Europe in Search of Her Soul E-Book

Georg von Goldbach

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 619

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The civilization of the modern world takes its origins in the Renaissance in Europe. A Historical reconstruction of the creation of modern Europe since the Renaissance leads to a thorough understanding of the critical and constituent elements that are characteristic of the mindset of Europe and its people. These principal elements are the growing individual consciousness and the role played by the individual in society, the specific European view on progress, and the unique European view on growth. Science and technology are the foundation and basic melody of the Western model of capitalism and life in modern Europe. In their combination, this complex of factors and forces has driven Europe and the West to colonialism and the paradigm of never-ending Expansion. These constituent factors and their systemic interdependencies are characteristic of the mindset of Europe and of the collective historical memory of the Western nations. The specific mindset of Europe and its people is considered the principal root cause of the economic, political and environmental crises in Europe. Through globalization, the crisis in Europe and the Western-dominated world has spread and is exerting its impact globally. Life on earth has reached a threshold. The crisis is further exacerbated by a lack of globally valid rules for global governance to effectively cope with the crisis. The Global South is not convinced by the suggestions and actions of the Western power elites. Hence, it is high time for Europe and the Western nations to look for an honorable and peaceful outcome. Pragmatic and feasible Steps for a way out of the crisis in Europe are shown in the book. A change in the mindset in Europe and a paradigm shift in politics are demanded.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

D

EDICATION

Our guiding principles and values

Foreword to the book

The spiritual fathers of this book

Content and Structure of the Book

P

ART

1 - S

YMPTOMS OF THE

C

RISIS IN

E

UROPE

Chapter 1

Introduction and analytical approach

Chapter 2

Lack of Political Will and Strategic Thinking in Europe

Chapter 3

Overview of the EU's foreign policy role

Chapter 4

Europe the "common home" – Russia the eternal enemy

Chapter 5

The New World Order after the Treaty of Versailles

L

IFE IN A

C

RISIS

M

ODE

- S

YMPTOMS OF

G

LOBAL

P

OLITICAL

S

TRUCTURES

T

HE ULTIMATE

C

RISIS

: W

AR

T

HE NEW

W

ORLD ORDER WAS HERALDED BY THE

USA

IN

1919

E

VERYTHING HAS ITS PRICE

,

ESPECIALLY FOR

G

ERMANY

E

UROPE

: B

RIDGE BETWEEN

E

AST AND

W

EST

,

OR OUTPOST OF

US

HEGEMONY

?

T

HE APPROPRIATION OF

R

USSIA

'

S RAW MATERIALS IS THE PREREQUISITE FOR POWER OVER

C

HINA

S

UMMARY

:

THE

R

EORGANIZATION OF THE

W

ORLD AFTER

V

ERSAILLES

Chapter 6

How Europe Lost Her Identity

B

ROTHERS

U

NDER

A

RMS

2019 – T

HE

M

EDIA

W

ARNING

S

HOT

T

HE FOUNDING YEARS OF THE

EU:

CENTRAL STATE OR COMMUNITY OF FATHERLANDS

?

T

HE

"E

UROPEAN

A

XIAL

A

GE

"

OF

1985-

UNDER

D

ELORS AND

M

ITTERRAND

T

HE TURNING POINT IN THE PROCESS OF

E

UROPEAN INTEGRATION

E

UROPE IS LOSING HER WAY

-

GOING ASTRAY ON

A

MERICAN PATHS

P

RELUDE TO THE

W

AR AGAINST

R

USSIA

:

THE

A

MERICAN

"

CORDON SANITAIRE

"

FROM THE

B

ALTIC TO THE

B

LACK

S

EA

T

HE

USA

AT THE

T

HRESHOLD OF

D

OMINANCE OVER THE

E

URASIAN

C

ONTINENT

E

UROPE HAS GIVEN UP HER SOVEREIGNTY

S

UMMARY

P

ART

O

NE

P

ART

T

WO

T

HE

R

OOT

C

AUSES OF THE

C

RISIS IN

E

UROPE

Chapter 1

Linear solutions: the Overdue Paradigm Shift

F

OREWORD

I

NTRODUCTION

C

ALL FOR A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PARADIGM SHIFT

Chapter 2

The Global Governance System Shaped by Europe

I

NTRODUCTION

C

ULTURAL

F

OUNDATIONS OF

C

APITALISM

T

RANSFORMING THE SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

T

HE FUTURE SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

:

THE CULTURAL BACKGROUND

C

ONCLUSIONS

Chapter 3

Europe’s mind-set: origin of the crisis

N

ATURAL SCIENCES

:

THE PRINCIPAL DRIVERS OF MATERIAL GROWTH AND PROGRESS

T

HE NOTION OF

“P

ROGRESS

”

AND ITS MEANING FOR THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF

E

UROPE

T

HE NOTION OF

“G

ROWTH

”

AND ITS MEANING FOR THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF

E

UROPE

G

LOBALIZATION OF GROWTH

L

IMITS TO GROWTH

T

HE

D

IMENSIONS OF THE

D

ILEMMA

G

RAPHICAL

G

ROWTH

C

URVES

G

ROWTH OF

W

ORLD

P

OPULATION

and the History of Technology

G

LOBAL PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY SOURCE

G

LOBAL

GDP

OVER THE LONG RUN

G

ROWTH IN

S

CIENTIFIC

K

NOWLEDGE

(1400 - 1900)

S

UMMARY OF

P

ART

T

WO

: T

HE

R

OOT

C

AUSES OF THE

C

RISIS IN

E

UROPE

P

ART

T

HREE

E

UROPE

’

S

W

AY

O

UT OF THE

C

RISIS

: P

ARADIGM

S

HIFT THROUGH

H

UMAN

A

CTION

I

NTRODUCTION

A

CTIONS

L

EADING TO A

P

ARADIGM

S

HIFT

Chapter 1

The new paradigm: Infinite Regeneration of Energy and Resources

I

NTRODUCTION

I

NFINITE REGENERATION AND THE MIRACLE OF GROWTH IN NATURE

Chapter 2

The End of Linear Solutions in Politics

C

RISIS

,

THE CHANCE FOR NEW HAPPINESS

D

EMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

:

THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT

L

INEAR THINKING LEADS TO A DEAD END

S

UCCESSFUL EXAMPLES OF PARADIGM SHIFTS IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE

The introduction of the social market economy in Germany

The policy of reconciliation and peace under Willy Brandt

S

UCCESSFUL EXAMPLES OF PARADIGM SHIFTS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Singapore: from Third to First World.

