aus als je zuvor. Nur ahnte ich nicht, dass ich genau hier, nur eine Woche später, eine der irrsinnigsten Erfahrungen meines Lebens machen sollte.

Kurz nachdem ich ankam, empfing ich eine Textnachricht von besagtem Felix und von etwas das sich Go&Change nannte. Er wollte sich mit mit mir treffen und über die Podiumsdiskussion reden. Ich antwortete ihm freundlich und war einverstanden. Aber als wir uns trafen, war es nicht das zwanglose, private Gespräch, das ich erwartet hatte. Stattdessen wurde ich sogleich in einen Kreis aus fünf oder sechs Leuten gesetzt. Ich dachte mir anfangs nicht viel dabei, aber es wurde schnell offensichtlich, dass dieser Typ irgendetwas von mir wollte und dass diese ganze Konstellation so aufgebaut war, um eben das zu bekommen. Jedoch liefen die Dinge nicht wie geplant.

Felix hat meine Bücher nicht zu Ende gelesen, wie er zugab, und konnte so nicht wissen, dass ich keinerlei Fetisch für Entwicklungsstufen hege und dass Kulte für mich eine ernstzunehmende totalitäre Gefahr der Zukunft darstellen. Er präsentierte Go&Change, von dem er so etwas wie ein Anführer war, als eng verbundene Gemeinschaft mit einer formalisierten sozialen Hierarchie, die auf der jeweiligen kognitiven Entwicklungsstufe der Mitglieder basiert. Ich dachte, das klingt nach einer verdammt schlechten Idee.[ii] Das Treffen ging danach eher bergab. Ich war froh, als es vorbei war und ich gehen konnte.

Später wurde mir klar, dass ich mitten in einer Gruppe aus Kultmitgliedern, in einem sogenannten „Wir-Raum“ saß (eine sozialpsychologische Gruppentechnik, die in einem kollektiven Miteinander tiefgehende Austauschprozesse generieren soll, oder so einen Quatsch). Wie auch immer, nach eingehender Betrachtung taufte ich es um in „Gaslighting-Kammer“. In den Händen der falschen Menschen ist das ein extrem effizientes Instrument der psychischen Manipulation.[iii]

Erst dachte ich, Felix Krolle sei lediglich irgendein Typ, der mir wieder irgendetwas verkaufen will. Das passiert ja ständig. Aber Felix wollte nicht nur irgendein Typ sein. Er versuchte wiederholt, sich nochmal mit mir zu treffen. Ich lehnte jedes Mal freundlich ab. Ich hatte einfach nicht genug Zeit, weil ich mich für meinen Vortrag vorbereiten wollte. Aber er gab nicht nach. Schließlich schrieb er mir, dass einer der Organisatoren des ZEGG Sommer Camps mich persönlich treffen wolle. Ich fand das etwas seltsam. Warum kann er mich dann nicht einfach persönlich kontaktieren? Ich rief diese Person an und vereinbarte ein Treffen. Wieder erwartete ich ein privates Gespräch unter vier Augen, aber als ich erschien, begleiteten uns drei andere Menschen inklusive Felix, dem ich wiederholt mitgeteilt hatte, dass ich keine Zeit habe.

Das Ganze fühlte sich nicht richtig an, aber ich ignorierte das achselzuckend und setzte mich mit ihnen zusammen. Ich dachte, wir würden gleich über die Podiumsdiskussion reden, aber stattdessen fingen sie an, sich über mich zu beschweren, weil ich zu wenig Zeit mit ihnen verbrächte und die ganze Zeit nur in meinem Zimmer wäre. Ich erwiderte, dass ich ihre Enttäuschung zwar verstehen kann, wenn sie sich eigentlich darauf gefreut haben, mich kennenzulernen, aber dass ich auch meine Rede vorbereiten muss und auch etwas Ruhe nach einer stressigen Zeit benötige. Unter normalen Menschen wäre diese Diskussion damit beendet – doch es ging noch weiter. Einer nach dem anderen fuhren sie fort sich zu beklagen in dem Versuch, Schuldgefühle in mir auszulösen. Felix insbesondere argumentierte sehr beharrlich, dass ich es der Gemeinschaft schuldig sei, ihr mehr zur Verfügung zu stehen.

Am Ende war ich einfach nur angepisst. Nie habe ich mich zu irgendetwas verpflichtet und ich schulde niemandem irgendetwas. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt dachte ich noch, es handele sich um nervige, gemeinschaftsbesessene Hippies, die nicht begreifen können, dass zu viel Socializing für manche eben kräftezehrend ist. Erst später verstand ich, dass sie mir näherkommen wollten, um mich für sie zu gewinnen.

Der Vorfall beim Abendessen

Bis dahin war ich nur Opfer eher kleinerer, subtilerer Manipulationen. Mein einziger Grund Felix Krolle und Go&Change zu vermeiden bestand darin, dass ich ihr Projekt eher uninteressant und Felix langweilig fand und etwas creepy in der Art und Weise, wie er hinter mir her war.[iv] Es brauchte eine Eskalation bei einem Tischgespräch beim Abendessen, bis ich endlich begriff, dass mit diesen Leuten ernsthaft was nicht stimmt.

Wie es oft bei mir der Fall ist, war ich erst zu konzentriert auf mein Essen, um zu bemerken, was um mich herum passierte. Aber irgendwo zwischen Suppe und Salat erwachte ich aus der tranceartigen Beschäftigung mit meinem Essen, als ein Freund von mir ziemlich boshaft von allen Seiten des Tisches attackiert wurde, nachdem er ein paar kritische Kommentare über die Rede von einem der führenden Organisatoren des Camps geäußert hat, welcher neben uns saß. Sie griffen jedoch nicht die Inhalte der Kritik meines Freundes an, sondern seine Persönlichkeit – beziehungsweise die angebliche Mangelhaftigkeit seiner Einstellung. Seine Kritik war nicht nur ungültig, sondern er hatte von Vornherein gar nicht das Recht überhaupt Kritik zu äußern. Wie könne er es wagen, ein angesehenes Mitglied des ZEGG zu kritisieren, nach allem, was dieser für die Welt getan habe, argumentierte Felix. Und wie könne mein junger Freund es auch nur nahelegen, dass er irgendetwas mitteilen kann, das für jemanden mit so vielen Jahren Erfahrung im entferntesten von Wert ist? Davon ausgehend gingen sie noch einen Schritt weiter und monierten über seine „Schatten“ und sein „Ego“. In einem Ton, den ich mir in einem Hippie-Camp nicht hätte vorstellen könne, beschuldigte Felix meinen Freund den besagten Organisator „auszusaugen“ und nannte ihn ein „Arschloch“. Mein Nervensystem war vollständig alarmiert und hochgefahren. Ich habe den Salat nie aufgegessen.

Zu diesem Zeitpunkt habe ich immer noch nicht voll begriffen, was hier vor sich geht. Aber es sollte klar sein, dass das typische Umgangsformen sind, die Kultmitglieder erwarten, wenn sie auf einer niedrigen Stufe in der sozialen Hierarchie stehen und die Anführer herausfordern. Und hier, an diesem Abendbrottisch, war der Senior ZEGG-Typ das Alphamännchen und muss vor jeglicher Kritik durch kollektive Einschüchterung abgeschirmt werden. Es war fast, als hätten die G&C-Leute, nachdem Felix den Angriff eröffnet hat, während des ganzen Vorfalls auf Autopilot geschaltet. Sie haben das vorher schon gemacht. Und sie waren gut darin.

Die Atmosphäre war spannungsgeladen und mein Freund tat mir leid, der so aussah, als wäre er von einem Auto überfahren worden. Es ist nachvollziehbar, dass er sich in einem kleinen Schockzustand befand, nachdem er so plötzlich von jeder Ecke des Tisches attackiert und degradiert wurde. Insbesondere wenn diejenigen Übung darin haben, Leute auseinanderzunehmen. Ich versuchte Felix in einen eher philosophischen Dialog zu verwickeln, um die Aufmerksamkeit von meinem Freund abzulenken. Es ist nicht überraschend, dass das nicht zu einem fruchtbaren intellektuellen Austausch führte, wie man hoffen könnte. Felix wies meine Argumentation zurück, da er sich, so behauptete er, auf einem höheren Level an kognitiver Komplexität befände, und ich nur verstehen könne, warum ich falsch liege, sobald ich sein Level ebenfalls erreicht habe. Felix beanspruchte für sich auf dem Level von „cross-paradigmatic“ zu sein (na klar, Junge)[v], und stand deshalb über jeglicher Kritik, die von uns restlichen kümmerlichen und unterentwickelten Wesen kommen könnte. Als weiterentwickelter Mensch liegt er automatisch richtig. Selbstverständlich hatte er allerdings die nötigen Werkzeuge, um uns in unserer Weiterentwicklung zu helfen, wenn wir ihm nur zuhören.

Trotz der Aussicht auf höhere Bewusstseinslevel hatte ich genug gehört und entschied mich zu gehen. Ich gebe zu, dass ich die Beherrschung verloren haben mag. Ich mag Felix gesagt haben, dass ich denke, dass er scheisse ist. Auch sagte ich ihm direkt, dass die Liebe über die er die ganze Zeit redete hohl ist und dass sie in seiner Gegenwart nirgends zu spüren ist, und dass seine Augen komplett tot aussehen.[vi] Sowas sagt man eigentlich niemandem. Aber ganz ehrlich – ich stehe immer noch zu diesen Worten.

Was auch immer sie bei G&C machen, es funktioniert nicht. Die meisten der Leute auf dem Sommercamp hatten diese leuchtende Hippie-Liebe, die aus ihren Augen strahlte und ihre Körpersprache strotzte vor Lebendigkeit und Energie. Es war ganz klar das es funktioniert, welche spirituelle und therapeutische Praktiken sie auch haben mögen. Und dann waren da die G&C-Leute: Lasche Körper, steinerne Gesichter, tote Augen, jederzeit bereit dich in Psycho-Jiu-Jitsu zu verwickeln, um ihre entwicklungsmäßige Überlegenheit zu behaupten.

Als ich den Tisch verließ und wegging, merkte ich nicht, dass Felix uns verfolgte. Kurz nachdem ich meinem Freund erzählte wie gruselig ich Felix finde, sah ich hinter mich und entdeckte ihn hinter uns herlaufend, nah genug um unserer Unterhaltung zu lauschen. Wenigstens wusste er nun, was ich über ihn dachte.

Dann ging ich auf mein Zimmer und googelte Go&Change:

„Esoterische Psycho-Sekte auf Fusion-Kinderspace?“

https://forum.kulturkosmos.de/viewtopic.php?t=29080

Razzia bei Gemeinschaft “Go&Change” in Lülsfeld

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/razzia-bei-gemeinschaft-goandchange-in-luelsfeld,SNyKr8s

Psychodruck und sexualisierte Gewalt in ehemaligem Kloster?

https://www.mainpost.de/regional/schweinfurt/psychodruck-und-sexualisierte-gewalt-in-ehemaligem-kloster-art-10449309

Hier ein paar Ausschnitte aus diesem Artikel (meine Hervorhebungen):

In den vergangenen Monaten wenden sich mehrere Frauen und Männer an die Redaktion: ehemalige Mitglieder von “Go&Change”. In der Gemeinschaft gebe es “Psychoterror” und “Gehirnwäsche“, berichten sie unabhängig voneinander. Sie erzählen von alles kontrollierenden Anführern und sexualisierter Gewalt als “Therapie”. Besuch von Angehörigen sei meist nicht gerne gesehen. Fast alle Aussteiger wollen anonym bleiben. Vor allem die Aussteigerinnen haben große Angst.

“Sadomaso-Sex” sei ebenfalls Teil einer “Therapie” von K.K., der sich laut Aussteigern selbst als “Heiler” bezeichnet. Dabei soll die Persönlichkeit von ihren “Schatten” kuriert werden. Diese Art der “Behandlung” finde in einem “Sex-Raum” im oberen Stockwerk von “Maria Schnee” statt. Die Frauen erzählen, dass einige dabei Verletzungen erlitten hätten, eine Frau sogar sehr schwere körperliche Verwundungen. Auf die Anfrage der Redaktion, was es mit den beschriebenen Sex-Therapien auf sich habe, antwortet “Go&Change” nicht. Das sei „unsere Privatsache”, so Krolle. Dementiert wird der Vorwurf nicht.

Heute bedauert Ralf B. sein Vertrauen, das er “Go&Change” entgegengebracht hat. Erholt habe sich seine Frau dort nicht. Im Gegenteil. “Sie ist durch die Hölle gegangen”, sagt Ralf B.; er hat es mitverfolgt. Er traf seine Frau während ihres Aufenthalts regelmäßig. Bis heute habe sie die Erfahrungen innerhalb der Klostermauern nicht verarbeitet. Momentan befindet sich die 45-Jährige in therapeutischer Behandlung.

