This is a story about power, about money, about morals, about norms, about dogmas. So it is actually a story about everything, it is your story. You can ignore it, read it, evaluate it, reject it, affirm it, share it with others, like the link to it, or simply overlook it.
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Bansky (artist)
Power is a basic political-sociological concept that is used for relationships of dependency or superiority, i.e. for the ability of those in power to enforce and achieve their own goals without the consent, against the will or despite the resistance of others (M. Weber)(1).
Those in power construct their way to a position of power by planning a career, the challenges of which also justify the legitimacy of the assumption of power. Only the better people are allowed to acquire and exercise power. This concession comes first and foremost from those who strive for this power. They were previously subject to it and perceive the path to this power as liberation.
Power always comes from people (in the field of social interaction). As a rule, it is also aimed at them. Power is not divisible, but it can be delegated. A hierarchy is therefore a structure that describes the official delegation of this power. This does not necessarily have to be the actual delegation, but if it is the same actors, informal power, whether patriarchy or shadow government, is also accepted.
Power fuels the ego, and power is prey for those who have to make prey in order to feel good, or at least better than bad. I will come back to this.
We encounter money everywhere in daily life, as banknotes and coins, as book money in bank accounts or as digital money on cards and smartphones. The important thing is not what material or form money has. What is important is that it is generally accepted as a means of payment. Money must fulfill three functions: the function of a medium of exchange, the function as a unit of account and the function as a storage of value (2).
That is the definition of the German Federal Bank. Everything important in life cannot be bought, so why this unsuitable medium of exchange? It does not work as a unit of account, how else could price increases and inflation be explained. If the price of gold rises, does it simply hang higher on the wall, or is the gold worth more or the money worth less?
Money as a store of value, yes and no. For those who know how to exchange resources and labor for FIAT currency by lending for a limited period of time, perhaps, but for those who ran to the bakery with their suitcase full of money between the great European wars, probably not. I’ll come back to that.
Webster (3) does not see the term as being so clear-cut and approaches the meaning by distinguishing between morality in judgment, morality as a meme, morality as a confirmation of right and wrong, morality as a set of obligations, morality as a means of distinguishing a value, or morality as the result of the fight. I do not know whether Webster will achieve such a moral victory in his attempt. But the moral victory is often claimed by the defeated in battle. I’ll come back to that.
In Cambridge (4), norms are seen as the accepted standard of the majority. The will to simplify as a means of dealing with chaos, the will to declare the decision at the end of the process as final – at least for the time being – the will to norm is also the will to standardize, to streamline communication and certainly in modern industrial societies always a source of power and money, and as a patent, completely without morality. I will come back to that.
Wikipedia knows: Developing Ontology-Grounded Methods and Applications has the abbreviation DOGMA. Nevertheless, one probably thinks of the religious or power-driven exaggeration of the norm. An industrial standard may serve to increase money or to expand power, but it is designed for a limited time and without morality. When norms and morality come together, there is room for much more. The dogma is suitable for binding people (who submit to it), it prevents energy loss in loops of repetition, it gives power when sacred things have to be used to interpret it and it unites the hunting party to unconditional success. If you continue reading, you will see how these terms, which were mentioned in seemingly unrelated ways at the beginning, are slowly coming together in a mixture that does not necessarily bode well. I will come back to that.
Somehow these terms were independent concepts of thought, as always in human communication subject to subjective interpretation, vague, and somehow manageable. However, when they come together, something is brewing.
This raises the question, not just now, why such a text is published here, on such a website? What does a living community have to do with power, money, morals, norms and dogmas? I will come back to that.
At a meeting that we still remember well, a friend named Gottfried with over 20 years of experience with and in intentional communities came to visit. He was fascinated by the concept of Familiafeliz and said it was a very contemporary form of community design that would build on the experiences of all the previous community designs (which he considered to have failed). He described it like this at the time: most communities are strong communities with weak members. These weak people come together with the intention of better protecting themselves from the strong. They invent rules, which they turn into laws, with the intention of offering reassurance to their fears. The myth is always that the strong are contained in the laws and that the collateral damage of their being strong is limited. And it always remains a myth.
It is said that Germans stop at a red light at an empty intersection at three in the morning, the tank of the strong keeps driving, even during the day, even when there is oncoming traffic, and does not follow the norms and rules of the weak.
My friend said that the weak in the communities invent rules in a hope that fails. In this respect, they are repeating the same thing that they had actually cited as a reason for distancing themselves from society, this thicket of norms and rules in which a) no one can find their way and b) which are constantly being violated by the strong.
Gottfried was only in Cervera in the House of the Dragon for 3 weeks, but his visit left traces – conceptual ones too. He concluded with the words: “What you are doing was not yet possible back then – when I went to communities – but it is only now becoming possible. Keep going.”
In discussions we often distinguish between strong communities with weak members and weak communities with strong members. A monastic community is very stable, very sustainable, above all because it is a strong community. The weakness of the members in relation to the community is collateral damage that is accepted because those who grant the option of the monastic community have their own goals that go far beyond those of this community. Familiafeliz is a weak community, a very weak one. That is probably why it is unattractive to many, because it hardly promises peace for those who are afraid, and it also offers little support for those who are uncertain about their path. In general, its aimlessness provokes the question of meaning, and even worse, it has no problem naming questions as questions without giving answers. I will come back to this.