Perestroika and German reunification

China's economic and social transformation

C

RITICISM

:

LINEAR POLITICS OF BUSINESS AS USUAL

U

RBANIZATION

: R

ELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

P

OPULATION

D

ENSITY AND

A

GGRESSION

C

HANGING THE PERSPECTIVE LEADS TO FINDING A NEW PATH

T

HE CHALLENGE

: S

ECURING AND

I

NCREASING

P

ROSPERITY

R

ISING TO THE CHALLENGE

I

NITIATING THE PARADIGM SHIFT NOW

T

HE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

T

HE KEY TO THE SOLUTION

: P

RODUCTIVITY

O

UR CALL

:

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

!

ACT NOW

!

Chapter 3

Call for a social and political paradigm shift

I

NTRODUCTION

W

AYS OUT OF THE DILEMMA

T

HE

N

EW

P

ARADIGM

: N

EW

W

AYS OF

L

IFE

T

HE

C

RITICAL QUESTION

: H

OW DO WE WANT TO LIVE IN

E

UROPE

?

E

UROPE

'

S LACK OF COURAGE FOR UTOPIA

A

CTIONS TO BE

T

AKEN

Epilogue – Final Considerations

E

UROPE

'

S

W

AY OUT OF THE CRISIS

E

UROPE

'

S NEW SELF

-

IMAGE

,

GROWN OUT OF HER HISTORY AND CULTURE

T

HE ROLE OF MODERN SCIENCE

E

UROPE IN

S

EARCH OF

H

ER

S

OUL

Bibliography

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to the professors

Wolf-Dieter Narr, Freie Universität Berlin,

Eike Haberland, Frobenius Institute Frankfurt, and Michel Izard, Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de Recherche

Scientifique and founding member of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale

of Claude Lévi-Strauss, at the Collège de France in Paris.

Their trust in me has given me courage and decisively promoted

my scientific education and academic career.

Our guiding principles and values

It may be helpful for the reader, if we give him some indications about the ideas, principles and values that have guided us in writing this book.

We believe that it is good, if people keep trying to improve their lives and also their living conditions. For us as modern humans, science and technology have become increasingly important tools to improve our living conditions. But there are at the same time other ways and means that man is deploying to improve living conditions and the quality of life. Most people will probably agree with us when we say that people strive to improve or enhance their living conditions and the quality of their lives through games, music, singing, poetry, dance, sports, various competitive games and many other activities. In anthropology, it is assumed that these are universal human activities, with which humans enrich their lives. While the natural sciences are mainly about technology and engineering, about the utilization and application of energy through instruments and tools, human life covers many more facets and aspects, taking into account a great diversity of values and interests.

The most important areas that we address here in this book, and which are not directly related to the application and use of energy through technology, concern the shaping of the coexistence of people, peoples and states. So we are dealing here with topics of politics, i.e. the shaping of public life, at the international level. This is what we mean by geopolitics.

The natural sciences are mainly about the application and use of energy and, issues that revolve around what we commonly call matter, or the physical world. In this sense, the most important functions of the natural sciences and of the technologies developed with their help are primarily linked to the improvement of our material living conditions.

In politics, it is power and money that are seen as the decisive factors, as the matter of politics, so to speak. At the end, however, the purpose and basic intentions that drive political action are not really different from those that are guiding science and technological efforts. In both areas, the purpose is the continuous improvement of living conditions and the quality of life.

In looking at things this way, we are also making a very personal commitment. We are expressing here our belief that we are able to make a sensitive contribution to the improvement of living conditions and the quality of life through improvements in the use of power and money as the essential factors and energies in the field of international politics, i.e. geopolitics. This belief infuses sense into our endeavor and is the raison d’être of this book.

This attitude is not self-evident. Because there are people out there, who think that, by principle, it is impossible to fundamentally improve geopolitics. Such attitudes are usually justified by the "nature" of man, by the belief that man’s nature cannot be improved and does therefore also leave no room for any meaningful and lasting improvement in the shaping of the coexistence of people, peoples and nations. While it is acknowledged that humans are always striving to shape geopolitics, man’s eternal nature seems to block off the way to real and lasting improvements. According to this thinking, many people ultimately assume that humans can develop a better way of life through technology and the application of the natural sciences alone. In the field of politics and geopolitics, they assume, however, that all these attempts to improve the modalities of coexistence will finally lead to nothing really useful. Since we have written this book, we admit that we do not share this point of view and therefore take a different stance.

We believe that it is important for people, for their living conditions and the quality of their lives, to try again and again to improve coexistence and the interaction and use of the factors of power and money in international relations among nations.

Due to our origins in Germany, we have taken a European perspective in this book. However, it should already have become clear that we are looking at the world as a whole, from the perspective of Germany and Europe. So we take a European perspective with the intention of understanding how we can improve our coexistence with other people, peoples and nations on earth.

We should also state here that we assume that the way, we shape our interactions between people, peoples and nations in Europe, is not necessarily the best, or should be seen as a role model for other people on earth. It remains to be seen what Europe can offer to improve the shaping of geopolitics, i.e. international coexistence. After all, other people, peoples and nations have to come in with their aspirations, beliefs and attitudes to check and co-decide on the making of geopolitics. So we are not going to take a Eurocentric position here. We do not claim that European, or Western geopolitics offer, basically and always, the best ideas or solutions.