Ralf B. erzählt von Schlafentzug durch “Prozess-Nächte” mit Gruppensitzungen und von massiven verbalen Beleidigungen seiner Frau gegenüber. Sie habe ihrem Mann von einer Strichliste berichtet, in der vermeintliche Verfehlungen einer Person gezählt worden seien. Von ihrer Isolierung in einer speziellen Gruppe für “narzisstische Frauen” als Strafmaßnahme. Und von finanzieller Kontrolle der Mitglieder. Drogen sollen zudem im Spiel gewesen sein: LSD und Ecstasy. “Weil man durch sie mehr von sich preis gibt”, meint Ralf B. Die anderen Aussteigerinnen und Aussteiger bestätigen das. Ralf B. habe zudem bei einem Besuch beobachtet, dass Drogen bewusst eingesetzt und gezielt an Einzelne ausgegeben worden seien. Ralf B. beschreibt, dass seine Frau die Gruppensitzungen als Folter empfunden habe. “Danach ist man fertig”, sagt er. Manchmal habe die Runde die ganze Nacht gedauert. Ohne Schlaf hätten alle wieder an die Arbeit gemusst, in der sie fest eingeteilt seien: in Küche oder Garten, zum Spüldienst, zum Kochen, zum Putzen. Andere konnten ihr handwerkliches Geschick einbringen.

Laut Lohmayer würden in der Gemeinschaft methodische Instrumente aus dem Feld der Psychologie wie zum Beispiel “Integrale Strukturaufstellungen mit Tiefenanalyse” eingesetzt, die hier jedoch ohne anerkannte psychotherapeutische Qualifikation angewandt würden. Für ihn ist “Go&Change” eine “Psychogruppe mit hohem Konfliktpotential”. Er sagt: “Gruppendynamische Prozesse, Leitungs- und Machtstrukturen, Sozialkontrolle, totales Engagement, Trennung vom bisherigen sozialen Umfeld” seien immer wieder Thema in den Beratungsgesprächen, die er mit Aussteigern und Angehörigen geführt habe. “Man muss sich den gruppendynamischen Zusammenhang so vorstellen”, erläutert Lohmayer: “Je mehr ich von einer Person weiß gerade auch in sexueller und partnerschaftlicher Hinsicht, umso mehr Macht gewinne ich über sie, desto steuerbarer wird sie und desto verletzlicher wird sie letztendlich.“

Im März 2019 fällt ein Einjähriger in einen Löschteich in der Nähe des Klosters und stirbt später in einem Krankenhaus in München. Wie sich herausstellt, war das Kind zu Besuch bei “Go&Change” und wurde von Mitgliedern der Gemeinschaft beaufsichtigt. Wie die Staatsanwaltschaft Schweinfurt auf Nachfrage mitteilt, sei “gegen drei Personen wegen fahrlässiger Tötung ermittelt” worden. Inzwischen wurden gegen die Beschuldigten Geldstrafen von 120 Tagessätzen verhängt, “die Strafbefehle sind rechtskräftig”. Bereits vier Wochen zuvor war ein Säugling aus dem Umfeld von “Go&Change” bei einem Spaziergang gestorben. Hier lag laut Staatsanwaltschaft “eine natürliche Todesursache” vor, ein Verfahren wurde eingestellt.

Oh, und wenn das noch nicht alarmierend genug ist, hier ein paar Google Reviews (wieder mit meinen Hervorhebungen):

Achtung!!! Ich verstehe die Sehnsucht nach liebevoller Gemeinschaft, doch macht nicht den Fehler sich dieser Glaubensgemeinschaft anzuschließen. Bei Go & Change handelt es sich definitiv um eine Sektenartige Gruppierung. Hier wird systematisch der Kontakt zur Außenwelt gekappt. Man soll sich von Freunden/Familie die kritisch sind distanzieren, es gibt deutliche Hierarchien und angebliche Energiearbeit/Psychotherapie welche im Endeffekt Brainwashing ist. teilweise werden hier Familien aufgelöst, Kinder von ihren Eltern getrennt und was weiß ich noch alles, und das Alles geschieht nach dem Gusto der “Anführer” namens Felix und Kai welche sich selber jegliche Freiheit nehmen können während die “Bewohner” strengen Tages und Arbeitsrhytmen unterliegen. Ich habe leider einen Freund an diese “Gemeinschaft” verloren. Einige weitere Freunde haben zum Glück rechtzeitig den Absprung geschafft. Ich habe mittlerweile auch von einigen anderen Aussteigern Berichte gehört die eindeutig auf Sekte und Brainwashing hinweisen. Natürlich gibt es dort Praktiken die funktionieren und einem zunächst suggerieren das es richtig ist was dort vermittelt wird oder man über sich selbst lernt, auch ist mit sicherheit nicht alles schlecht was dort passiert. Auf Dauer soll und wird aber eine Abhängigkeit und ein Machtgefälle erzeugt welches in einer Art Ohnmacht endet. So richtig bewusst wird es vielen Aussteigern erst nachdem sie davon weg sind. Ich rate zu äußerster Vorsicht und wünsche allen Menschen hier das Beste.

—fex cnrd

Diese Gemeinschaft hat für mich etwas von einer Psychosekte.

Tut mir Leid das sagen zu müssen, aber ich mags auch nicht verschweigen.

Starke Manipulation durch sowas wie : “wir denken alle, dass du…” und “wir möchten dir spiegeln, dass…” dann wird diskutiert, “bis alle dieselbe Perspektive haben”, zur Not die ganze Nacht durch, aber “durch wenig Schlaf hat man auch weniger innere Widerstände”. Du wirst angehalten nicht alleine zu essen, darfst dich auch nicht im Speiseraum gesondert setzen, denn “wenn man sich absondert, wachsen die Schatten”. Idee ist, konstant mit anderen Menschen zu sein, weil ein Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaft fähig sei, seine Schattenseiten zu transformieren. Innere Hirarchie gemischt mit Polyamorie – ” ich mach dir sofort ein Kind, wenn du diese Themen transformiert hast.”

Uiuiuiuiui… passt gut auf euch auf : )

—silvia mittelstaedt

Bei Go&Change ist die innere Prozess- und Schattenarbeit Kern der Gemeinschaft. Es gibt eine offizielle 7 stufige Hierarchie in die alle Bewohner eingestuft werden, in der obersten Gruppe sind die Beiden Gründer Felix und Kai. Ein gängiges Mittel ist das “Spiegeln”, wobei dir dein Verhalten und Verhaltensmuster gespiegelt werden, jedoch wird ausschließlich von Ranghöheren an niedrigere Mitglieder gespiegelt, welche dessen Urteile scheinbar uneingeschränkt annehmen. Es gibt eine  Tagesstruktur mit Aktivitäten und Arbeiten zu denen alle Bewohner verpflichtet sind, außer die Ranghöheren Gruppen.

Ich erlebte einen Mann dem wegen zuspätkommen zu einer Aktivität mit einer Disziplinarmaßnahme (1Std. in einem Raum sitzen) gedroht wurde. Außerdem wurde ein Mensch dafür gelobt, dass er 54 Std. wach war, da dies als liebevoll der Gemeinschaft gegenüber gewertet wird. Seine Frau wurde kritisiert ihn nicht genug dafür Wertzuschätzen.

Auch einiges was ich gehört habe, z.B. die Trennung von Eltern und Kindern, stärken das Bild das hier Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse geschaffen werden und Menschen entmächtigt.

Allen Menschen die in der Gemeinschaft wohnen oder sich in Annäherung befinden wünsche ich hinterfragen zu können, ob dass was diese Gruppierung ihnen gibt es Wert es was sie ihnen nimmt, Ihre Selbstbestimmung und Selbstachtung.

Allen die sich dafür Interessieren rate ich zu Vorsicht und immer der eigenen Wahrnehmung am meisten zu trauen.

—Markus XX

Ich halte diesen Ort für sehr destruktiv. Ausgeprägte Hierarchien, große Egos, Untergrabung von Selbstbestimmtheit und Individualität, Abwertung von Gefühlen und der Stimme des Herzens, psychologische Manipulation und das alles unter dem Deckmantel der “Liebe”.

—Sarah D

Dieser Ort hat meine Grenzen überschritten.

—Noar Blume

Ach du heilige Scheiße!

Das sind ziemlich schlechte Rezensionen. Und ich meine, sie kriegen jetzt nicht einen Stern, weil sie mittelmäßiges Essen servieren und die Workshops langweilig waren. Diese Anschuldigungen sind verdammt schwerwiegend. Go&Change ist ein Ort, an dem Menschen verletzt werden.

Und als wäre das nicht genug, erwähnt der Artikel aus der Main-Post auch noch zwei tote Kinder. Zwei. Tote. Kinder.

Ich bin mit Leuten in Kontakt gekommen, die G&C sehr nahe standen und das bestätigten. Es ist in der Tat passiert und G&C hat es niemals verleugnet, dass zwei Kinder bei zwei verschiedenen Vorfällen ums Leben gekommen sind. Natürlich Unfälle.

Klar, es kann mal etwas gewaltig schief gehen. Aber zweimal? Innerhalb desselben Jahres? In einem Land mit einer der niedrigsten Kindersterblichkeit auf der Welt? Hmm. Ich verdächtige sie jetzt nicht, dass sie diese Kinder töten wollten. Allerdings scheint mir G&C kein sicherer Ort für Kinder zu sein. Der Grund dafür könnte darin liegen, dass die Erwachsenen viel zu sehr mit krankem Sektenkram beschäftigt sind, anstatt sich um die Kinder zu kümmern.

Diese ganze Geschichte war plötzlich nicht mehr nur unheimlich, sondern geradezu furchteinflößend.

Was tun?

Hier bin ich nun, ich kleiner Mann, drauf und dran eine Podiumsdiskussion mit einem Anführer einer Psychosekte zu haben, ausgerüstet mit genügend dunklen Jedi-Psycho-Tricks, um eine Gemeinschaft von 40 Menschen zu kontrollieren. Und ich habe es gerade hinbekommen, ihn so richtig zu verärgern. Und ihn super gruselig zu nennen, als er gerade zuhörte.

Für mich war jegliche Möglichkeit an dieser Veranstaltung teilzunehmen gestorben. Ich wäre am liebsten auf der Stelle verschwunden, aber das konnte ich auch nicht machen. Jedenfalls nicht ohne zu erklären warum. Ich musste eine öffentliche Stellungnahme verfassen und so die Menschen warnen. Aber bevor ich das machte, dachte ich naiverweise, ich könnte G&C irgendwie aus dem ZEGG kriegen, indem ich die Organisatoren des Sommercamps damit konfrontiere, was ich über G&C herausgefunden habe und ihnen ein Ultimatum stelle: Entweder stoppen sie die Kooperation mit G&C und bitten sie höflich zu gehen oder ich schreibe eine öffentliche Stellungnahme und veröffentliche einen Artikel, in dem ich die Leute warne, dass das ZEGG mit einer gefährlichen Sekte kooperiert.

Im Anschluss an den Vorfall beim Abendessen redete ich mit vielen Bewohner:innen des ZEGG über diese Dinge. Ich fand heraus, dass die meisten G&C gegenüber sehr kritisch eingestellt waren und und nur eine kleine Gruppe G&C befürworteten. Unglücklicherweise bestand diese kleine Minderheit aus vielen der angesehensten Mitglieder des Ökodorfs. Leute mit viel Einfluss und mit viel Hingabe für das ganze Projekt. Von den Organisatoren waren bis auf wenige Ausnahmen alle eng mit G&C verbunden. Später ist mir klargeworden, dass das ganze Sommercamp eine große Werbeaktion für G&C war. Die Organisatoren hatten die Mitglieder des ZEGG nicht um Erlaubnis dafür gefragt, weil sie wussten, dass G&C innerhalb der Gemeinschaft eher unbeliebt ist. Und tatsächlich: dass Felix Krolle sich beteiligen würde, wurde erst einige Tage vor Beginn des Sommercamps bekanntgegeben.

Wenige Leute wussten also, dass das Sommercamp im Prinzip eine G&C-Veranstaltung ist. Allmählich und in kleinen Schritten wurde immer klarer, was hier vor sich ging. Mehr und mehr G&C Inhalte wurden hier und da eingeschleust und mit jedem Tag wurden die Loblieder auf G&C und Felix Krolle lauter und deutlicher. Eine Frau schoss etwas über das Ziel hinaus, indem sie G&C in den Himmel lobte und anfing etwas zuviel darüber zu verraten, wie sehr sie es liebt ihr ganzes Geld und alle Entscheidungsgewalt G&C zu geben (du kannst diesen Talk hier nachsehen: https://sommercamp.zegg.de/de/live.html#day-6). Die Podiumsdiskussion mit Felix Krolle sollte dann natürlich so etwas wie den Höhepunkt der ganzen Show darstellen. Ich schätze meine Rolle bestand hauptsächlich darin, ihm durch meine Anwesenheit mehr Legitimität zu verleihen und hoffentlich ganz begeistert über G&C zu sein, weil sie es hinbekommen haben, mich von ihrem fantastischen, tollen Projekt zu überzeugen.

