by Dieter Duhm

In principle, every community of the future will be a Healing Biotope, otherwise it could not function and survive within the global network of life. A Healing Biotope is a community of human beings, animals and plants that support and complement each other by communicating. This gives them a high potential for development and survival. In the following I want to list some characteristics of functioning communities of the future. They are deeply rooted in a very precise vision of a fundamentally different way of living and communicating with each other. By living together I always mean the coexistence of all human beings, the coexistence of humans with nature and her beings, the coexistence of humans with the universe and its beings. On all three levels - the social, the ecological and the spiritual - a definite transformation is taking place that will enable us to survive because it re-integrates us into the larger context of all.

1. Only tribes will survive

Maybe this quote by the American Indian leader Vine Deloria is a bit too strong, but it contains a central truth: in most cases the powers of the individual aren't enough to guarantee a meaningful survival. We need communitarian and spiritual powers of new kind. We need an energy connection with the community, with the biosphere and with the universe.

2. The communitarian self

Functioning communities will help to bring about a kind of communitarian self, containing all powers of the individual selves. The communitarian self is a higher development on the path of evolution. It is much stronger and much more intelligent than the individual self, and with its spiritual energy it can overcome situations of hunger, cold, or pain which would be too difficult for the individual self. The communitarian self is fully functional when there are no unnecessary collisions between the individual selves and when every individual self has awakened to fully responsible participation in the whole.

3. Individuation

The superior power of the communitarian self cannot be formed if the participants of a community are brought into a uniform line. Members of future communities must completely overcome their tendency to collectivism and uniformity as promoted by the trends and media of our time. This is prerequisite to their self-responsible participation in the idea of future communities. The authentic power of the community needs the authentic, individual autonomy of its participants. Therefore future communities must care for and support all inner processes which empower the process of individuation. This important principle is crucial for love. Man and woman, woman and man, woman and woman, man and man can face each other again and again in a loving way only if they meet as responsible individuals, and not as segments of a party, a church or an ideology. They need to be able to perceive and love each other every moment of their way together, free of collective pressures from any group. Eros lives on this freedom, because it is here that an intimacy comes into being that can be relied upon.

4. Transparency

The underlying quality that makes a community functional is transparency, transparency in group formation, transparency in love relationships, transparency in power issues and decision making processes. Without transparency there is no trust, no open communication and no communitarian self. The community of the future develops public forums to make the group life of all its members transparent. The members themselves discover a great joy in not having to lie anymore.

5. Truth

Truth is necessary for transparency. Truth is the opposite of our way of being today, because we have been forced to lie from early childhood. Now it is up to us to either continue with this habit or to join efforts for a new basis of living together. Untruth stops the development of love and the formation of communities, it blocks transparency and obstructs communication with the beings of nature.

Whether a person is ready for community or not depends on his/her ability and readiness for truth. This can only be achieved once we overcome the reasons for lies. Communities of the future will develop a way of living and loving that doesn't force anyone to lie. Can we imagine: a free, transparent communication among human beings without lies? Lovers that don't need to hide from each other due to false promises of eternal faithfulness? Children that aren't told lies by their parents? And human beings that don't even lie to animals anymore? Under those circumstances it will no longer be easy to cheat a fish with bait on a hook. The concept of truth leads us to the deepest level on which life in the new communities is based. Where truth develops, trust develops. Where trust develops, healing between all beings develops.

Truth is so closely linked with the concepts of transparency, ecology, non-violence, and free love, that they form a mental unity. Future communities will survive thanks to their ability for communication, which in turn stands in direct relation to their level of truth. Where truth fully takes root, new possibilities for communication in spiritual and telepathic form will develop. All beings in the biosphere communicate among themselves in this way.

6. Non-violence

Only if we enter a non-violent state towards all fellow beings, will we be able to discover and deepen life. Wherever we use violence, wrong systems of communication and information will develop. The violence we use will always come back to us in the form of fear. This is a bottleneck of universal communication, a bottleneck in human development and in the biosphere. In new cultural systems violence definitely should not give an evolutionary advantage, because violence always goes along with fear and lies and a tightening in the whole life-system. If we had never used violence against animals, plants and all beings of nature including ourselves, we would know more about them. The reasons for violence are rooted in the human being itself, in the cultural coercion to constantly lie, in unlived energy potentials, in a wrong concept of love, sexuality and faithfulness. Therefore non?violence is not a moral formula, but a key word for a fundamentally new cultural formation.

7. Free love

Free love means love free of fear and pretense. The universal communication of future communities is a fearless contact between all beings of creation. Within such a system it would not make sense anymore to block the powers of love by any sort of prohibitions. Especially between the sexes free love stands for the central principle of opening and truth, be it mental, spiritual, sexual or all at once. Free love is a given of our existence when lies, fear, and humiliation have been taken out of love. Future communities without free love would be a contradiction in terms, and therefore would not be capable of survival.

8. Biotope and fellow beings.

All beings are different forms of life or different »states of aggregation« of the one universal spirit. That is why all beings live in constant spiritual communication among themselves. We will learn to communicate with plants and animals the same way as with our friends, because they are animated by the same spiritual energy as we are. Some of them are like embryos or children of creation and want to evolve according to an entelechy that leads all beings to the same goal. We as human beings have the possibility to understand all this and help our fellow beings in their development. They in turn will help us as all of creation is reciprocal. Healing herbs will come where they are needed, if we learn to communicate on their level. Animals will come or go, if we learn to communicate on their level. The Bishnoi in India, the Aborigines in Australia, some American Indian tribes and some tribes in Africa give us hints of what it means to communicate with fellow beings on their level. Naturally future communities will re-find and apply such contents of archaic consciousness on a new level.

9. Self sufficiency.

The prevailing forms of global western civilization are based on colonial systems of conquest and imperialism. Innately they are permeated with violence, lies, and fear, and thus do not have the ability for communication needed for their survival. Communities of the future therefore need a high level of self sufficiency in all areas of life to become independent of existing distributory and supply systems. Self sufficiency is necessary in the areas of water, nutrition, energy, and medicine.

In context with the demand for self sufficiency we come across an interesting question: how large do future communities need to be to realize self sufficiency? The answer can only be found from experience, but we will see that they should not be too small. If we try to realize self sufficiency in small communities (below 100 people) it will probably throw us back into the stone age. But communities of the future need to contain a high level of cultural, technological, spiritual, and biological variety to reach the complexity needed for a global cultural formation.

10. Global cultural formation.

When future communities are in resonance with the living body of the earth, they will have global impact. This is no pious hope but scientific law, because the living body of the earth is one unique organism together with the biosphere. If this organism gets new information through the non-violent culture of a healing biotope, it will be effective in all of its organs. If the life-system of the coming communities is compatible with the life-system of the biosphere and of creation, a relatively small impulse will be enough to change the whole. The first healing biotope is a global cultural crystal that will soon call into being similar crystal formations globally. Within the next three decades we count on similar foundations in the USA, in South America, in Africa, and in Australia. The cultural formation of the new era will follow a network of such planetary centers.