It will be useful, if we finally give some further explanations about the values and principles that guided us in writing this book. We agree that it is not possible to define personal values and principles conclusively. We declare it desirable to work for a future political environment with more peace and less war and violent conflicts, attained through the shaping of geopolitics and international relations between peoples, peoples and nations. Furthermore, we see major deficits and opportunities for improvement concerning these questions of peace or war. Obviously, we do not consider war and violent conflicts to be good means of shaping the coexistence of people, peoples and states on earth. This is a clear statement that we want to make here.

Another value and fundamental principle that we consider important for the shaping of geopolitics is freedom. There is no question that there is not just one definition, one universally valid understanding of freedom. In the end, freedom and free development are very personal and depend very much on personal desires and aspirations. However, we believe that freedom, as a value and principle, should also be used and applied in the shaping of geopolitics. Taking into account the desires and aspirations of the great diversity of people will help define freedom. The definition of freedom cannot be provided by Government. The meaning of freedom is not theoretical, rather it is the perception of individual people that can teach us about the value and significance of freedom. As we see it, freedom is what people can realize in practice, in their Human Action1. In geopolitics, freedom therefore means to us that all people, peoples and nations can claim their right to contribute to the shaping of good and always better international relations, leading to improving living conditions and the quality of life on earth. Freedom means free participation in the competition for the better ideas2. We consider this participation in the competition for the better ideas to be a right that should apply not only to individuals, but also to individual peoples and nations. We will see later that the great challenge ahead is to find rules that enable us to really make these civil liberties possible in the interaction of peoples and nations. It is for this reason, that we intend in our book to provide useful practical indications for ways and means to find and apply such rules.

If the reader has followed us this far, then it should have become clear that our claim for personal peace and freedom, as we represent it in this book, is our fundamental weapon that we want to use in shaping the coexistence of people, peoples and nations. We contrast our weapon, the competition for better ideas in search of peace and freedom, with currently applied weapons, such as combat drones, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombs and chemical weapons. This is our personal declaration of war and should be considered an appeal to strive towards ending the era of relentless rearmament and war.

We assume that there is no a priori plan for the course of human development. Likewise, no culture has an absolute claim to priority over any other culture. The dominant culture of the West, with science and technology at its center, has only asserted its dominance for the past 600 years. The African, Oceanic and Native American cultures have proven their value and importance for their people over hundreds of thousands of years. The cultural achievements of African, Oceanic and Native American cultures, expressed in languages, arts, and a great diversity of forms of social organization and kinship systems, are in no way less valuable or less complex than the achievements of Western or Eastern great cultures, such as China or India.

By principle, all cultures can therefore make a significant contribution to the further development of living conditions and the quality of life for people on earth. This understanding of the value of human cultures is one of the fundamental prerequisites for the future improvement of living conditions for humanity. All people, peoples and nations have the same right to participate in the competition for the better ideas to formulate new rules, according to which coexistence on our earth should be organized in the future.

.

1 We refer here to “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics”, 1949, by Ludwig von Mises.

2 We refer here to lectures given in Buenos Aires in 1958, by Ludwig von Mises. They have been published in German under the title „Vom Wert der besseren Ideen“, which we translate here with “The value of better ideas”.

Kiän - the Creative

The creative works lead to sublime success, furthered through perseverance.

I Ging, Book of Changes in the translation of Richard Wilhelm

Foreword to the book

The personal motivation for this book comes from my realization that the creation of peace is, in our time, the most important concern of humanity. I was born in Germany and can therefore say that war is in my blood, as it is the case for most Europeans. A great number of wars have been waged on European ground among the European nations over the past centuries. In response to that, the European Union has been created and has progressively been shaped after the end of the Second World War as a “peace project”. This hope is waning more and more, and Europe does not seem capable of escaping the claws of the evil of war.

In the decades after 1993, I had increasingly worked as a consultant for organizational development on behalf of the European Commission (EC). In the beginning, I was pleased and, to a certain degree, even enthusiastic to do this, as long as "international partnership" has been the EU’s credible intention and guiding principle for our international advisory services and activities. After 2001, however, the situation started to change, and things went in a different direction. More and more, I had noticed how an intentional effort for dominance had come to the fore, thus changing progressively the foreign policy of the EU. Relations with partner countries became increasingly political and power oriented, less characterized by friendship and the honest dealings among partners. Of course, this change in attitude had also become obvious to many of our partners in the countries in which we worked. I am more of a free and liberal spirit by nature, and ideological narrow-mindedness has never been one of my personal traits. However, I have always endeavored to consciously guide my personal as well as my professional actions based on my ethical convictions and moral principles.

I can say that peaceful development among people and nations based on shared values and principles has always been a matter close to my heart. That is why I didn’t feel challenged in particular when I was asked, consciously and with conviction, but without personal zeal or even fanaticism, to work for the healthy development of Europe and its relations with other countries in the world. My anxiety therefore increased more and more as certain authoritarian tendencies in the European Union (EU) and the European Commission became more frequently apparent to me. I then drafted an essay in 2017, essentially for myself, to sort out and clearly articulate my own thoughts, entitled "How Europe Lost Her Sovereignty". In it, I showed how, in the interplay between Germany and France, which had become a second spiritual home for me, the European Commission usurped the sovereignty of the European nation states and increasingly restricted their national responsibility. In addition, as a "participating observer", I recognized that a war was being prepared on European soil. Of course, that was not easy to see at the time. However, as I have been acting relatively close to the centers of political power, I could quite easily substantiate my perception. All the friends, acquaintances and business partners to whom I wanted to point out the issue of a looming war in Europe turned away or only looked into the air when I talked about it. Nobody wanted to know anything about it. I myself did not investigate this question deeper and, of course, could not know in what form this war would then begin and take place. I was personally surprised by the impressive way, with a flick of the wrist, Germany and the entire Europe were driven into this war, which was foreseeable by 2014 at the latest, and then turned into an open war in 2022.