Bevor ich mein Statement veröffentlichte, traf ich zwei der führenden ZEGG Organisatoren. Im ersten Treffen spürte ich einen kleinen Hoffnungsschimmer. Es war, als konnte ich den Zweifel in ihren Augen aufflackern sehen, als ich von meinen Erkenntnissen erzählte und sie davor warnte, in was sie drauf und dran waren sich zu verstricken. Sie willigten ein, darüber nachzudenken und wollten mich tags darauf treffen. Aber die Offenheit, die ich im ersten Treffen wahrgenommen habe, war vollständig verschwunden am nächsten Tag. Ganz unspektakulär wurden wir uns schnell darüber klar, dass wir voneinander weit entfernt waren und es keine Optionen geben würde, der beide Seiten zustimmen könnten. Also wurde ich aus dem Programm genommen und ich veröffentlichte mein Statement am nächsten Morgen.[vii]

Aus Berücksichtigung aller anderen ZEGG-Bewohner:innen gab ich der Gemeinschaft zwei Monate Zeit, um sich offiziell von G&C zu distanzieren, bevor ich einen Artikel über meine Erfahrungen schreiben würde. Nun sind zwei Monate vergangen und obwohl sie jüngst zugestimmt haben, auf dem nächsten Sommercamp nicht mehr mit G&C kooperieren zu wollen, gab es keine öffentliche Bekanntmachung bezüglich G&C. Das ZEGG ist immer noch ein offizieller Partner von G&C, wie man es der Webseite entnehmen kann: https://goandchange.de/kooperation/

Eine Freundin erzählte mir, dass sie Felix Krolle vor ein paar Wochen im ZEGG getroffen hat. Daher muss ich daraus schlussfolgern, dass das ZEGG weiterhin von G&C unterlaufen wird und daher kein vollständig sicherer Ort für Besucher:innen ist. Also wie versprochen nun der Artikel über diese ganze Sauerei. Ich hatte wirklich gehofft, dass es anders kommen würde, doch leider ist nun hier dieser Artikel.

Was mich am meisten ärgert an dem Ganzen sind nicht so sehr die unangenehmen Begegnungen im Sommercamp. Es ist eher die Unaufrichtigkeit, mit der ich ein Problem habe. Zunächst einmal bin ich nie über die Beteiligung von G&C informiert worden, geschweige denn über die kontroversen Hintergründe von G&C oder dass das Sommercamp dafür da war, diese Organisation zu promoten. Noch schlimmer allerdings ist, dass der Vortrag, den ich halten sollte Teil des großen Plans war, für G&C zu werben und sie zu rechtfertigen; ein Vortrag über verschiedene Entwicklungsstufen kognitiver Komplexität, was genau das ist, was G&C pervertiert und missbraucht, um soziale Hierarchien in ihrer Gemeinschaft zu legitimieren – ohne dass ich irgendetwas davon wusste. Glücklicherweise hatte ich ein Bauchgefühl, dass an dieser Stelle über das „Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC)“ zu reden eine schlechte Idee wäre. Stattdessen redete ich über die Vision einer „Listening Society“. Ich wurde eh nicht bezahlt und ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass die Leute mehr Spaß an diesem Thema hatten. Der Vortrag lief übrigens gut und ich habe alle Bücher verkauft, die ich mit hatte. Yay.

Abgesehen von Felix, zweier Organisatoren und meiner Wenigkeit, war eine fünfte Person in der Podiumsdiskussion vorgesehen, ein integraler Typ namens Rolf Lütterbeck. Da ich nicht wusste, wer er war und da ich naiv annahm, dass er genauso unwissend war, wie ich gewesen bin, sendete ich ihm eine Email, in der ich ihn warnte, mit wem er es auf der Podiumsdiskussion zu tun hatte. Das wäre die einzig angemessene Reaktion dachte ich: ihm eine Chance zu geben, seine Haltung noch einmal zu verändern, bevor ich meine Stellungnahme veröffentliche. Wieder einmal habe ich meine verdammten Hausaufgaben, Leute vorher zu recherchieren, nicht gemacht. Kurz danach erzählte mir jemand, dass er Felix’ alter Mentor ist und nun ein großer Unterstützer von G&C.

Die sogenannte Podiumsdiskussion war also nichts anderes als Felix Krolles Fanclub. Und ich mittendrin. Wäre nett gewesen, das vorher zu wissen.

Aus dem ZEGG rausgeworfen

So, und bevor ich es vergesse. Ich habe immer noch nicht erzählt, was denn nun eine dieser irrsinnigsten Erfahrungen meines Lebens war, die ich eingangs erwähnte. Wie ich das ZEGG nun verließ, lief nicht völlig friedlich ab. Tatsächlich wurden ich und meine Verlobte rausgeworfen und es wurde fast körperlich.

Die Organisatoren, mit denen ich die oben erwähnten Treffen hatte, baten mich am nächsten Tag abzureisen. Ich sagte zu. Aber als ich am folgenden Tag aufwachte, hatte ich Kopfschmerzen, also änderte ich meine Pläne und verschob unsere Abreise auf den nächsten Morgen. Ich habe ihre Bitte nicht als Ultimatum verstanden und da ich mich insgesamt doch recht willkommen im ZEGG fühlte, nicht zuletzt durch viele Leute, die mich fragten, ob ich nicht länger bleiben könne, dachte ich nicht lange darüber nach. Hinzu kommt, dass ich mich an diesem Tag sowieso nicht danach fühlte, als könnte ich an irgendwelchen Veranstaltungen teilnehmen. Ich wollte nur in meinem Raum und in dem ansässigen Café bzw. Kneipe chillen.

Obwohl ich mich eigentlich entspannen wollte, verbrachte ich dann doch einen Großteil des Tages damit, mit Menschen zu reden. Viele der ZEGG-Leute waren erschüttert darüber, dass das Sommercamp so ausgenutzt wird und waren froh, dass ich klar gegen G&C Stellung bezog. Viele wussten gar nicht, was los war und waren begierig darauf zu erfahren, was ich rausgefunden hatte. Ich sah es als meine Pflicht, die Menschen zu informieren, kann aber verstehen, dass man das auch als provokativ interpretieren kann. Andererseits: wie könnte ich diese Informationen vorenthalten, wenn ich sie selbst so wichtig fand? Ich habe nicht aktiv Leute aufgesucht, sie kamen zu mir.

Bevor wir ins Bett gingen, wollten meine Verlobte und ich noch ein Feierabend-Bier trinken in der Kneipe. Auf dem Weg dahin wurden wir wieder unterwegs aufgehalten von Leuten, die mit uns reden wollten und gut fanden, was wir getan hatten. Wir unterhielten uns für eine Weile und gerade als wir uns verabschieden wollten, stürmten zwei der Organisatoren auf uns zu. Es wurde sehr schnell ungemütlich und wir wurden sehr bestimmt dazu aufgefordert, das Ökodorf umgehend zu verlassen. Erst weigerte ich mich, aber nach einem extrem aggressiven verbalen Wortgefecht entschied ich mich dazu, dass es das nicht wert war. Lieber eine stundenlange Zugreise mit Kopfschmerzen, als noch länger in diesem Irrenhaus.

Der Blick der einen Frau war mörderisch, als wären ihre Augen komplett schwarz geworden. Ich habe noch nie vorher was Vergleichbares erlebt. Sie schrie eine der anderen Frauen an, mit der wir uns eben unterhalten hatten, dass sie hier nicht mit ihren „Hundeaugen“ dastehen solle, was auch immer sie damit meinte und sagte ihr, dass sie sich aus dieser ganzen Sache raushalten solle, da sie noch nicht einmal ein richtiges Mitglied im ZEGG sei. Als wir uns dazu entschieden, zu gehen und nun unsere Taschen zu packen, stellte sie sich vor mich und blockierte den Weg und schrie uns an, dass wir ihr die Schlüssel geben sollten und dass sie das Zeug rausholen würde. Als wir uns weigerten und ihr sagten, dass wir nicht wollen, dass sie durch unsere privaten Sachen wühlt, einschließlich so sensibler Dinge wie Computer und Notebooks, wollte sie mich verdammt noch mal packen und mich dazu zwingen.

Die Irrsinnigkeit dieser Situation bestand nicht so sehr in diesem Streit an sich, sondern in der Art und Weise, wie diese ältere Frau, erzürnt durch ihren Hass, als wäre sie von einem üblen Dämon besessen, dazu bereit war, einen jüngeren, stärkeren Mann in einen Faustkampf zu verwickeln. Es mag vielleicht relativ trivial klingen, wenn ich darüber schreibe. Aber es war dieser rapide Wandel vom Gesicht einer lieben Hippie-Frau, dass sich in eines deformierte, dass aus purem Zorn und Hass zu bestehen schien, mit einem Blick, der töten könnte, der diese Erfahrung so derart wahnwitzig werden ließ. Wie in einem dieser Filme, in denen sich die netten, lächelnden Hippies plötzlich in hirngewaschene Mördermaschinen verwandeln, wenn die Außenstehenden schließlich herausfinden, was wirklich vor sich geht.

Erst als ich dann richtig laut geworden bin, das einzige Mal, und sie fragte, ob sie jetzt gewalttätig werden will, ließ sie los und wich endlich zurück. Wir gingen zurück in unser Zimmer, aber diese Frau folgte uns und versuchte körperlich möglichst nah bei meiner Verlobten zu bleiben. Nur dank der zwei Frauen, mit denen wir uns eben unterhalten hatten, die sie beim Arm nahmen und sie vor der verrückten Frau abschirmten, konnte sie überhaupt in unser Zimmer rein. Wiederholt baten wir die Frau zu gehen, und versicherten ihr dabei, dass wir jetzt nach Hause gehen würden, aber sie weigerte sich und wollte sogar mit ins Zimmer hinein kommen, während sie fauchte, dass sie nicht „wie ein Hund“ draußen warten würde. Ich weiß auch nicht, was sie an dem Tag mit Hunden hatte.

Die beiden anderen halfen uns drinnen, ohne dass die Verrückte reinkam. Nachdem wir uns wenige Minuten von diesem Vorfall erholten, packten wir unsere Sachen und verließen das Dorf. Wie angekündigt, wartete die Frau nicht draußen.

Vergewaltigungen und tote Kinder

Nach dem Sommercamp kontaktieren mich verschiedene Menschen, die meine Stellungnahme gelesen hatten oder anderweitig gehört hatten, was passiert war. In den folgenden Wochen verbrachte ich viel Zeit damit, mir ihre Aussagen dazu anzuhören, welche alles in allem meinen Eindruck bestätigten, dass G&C ein sehr gefährlicher Kult ist.

Von den vielen Leuten, mit denen ich gesprochen hatte, haben besonders zwei einen bleibenden Eindruck hinterlassen. Die erste ist eine Therapeutin, die aktuell einige G&C-Opfer behandelt. Leider kann sie mit den Aussagen ihrer Patient:innen nicht an die Öffentlichkeit gehen, da sie sonst  das Patientengeheimnis verletzen würde. Was mir jedenfalls erzählt wurde, stimmt mit dem Bild von Gehirnwäsche, sexuellem Missbrauch und Gewalt überein, dass ich an anderen Stellen gehört oder gelesen hatte. Die zweite Person ist Sebastian Stark, der ebenfalls im Main-Post-Artikel erwähnt worden ist.

Sebastian Stark ist seit Jahren in der sogenannten “Integralen Bewegung” aktiv, eine Szene, zu der sich auch “Go&Change” rechnet. Er kennt auch K.K. und Krolle schon lange, sei mehrfach in Lülsfeld gewesen. Er bestätigt im Gespräch mit der Redaktion die Schilderungen der Aussteiger:Sex als „Behandlung”, Drogenmissbrauch und eine psychische und finanzielle Abhängigkeit der Gemeinschaftsmitglieder. Er spricht von einer “permanenten totalitären psychotherapieartigen Arbeit” im Kloster. Starks Einschätzung: „Da werden Menschen kaputtgemacht, gleichgeschaltet und traumatisiert.“

Vor zehn Jahren initiierte Sebastian Stark ein Netzwerk aus jungen integralen Menschen, dass IMOVE heißt. Hier lernte er Felix kennen. Anfangs, so erzählte er mir, war Felix einfach nur ein nerdiger Junge, der Freunde suchte. Jahrelang waren die beiden enge Freunde, die zusammen diese transformative Bewegung innerhalb der integralen Szene in Deutschland aufbauten. Das änderte sich allerdings, als Felix einen Typen namens Kai Krischik kennenlernte, was dazu führte, dass sie sich zusammen von der Bewegung abspalteten und Go&Change starteten. Nun begannen Felix und Kai all die Dinge, gegen die sich Sebastian entschieden aussprach, wie der Gebrauch von psychedelischen Substanzen, Gruppensex und Schattenarbeit ohne Einverständnis. Nach und nach entwickelte sich das ganze immer mehr in Richtung einer Sekte, mit typischen Elementen wie einer festen sozialen Hierarchie, einem Guru mit Sonderstatus (diesen Job bekam Kai) und verschiedenen Methoden zur psychischen Manipulation.

