marți, 16 august 2011

A Hungarian poem

 This post was initially published here: http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/


By Tibor Hartel (thanks to Laura Sutcliffe for proof-reading the translation!)
Around 10 years ago I read an exciting essay of the great Hungarian ecologist and thinker, Juhász-Nagy Pál. He quoted a verse from a poem of the Hungarian Nobel Price winner Albert Szent-Györgyi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Szent-Gy%C3%B6rgyi ), called Psalmus Humanus. It has taken me some weeks to get the whole poem and effectively copied by hand the whole poem (common practice at those times) to have it with me as kind of “intellectual food” for a life journey. In the past few days I thought to share some verses with you, in this blog. Since I find no English translation I translated some verses myself. Here I apologize if the translation is not perfect – still I feel it gives back well the fears and concerns of Szent-Györgyi quite well.
Beyond hard core science and Impact Factors, this can be a way to influence thinking, feeling and reflection about us, our life, our trajectory and our place in this beautiful planet.
Szent-Györgyi Albert: Psalmus Humanus
Lord, who are You?
My strict Father,
Or my loving Mother?
Whose womb bore the Universe?
Are you the Universe itself?
Or, the Law, which dominates it?
Is the only reason you created life to untie it again?
Did you create me or did I create You?
To escape from my loneliness and my responsibility?
God! I don’t know, who you are,
But I cry to You in my great troubles,
Frightened by myself and my fellow men!
Maybe you don’t even understand my words,
But perceive my speechless song.
First Prayer: God
Lord, you are more powerful than your creation.
And your home is the Universe.
I perceived you like myself,
Evil, greedy and vain,
Who yearns for glorification and sacrifice from me,
Who avenges my minor sins,
To whom I should build a temple,
Whilst I leave my brothers homeless?
God! Let me praise You with
The enhancement of that tiny point,
Entrusted to me in your Creation.
Shower light on this earthly existence,
Warmth, goodwill and happiness.

Fourth prayer: Power (energy) and speed
Lord!
You revealed to us the secret forces of materials,
To ease our burdens and beautify our lives.
You thought us to fly faster than our own sound,
That distance must no longer separate people.
We strive to concentrate its powers into projectiles,
And wing them to the farthest corners of the Earth,
To draw our human fellows in misery and destruction.
Leaving a scorched, lifeless earth behind.
God! Do not let us destroy the temple of life,
Allow me to use my skills for my own benefit and
Sanctify life with it,
Giving dignity to my existence.
Fifth prayer: the Earth
Lord! You gave this beautiful Earth as our home,
You have hidden immeasurable treasures in its depths,
You enable us to understand your work,
To ease our life, banish hunger and disease.
We dig out the treasures to waste them,
To create formidable instruments of destruction,
To destroy with them what other people are building,
While they do not turn against me and kill me and
my children.
Lord! Let us to be your companion in creation,
To understand and beautify the work of Your hand,
To make our planet the secure home of peace,
Abundance, joy and beauty.




joi, 28 iulie 2011

Sustainability or societal relevance?

By Tibor Hartel


This post was initially published here: http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/ and is a response to the previous post on the research implementation gap.
A number of conservation scientists have identified a ‘gap’ between conservation research and implementation: while the scientific conservation knowledge is quickly accumulating, biological diversity seems to go down; previously heterogeneous and aesthetically pleasant landscapes become homogenous, infinitely boring and dead – thanks to Homo sapiens.
At the scale of Europe, this phenomenon is sharply extending from the ‘west’ (i.e. generally more impacted systems) to the ‘east’ (generally less impacted, more ‘ecologically intact’ systems). In a slightly exaggerated way: if an extra-terrestrial organism were to start researching the behaviour, demographics and economy of Homo sapiens s/he would possibly wouldn’t even realize that conservation science exists at all in Europe. If an extra-terrestrial ethnographer or anthropologist were to join the research team, she/he would probably realize after a while that Homo sapiensproduces cinemas, kindergartens, discotheque and indeed universities as well… and somewhere they do something they call “conservation science”.