Personally, this experience has shaken me very much, and my trust in people as a whole has been disappointed. I didn't want to believe how sensible and intelligent people could get involved in such stupidity. The experience of this general irrational behavior of the people in Europe still pains me very much. My grandfather was sent into the First World War in 1914 with the motto "Cannon thunder is our greeting". My father went to war in 1939 for the Hitler regime, from which he was not to return home from Russian captivity until the end of 19473, severely damaged in physical health and also mentally. And now, at the end of my life, the war was to haunt me and perhaps plague my children as well.

I have always consciously enjoyed and never despised the great fortune of growing up in peace and being able to shape my life peacefully. Peace had always seemed to me to be a great and precious good that had to be carefully preserved. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in this.

3 At a time when Russia is once again under strong ideological attack, it is necessary to confess that I have not developed any negative attitude or resentment from my father's experience in the mines of Russia. My father had been a prisoner of war (PoW), and his imprisonment was to be taken as the result of a war that had arisen and been waged in a criminal way.

The spiritual fathers of this book

The intellectual authorship of this book is held by two American thinkers and visionaries. The two have never met in person, but what they have in common is that they derive their thinking from cybernetics as a scientific means to understand and explain our world4. This is obvious in the case of Gregory Bateson5, because he speaks of it frequently in his writings. In the case of R. Buckminster Fuller6, the reference to cybernetics is visible everywhere in his writings and also in his works, but he was more of a pragmatist and generalist nature. "Bucky" Fuller strove to live a life, in which he fought for the practical implementation of his ideas, mainly through the use and application of his design artifacts, while Gregory Bateson limited himself to theoretical and epistemological research, reflection and teaching.

What they both have in common is that they were very sharp observers of what was going on in the world and were always keen to understand how people acted. Both have always put people at the center of their efforts and have always looked at people in a larger, more comprehensive context and from a system view. In Buckminster Fuller's case, it was "man in the universe." For Gregory Bateson, a trained anthropologist and biologist, it was the systemic relation between man and nature. What both have in common is that they saw the fundamental fallacy in human thought and action in the fact that modern man saw himself disconnected from these necessary systemic relations with nature and the universe. Both explained this as the result of the one-sided emphasis on the development of the natural sciences since the 17th century, which has led to a mechanistic world view. This paradigm of human isolation from nature and the universe, as both saw it, has slowly started to dissolve again since the early 20th century with quantum mechanics and new insights gained by biology in the self-regulating systems of life. These scientific discoveries generated progressively a new world view that related life and the role of humanity to the "uncertainty principle". A door into the unknown had opened. From now on, the meaning of life and human nature were perceived in a new light. It had become possible to reconnect with the nature of man and his relevance in the cosmos.7 This sums up the experience shared by Gregory Bateson and Buckminster Fuller.

In order to better understand these two great minds, we would like to emphasize the decisive basic idea that is characteristic of each of them. Buckminster Fuller developed his fundamental ideas after 1930, formulated them in 1969 in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and summarized them with the formulation of Synergetics as Explorations into the Geometry of Thinking8. Intuitively, he seized the need for the application of "general principles and laws" to the understanding of the role and functioning of Man in Universe. He convincingly shows that it is not a lack of energy that inhibits the development of humanity. Rather, the fundamental deficiency lies in the fact that humanity has not found, not understood, the access to the infinite source of energy that is provided to us from the universe through the sun. This lack of access to understanding eternally regenerating energy has so far kept modern man caught in a self-made trap. According to Buckminster Fuller, this phenomenon can be traced back in particular to the work of the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus, who established at the beginning of the 19th century the principle, that humans would continue to reproduce with a necessary fatefulness, but at the same time they would have only limited natural resources at their disposal. Hence, the fight among humans for limited resources was inevitable. For Darwin, this became the struggle for existence and led Darwinists to formulate the principle of "survival of the fittest". If we take these thoughts just a few steps further, we end up directly at the rationale for the demand for "unlimited growth" of the economy, and at the political level, for the hegemonic striving and the seemingly inevitable wars as a means of gaining power and access to supposedly limited resources. The critical analysis and examination of this rationale are at the center of this book.

Gregory Bateson is an anthropologist and a biologist by training. He has also worked successfully in the fields of psychology and psychiatry9. However, he has attained the most important significance as a researcher on epistemology, and in particular on the importance of cybernetics for the sciences and for the shaping of human living conditions on earth.

He says of himself that "the two most important historical events in my life were the Treaty of Versailles and the discovery of cybernetics"10. This certainly sounds astonishing, because it is not immediately clear what the relationship between these two "events" looks like. We come closer to understanding what Gregory Bateson means when he says that, in his view, the "important question for history is: has the default11 or attitude been changed?". He goes on to explain that "the most important points in history are... the historical moments... in which attitudes are changed", i.e. in which previous "values" change. He then shows that the Treaty of Versailles has not successfully changed the attitudes and values of the most important signatories of the treaty12, i.e. Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA.13 Therefore, according to his understanding, the inevitable consequence of the Treaty of Versailles was the Second World War, with the same nations as principal protagonists. He calls the Treaty of Versailles one of the "greatest relapses in the history of our civilization" and says that "we will have to deal with the aftermath of this betrayal for a number of generations to come", before adding that "betrayal in an armistice or in peace negotiations is worse than a stratagem in battle." His conclusion: "It goes on and on. The tragedy of fluctuating, self-propagating mistrust, hatred and destruction through generations".