Die Story, die Sebastian mir über Kai erzählte, die er wiederum von anderen G&C-Mitgliedern gehört hat, klingt beinahe erfunden. Ich gehe an dieser Stelle nicht zu sehr ins Detail, aber kurz gefasst ist Kai in einem Kinderheim aufgewachsen. Als er später bei der Bundeswehr war, wurde ihm irgendetwas injiziert, das allerdings dazu führte, dass er fünf Jahre lang bettlägerig geworden ist. In dieser Zeit hat er stark zugenommen und studierte alle möglichen Arten von Manipulationstechniken, wie man Körpersprache liest, Neurolinguistisches Programmieren, Pick-Up-Artistry und Schamanismus. Letztlich kultivierte er also eine Guru-Persönlichkeit und startete dann G&C gemeinsam mit Felix. Ich weiß nicht, wie es dir geht, aber für mich klingt das nach einem perfekten Comic-Bösewicht. Oh, und scheinbar mag er es sehr, riesige Dildos in menschliche Aushöhlungen zu rammen. Er behauptet eine Art Heiler sein, wenn man den blumigen Geschichten Glauben schenken mag. Offenbar heilt er Menschen mit diesen Dildos. Einer Frau wurden ernsthafte Verletzungen an ihren Genitalien zugefügt. Go&Change dementiert diese Geschichte nicht, sondern stellt dazu lediglich fest, dass das eine Privatangelegenheit sei.

Mir wurde auch erzählt, dass sie viel Wert darauf legen, die Paare voneinander zu trennen, wenn sie bei G&C ankommen. Zu Beginn werden neue Frauen mit Liebe geradezu bombardiert und man lässt sie glauben, dass sie einen ganz besonderen „Prinzessinnen“-Status haben, weil sie ja soviel positive Anerkennung bekommen, insbesondere vom höchststehenden Männchen in der Gruppe, dem Guru. Ein paar Wochen, nachdem sie angekommen sind, wird ihnen üblicherweise erzählt, dass sie noch schlimme Probleme mit eigenen Schatten hätten und daher psychosexuelle Heilung von, du ahnst es bereits, Kai dem Guru brauchen. Standard für Sekten. Originell an G&C jedoch ist, dass der Mann dazu gedrängt wird, Sex mit anderen Männern in der Gemeinschaft zu haben. Die Intention dahinter ist natürlich die Beziehung des Paares zu schwächen, sodass es leichter wird, beide zu kontrollieren. Denn sehr wenige heterosexuelle Beziehungen profitieren davon, wenn die Frau, welche denkt, dass sie die neue Prinzessin ist, vom Guru gefickt wird, während der Mann von einem Haufen anderer Männer in den Arsch gefickt wird, egal ob er drauf steht oder nicht.

Alles typisch Sexkult. Sie haben alle möglichen Erklärungen dafür, warum das nötig ist: Schattenarbeit, das Transzendieren des Egos, die heteronormative Konditionierung zu durchbrechen usw. Aber das Ende vom Lied ist immer, dass der Guru deine Frau fickt. Und bei G&C wirst du als Mann ebenfalls so richtig durchgenommen – wörtlich und im übertragenen Sinne.

Neben Sex benutzt G&C noch andere Methoden wie Schlafentzug und Drogen, um die Mitglieder zu manipulieren und zu kontrollieren. Menschen vom Schlaf abzuhalten, ihnen verschiedene Substanzen wie LSD oder MDMA aufzudrängen, um dann Sex auf eine Art und Weise mit ihnen zu haben, dem sie anderweitig niemals zustimmen würden. All das öffnet Tore für Manipulation auf einem ganz anderen Level – du kannst hier deine Psyche zerstören lassen, wenn du das wünschst. Ich meine, alles was ich gehört habe, was sie bei G&C tun, klingt wie kranker CIA-Scheiß.

Wenn Sex auf Drogen dein Ding ist, werde ich das nicht verurteilen, aber wenn du einen Ort suchst, an dem du dich spirituell entwickeln kannst und du wirst stattdessen durch die Gruppe dazu gedrängt Psychedelika zu nehmen und der Guru und jeder andere fickt dich, während du wild am trippen bist, dann ist es schwer hier von Konsens zu sprechen. Und Sex ohne Konsens, nun ja, das heißt auf gut deutsch Vergewaltigung.

Das Schlimmste war allerdings, als wir anfingen über die Kinder zu sprechen. Ich fragte, ob es richtig sei, dass zwei Kinder gestorben sind. Sebastian bestätigte das. Dann sprachen wir über die Kinder, die dort lebten. Er sagte, es wären etwa zehn gewesen, als er das letzte Mal da war. Er fügte hinzu, dass die Kinder dort von den Erwachsenen getrennt werden, etwas, dass ich auch schon von anderen gehört hatte, und dass sie in einem separaten Zimmer leben und es ihnen nicht erlaubt war, frei herumzustromern und sich unter die Erwachsenen zu mischen. Der Grund dafür war, dass man die Kinder „egolos“ aufwachsen lassen wolle und verhindern wolle, dass die Egos der Kinder die Eltern manipulieren oder irgendsoein wahnsinniger Quark. In Wirklicht geht es darum, dass man viel leichter zu kontrollieren ist, wenn die emotionale Bindung zu den Kindern möglichst geschwächt ist.

Und als wäre die Trennung der Kinder von den Eltern nicht schlimm genug – die Geschichte eines der Paare, die ihr Kind verloren haben ist absolut geisteskrank. Um zu verhindern, dass die Eltern einen Moment der Klarheit bei der Beerdigung haben und womöglich realisieren, wo sie hier gerade reingeraten sind, wurden sie dazu genötigt, LSD zu nehmen und an einer Sexorgie teilzunehmen, während sie gleichzeitig auf Schlafentzug waren – und dass in der Nacht vor der Beerdigung ihres eigenen Kindes. Das ist echt kranker Scheiß.[viii]

So zerbricht man Menschen.

Das ZEGG muss gegen Sekten geimpft werden

Also folgendes muss passieren: Entweder endet alle Kooperation zwischen dem ZEGG und G&C und allen Mitgliedern von G&C wird der Zutritt zum ZEGG untersagt, oder das ZEGG wird zu einer Hochburg von G&C.

Auch wenn es aktuell nur eine kleine Minderheit im ZEGG ist, die bei G&C sind, besteht diese Minderheit doch aus angesehenen Mitgliedern der Gemeinschaft, die alle eifrig dabei sind G&C zu promoten. Das wird es der Mehrheit der anderen Mitglieder im ZEGG schwer machen, ihnen langfristig etwas entgegenzusetzen. Wie es bei Sekten so oft der Fall ist, glauben sie ja, die ultimative Wahrheit gefunden zu haben und dass sie die Welt retten werden. Daher werden ihnen ein paar gefallene Späne egal sein. Zusätzlich haben sie dieses selbstgerechte Wir-gegen-Die-Ding am laufen. Wenn du ihnen Widerstand leistest, bestätigt das ihre Auserwähltheit und sie kämpfen für die gerechte Sache. Sie werden high vom Streit. Normale Menschen werden von solchem Unsinn müde. Am Ende werden mehr und mehr Leute vom permanenten Konflikt ermüden und aus dem ZEGG ausziehen und so das Feld G&C überlassen.

Wenn daher G&C erlaubt wird, weiter ihren Aktivitäten nachzugehen, zu intrigieren, zu planen und zu manipulieren bei jeder sich bietenden Möglichkeit, werden sie sich letztlich durchsetzen. Also allen Sektierern da draußen: Glückwunsch, der Sieg ist nah.

Das Ding ist, Leute wie die essen glückliche Hippies zum Frühstück. Sie benutzen ihre Werte der Offenheit und des Vertrauens gegen sie: „bitte vertrau mir“, „es ist für dein eigenes Wohl“, „warum hörst du mir nicht zu“, „sei nicht so herablassend“, „sei offen für neue Ideen“ und so weiter. Dadurch, dass sie immer lieb, herzlich und offen für neue Dinge sein wollen, haben Hippies wenige Verteidigungsmöglichkeiten gegen fähige Manipulateure. Wenn ein Team dreckig und brutal spielt, während das andere darauf besteht, immer nett zu spielen, oder das Spiel überhaupt gar nicht spielen will, dann stehen die Chancen überproportional gut für das Erstere. Letztere werden nicht mal mitkriegen, was sie geschlagen hat.

Da sie aus der integralen Szene kommen, weiß G&C wie sie mit diesen Leuten umgehen müssen. Zunächst einmal tendieren Integralos dazu, alles übermäßig zu intellektualisieren, sodass selbst die einfachsten Wahrheiten in einem Lärm aus toll klingenden Wörtern versinken. Ich habe außerdem wahrgenommen, dass immer etwas von „Des Kaisers neue Kleider“ in den Reaktionen von intelligenten Menschen auf G&C mitschwingt: keiner will derjenige sein, der nicht weit genug entwickelt ist, zu wenig erleuchtet und schlicht zu dumm, um die höhere Gesinnung dieser prächtig entwickelten G&C-Leute zu begreifen. Am wichtigsten jedoch ist, dass integrale Tugenden wie Multiperspektivität, sowohl-als-auch-Interpretationen und das Vermeiden postmodernen Justice-Warrior-Gehabes, das irgendwas als böse verleumdet, sehr einfach dazu benutzt werden können, um die Integralos zu neutralisieren und zu entwaffnen.

Und da ich gerade von multiperspektivischen Integralos spreche, ich habe auch mit einem sympathischen Typen namens Alexander Capistran geredet, der früher an einigen Veranstaltungen von G&C teilgenommen hat, aber letztlich zu dem Schluss kam, dass das Ganze eher pathologisch war. Du kannst seinen Bericht hier lesen:

https://alexandercapistran.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/go-change-ein-auf-und-abgesang/

Da er ein guter Integralist ist, startet er seinen Essay über G&C mit allen guten Eigenschaften, die ihm einfallen. Es sollte klar sein, dass alle Kulte und Sekten auch Dinge von Wert bieten; Dinge, die positive Emotionen entfachen und die Menschen dazu bringen, wieder zu kommen. Herrgott, selbst die Nazis hatten viele Sachen, um positive Gefühle hervorzurufen und aufregende Erfahrungen zu ermöglichen. Aber ernsthaft, wenn die negativen Seiten so schwerwiegend sind wie bei G&C oder den Nazis, um bei der Analogie zu bleiben, erscheint es etwas deplatziert zu sagen, dass wir die positiven Sachen nicht vergessen sollten. Das ist, als wäre ich auf einer Party, in der jede:r vergewaltigt wird, und man trotzdem betont, wie gut das Essen war und dass der DJ ein paar geile Tracks aufgelegt hat. Oder zu betonen, dass Hitler uns immerhin die Autobahn gegeben hat, wenn  man gerade über den Holocaust redet.

Da ich also kein guter Integralist bin und mir Multiperspektivität in Bezug auf G&C egal ist, habe ich mich dazu entschieden, all den Spaß zu übergehen, der Alexander anfangs dazu bewogen hat, bei G&C-Veranstaltungen mitzumachen und präsentiere nun stattdessen ein paar Ausschnitte aus dem Text, die ihn dazu gebracht haben, G&C hinter sich zu lassen:

Kritikunfähigkeit. Entweder die Person wird vor der ganzen Gruppe gechallengt und eingeschüchtert oder (wie in meinem Fall zwei Mal vorgekommen), die Person wird in ein Hinterzimmer bestellt, wo die Leitung des Klosters denjenigen zur Rede stellt und Ultimaten setzt: Entweder du vertraust und hörst auf zu kritisieren, oder du musst binnen X Stunden gehen.

Manipulation der Pressefreiheit und Öffentlichkeit:Verfolgt man interne Gesprächsdynamiken oder jetzt Korrespondenzen mit der Öffentlichkeit bei Go&Change, drängt sich der Eindruck auf, nur die Person soll sprechen, die am höchsten entwickelt ist. Wer aus einer (vermeintlich) niederen Perspektive argumentiert, sollte schweigen.

Gaslighting: Imbalance von Projektionen und Introjektionen. Dieses Phänomen, wenn Projektionen anderer zur eigenen Wirklichkeit werden, nennt sich „Gaslighting“. Das ist meines Erachtens ein Grundwirkungsprinzip der Manipulation bei Go&Change.

