Expos­ing dan­ger­ous illu­sions – shap­ing the future

Every year on 9 August, the peace bell rings at the Hen­ry Dunant Muse­um in Hei­den, Switzer­land, in mem­o­ry of the atom­ic bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki in 1945.

SJust as our eco­nom­ic sys­tem was con­struct­ed by us humans, the illu­sion of nuclear safe­ty is also a con­struct of the mind. The guest speak­er at the memo­r­i­al ser­vice in Hei­den, Flo­ri­an Eblenkamp, board mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Cam­paign to Abol­ish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), made this very clear in his remarks:

“We live in a para­dox: nuclear weapons are con­sid­ered a nec­es­sary deter­rent – and at the same time unthink­able to use. How can some­thing be unthink­able and nec­es­sary at the same time? The con­cept of nuclear deter­rence is a the­o­ry that can­not be proven. It works – until it does­n’t.”

For Flo­ri­an Eblenkamp, the opin­ion that more nuclear weapons make the world safer defies all log­ic.

“Sim­i­lar to the debate on gun own­er­ship in the USA, which is incom­pre­hen­si­ble to us Euro­peans, the argu­ment seems to be: the only thing that can counter nuclear weapons is more nuclear weapons. Behind this demand lies the con­cept of nuclear deter­rence. How­ev­er, no one knows for sure whether such deter­rence works. What we do know for sure, on the oth­er hand, are the con­se­quences of the use of nuclear weapons – sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, med­ical­ly, humane­ly. … The con­cept of nuclear deter­rence ignores all of this. It is a con­cept that was devel­oped sole­ly to obscure the truth about nuclear weapons. The truth about what hap­pens when these weapons are used. What hap­pens to peo­ple, to human­i­ty and to humane­ness?”

These words shook us up. They made us think and once again held up a mir­ror to us. Just because an opin­ion or point of view is held by more and more peo­ple does not make it ‘more cor­rect’ or more mean­ing­ful.

At the same time, these words have encour­aged us to dri­ve for­ward the trans­for­ma­tion of our eco­nom­ic sys­tems with the same deter­mi­na­tion. These sys­tems are also con­struct­ed by peo­ple – and what we have cre­at­ed, we can also change.

Col­lab­o­rais­ing Organ­i­sa­tions® – shap­ing the future

Col­lab­o­rais­ing Organ­i­sa­tions® stand for a dif­fer­ent kind of future: they embody co-cre­ation, mutu­al trust and a cul­ture of togeth­er­ness. They are organ­i­sa­tions that devel­op in a long-term, holis­tic and dynam­ic way. They cre­ate a frame­work in which the needs of peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions are equal­ly respect­ed and bal­anced.

When we no longer view the econ­o­my sole­ly as a dri­ver of prof­it, but as an embed­ded part of life and nature, new hori­zons open up.  Old pat­terns and nar­ra­tives lose their pow­er – they must be unlearned so that some­thing new can flour­ish.  Col­lab­o­rais­ing Organ­i­sa­tions® fol­low this invi­ta­tion. They cre­ate spaces where peo­ple can devel­op their poten­tial, organ­i­sa­tions can cre­ate mean­ing, and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty con­tributes to more sus­tain­able rela­tion­ships, fer­tile soil and a health­i­er bios­phere.    

Just as Flo­ri­an Eblenkamp advo­cates for the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons, we advo­cate for an econ­o­my and organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture that makes devel­op­ment, coop­er­a­tion and holism its guid­ing prin­ci­ples. We are tak­ing our own per­son­al, deter­mined steps towards greater vital­i­ty and gen­uine cre­ative free­dom.

In any case, this has fur­ther increased our moti­va­tion for our book project – we con­tin­ue to write with curios­i­ty, deter­mi­na­tion and con­fi­dence.