Gregory Bateson is aware that cybernetics, i.e. "the second historical event" of his time, will not in itself bring the solution to our geopolitical problems. But he sees that it can be a contribution to changing attitudes and behavior. At the same time, he knows that "any understanding can be used destructively". He summarizes his insight as follows: "In cybernetics itself there is integrity14, which helps us not to be seduced by it into another madness, but we cannot trust that it will keep us from sin"15 and then he adds in a more hopeful tone: "But this much is certain, that in cybernetics there is also the means to achieve a new and perhaps human worldview, a means to change our philosophy of power, and a means to see our own stupidities from a larger perspective". Obviously, he takes a system-view perspective.

4 Cybernetics is the science of controlling and regulating machines in analogy to the functioning of living organisms by means of feedback processes that receive impulses from the sense organs. In social organizations, feedback works through information, communication and participant observation. The science of cybernetics was born from the cooperation of scientists in the "Vienna Circle". It was formulated by Norbert Wiener after 1945, after his emigration to the USA, when he came to the realization that intelligent behavior can be described as the result of feedback mechanisms.

5 In the case of Gregory Bateson, we are essentially referring to the collection of essays published as "Ecology of the Mind" in 1985. The English edition of "Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Collected Essays" dates from 1972.

6 At Buckminster Fuller, our main source is his book "Critical Path", which was published in 1981. Probably his best-known book is "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth", from 1969. It can be downloaded online from the Buckminster Fuller Institute website. The German edition of "Instruction Manual for the Spaceship Earth and Other Writings" dates from 2011.

7 Fritjof Capra gives a catchy account of this in his "Tao of Physics", of 1977.

8 This is the title of a book first published in 1975, in cooperation with E. J. Applewhite.

9 The term "double-bind", i.e. the relationship trap, which is of common use in psychology and psychiatry, was coined by him.

10 In this part, we essentially refer to Gregory Bateson, "Ecology of the Mind, Part VI, Crises in the Ecology of the Mind, from Versailles to Cybernetics", from his lecture in 1966.

11 The term "specification" here refers to cybernetics, as a system theory, and means "leadership variable" or "decisive reference value" to which the other parameters and elements of a system are oriented.

12 We should note here that since the October Revolution of 1917, a government had taken power in Russia with which the United States did not want to come to an understanding.

13 As we will show later, it was precisely this thought that guided Rudolf Steiner in his assessment of the events surrounding the First World War. He insisted that it was necessary to change the political "rules" in order not to prepare a new catastrophe. As we know, Max von Baden, the last Reich Chancellor of the German Empire, very soon ended Rudolf Steiner's advisory activities.

14 Because cybernetics allows us to see the connections between events.

15 We would like to note here that Buckminster Fuller also sees integrity as a very important criterion for good and successful action. That's how he called one of his books, "Ideas and Integrities", from 1963. He also emphasizes this point in his "Critical Path".

Content and Structure of the Book

The purpose of the book is to look at the fundamental issues that are symptomatic of, and to identify and analyze the principal causes, that are at the root of the crisis in Europe. However, the book does not stop there, but shows ways to escape the crisis mode and the self-made traps by using her own will. Europe must now initiate the overdue paradigm shift to end the futile application of linear solutions in European politics. The book provides convincing examples to show that such a paradigm shift is possible. The prerequisite is political will and a determination built on new self-confidence. These political “virtues” will enable the EU and Europe to progressively move towards an end to the crisis mode. At the same time, a new self-confidence will enable Europe to reposition herself as an independent actor on the stage of geopolitics.

The book is structured in three distinct parts.

In Part One of the book, we will look at the Symptoms of the Crisis in Europe. The scientific approach in this part feeds on the historical analysis of the political economy, which is characteristic of Europe today. The critical result of the historical development of Europe’s political economy over the past decades is her increasing involvement and even promotion of wars on the continent and beyond. We will bring to light the constituent role of the USA, which is at the origin of the root cause of this primordial symptom of Europe’s crisis.

This is to say that the book does not intend to provide a sociological analysis of the crisis and its symptoms. In this book, we take an evidence-based approach and look at the most important symptom of the crisis in Europe.

We know from oncological medicine that patients with cancer usually develop various secondary symptoms, because the body is generally weakened and open to all kinds of secondary ailments. The physicists know, however, that they will have to focus their care on the root cause, which is cancer. The principal symptom of the crisis in Europe is, in our view, her involvement and the promotion of wars. A country, or a continent in war, will develop various other symptoms. This is what we call the crisis mode in Europe and the Western world in general.

Once we have a sufficiently good understanding of the symptoms, we will dedicate the second part of the book to the analytical description of the root causes of the crisis in Europe.

In Part Two of the book, we will focus our evidence-based approach on the descriptive analysis of the root causes of the Crisis in Europe. This approach will lead us to an epistemological understanding of the root causes of the crisis in Europe. This implies that we will describe and analyze the principal historical events and cultural factors that have shaped Europe and the social and economic life in her societies since the Renaissance. The origins of the historical memory and of modern Europe’s self-image and consciousness are thus brought to light. This will eventually lead us to a thorough understanding of the principal root causes of the Crisis in Europe.

This examination will lead us deeply into the historical and cultural context of modern-time Europe. Our questions in this second part of the book will be complex. We will understand that the possible answers and potential solutions will be challenging for Europe on her way into the future of our globalizing world.

In Part Three of the book, we will intend to demonstrate that there are ways and means for Europe to get out of her self-inflicted crisis.

Building on the analytical results of the previous parts of the book, pragmatic solutions will be presented. It will become obvious that the main reasons for the continuing deep current crisis have their origins mainly in Europe herself. We will show that the root causes of the crisis are of a two-pronged nature. On the one side, they trace their origins to the historical and cultural development of Europe since the Renaissance. This is the ground on which the historical memory of modern Europe and the mental and psychological character of her people have grown. On the other side, the principal root causes can be found in its modern social, cultural and political history. Starting in 1919 and definitely realized after 1945, Europe has been incorporated into the American nation and its economic and political strategies, striving for global hegemony. This political process has attained its climax in our days, as Europe has lost her economic freedom and has been forced to change to an economy of war and to wage proxy wars on behalf of NATO and under US command.