Unterminierung der menschlichen Freiheit. Die bei Go&Change oft kolportierte Grundbotschaft: „Geh in deine Kraft, geh in deine Selbstverantwortung“ ist großartig. Was aber zuhauf passiert, ist, dass die Leitung über die unhinterfragte Deutungshoheit verfügt und vor allem, was das Hauptproblem ist, oft handlungsleitend wirkt: Mach doch mal dies und jenes, du solltest das und das machen, um dich zu entwickeln. Das Perfide ist: oft sind dies sogar gute Beobachtungen und Tips, nur subvertierten sie das, wofür sie eigentlich stehen sollten: Selbstverantwortung und freier Wille im Geiste der Liebe. Was würde Kai jetzt wohl machen oder sagen? Was wäre, wenn er jetzt zur Tür hineinkommen würde? Das habe ich sehr oft gehört und es lag wie ein wabernder Schatten über der Gesamtatmosphäre. Das merkt man auch noch an der Reaktion einiger Ehemaliger, „Verstoßener“: Die Loyalität erhält sich auch nach für die Betroffenen teilweise entwürdigenden Vorgängen und Zerwürfnissen. Die ehemalige Abhängigkeit von der Gruppe bzw. der Fremdführung durch eine Autorität ist immer noch wirksam, nur stumm. Stockholm-Syndrom im subtilen Bereich.

Unangreifbarkeit durch Ungreifbarkeit: Zuletzt möchte ich noch subtile Faktoren benennen, die schwer greifbar sind, aber eine große Relevanz haben. Hier geht es um atmosphärische Gewalt und Härte. Viele Prozesse wurden mit Aggression geführt, die als entschiedenes Grenzen-Aufzeigen und nüchternes Spiegeln legitimiert wurde. Das ist keine Apologie von Pseudo-Freundlichkeit oder „professioneller Distanz“, sondern einfach die Beobachtung, dass Härte und Aggression, Wut, einen integralen Teil der Wucht der psychologischen Arbeit des Projekts bilden.

Der Versuch, die Schatten auf diesen Ebenen zu integrieren, resultierte meiner Beobachtung nach eher in einer manipulativen Aktivierung dieser Ebenen, mit dem Effekt, die Leute kleinzuhalten und einen unendlichen Entwicklungsdrang anzutreiben.

Im Großen und Ganzen aber strahlen die Menschen nicht, sondern wirken abgespannt, flatterhaft und servil.

Alexander beendet seinen Essay mit dem Schluss, dass es besser für G&C wäre, wenn es sich auflöst, zumindest in seiner gegenwärtigen Form. Ich kann nicht sagen, dass ich da nicht zustimme.

 —

 So wie ich es sehe, fungieren die sogenannten Wir-Räume, die G&C zu verschiedenen Gelegenheiten beim Sommercamp anleitete, als eine Art trojanisches Pferd. Zu Beginn wird der Zweck dieser Wir-Räume nicht darin bestehen, alle zu manipulieren und Gaslighting zu betreiben, sondern eher darin, den Gebrauch von Wir-Räumen als Methode und die Anleitung durch G&C zu normalisieren. Erst allmählich, wenn die Leute Vertrauen in die Methoden und die Menschen entwickeln, die sie durchführen, werden die Wir-Räume mehr und mehr zur sektentypischen Einschüchterung und zum Gaslighting benutzt werden. Und je mehr intime Details Menschen in diesen Räumen geteilt haben, umso mehr Material werden die Anleiter haben, dass sie gegen die Teilnehmenden verwenden können. Und ab dann wird es haarig.

Gerade Menschen an Orten wie dem ZEGG müssen viel mehr über Kulte und Sekten, über Gaslighting und andere Manipulationstechniken lernen. Bewusste Gemeinschaften, oder wie man das auch nennen mag, Gemeinschaften, an denen Menschen nach höherer spiritueller Entwicklung und mehr Zusammenhalt streben, als die Mainstream-Gesellschaft bieten kann, sind besonders anfällig gegenüber spiritueller Infiltration, limbischem Hacking und unbewusster Manipulation, alles um das gemütliche Gaslighting-Feuer zusammengekuschelt.

Spirituelle Menschen müssen gegen solche Dinge geimpft werden. Und solange sie diese Spritze ablehnen, werden solche Geschichten immer und immer wieder passieren.

Ich denke nicht, dass es eine gute Idee wäre, nach Bad Belzig in nächster Zeit zurückzukehren. Und ganz ehrlich habe ich die Nase voll von diesem Ort. Aber wenn jemand dort hingehen würde und ein zwei Workshops über diese Themen anbieten würde, wäre das glaube ich echt hilfreich für viele Menschen dort.

Aber bis dahin lautet mein Rat, so weit wie möglich von diesem Ort entfernt zu bleiben.

—

[i] Hallo Felix, ich weiß, dass du das liest 🙂

[ii] Eine angemessene praktische Applikation von Entwicklungspsychologie für Erwachsene muss natürliche Hierarchien stark machen – und keine neue, willkürliche Dominanzhierarchie in das soziale Gefüge einflechten. Das ist Basiswissen.

[iii] Nachdem ich einigen G&C-geführten Wir-Räumen beigewohnt habe, rief ich meinen lieben Freund und Kollegen Daniel Görtz an, der einen Doktor in Soziologie  und ein ausgeprägtes Interesse an Sekten hat. Ich erzählte ihm von meinen Bedenken und fing an, von den sogenannten „Wir-Räumen“ zu erzählen, aber bevor ich nur die Chance hatte, von meinen Erfahrungen zu berichten, unterbrach er mich und stellte Mutmaßungen an, wie das ganze funktioniert. Ohne irgendetwas darüber zu wissen, was ich gesehen hatte, konnte er mir im Detail erklären, wie das Ganze abläuft und erklärte mir, dass die meisten Sekten solche Methoden benutzen. Das ist sozusagen Industriestandard im Sektengeschäft.

[iv] Er war nicht nur sehr beharrlich bei dem Versuch, mich häufiger zu treffen, sondern jedesmal beim Essen versuchte er, sich so nah wie möglich an mich heranzusetzen. Creepy.

[v] Felix ist wahrscheinlich nicht bewusst, dass Michael Commons, der Schöpfer des „Model of Hierarchical Complexity“, jüngst eine noch höhere Stufe als „cross-paradigmatic“ hinzugefügt hat: „Meta cross-paradigmatic“. Mein heimlicher Verdacht sagt mir, dass Felix, wenn er das gewusst hätte, behauptet hätte auf dieser Stufe zu sehen.

[vi] Ich habe mir neulich die Podiumsdiskussion angesehen. Es ist interessant zu sehen, wie sie meine Beobachtung adressieren, dass sie keine Liebe zeigen und tote Augen haben. Offenbar zeigen hochentwickelte Menschen Liebe nicht auf die Art und Weise wie wir normalen Menschen. Tatsächlich können wir wohl nicht fühlen wie warm und liebevoll sie sind, weil wir einfach zu unterentwickelt sind, um es überhaupt zu bemerken. Ich bin so froh, dass wir das geklärt haben. Du kannst dir die Podiumsdiskussion hier ansehen: https://sommercamp.zegg.de/de/live.html#day-9

[vii] Du kannst meine Stellungnahme hier lesen https://metamoderna.org/the-reasons-why-i-emil-ejner-friis-am-withdrawing-from-the-panel-discussion-at-the-zegg-summer-camp-july-30-2021/

[viii] Du kannst mir gerne vorwerfen, dass ich von meiner kognitiven Entwicklung her nicht weit genug bin, um den höheren Sinn in all dem zu erkennen. Der geht aufs Haus. Aber meine Empfehlung bleibt: Bleib verdammt nochmal fern davon.

Since the publication of this article, the ZEGG has made a public announcement stating that they, for the time being, are going to terminate their cooperation with Go&Change and that they have requested to have the ZEGG removed as an official partner from Go&Change’s website. In this public announcement, many of the problematic practices of Go&Change that are mentioned in the following are condemned. The ZEGG also apologizes for the way in which my wife (fiancée at the time) and I were expelled from the summer camp. We greatly appreciate the apology and rejoice at the good news that a decision has been made to end the cooperation with Go&Change. The public statement can be read on ZEGG’s website here: https://www.zegg.de/de/mediathek/news-archiv/1151-das-zegg-und-go-change.html

It all began with an invitation to speak at the ZEGG Summer Camp 2021 in Bad Belzig near Berlin. I was to give a talk and participate in a panel discussion with, among others, a strange fellow named Felix Krolle.^[2] Had I been a wise man, I would have looked up with whom I was to panel and what kind of organisation he represented. Sadly, I was too lazy to be a wise man.

I’ve been to the ZEGG a couple of times before and have always found the place gorgeous. When you’ve been staying in gritty grey Berlin for too long, arriving at the ZEGG is like entering a little paradise. And the day I arrived for the Summer Camp, on a sunny day under a cloudless sky, it looked more beautiful than ever. Little did I know that here, just one week later, one of the most insane experiences of my life would take place.

Shortly after arriving I received a text from this Felix guy from something called Go&Change. He wanted to meet and have a chat about the panel discussion. I politely agreed. But when we met, it wasn’t the casual private conversation I had expected. Instead, I was instantly seated in a circle of five or six other people. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it quickly became apparent that this guy wanted something from me, and that the whole setup was intended to accomplish just that. Things didn’t go as planned though.

Felix hadn’t finished reading my books, he admitted, and thus couldn’t have known that I’m not a stage fetishist and that I consider cults the great totalitarian danger of the future. He presented Go&Change, of which he was some kind of leader, as a close-knit community with a formalized social hierarchy based on people’s cognitive stage of development. I thought it sounded like a bad fucking idea.^[3] The meeting kinda went downhill from there. I was happy to leave when it ended.

I later realized that I had been sitting in the middle of a group of cult people, in what they call a “we-space” (a social technology intended to generate a field of collective practices that generate profound conversations, or some shit like that). However, after closer inquiry, I renamed it the gaslighting chamber. In the hands of the wrong people, this thing is an extremely efficient instrument of manipulation.^[4]

Initially I merely thought of Felix Krolle as just another dude trying to sell me something. It happens all the time. But Felix refused to be just another dude. He repeatedly tried to get more meetings with me, all of which I politely declined. I simply didn’t have the time since I needed to prepare for my talk. But he didn’t give up. Eventually he texted me that one of the ZEGG summer camp organizers wanted to talk to me in person. I found that a bit weird. Why couldn’t he just contact me himself? I called the person and set up a meeting. Again I just expected a private meeting between the two of us, but once I arrived we were accompanied by three other people, including Felix whom I had repeatedly told I didn’t have time for.

This didn’t feel entirely honest to me, but I shrugged it off and sat down with them. I thought we were to talk about the panel discussion, but instead they started complaining about me not spending time with them and staying too much in my room. I answered that I understood it could be disappointing if they had been looking forward to meeting me, but that I needed to prepare for the talk and rest after a stressful vacation. Among normal people this would have been the end of the discussion, but it didn’t end there. One after the other they continued complaining and tried to guilt-trip me. Felix in particular became very insisting, arguing how I owed it to the community to make myself more available.

In the end it just pissed me off. I never signed up for this, and certainly didn’t owe anyone anything. At the time I merely thought of them as annoying community obsessed hippies not grasping that too much socializing can be draining to some. It was only later I understood that they needed to get closer to me in order to win me over.

The Dinner Table Incident

Until that point I had only been subject to minor subtle manipulations. My only reason to avoid Felix Krolle and Go&Change was that I found their project rather uninteresting and Felix to be boring and slightly creepy in the way he was stalking me.^[5] It was only when things escalated at a dinner table conversation that I realized something was severely off with these folks.

Initially I was too focused on my food to notice what was happening around me, as is often the case. But at some point between the soup and the salad, I came out of my food trance as a friend of mine was being quite viciously attacked from all sides of the table after making a few critical comments about the speech of one of the leading camp organizers who was sitting next to us. My friend wasn’t getting flack for the contents of his criticism though, but for his personal virtues—or supposed lack thereof. It was not just that his criticism was invalid, but that he didn’t have a right to criticise in the first place. How dared he criticise this prominent member of the ZEGG after everything he had done for the world, Felix argued. And how could my young friend even suggest he could have anything of value to say to someone with so many years of experience. From there they went on and on about his “shadows” and “ego”. It was when Felix in a tone I wouldn’t have imagined at a hippie camp accused my friend of “sucking [name of the ZEGG guy] dry”^[6] and called him an “asshole” that my nervous system had become fully alert. I never finished the salad.

At the time I never fully realised what was going on. But of course, this is the kind of treatment any lowly member of a cult can expect if they challenge the leadership. And here at the dinner table, the senior ZEGG guy was the top dog and thus to be shielded from criticism by collective bullying. It was almost as if the G&C people auto piloted through the whole incident once Felix started going after my friend. They had done this before. And they were good at it.

The atmosphere had become rather tense and I felt sorry for my friend who looked like he had been run over by a car. Understandably, you’ll enter a state of minor shock from suddenly being attacked from every corner of the room and being told you’re trash. Especially if the ones doing so are trained in picking people apart. I attempted to engage Felix in a more philosophical conversation instead to shift focus away from my friend. Unsurprisingly it didn’t result in the fruitful intellectual exchange one could have hoped. Felix simply rejected my argumentation by claiming he was on a higher level of cognitive complexity and that I would only understand why I was wrong once I evolved to his level of development. Felix claimed to be at cross-paradigmatic (yeah right, buddy)^[7], and thus stood above any criticism from the rest of us puny unevolved beings. As a more developed human being, he was automatically right. But of course, he had the tools to help us become more evolved if we just listened to him.