Our Familiafeliz group, with a shared economy, decentralized in Spain and Germany, had dealt intensively with these issues in the formulation of its charter. In contrast to many other community designs – motivated by the intention to do something different – we have not isolated ourselves, but include the whole world. We basically say that everyone on this planet belongs to Familiafeliz. The only question that remains is how close they come to a middle ground – as they imagine it. We often receive astonished feedback that the communal aspect of our community cannot be seen at all. Our response is all the more surprising: That’s a good thing!
In our opinion, a community that no one needs is the absolute optimum. Such a community does not promise what it cannot keep, it does not create dependencies, it does not exploit and is not suitable as a tool in the hands of those who want to exploit others.
But if a community enjoys being useless, what is the advantage of feeling a sense of belonging to it, or perhaps developing, maintaining and expanding it.
Another visitor to our community once came by and complained about his family accusing him of being a daydreamer, a good-for-nothing, of doing pointless things. They knew that he only worked a few weeks a year and that he spent most of his time doing what he enjoyed. It was not goal-oriented. He was wasting his life pointlessly.
My reply surprised him – and delighted him: he should consider himself lucky to receive this extraordinary praise and the recognition he was receiving. Only those who can regularly do pointless things are free. Those who subject their actions to a benefit or meaning, whether it is imposed from outside or developed from within themselves (which I cannot recognize, by the way), are not free. They are and remain trapped in their accepted structures and ways of thinking. I will come back to this.
As easy as it is for us to attribute this sense of community to a good mother, this ability to leave the ego behind in order to plan, decide and act in the best way possible for the “we” – in this case the family – it is just as difficult for us to extend this intention of well-being to our own clan. What is it that drives people today into discussion groups, what offers rituals, what organizes hunting parties? Perhaps it is the will to “we”.
A sentence for you: Anyone who rejects money as a form of maintaining power and as a means of organizing people, who shows little interest in standardization in a world of diversity, who does not want to generate or establish dogmas in order to consolidate their status or avoid the need for an explanation, is already interesting for a society that is desperately looking for direction, that demands leadership, good leadership of course, in their sense, and therefore also meaningful, efficient and effective.
Society as a term is also an oversimplification of the diversity of people as a concept of thought. One should not actually attribute any characteristics or intentions to it. Nevertheless, the term triggers something that one can intend on the path to knowledge and can therefore – in an environment such as this post – also be seen as legitimate.
It is your story, one of many that is often told by others to move you. Harari – controversial history professor from the Middle East – said the time had come to be careful not to let one’s mind be hijacked. The fifth battlefield defined by NATO think tanks is psychological warfare. Edward Bernays’s battle for mind-control began long before the pyramids were built. And it will not end if one finally does the “right” thing… with power.
The dream of the weak of the super-strong, who will come, who will fix things and bring salvation, is presented as a dream and also serves as a comfortable excuse for one’s own failure.
Giving without intention does not build a value chain and will not help the clever to increase something that others accept as a means of exchange. If your own deed does not end in a product that you have to fight against the competition – pay attention to the words – to push through on the market, your own deed may be pointless, but it may also be pleasant for you. And if the collateral damage is the compassionate happiness of those around you, friendly fire is also suitable for preparing food.
When the sentence: “But without money it doesn’t work!” is no longer enough to cope with everyday life, you mentally enter building 7, and unfortunately that is at the beginning of September. If you then practice giving without intention and your ego constantly interferes, you are on the high seas and without a captain. You can then turn it and twist it (the steering wheel) but there is no helmsman on board.
As with any relative equilibrium, the sinking empire is attracted to the chaos that it needs to find a new relative equilibrium in the future.
The path through this chaos is arduous, long, much longer than you thought. It also involves reading articles like these, which ultimately leave you at a loss.
And that’s a good thing. I’ll come back to that.
You can only reject what you accept. Anyone who accepts and rejects power as a concept is asking the question of power themselves. Even if their own kingdom ends on the horizon of their forehead, it is a demarcation and thus conducive to the existence of the thing itself. Even the successful dropout then becomes a boomerang of the society they left. And as a TikToker they return and monetize their superiority.
The so-called Internet is currently bubbling. New social media platforms are constantly claiming to be the better ones. The fragmentation of society is followed by the dismantling of the mind. From books to emails, from short messages to smileys. The trivialization of communication in chaos competes with the charging cycles of autonomous vehicles. The network is overloaded.
Every discussion is charged with morality, the ROI in the afterlife allows unlimited exploitation, and in war, all means are LEGAL.
Anyone who manages to exchange weapons for money turns money into a weapon. Then every money trade is also a trade of weapons. And since opinions can also be bought these days, the – published – opinion also becomes a weapon.
It is just a story. To attribute meaning to it misses the point. The story may create or motivate a question, but it cannot formulate an answer. We are too different for that. I will come back to that – gladly.