Europe has lost the sovereignty to decide on her own destiny, mainly out of fear of taking responsibility against the forces that intend to keep her under their hegemonic influence and power. This fear of taking responsibility is further corroborated by the lack of moral honesty and intellectual courage to face the existing challenges. Europe's nations refuse to abandon their petty egoistic interests and to determine a common developmental strategy for the continent. These reasons lead to the complete lack of a vision for a sovereign and better future in Europe.

In our Epilogue to this book, we will eventually provide concrete indications of the first pragmatic steps towards a geopolitical paradigm shift that can lead Europe out of her imminent apocalypse and bring it back into the geopolitical arena as a sovereign actor and broker of peace and prosperity.

In addition, we will introduce initial reflections on the soul of Europe. For this purpose, we will briefly present our ideas and considerations concerning the meaning of this notion. On the basis of these reflections, we will explain, what we consider to be the principal conditions for Europe to find its way out of the crisis. Europe will have to build her future on her raising consciousness and new self-image.

PART 1 - SYMPTOMS OF THE CRISIS IN EUROPE

Chapter 1

Introduction and analytical approach

Just a decade ago, we would have said that the intention we pursued with our book was to prevent Europe from being drawn into a new war, or being driven into it. In the fall of 2024, as we write this introduction, we will be too late with this appeal against war. Europe has entered into an open war again since 2022. This is not a "Cold War", as it is still offered to the public by the media. Since February 2022, probably close to one million soldiers and civilians have already died in this war. Millions are on the move and fleeing the war zone and its borderlands.

How could this happen? Cynically, one could answer: because the 14,000 Russian-speaking residents in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, killed in their own country by the Ukrainian government since 2014, after the "Euro-Maidan", were not counted. In German, they say that they "did not count", i.e. they were not worth being counted. Cynical? It's wartime again!

Behind this concealment of the terrorization and killing of its own population by the Ukrainian government, however, there was intention, one may assume "bad intention".

In 2015, the Minsk Agreement was signed in a binding manner under international law, and Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine pretended to take responsibility for its implementation. The main focus was on the observance of a ceasefire and the negotiation of an autonomous status for the two Russian-speaking regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

However, as it turned out, there was no manifest intention on the part of Ukraine and the Western states that had signed the Minsk agreement to implement this agreement. As the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly stated in 2023, the main intention of the Minsk agreement was to “buy Ukraine time”16. Time for doing what? Since 2015, Ukraine has been massively armed by NATO to prepare for an imminent war with Russia. That had been the intention behind the staging of the Euro Maidan. In order to spread fog and give Russia hope, in the years from 2018 to 2020, new fragile ceasefire agreements were reached on average every three months by the Trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine, consisting of Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE17.

Today, it is obvious that NATO's preparations for a war with Russia have been in full swing since 2015 at the latest. The Ukrainian army has been massively upgraded, equipped with weapons and military material, and supported by European and American military advisers.

Russia put an end to this false and nasty game in February 2022, with its military intervention in Ukraine. In terms of its own self-defense, Russia found herself in a situation, in which the country had no other choice.

What can be achieved with this book in such a situation? Why do we address it to the public?

One of the principal questions we want to ask ourselves is: What were the reasons for the sabotage of the Minsk agreement by the Western powers and NATO? What were the intentions behind the preparation of the war against Russia? After all, as we know today, Germany and France were only proxies for the "global West", i.e. for NATO and US interests, in this tactical game.

Methodologically, we want to advance from the perception of symptoms to the understanding of reality in order to answer this question. The answer to our questions is hidden behind the veil of symptoms18 that only show us a semblance of reality through false mirror images of reality that want to fool us. The most important instrument we will apply for understanding reality will be thinking, and the most important prerequisite is our own fearlessness to face the often terrible (un)truths and lies, for which some of our fellow humans and their nations are responsible. If we courageously face reality in this sense, then we will increasingly come to an understanding of the "spiritual driving forces" that are effectively driving the behavior of some of the key political and economic actors behind the veil of symptoms. In the course of our analytical description, we will provide important insights into these processes of geopolitics and the mechanisms that are deployed in the struggle for global hegemonic power that is going on behind this veil of symptoms.

For those who want to face reality, the facts are not so difficult to understand. Of course, one must be willing not to be blinded or satisfied with the "colorful reflections"19 of reality, which the media, our political leaders and the power elites are diffusing everywhere.

Intelligent and honest political analysts, such as Noam Chomsky, have been telling us what is going on behind the veil of symptoms for decades. In an interview in the New Left Review (No. 57, September/October 1969), which was published in Germany in the appendix Linguistics and Politics to the book Language and Spirit, Chomsky said: "The goal of creating an integrated world economy dominated by American capital ranks first for the elite that governs the United States. It's not just about having safe areas for American investment, markets, and control over raw materials, as important as they may be. It is also necessary to keep defense-spending, i.e. ultimately the costs of war, at a high level. This is the most important Keynesian mechanism for maintaining what is called a healthy economy”. This is a clear statement: high spending on a war economy is seen by US power elites as an important mechanism for maintaining a healthy economy. We will have to come back to this point when we talk about the war economy, into which the EU and her various member states have been forced since 2023 by the hegemonic policies of the USA. As Eckart Conze writes: "Research rightly and almost unanimously considers the USA to be the hegemonic power of the Western world since 1945"20.

By taking away the veil that is covering the reality behind the symptoms, their historical origin and root causes, we want to show a way to come to an in-depth understanding of important political and economic processes and contexts in our time. This kind of "analytical and symptomatologic history" should then provide the basis for making a diagnosis, which we see as a prerequisite for showing possible future solutions to eventually eliminate the root causes of the evils we have identified.

With our symptomatologic look at history, we pretend not to remain at the symptomatic level with the analysis we are undertaking, but we intend to explore this question of reasons and intentions behind the veil of historical symptoms. In this, we will shed light on the reality of events and processes from different angles and aspects in order to understand how Europe got on the path to its self-destruction and its imminent apocalypse.