Despite the prospect of evolving to higher levels, I thought I’d heard enough and decided to leave. I admit, I might have lost my temper at some point. I might have told Felix I thought he was full of shit. I also told him straight up that the love he constantly talked about rang hollow and was nowhere to be felt in his presence, and that his eyes looked completely dead.^[8] That’s not a nice thing to say to someone. But honestly, I still stand by my words.

Whatever they are doing at G&C, it isn’t working. Most of the folks at the camp had this shiny hippie love radiating from their eyes and body language full of life and vigour. It was clear to see that whatever spiritual and therapeutic practices they were into, it was working. And then there were these G&C folks: stale bodies, stone faced, dead eyes, ready to engage you in psychological jiu-jitsu at any moment to establish their developmental superiority.

As I left the dinner table and walked away, I didn’t realise that Felix fucking followed us. It was only after having told my friend how creepy I found Felix that I looked back and discovered him walking behind us close enough to eardrop on our conversation. But at least he now knew what I thought of him.

And then I went to my room and googled Go&Change:

“Esoteric Psycho Cult on Fusion-Kinderspace?”

https://forum.kulturkosmos.de/viewtopic.php?t=29080

 “Razzia at community Go&Change in Luelsfeld”

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/razzia-bei-gemeinschaft-goandchange-in-luelsfeld,SNyKr8

s

“Psychological Pressure and Sexualized Violence in a Former Monastery?”

https://www.mainpost.de/regional/schweinfurt/psychodruck-und-sexualisierte-gewalt-in-ehemaligem-kloster-art-10449309

The latter is from the German newspaper Main-Post. An English translation can be found here:

https://www.world-today-news.com/psychological-pressure-and-sexualized-violence-in-a-former-monastery/

Here are a few snippets from the article (my bolds):

“In the past few months, several women and men have turned to the editorial team: former members of ‘Go & Change’. There are ‘psychological terrorism’ and ‘brainwashing’ in the community, they report independently. They tell of all-controlling leaders and sexualized violence as ‘therapy’. Visiting relatives is usually not welcome. Almost all dropouts want to remain anonymous. The dropouts in particular are very scared.”

“‘Sadomaso sex’ is also part of a ‘therapy’ by K.K., who, according to dropouts, describes himself as a ‘healer’. The personality should be cured from its ‘shadows’. This type of ‘treatment’ takes place in a ‘sex room’ on the upper floor of ‘Maria Schnee’. The women say that some were injured, a woman even very serious physical wounds. ‘Go & Change’ does not answer the editor’s question about the sex therapies described. That is ‘our private matter’, says Krolle. The allegation is not being denied.”

“Today Ralf B. regrets his trust in ‘Go & Change’. His wife had not recovered there. On the contrary. ‘She went through hell,’ says Ralf B .; he followed it. He met his wife regularly during their stay. To date, she has not processed the experience within the monastery walls. The 45-year-old is currently undergoing therapeutic treatment.”

“Ralf B. tells of sleep deprivation through ‘process nights’ with group sessions and of massive verbal insults against his wife. She had told her husband about a tally list in which alleged misconduct was counted. From her isolation in a special group for ‘narcissistic women’ – as a punitive measure. And financial control of the members.

Drugs are said to have been involved: LSD and ecstasy. ‘Because they reveal more of themselves,’ says Ralf B. The other dropouts confirm this. Ralf B. also observed during a visit that drugs were used deliberately and specifically targeted at individuals.

Ralf B. describes that his wife found the group sessions torture. ‘Then you’re done,’ he says. Sometimes the round lasted all night. Without sleep, everyone would have had to go back to the work in which they were firmly divided: in the kitchen or garden, for washing up, for cooking, for cleaning. Others were able to bring in their manual skills.”

“According to Lohmayer, methodological instruments from the field of psychology, such as ‘integral structural constellations with in-depth analysis’, are used in the community, but are used here without recognized psychotherapeutic qualifications. For him, ‘Go & Change’ is a ‘psycho group with a high potential for conflict’. He says: ‘Group dynamic processes, management and power structures, social control, total commitment, separation from the previous social environment’ are always a topic in the consultations that he had with dropouts and relatives. ‘You have to imagine the group dynamic context like this,’ explains Lohmayer: ‘The more I know about a person – especially in sexual and partnership terms – the more power I gain over them, the more controllable they become and the more vulnerable they ultimately become.‘”

“In March 2019, a one-year-old falls into an extinguishing pond near the monastery and later dies in a hospital in Munich. As it turns out, the child was visiting ‘Go & Change’ and was supervised by members of the community. According to the public prosecutor’s office in Schweinfurt, ‘it was investigated against three people for negligent homicide’. […] ‘An infant from the ‘Go & Change’ environment had died on a walk four weeks earlier.”

Oh, and if that wasn’t alarming enough, here are some of Go&Change’s google reviews (again, my bolds):

[Translated by Google]

“Danger!!! I understand the longing for loving fellowship, but don’t make the mistake of joining this religious community. Go & Change is definitely a sect-like group. Here contact with the outside world is systematically cut off. One should distance oneself from friends / family who are critical, there are clear hierarchies and alleged energy work / psychotherapy which in the end is brainwashing. Sometimes families are dissolved here, children are separated from their parents and what else do I know, and everything happens to the taste of the “leaders” named Felix and Kai who can take any freedom themselves while the “residents” are subject to strict daily and work rhythms . Unfortunately I lost a friend to this “community”. Fortunately, some other friends made the jump in time. In the meantime I have also heard reports from some other dropouts that clearly point to sects and brainwashing. Of course there are practices there that work and initially suggest that what is being conveyed there is correct or that you learn about yourself, and certainly not everything that happens there is bad. In the long run, however, a dependency and a power imbalance should and will be created which ends in a kind of powerlessness. Many dropouts only become really aware of it after they have left it. I advise extreme caution and wish everyone here the best.”^[9]

[Translated by Google]

“This community has something of a psychosis for me.

I’m sorry to have to say that, but I also do not want to conceal it.

Strong manipulation through something like, “we all think that you …” and “we want to mirror that …” then it is discussed, “until all have the same perspective,” all night through, but distressing ” with little sleep you also have less internal resistance “. You are encouraged not to eat alone, you must not sit separately in the dining room, because “when you separate, the shadows grow”. The idea is to be constant with other people, because a person is only capable of transforming his dark side in the community. Inner hierarchy mixed with polyamory – “I’ll make you a child right away if you’ve transformed those issues.”

Uiuiuiuiui … take good care of you :)”^[10]

[Translated by Google]

“At Go & Change, the inner process and shadow work is the core of the community. There is an official 7-level hierarchy in which all residents are classified, in the top group are the two founders Felix and Kai. A common means is “mirroring”, whereby your behavior and behavioral patterns are mirrored to you, but only mirrored by higher-ranking members to lower members, who seem to accept his judgments unreservedly. There is a daily structure with activities and work to which all residents are obliged, except for the higher-ranking groups.

I saw a man who was threatened with disciplinary action (sitting in a room for 1 hour) for being late for an activity. In addition, a person was praised for staying awake for 54 hours, as this is considered to be loving towards the community. His wife has been criticized for not valuing him enough.

Some of what I have heard, e.g. the separation of parents and children, strengthen the image that relationships of dependency are created here and that people are disempowered.

I wish to be able to question all people who live in the community or who are in close contact, whether what this group gives them is worth what it takes away from them, their self-determination and self-esteem.

I advise everyone who is interested in it to be careful and always to trust their own perception the most.”^[11]

[Translated by Google]

“I think this place is very destructive. Distinctive hierarchies, great egos, undermining of self-determination and individuality, devaluation of feelings and the voice of the heart, psychological manipulation and all under the guise of “love”.”^[12]

[Translated by Google]

“This place has exceeded my limits.”^[13]

Holy shit!

That’s some pretty bad reviews. And I mean, it’s not like they’re getting one star reviews for serving mediocre food and hosting boring workshops. These accusations are pretty damn serious. Go&Change is a place where people get hurt.

And not only that, from the article in the Main-Post you probably couldn’t have missed the part mentioning the two dead children. Children. Dead.

I did get in contact with people who’ve been close to G&C to have this confirmed. It did in fact happen, and G&C has never denied that two children, in two different incidents, got killed at their premises. Accidents, of course.

Of course you can have bad luck. But twice? Within the same year? In a country with one of the lowest child mortality rates in the world? Hmm. I don’t suspect they wanted these children dead. But, it appears to me that G&C is not a safe place for kids to be, and that the reason it isn’t safe is because the adults are caught up in all kinds of sick cult stuff instead of taking care of their children.

Suddenly this whole story went from eerie to rightout frightening.

What to Do?

So here I am, little old me, going on a panel discussion with this psycho cult leader equipped with enough dark jedi mind tricks to control a community of 40 people. And I just managed to piss him off. And call him super creepy while he was listening.

There was no way in hell I was participating in that event. I just felt like leaving the damn place right away, but that I couldn’t do either. At least not without explaining why. I had to write a public statement and at the same time warn people. But before doing that, I naively thought I could somehow get G&C out of ZEGG by confronting the summer camp organizers with what I had found out about G&C and give them an ultimatum: Either stop the cooperation with G&C and politely ask them to leave, or, I would write a public statement and publish an article warning people about ZEGG being involved with a dangerous cult.

Following the dinner table incident, I talked to many of the ZEGG inhabitants about what was going on. I found out that the majority were critical of G&C and that only a small group were in favor of G&C. Unfortunately, that small minority consisted of many of the most prominent members of the community, people with a lot of influence, and they were very devoted to the project. Of the summer camp organizers, all but a few were deeply into G&C. Later it became clear to me that the whole summer camp had been one big promotion of G&C. The organizers hadn’t asked the other members of ZEGG for permission since they knew G&C was rather unpopular in the community. In fact, that Felix Krolle would participate was only announced a few days before the beginning of the summer camp.

Few people thus knew that the summer camp essentially was a G&C event. Little by little, however, it became clearer and clearer what was going on. More and more G&C stuff was smuggled in here and there, and for every day the talks contained more and more praise of G&C and Felix Krolle. One woman went a bit overboard, kind of blew the cover, by praising G&C to the skies and started oversharing about how much she just loved giving away all her money and decision power to G&C (you can see the talk here: https://sommercamp.zegg.de/de/live.html#day-6). The panel discussion featuring Felix Krolle was of course supposed to be the pinnacle of the show. I guess my primary role was to lend him legitimacy by my mere presence and hopefully by being just as excited about G&C had they managed to convince me about their amazingness.

Before publishing my statement I had two meetings with some of the leading ZEGG summer camp organizers. At the first meeting I sensed a little window of hope. It was as if I could see glimmers of doubt in their eyes as I presented my findings and warned them about what they had gotten themselves into. They agreed to think about it and meet me the day after. But the openness I had felt on the first meeting was nowhere to be found the following day. Rather undramatically we quickly realised that we were miles apart and no change of course from either party were to be agreed upon. As such, I was written out of the program and I published my statement the following morning.^[14]

Out of consideration to the remaining ZEGG inhabitants I gave the community two months to officially distance themselves from G&C before I would write an article about my experiences. It’s been two months now, and even though they recently agreed to not cooperate with G&C on next year’s summer camp, there hasn’t been any public announcement regarding G&C. ZEGG is still an official partner of G&C, as you can see on G&C’s website here: https://goandchange.de/kooperation/

A friend of mine told me she met Felix Krolle at the ZEGG a couple of weeks ago. As such, I must conclude that ZEGG remains infiltrated by G&C and thus isn’t a completely safe place for people to visit. So, as promised, an article about the whole mess by yours truly. I had hoped it would have been different, but alas, here we are.

The thing that pisses me off the most about the whole thing is not so much the unpleasant encounters at the summer camp. It’s more the dishonesty I have a problem with. First of all I was never informed about the participation of G&C, the controversial nature of the organisation or that the intention with the summer camp was to promote this organization. But worse is that the talk I was supposed to have given, a talk about cognitive complexity stages, the very thing that G&C misuses in a severely perverted way to legitimise the social hierarchies in their community, was part of an overall plan to promote and legitimise G&C—without me knowing anything about it. Fortunately, my gut feeling told me that talking about the Model of Hierarchical Complexity was a bad idea. Instead I talked about the vision of the listening society. I wasn’t getting paid anyway, and I’m pretty sure people enjoyed that topic more. The talk went well by the way, and I sold all the books I had brought with me. Yay.

Apart from Felix, two of the camp organisers and me, a fifth person was to participate in the panel discussion, an integral guy named Rolf Lütterbeck. Not knowing who he was, naively assuming he was just as ignorant as I had been, I sent him an email warning him about who he were to be on a panel discussion with. The only proper thing to do, I thought, would be to give the guy a chance to make up his mind about what he was getting himself into before I published my statement. Once again, however, I didn’t do my fucking homework to properly research people. Shortly after, someone told me he was Felix’s old mentor, now a big supporter of G&C.

