Our hope lies in your courageous actions

News from the future

Dear Grandpa,

After so many years, I am reaching out to you from a future that once seemed far away to both of us: the year 2103. Here I stand, in my old age, surrounded by memories and uncertainty, with the unique opportunity to send you a message through time.

I am doing well, but our daily lives have become strenuous, and the weather is unpredictable everywhere. Beautiful days are rare, and I fondly remember my childhood - when everything seemed somehow different and more peaceful. Nowadays, we spend a lot of time and effort just to meet our basic needs.

In your time, most people lived behind closed doors, primarily focused on themselves, their personal interests, and their longing for material things. This still exists today, but it's a small minority. Individualism came first, humanity second. We are no longer driven by the allure of money and commerce. The Homo Economicus was indeed a very heartless being - power and profit-oriented - living at the expense of others. Self-actualization was merely a means to acquire money, regardless of its source.

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The end of a logic is the beginning of a new

Dear Grandpa,

This logic was unsustainable in the long run. It ended up abolishing itself. Unfortunately, it took a very long time, and it was not a peaceful process - it cost too much suffering, lives, and nature.

But Grandpa, you must not despair when reading this. You are living in a time of change. People in the country see and feel this. They are disappointed with this politics - but in the sense of the end of a deception and also the end of self-deception. They no longer want to be seen and treated as business objects. They feel like independent subjects and act on their own.

Yes, these days are challenging for you - but for us, this time is a moment of hope - the fog is clearing - finally, people can see more clearly.

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Democracy doesn't mean just ticking a box for a party and delegating your fate for 5 years to people who are more or less strangers to you - with whom you actually have no personal relationship. And where the winner decides everything, and the loser decides nothing. Government against opposition. Pitting valuable ideas and people against each other.

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Dear Grandpa,

people understand that it doesn't work that way. They want to improve this form of democracy and get involved! People realize that every individual must take responsibility for their own fate and that of others to the best of their ability. Not alone, but all together.

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Dear Grandpa,

it's not a moment of disappointment, but a moment of hope. You just have to look closely.

There, even in your surroundings, people are standing up, forming cooperatives and associations, engaging in community-supported agriculture, open-source projects, protest movements, initiatives for more democracy, and associations of all kinds.

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But where is the problem?

But Grandpa, if you look closely, you'll notice that these initiatives start off differently and don't develop like commercial enterprises. It's important to observe closely and understand why they aren't as successful. They are not exclusive or elitist; they should naturally spread and grow, just as nature intends.

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So, Grandpa, what's holding them back?

It's not their nature, but the human-made system in which they grow.

When networking with others, they often fall back into market behavior patterns. Thinking in hierarchies and central structures doesn't work when they don't exist. Profitability and profits don't make sense when that's not the primary goal. This commercial mindset has also led to many laws that block the natural spread of these initiatives because they don't appear profit-oriented and competitive. In our time, when quality of life has become so scarce, we have developed very different criteria that are important and decisive for our actions.

And it's actually simple, it's a matter of methodology, you just need to learn it - like in elementary school.

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Tutoring from the future

Dear Grandpa,

Now, I must confess to you that I'm not writing this letter just for personal reasons, no - we don't have much time until you realize this on your own, so I have to whisper it to you in this way.

Yes, sorry, but if you could understand this a bit quicker, we could simply have a better life.

That's why I want to give you and your contemporaries a little nudge:

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There were significant scientists in your time. Already in the 1990s, the American economist Elinor Ostrom researched particularly durable social cooperatives and organizations of the commons and formulated this "Constitution of the Commons." For this, she also received the Nobel Prize in 2009 with others and defined 8 simple design principles of these commons in her speech.

Grandpa, I want to tell you about Silke Helfrich, who translated and further developed the concept of the commons into German. And she would answer the question, “What is this commoning?” by saying, it's the wrong question - The right question is, "What is commoning made of?"