At the conclusion of this brief analytical and intellectual process we will go through in this book, it should become clear what the situation in Europe is today and where the path taken will consequently lead in the coming years and decades. It should have become obvious that we don't want to write a war reportage, nor do we want to indulge in the diplomatic backstabbing in detail, as it has been and still is presented in the media every hour for years now. Our goal is to come to an understanding of the root causes and drivers of these processes that currently shape our lives in Europe.

We also do not intend to write a comprehensive scientific treatise, in which the relationships and interdependencies of politics, economics and society are explained in detail. Rather, we are concerned with creating evidence for the driving forces, as well as the relationships and interdependencies behind the events and facts, bringing them to light and making them more and more obvious. Following this line of reasoning requires us to bring in the courage to face the facts and not be afraid of the consequences of an impending catastrophe, towards which we are heading with our eyes wide open. It is our conviction that this catastrophe can no longer be prevented. In the fall of 2024, it has become obvious that we are already moving into its very center. Europe is rapidly heading toward its own apocalypse at a breathtaking pace in a dynamic process of self-destruction.21

Through our academic training and research on history and political economy, we have learned that there are forces at work in history, good and bad, that cannot always be precisely named and do not follow any "logic". In our book, we will repeatedly refer to benevolent actors and good forces, too, who are trying to counteract this impending European catastrophe. As long as these actors and forces exist, we should not give up hope completely.

However, we are convinced that Europe and the so-called "West" will find it very difficult to find their way out of this catastrophe on their own.

With this book, we will limit ourselves to the period of the past century until today. These have been the decisive one hundred plus years for this path to catastrophe that Europe has traveled. So we start in the time shortly before the First World War, when Diaghilev and Stravinsky staged their "Ballet Russe" and "Le Sacre du Printemps" (the "Rites of Spring") in Paris, when Oswald Spengler published the first drafts for his "Decline of the West", when Thomas Mann wrote his "Death in Venice" and was inspired to write his "Magic Mountain", and when C. G. Jung had his visions of the blood flowing all over the European continent.22 These visions were the impulse for C. G. Jung to start working on his Red Book, which finally led him to the development of Analytical Psychology.

This example of C. G. Jung provides us with a good example of a personal crisis being transformed into a highly creative intellectual and spiritual process. Reading the personal history of R. Buckminster Fuller, we witness a similar situation as a starting point for personal transformation. In the case of Buckminster Fuller, this happened to him at the age of 32, when his first daughter had died just one year after her birth, while his professional career was at its lowest and he was broke. He went deeply into himself and started a new life, in the lifelong company of his wife and family, to serve humanity with the best of his capabilities. It seems that these two examples of highly developed persons provide us with a model for self-transformation, coming out of a deep crisis, to open the way for creative and inspirational energies. At the level of a federation of nations, these examples might also inspire Europe to find a way out of her deep crisis.

16 As an example, from the Tagesspiegel of December 9, 2022, where we read: "The former Chancellor described the Minsk Peace Agreement of 2014 as an attempt to give Ukraine time".

17 OSCE stands for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE emerged as an international institution from the negotiations on "Security and Co-operation in Europe", which ended in 1975 with the Helsinki Final Act. We cite this to show that 50 years ago, there was a will for peaceful cooperation in Europe. This initiative has been completely destroyed since 1990, with the end of the Soviet Union. The will to war has regained the upper hand. OSCE has become an organ of NATO and US interests, i.e. a transatlantic institution.

18 In his lectures of 1919 on the symptomatology of history, Rudolf Steiner challenges us to see the reality behind the symptoms, the truth behind the events. Refer to the lectures of Steiner in GA 185: https://anthrowiki.at/Geschichtliche_Symptomatologie.

19 A winged saying that Goethe puts into the mouth of his Faust; see Faust II, Act One.

20 Eckart Conze; Hegemonie durch Integration: Die amerikanische Europapolitik und ihre Herausforderung durch de Gaulle, in: Institute für Zeitgeschichte, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Jahrgang 43 (1995), Heft 2.

21 We are not the first or the only ones to have come to such an understanding. Emmanuel Todd, who has published several books on the subject, is one of the examples. Available in German are: World Power USA: An Obituary, from 2003; available in French: La Défaite de l'Occident, from 2024. However, we have developed our own line of argumentation that starts with historical processes in order to then argue consistently in the sense of political economy.

22 It is worth reading the 1989 book "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age", by the Latvian-Canadian historian Modris Eksteins.

Chapter 2

Lack of Political Will and Strategic Thinking in Europe

This world means something to the capable and is not mute to the brave. Why does he need to roam eternity! Let him grasp what firm reality is.

Goethe, Faust. The Tragedy, Second Part, 1832. Act 5

In his important historical work on the "Decline of the West, A Morphology of World History", Oswald Spengler presented23 a comparative analysis and philosophy for the understanding of the classical Greek man and spirit (the Apollonian type) compared with the modern, scientific-technically educated man and spirit (the Faustian type). As an attentive observer of world political events, one may feel reminded of these thoughts in the current situation.

To be honest, one cannot help but marvel at the American political will, i.e. the "Faustian will", to assert its interests. It almost arouses a feeling of admiration to see the courage and determination with which the USA has driven the Europeans into the current global conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Yemen, to finally drive them in 2022 into the new open war against Russia combined with the conversion of their civil industries into a war industry as an extension of the American military-industrial complex.

Even if this strategic cold-bloodedness may have grown partly out of a courage of desperation, we honestly cannot avoid admitting that such vehement determination, which is the prerequisite for great wars and major crimes alike24, has been completely lost in Europe. Looking at the present European leaders and power elites, such an attitude must today be considered downright unthinkable.