So, the so-called panel discussion was nothing but Felix Krolle’s fan club. And then me. Would have been nice to have known beforehand.

Kicked Out of the ZEGG

Oh, and before I forget. I still haven’t talked about what I in the introduction referred to as one of the most insane experiences of my life. The way I left the ZEGG wasn’t entirely peaceful. In fact, my fiancée and I were kicked out, and it almost got physical.

The camp organizers, with whom I had had the above mentioned meetings, did ask me to leave the day after. I said I would. But I woke up quite late the following day with a headache, so I changed my mind and postponed our departure to the morning after. I didn’t interpret their request as an ultimatum, and since I felt rather welcome at the ZEGG, not least due to all the people asking me to stay, I didn’t think much of it. After all, the camp organizers were only in charge of the camp, not the whole village. In addition, I didn’t feel like participating in any of the events anyway and just wanted to chill in my room and the village pub.

Despite wanting to rest, I did end up spending a significant proportion of the day talking to people. Many of the ZEGG folks were appalled about the summer camp having been hijacked and were happy about me taking a stand against G&C. Many of them didn’t know what was going on and were keen on hearing what I had found out. I did see it as my duty to inform people, but I can also see that it can be interpreted as a provocation. On the other hand, were I to deny people the information that I myself found so important? I didn’t seek people actively, they came to me.

Before going to bed my fiancée and I wanted to go to the pub for a goodnight beer. On the way we were stopped, again, by people wanting to talk and praising what we were doing. We chatted for a while, and just before saying goodbye, two of the camp organisers stormed towards us. Things quickly turned rather unpleasant and we were asked, quite assertively, to leave the village immediately. Initially I refused, but after an extremely aggressive verbal exchange I decided that it wasn’t worth staying. Going on an hour-long train ride with a migraine was preferable to staying in this madhouse.

I’ve never experienced anything like it, the gaze in this one woman’s eyes was just murderous, as if her eyes turned completely black. She yelled at one of the other ZEGG women with whom we had been talking to not stand there with her “dog’s eyes”, whatever that meant, and told her she had no say in the matter since she wasn’t even a full member of the ZEGG. As we decided to leave and go pack our bags, she stepped in front of me and blocked the path yelling at us that we should hand over the keys and that she would get our stuff for us and put it outfront. When we refused and told her that we didn’t want her to go through our private belongings, including sensitive objects such as computers and notebooks, she wanted to fucking grab me and force me into submission.

The insanity of the situation was not so much the quarrel itself, but the way in which this middle aged woman, enraged by hate, as if possessed by some malicious spirit, was ready to engage a younger, stronger male in hand-to-hand combat. It may sound rather trivial when I write about it. But it was the way in which this nice hippie lady’s face suddenly just deformed into pure rage and hate, with eyes ready to kill you with a gaze, which made the experience just so darn insane. It was like one of those films about cults where the nice smiling hippies suddenly turn into brainwashed murdermachines when the outsider finally reveals what’s actually going on.

It was only when I raised my voice, the only time I did so, and asked her if she was going to use force against me, that she snapped out of it and finally pulled back. We walked back to our room, but the woman followed us, trying to get as physically close to my fiancée as possible. It was only because the two women we had been talking to, bless their souls, took her under their arms and shielded her from the mad woman with their bodies that she made it to our room. We repeatedly asked the woman to leave, reassuring her that we were going home, but she refused and even wanted to get into our room, yelling that she was not going to wait outside “like a dog”. I guess she was all about dogs that day.

The two women helped us inside without the mad woman entering. After spending a few minutes recovering from what had just happened, we packed our bags and left the village. As announced, the woman did not wait outside.

Rape and Dead Children

After the summer camp I was contacted by several people who had read my statement or otherwise heard about what had happened. I spent the following weeks listening to their testimonies, which all-in-all confirmed my impression that G&C is a very dangerous cult.

Of the many people I spoke to, there were two in particular who left a lasting impression on me. The first is a therapist who’s currently treating several G&C victims. Unfortunately, she can’t go public with these testimonies due to client confidentiality. What I was told, however, did fit the overall pattern of brainwashing, sexual abuse and violence that I had heard and read elsewhere. The second person is Sebastian Stark, who was also mentioned in the Main-Post article:

“Sebastian Stark, former companion of Felix Krolle […] has been active in the so-called ‘integral movement’ for years, a scene that also includes ‘Go & Change’. He also knows K.K. and Krolle for a long time, had been to Lülsfeld several times. In an interview with the editors, he confirmed the descriptions of the dropouts: sex as ‘treatment’, substance abuse and a psychological and financial dependency of the community members. He speaks of ‘permanent totalitarian psychotherapy-like work’ in the monastery. Stark’s assessment: ’People are destroyed, brought into line and traumatized.’”^[15]

Ten years ago Sebastian Stark started this network of young integral people known as IMOVE. It was here he met Felix. Initially, he told me, Felix was just this nerdy kid looking for friends. For years the two were close friends, building up this transformative movement within the integral scene in Germany. This changed, however, when Felix met a guy named Kai Krischik and the two broke off from the main branch of the movement and started Go&Change. Here, Felix and Kai began doing all the things Sebastian had been opposed to, such as psychedelics, group sex and shadow work without consent. Gradually, the whole thing developed more and more cult-like features such as a strict social hierarchy, a guru with a special status (that job became Kai’s) and various mind control measures.

The story Sebastian told me about Kai, which he in turn had heard from other G&C members, was out of this world. I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but the short story is that Kai grew up in a children’s home. Later he was injected with something when he was in the army, which resulted in him being bedridden for five years where he got really really fat. For those five years he studied all kinds of manipulation techniques, body language reading, neuro-linguistic programming, pick-up artistry and shamanism. Eventually he cultivated this guru personality and started G&C with Felix. I don’t know about you, but this guy sounds like the perfect comic book villain. Oh, and apparently he likes to ram giant dildos up people’s cavities. He claims to be some kind of healer, if the colorful stories I hear are true. Apparently he heals people with those dildos. One woman allegedly got severe injuries to her genitals. Go&Change hasn’t denied the story, but merely asserted that it’s a private matter.

I was also told they put great care into separating couples when they arrive at G&C. Initially, new females will be love-bombed and led to believe they have some kind of special “princess” status by all the positive attention they get, especially from the highest ranking male in the group, the guru. A few weeks after arriving, they are usually told they have severe shadow issues and are in need of sexual healing from, you guessed it, Kai the guru. This is standard cult stuff. But the originality of G&C is that the male is pressured into having sex with the other men in the community. The intention is of course to weaken the couple’s relationship so that they become easier to control, and few heterosexual relationships obviously benefit from the woman being fucked by the guru, thinking she’s the new princess, while the man gets fucked in the ass by a bunch of guys whether he’s into it or not.

It’s all typical cult stuff. They all have different explanations to why: facing your shadow, transcending your ego, challenging your heteronormative conditioning etc. But at the end of the day, it always comes down to the guru fucking your wife. And at G&C, as a guy you’ll end up being fucked as well—figuratively as well as literally.

Apart from sex, G&C also uses methods such a sleep deprivation and drugs to manipulate and control their members. Depriving people from sleep, pressuring them to use various substances such as LSD or MDMA, and then having sex with them in ways they otherwise wouldn’t, that really opens you up to be manipulated on a whole other level—and have your soul crushed if one desires. I mean, from what I hear, the stuff they’re doing at G&C sounds like some serious CIA shit.

If chem sex is your thing, no judgment from my side, but if you’re at a place to seek spiritual development, and you’re peer pressured into talking psychedelics, and the guru and everyone else fucks you while you’re tripping balls, it’s pretty difficult to talk about consent. And sex without consent, well, in plain English, that’s rape.

The worst thing, however, was when we started talking about the children. I asked if it was right that two children had died. Sebastian confirmed. I then went on to ask how many children were living there. He said around ten the last time he was there. He added that the children were to be separated from the adults, something I’ve heard from others, too, and that they lived in a separate room and weren’t allowed to roam freely around and mingle with the adults. The reason for this was to enable the children to grow up “egoless” and to prevent the egos of the children to manipulate the parents, or some crazy shit like that. In reality, of course, the reason is that it’s much easier to control someone if the emotional bonds with their children have become as weak as possible.

If children being separated from their parents wasn’t bad enough, the story I heard about one of the couples who lost a child is absolutely insane. In order to prevent the parents from having a moment of clarity at the funeral and realise what they had gotten themselves into, they were pressured to take LSD and participate in a group sex orgy, while at the same time being deprived of sleep, on the night before their child’s funeral. That’s some fucked up shit.^[16]

And that’s how you break people.

The ZEGG Needs to Be Vaccinated against Cults

So, here’s what’s gonna happen: Either all cooperation between ZEGG and G&C comes to an end and all G&C members are banned from entering the ZEGG, or ZEGG becomes a G&C stronghold.

Although it’s currently just a small minority of the ZEGG who’s into G&C, that this minority is composed of prominent members of the community, all lit by a zealous fire to promote G&C, will make it very hard for the remaining members to resist them in the long run. As is often the case with cults, they believe they’ve found the ultimate truth and that they’re going to save the world. As such, they can’t really be bothered by a few broken eggs in the process. They also tend to have this righteous us-against-them thing going on. If you resist them, it just confirms their chosenness and that they are fighting for a just cause. They get high from the struggle. Normal people just get tired of that shit. In the end, more and more people will be exhausted by the constant conflict and move out of the ZEGG, leaving the place in the hands of G&C.

As such, if G&C is allowed to continue their activities, scheming and planning and manipulating people at every opportunity they get, eventually, they will prevail. So to all you cultists out there, congratulations, victory is nigh.

The thing is, these kinds of people eat happy hippies for breakfast. They use the hippies’ values of openness and trust against them: “please trust me”, “it’s for your own good”, “why don’t you listen to me”, “don’t be so dismissive”, “open your mind” and so on. By wanting to be nice, good-hearted and open to new things, the hippies have little defence against a group of skilled manipulators. If one group plays dirty and brutal, while the other insists on playing nice, or even denies to play at all, the odds are disproportionately stacked in favor of the former. They’ll never know what hit them.

Coming from the integral scene, G&C also knows how to play these folks. First of all, integralists tend to over-intellectualize everything so that obvious plain truths are lost in the noise of words, all the best words. I’ve also noticed that there seems to be a bit of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in many smart people’s responses to G&C: no one wants to be the one who’s not developed enough, too unenlightened or just too stupid to grasp the higher meaning of these super duper developed G&C folks. But most importantly, integral virtues such as multiperspectivalism, both-and interpretations and the ideal of not being a postmodern justice warrior who declares things to be evil, are all easily used to neuter and disarm the integralist.

And speaking of nice multiperspectivalist integralists, I also talked to a guy named Alexander Capistran, a very sympathetic fellow who had participated in a number of G&C events in the past, but eventually concluded that the whole thing was rather pathological. You can read his testimonial here: https://alexandercapistran.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/go-change-ein-auf-und-abgesang/

Being a good integralist, he starts his essay on G&C with all the good things about them he can come up with. But obviously, all cults offer something of value; things that incite positive emotions and make people come back for more. For christsake, even the Nazis had a lot of things going for them in terms of arousing positive emotions and offering exciting experiences. But seriously, when the negatives are so severe as in the case of G&C, or the Nazis for that matter, it appears rather out of place to insist that we shouldn’t omit all the positive things. I mean, it’s like having been to a party where everyone got violently raped, but you still want to emphasize that the food was delicious and the DJ played some sassy tunes. Or to stress that at least Hitler gave us the Autobahn when talking about the Holocaust.

So, since I’m not a good integralist and don’t care much about multiperspectivalism in regards to G&C, I’ve decided to just skip all the fun stuff that made Alexander stay around to begin with, and instead present a few snippets from the text with the things that made him leave:

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Inability to criticize: Either the person is challenged and intimidated in front of the whole group or (as happened twice in my case), the person is summoned to a back room where the management of the monastery confronts the person and sets ultimatums: Either you trust and stop criticizing or you have to leave within X hours.”^[17]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Manipulation of Freedom of the Press and the Public: If one follows internal discussion dynamics or now correspondences with the public at Go&Change, one is left with the impression that only the person who is most highly developed should speak. Those arguing from a (perceived) lower perspective should remain silent.”^[18]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Gaslighting: Imbalance of projections and introjections This phenomenon, when projections of others become one’s own reality, is called ‘gaslighting.’ This is, in my opinion, a basic operating principle of manipulation in Go&Change.”^[19]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Undermining of Human Freedom: The basic message often coined at Go&Change: ‘Go into your power, go into your self-responsibility’ is great. What happens too often, however, is that the leadership has unquestioned interpretive authority and, above all, which is the main problem, often acts as a guide to action: why don’t you do this and that, you should do this and that in order to develop yourself. The perfidious thing is: often these are even good observations and tips, only they subvert what they should actually stand for: Self-responsibility and free will in the spirit of love. What would Kai probably do or say now? What would happen if he walked in the door now? I heard this very often and it lay like a wafting shadow over the overall atmosphere. You can still see this in the reaction of some of the former, ‘cast-offs’: loyalty is maintained even after events and discord that are sometimes degrading for those affected. The former dependence on the group or the external leadership by an authority is still effective, only mute. Stockholm syndrome in subtle.”^[20]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Unassailability through intangibility: Lastly, I would like to mention subtle factors that are difficult to grasp but have great relevance. This is about atmospheric violence and harshness. Many processes were conducted with aggression that was legitimized as resolutely pointing out boundaries and soberly mirroring them. This is not an apologia of pseudo-friendliness or “professional detachment,” but simply an observation that harshness and aggression, anger, form an integral part of the force of the project’s psychological work.”^[21]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“Attempting to integrate the shadows at these levels, in my observation, resulted more in a manipulative activation of these levels, with the effect of keeping people down and driving an unending drive for development.”^[22]

[Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)]

“On the whole, however, people don’t shine; they seem jaded, flighty and servile.”^[23]

Alexander ends his essay by concluding that it would be for the better if G&C was dissolved, at least in its present form. I can’t say I disagree.