It's simply about people collaborating on an equal footing to get along with each other and to do something useful for themselves and others in a self-determined manner.

She has visited many enduring community initiatives and cooperatives worldwide, small but also very large, where thousands of people create a livelihood for hundreds of thousands - already coordinated but especially in small, self-organized groups. Together with other researchers and many sessions, they recognized common patterns, these so-called “Patterns of Commoning,” these “patterns of collective action” were developed.

There are not many. There are initially 30 such action patterns that promote social coexistence based on self-organization, self-determination, and caring economy.

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GLOBAL COMMONING - Why is that so important?

Yes, Grandpa, why am I telling you this?

Because these patterns are so simple and logical - we learn them in kindergarten. But in truth, children know this instinctively from birth. They learn to understand and appreciate their natural behavior better. This forms the basis of their self-esteem and their awareness of others, for self-determined action, and the courage to connect with other people and nature.

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Grandpa, our brains primarily function based on pattern recognition. When we recognize a pattern for something or an action, we can not only learn it; we can understand it. Our brain is then able to immediately recognize similar situations through similar patterns and apply it to other situations in life, entirely intuitively, without thinking.

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Why is understanding these patterns so crucial in dealing with these initiatives?

By uncovering the motivations behind these initiatives and bringing the common behavioral patterns closer to people, we enable them to grasp these and distinguish them from the usual patterns of the commercial world. Then, the initiatives can spread unhindered because people simply understand and apply them correctly.

Doing more commoning simply means doing less capitalism - every child understands this distinction where we come from.

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Doing more commoning simply means doing less capitalism - every child of us understands that - they can tell the difference.

Dear Grandpa,

Why is this so important in your political situation? You are currently experiencing a shift to the right, which is essentially a typical capitalist behavior pattern in the struggle for the distribution of increasingly scarce resources. Next, culprits are sought.

It's crucial that politics now just steps aside, giving people the space to involve everyone in shaping the future, regardless of political orientation. To simply experience and appreciate what we have in common. It's not just about the fair distribution of property or status but primarily about the power of collective action that builds trust. This mutual trust is what we need to overcome the growing divides and competition and enable peaceful, people-led change.

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Tech Talk - There is still so much to talk about...

Dear Grandpa,

You're a software architect - so am I. I would have so much to tell you in a "Tech Talk":

How people on the internet connect on an equal footing without central servers, drying up the business models of these big tech corporations.

How solidarity among people and places worldwide recognized and found each other through the patterns of commoning on the internet.

How we've understood the rapid developments of technology and economy and their social and ecological impacts early on with "Artificial Intelligence," and protected ourselves accordingly.

How we collectively learned to distinguish between meaningless and meaningful knowledge, and how a good idea from one person could spread across the globe in an instant, becoming collective knowledge.

How we've involved people in political life so that the public and government formed a unit that acted together, not against each other.

How we tamed the exclusive world of business logic by embedding it in human logic and nature logic. In short, we've circumvented this system of inequality, these monopolies, this exploitation.

How in the end, we used this connected world only as an educational tool, with which people collectively re-taught themselves what they had unlearned over the last centuries through these wrong behavior patterns.

Today, we rarely need this connected world because we are autonomous and simply know through personal exchange why and how we act.

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Dear Grandpa,

Just find some interested people and figure it out with them - I'm sure you have ideas :)

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Dear Grandpa,

To conclude, I want to share the most important message of all. It's not just me sending a message to my grandpa. It's descendants all over the world sending their concerns - to their grandmas and grandpas and to those who wish for descendants. You are not alone in this. Our common task is not laborious; it doesn't require great effort. It can't be mandated by law - it's simply a matter of spirit and will. It's our coordinated action that builds trust, frees us from the burden of the meaningless, and brings us all great joy and a better life.

Dear Grandpa, our hope is in your courageous actions.

Farewell!

Your granddaughter A.

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