European political leaders are much more likely to radiate a melancholic nostalgia, as we know it from the "Knight of the Rueful Countenance".25 Big words and impressive gestures are at best dared in the American slipstream. Independent, sovereign action can no longer be expected. Europe has dwarfed itself politically in her political and other public personalities and follows the example of the small Baltic EU member states, who borrow their importance solely from their bigger brother on the other side of the Atlantic and their older siblings from "Brussels".

To be honest, we must also acknowledge that, on the face of it and according to the impression given by the leaders at the global political level, it is the Russian and Chinese role players who are most likely to exude sovereignty on the big stage of world politics that can compete with the United States.

This appearance and our perceptual observation are supported by the fact that, apart from the three large nations mentioned, no nation or confederation of states can define similarly clear geopolitical goals and would also be able to deploy the courage to enforce them in an independent and sovereign way.

Since the admission of the Eastern European countries to the EU and NATO in 1990, and the accession of France to NATO in 2009, Europe and the EU have definitely lined up in order behind the American hegemon.

Apart from the USA, it is only China that, with its Road and Belt Initiative (RBI), the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the associated large Interbank Consortium, has set the clear geopolitical goal of building an alternative to the Bretton Woods institutions and the Western world. This is China’s offer to the Global South and to all the states and nations of the world in search of their independent development.

Under Putin's leadership, Russia has managed to pull the ripcord in time and prevent the sell-off of its natural resources under stress and in difficult times, with great courage and considerable effort. Russia was woken up, due to the war with Ukraine, and is now forced to increasingly build and shape its own political profile at the global level against the combined power of the entire West. The military potential and efficient war technology, in combination with its wealth of natural resources, are the important factors in Russia's ambition to make the Eurasian north and the Central Asian heartlands spheres in which it will be recognized for its leading role.

23 Spengler says he found the idea for this book in 1913. The first volume was published in 1918, and the second volume was published in 1922.

24 In the chapter "Law of Aggression" in his book "The Laws of Human Nature" (2021), Robert Greene cites very convincing examples. This is perhaps even more true of his book "The Laws of Power" (1998).

25 Don Quixote, the "hero" from Miguel de Cervantes' novel, gave himself this nickname on the advice of his squire.

Chapter 3

Overview of the EU's foreign policy role

Within the framework of this study, we cannot attempt to reconstruct the historical evolution of the European Union, or to offer an overall overview of the institutions and status of the European Union. Nevertheless, we want to create a picture in order to put the theses and considerations that we will present in this book into a meaningful framework. In doing so, we will be guided by our personal experience that we have been able to gain in professional practice as organizational consultant with various European institutions since 1995, especially in our work with and for the European Commission.

The first point that we would like to emphasize is that the European Union is not a democratic project26. It has clearly been pushed forward by European political leaders and power elites as a joint European initiative. The European Economic Community (EEC) was founded in 1957 with the "Treaties of Rome". The primary goal at that time was to reassure each other that the future in Europe should be shaped without further wars. The subject of these EEC treaties was limited to certain sub-areas and took into account the early realization that a political or even military union could not be achieved immediately. Priority was therefore given to the economy and peace building. This had already been decided earlier by representatives of European power elites at the Bilderberg conferences27 related to the preparation of the European community. It is also important to note that Great Britain is not one of the founding members. The United Kingdom, together with Denmark and Ireland, did not join the European Communities until January 1973.

When we point out this elitist character of the EU, it seems very important to us to emphasize that the EU's most successful and popular program is probably "Europe of the Regions". This program emerged after 1980 as a political concept intended to promote geographical and historical regions within Europe independently of the direct influence of the EU member states and to support them in their regional independence. It is a kind of integration model in which individual geographical and historical regions in Europe are to be given more sovereignty and strengthened in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. In this federal system approach, citizens are to be more involved in decision-making. The "Europe of the Regions" program promotes cooperation through joint projects and initiatives that are implemented across countries. They can affect economic, cultural or ecological regions as well as promote joint projects. We mention this program because it shows that cooperation between the people in the regions, historical settlement areas and cities concerned in Europe can effectively bring fruitful results and experiences. From this perspective, the evils and problems of the European Union seem to stem more from the power elites in the member states. The Treaty of Maastricht, which came into force in 1993, i.e. under Jacques Delors as head of the European Commission, established the Committee of the Regions as an advisory body of the European Union.

Overall, it must be understood and also positively emphasized that the European Union was created and constantly developed in a constructive process between the member states. So there was no secret plan, or blueprint. Thus, in 1993, the EEC was renamed the European Union by the Treaty of Maastricht. New institutions have also been created again and again, such as the European Court of Justice, to take on common tasks. In 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon established a common set of rules for the functioning and management of the European Union. However, this Treaty of Lisbon, which was originally presented in 2005, with the ambition of a European Constitution, was not adopted by all parliaments28. Nevertheless, it has retained its validity as the European Treaty. Obviously, this Treaty is a project of the European power elites, with deliberate exclusion and without the direct participation of the European population.

An important topic that we would like to address briefly here concerns European foreign policy. Even if the creation of the EEC were to have primal significance for Europe’s internal affairs, i.e., the economic and political relations of the European Member States, it must not be overlooked that the founding of the EEC and the European Union was also to have foreign policy significance from the outset. This is already evident in the quite contrasting discussions of the groups that formed early on around the two "founding fathers", Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann. While Jean Monnet had envisaged a European federal state based on the model of the USA from the beginning, Schumann clearly favored a confederation of states in the spirit of Charles de Gaulle's policy, i.e. the so-called "Europe of the Fatherlands".29 This area of tension basically continues to this day, although it must be said that, at the latest since the reign of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from 2005 to 2021, the creation of the European Unitarian central nation state based on the model of the USA has progressively taken shape. This irreversibility of the European integration process from the perspective of a European Unitarian central nation state is very convincingly demonstrated in the studies and books of Charles B. Blankart. In 2007, Blankart published his knowledgeable and profound study on Federalism in Germany and Europe