—

The way I see it, the so-called we-space, which G&C on several occasions hosted during the summer camp, functions as a kind of Trojan horse. Initially, the purpose is not to immediately start manipulating and gaslighting everyone around, but rather to normalize the use of we-spaces and of G&C leading them. Gradually, as people gain trust in the methods and the people conducting them, the we-spaces will begin to contain more and more of the usual bullying and gaslighting cults tend to use them for. And the more intimate details people already have shared in these spaces, the more stuff the facilitators have to use against them. Things will quickly turn quite icky from there.

The thing is, people, especially in places like the ZEGG, need to learn about cults, gaslighting and other manipulation techniques. Conscious communities, or whatever we’re gonna call them, communities where people seek higher spiritual development and closer togetherness than what mainstream society can offer, are exceptionally vulnerable to spiritual hijacking, limbic hacking and unconscious manipulations, all huddling around the cozy fire of the gaslight.

Spiritual people need to get vaccinated against these kinds of things. And as long as they don’t take the jab, we’ll see stories like these again and again.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go back to Bad Belzig any time soon, and honestly I’m starting to get pretty fed up with the place, but if someone would go out there and offer a workshop or two about these matters I think it would benefit a lot of people.

Until then, my advice to you is to stay as far away as possible.

—

^[1] In German, “Zentrum für experimentelle Gesellschaftsgestaltung”, in English “Center for Experimental and Cultural Design”.

^[2] Hello Felix, I know you’re reading this 🙂

^[3] Proper practical usage of adult development theory must emphasise natural hierarchies — not introduce another arbitrary dominator hierarchy into the social matrix. It’s adult development psychology 101.

^[4] After having witnessed one of the G&C led we-spaces at the summer camp, I called my dear friend and colleague Daniel Görtz who’s a doctor in sociology with a keen interest in cults. I told him about my concerns and started talking about the so-called “we-space”, but before I got a chance to describe what I had experienced, he interrupted me and insisted on guessing how it worked. Without knowing anything about what I had seen, he could in detail describe what had happened and told me that most cults have such methods. It’s standard procedure in the cult business, so to speak.

^[5] Not only was he very insistent on getting more meetings with me, every time he saw me at dinner he tried to sit as close to me as possible. Creepy.

^[6] In German, “Aussaugen”.

^[7] Felix is probably not aware that Michael Commons, the creator of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, recently added an even higher stage than cross-paradigmatic: Meta cross-paradigmatic. My sneaking suspicion tells me that had Felix known, he would probably have claimed to be that.

^[8] I recently watched the panel discussion. It’s interesting to see how they addressed my observation that they didn’t seem to show love and that they all have dead eyes. Apparently, highly evolved people do not show love the way us normal people do. In fact, we probably can’t feel how warm and loving they are because we’re just too unevolved to notice it. I’m so glad we cleared that up. You can watch the panel discussion here: https://sommercamp.zegg.de/de/live.html#day-9

^[9] Achtung!!! Ich verstehe die Sehnsucht nach liebevoller Gemeinschaft, doch macht nicht den Fehler sich dieser Glaubensgemeinschaft anzuschließen. Bei Go & Change handelt es sich definitiv um eine Sektenartige Gruppierung. Hier wird systematisch der Kontakt zur Außenwelt gekappt. Man soll sich von Freunden/Familie die kritisch sind distanzieren, es gibt deutliche Hierarchien und angebliche Energiearbeit/Psychotherapie welche im Endeffekt Brainwashing ist. teilweise werden hier Familien aufgelöst, Kinder von ihren Eltern getrennt und was weiß ich noch alles, und das Alles geschieht nach dem Gusto der “Anführer” namens Felix und Kai welche sich selber jegliche Freiheit nehmen können während die “Bewohner” strengen Tages und Arbeitsrhytmen unterliegen. Ich habe leider einen Freund an diese “Gemeinschaft” verloren. Einige weitere Freunde haben zum Glück rechtzeitig den Absprung geschafft. Ich habe mittlerweile auch von einigen anderen Aussteigern Berichte gehört die eindeutig auf Sekte und Brainwashing hinweisen. Natürlich gibt es dort Praktiken die funktionieren und einem zunächst suggerieren das es richtig ist was dort vermittelt wird oder man über sich selbst lernt, auch ist mit sicherheit nicht alles schlecht was dort passiert. Auf Dauer soll und wird aber eine Abhängigkeit und ein Machtgefälle erzeugt welches in einer Art Ohnmacht endet. So richtig bewusst wird es vielen Aussteigern erst nachdem sie davon weg sind. Ich rate zu äußerster Vorsicht und wünsche allen Menschen hier das Beste. —fex cnrd

^[10] Diese Gemeinschaft hat für mich etwas von einer Psychosekte.

Tut mir Leid das sagen zu müssen, aber ich mags auch nicht verschweigen.

Starke Manipulation durch sowas wie : “wir denken alle, dass du…” und “wir möchten dir spiegeln, dass…” dann wird diskutiert, “bis alle dieselbe Perspektive haben”, zur Not die ganze Nacht durch, aber “durch wenig Schlaf hat man auch weniger innere Widerstände”. Du wirst angehalten nicht alleine zu essen, darfst dich auch nicht im Speiseraum gesondert setzen, denn “wenn man sich absondert, wachsen die Schatten”. Idee ist, konstant mit anderen Menschen zu sein, weil ein Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaft fähig sei, seine Schattenseiten zu transformieren. Innere Hirarchie gemischt mit Polyamorie – ” ich mach dir sofort ein Kind, wenn du diese Themen transformiert hast.”

Uiuiuiuiui… passt gut auf euch auf : ) —silvia mittelstaedt

^[11] Bei Go&Change ist die innere Prozess- und Schattenarbeit Kern der Gemeinschaft. Es gibt eine offizielle 7 stufige Hierarchie in die alle Bewohner eingestuft werden, in der obersten Gruppe sind die Beiden Gründer Felix und Kai. Ein gängiges Mittel ist das “Spiegeln”, wobei dir dein Verhalten und Verhaltensmuster gespiegelt werden, jedoch wird ausschließlich von Ranghöheren an niedrigere Mitglieder gespiegelt, welche dessen Urteile scheinbar uneingeschränkt annehmen. Es gibt eine  Tagesstruktur mit Aktivitäten und Arbeiten zu denen alle Bewohner verpflichtet sind, außer die Ranghöheren Gruppen.

Ich erlebte einen Mann dem wegen zuspätkommen zu einer Aktivität mit einer Disziplinarmaßnahme (1Std. in einem Raum sitzen) gedroht wurde. Außerdem wurde ein Mensch dafür gelobt, dass er 54 Std. wach war, da dies als liebevoll der Gemeinschaft gegenüber gewertet wird. Seine Frau wurde kritisiert ihn nicht genug dafür Wertzuschätzen.

Auch einiges was ich gehört habe, z.B. die Trennung von Eltern und Kindern, stärken das Bild das hier Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse geschaffen werden und Menschen entmächtigt.

Allen Menschen die in der Gemeinschaft wohnen oder sich in Annäherung befinden wünsche ich hinterfragen zu können, ob dass was diese Gruppierung ihnen gibt es Wert es was sie ihnen nimmt, Ihre Selbstbestimmung und Selbstachtung.

Allen die sich dafür Interessieren rate ich zu Vorsicht und immer der eigenen Wahrnehmung am meisten zu trauen. —Markus XX

^[12] Ich halte diesen Ort für sehr destruktiv. Ausgeprägte Hierarchien, große Egos, Untergrabung von Selbstbestimmtheit und Individualität, Abwertung von Gefühlen und der Stimme des Herzens, psychologische Manipulation und das alles unter dem Deckmantel der “Liebe”. —Sarah D

^[13] Dieser Ort hat meine Grenzen überschritten. —Noar Blume

^[14] You can read my statement here: https://metamoderna.org/the-reasons-why-i-emil-ejner-friis-am-withdrawing-from-the-panel-discussion-at-the-zegg-summer-camp-july-30-2021/

^[15] https://www.world-today-news.com/psychological-pressure-and-sexualized-violence-in-a-former-monastery/

^[16] You are free to accuse me of not being on a high enough level of cognitive development to understand the higher meaning of all this stuff. That’s on the house. My recommendation still stands: Stay the fuck away.

^[17] “Kritikunfähigkeit: Entweder die Person wird vor der ganzen Gruppe gechallengt und eingeschüchtert oder (wie in meinem Fall zwei Mal vorgekommen), die Person wird in ein Hinterzimmer bestellt, wo die Leitung des Klosters denjenigen zur Rede stellt und Ultimaten setzt: Entweder du vertraust und hörst auf zu kritisieren, oder du musst binnen X Stunden gehen.”

^[18] “Manipulation der Pressefreiheit und Öffentlichkeit: Verfolgt man interne Gesprächsdynamiken oder jetzt Korrespondenzen mit der Öffentlichkeit bei Go&Change, drängt sich der Eindruck auf, nur die Person soll sprechen, die am höchsten entwickelt ist. Wer aus einer (vermeintlich) niederen Perspektive argumentiert, sollte schweigen.”

^[19] “Gaslighting: Imbalance von Projektionen und Introjektionen: Dieses Phänomen, wenn Projektionen anderer zur eigenen Wirklichkeit werden, nennt sich „Gaslighting“. Das ist meines Erachtens ein Grundwirkungsprinzip der Manipulation bei Go&Change.”

^[20] “Unterminierung der menschlichen Freiheit: Die bei Go&Change oft kolportierte Grundbotschaft: „Geh in deine Kraft, geh in deine Selbstverantwortung“ ist großartig. Was aber zuhauf passiert, ist, dass die Leitung über die unhinterfragte Deutungshoheit verfügt und vor allem, was das Hauptproblem ist, oft handlungsleitend wirkt: Mach doch mal dies und jenes, du solltest das und das machen, um dich zu entwickeln. Das Perfide ist: oft sind dies sogar gute Beobachtungen und Tips, nur subvertierten sie das, wofür sie eigentlich stehen sollten: Selbstverantwortung und freier Wille im Geiste der Liebe. Was würde Kai jetzt wohl machen oder sagen? Was wäre, wenn er jetzt zur Tür hineinkommen würde? Das habe ich sehr oft gehört und es lag wie ein wabernder Schatten über der Gesamtatmosphäre. Das merkt man auch noch an der Reaktion einiger Ehemaliger, „Verstoßener“: Die Loyalität erhält sich auch nach für die Betroffenen teilweise entwürdigenden Vorgängen und Zerwürfnissen. Die ehemalige Abhängigkeit von der Gruppe bzw. der Fremdführung durch eine Autorität ist immer noch wirksam, nur stumm. Stockholm-Syndrom im subtilen Bereich.”

^[21] “Unangreifbarkeit durch Ungreifbarkeit: Zuletzt möchte ich noch subtile Faktoren benennen, die schwer greifbar sind, aber eine große Relevanz haben. Hier geht es um atmosphärische Gewalt und Härte. Viele Prozesse wurden mit Aggression geführt, die als entschiedenes Grenzen-Aufzeigen und nüchternes Spiegeln legitimiert wurde. Das ist keine Apologie von Pseudo-Freundlichkeit oder „professioneller Distanz“, sondern einfach die Beobachtung, dass Härte und Aggression, Wut, einen integralen Teil der Wucht der psychologischen Arbeit des Projekts bilden.”

^[22] “Der Versuch, die Schatten auf diesen Ebenen zu integrieren, resultierte meiner Beobachtung nach eher in einer manipulativen Aktivierung dieser Ebenen, mit dem Effekt, die Leute kleinzuhalten und einen unendlichen Entwicklungsdrang anzutreiben.”

^[23] “Im Großen und Ganzen aber strahlen die Menschen nicht, sondern wirken abgespannt, flatterhaft und servil.”