Source: http://www.daviddarling.info/images/ET_The_Extraterrestrial.jpg
If these extra-terrestrial had to somehow rank the importance of various cultural products made by humans, the importance of conservation science would be somewhere in line (or more probably below) the arts, football and other sports.
Indeed, we should admit that something is not working in the line of conservation science and its application in the real world. Scientists suggested a number of recommendations to research institutions and individual researchers to ‘control’ and solve this apparent conflict situation.
Below I will pick up one such recommendation from Knight et al. (2008) and will try to build some questions around this.
‘Bridging the research-implementation gap requires that we as a scientific community acknowledge and agree we generally are not conducting research of societal relevance and move beyond simply noting the existence of the research-implementation gap to implementing tangible changes to correct it.’
Further they point out that:
‘Researchers should therefore formulate problems collaboratively with stakeholders so as to comprehensively understand implementation opportunities and constraints and design useful, user friendly assessments’.
Both recommendations roughly converge toward the need for participatory exercises to identify common problems: to be of ‘societal relevance’ one needs to collaborate with stakeholders. It is good practice and equitable to involve a variety of different stakeholders to account for different realities.
Here I would like to point out a potentially dangerous trap. Namely, if these participatory meetings and workshops are not conducted and framed under the normative goal of sustainable development, they may fail and push the results of such workshops towards unsustainable outcomes.
One of the principles of participatory approaches is to account for different realities and ‘putting the first last’. And the question comes: ‘whose reality counts’? (see Robert Chambers exciting book about this, e.g. here for a preview)
If we ‘put’ sustainability as a normative goal for such exercises which eventually will be translated into policies and decisions – then we potentially undermine a basic principle of participation. Since sustainability is not part of the reality of everybody (various groups of stakeholders), or even if it is, not in equal importance, pushing it to a single normative goal might be dictatorial and not desirable. In a previous entry, I discussed the importance of perception about life in decision making and establishing trajectory of societies. To put it simply: if you are hungry, this means you will have different perception about life, will have different priorities (e.g. to feed your children…) and attitude toward sustainability – and you will therefore favour different types of policy and decisions.
And this is where the ‘research of societal relevance’ and ‘collaboration with stakeholders’ represents a potentially dangerous trap that needs to be managed.
How to tackle this problem?
Should we push sustainability as normative goal and then violate some basic assumption of participation and decision (e.g. ‘democracy’ or equity)?
Or in our desire to be solution-oriented and of societal relevance, should we go in the hand of ‘stakeholders’ and skew our research? (e.g. if I as conservation scientist show that fish negatively affect amphibians but actually the result is not of societal relevance – as it is in Romania for example – should I stop such kind of research?)

vineri, 15 iulie 2011

Poverty or biodiversity loss: an inevitable choice?

By Tibor Hartel

initially published here: http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/

Here’s a 'conservation dilemma’ – (dilemma) a problem offering at least two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable (Source: Wikipedia). Working a relatively poor part of Europe (Central Romania), we are confronted with this dilemma on a daily basis.

One possibility to protect biodiversity, widely used in Europe and around the world, is the delineation of protected areas to preserve rare or endemic species, or a certain type of  cultural-natural heritage. To achieve conservation goals the area delineated should be managed in a specific way, that is, according to a management plan. If people live there, then a number of (usually financial) incentives can be used to ‘motivate’ agriculture and development which under the best available knowledge is ‘environmentally friendly’. Put simply: there are certain delineated areas where certain species or ecological functions are worth protecting, and there are areas where all these are already lost. It’s only in the latter that development can occur in a relatively unrestricted way.

Financial incentives to people living within protected areas (e.g. in the EU, Natura 2000 sites) have the aim to compensate people so they can afford the same things as people living outside the protected areas. People should not experience economic hardship because they live in a protected area, and therefore payments are used to compensate them for restrictions to development and production.

Does this work? This type of conservation strategy fragments ecological space into small isolates – like islands in the sea. These isolates (i) are unlikely to generate the full spectrum of life supporting ecosystem services, (ii) are less likely to be adaptive-resilient to global change and (iii) might hide a huge latent conflictual situation: what will happen if the financial incentives to maintain biodiverse landscapes stop?

So splitting the world into protected and unprotected areas, and compensating people accordingly works only when the world is stable. It is not sustainable in a rapidly changing world.

The second possibility is to find locations where traditional land use practices are still being practiced today. The assumption here is that if certain farming practices applied over centuries maintained fertile soils, clear waters and biodiverse landscapes, then these practices could be a good solution for sustainability. Moreover, they will generate good quality food, water and other resources for people. Perhaps these areas should then be protected areas, such as Natura 2000 sites? In Romania this happens, but one of the difficulties is that highly biodiverse farmlands are so widespread that delineating protected ‘islands’ appears quite nonsensical or even dangerous. In Romania, many valuable landscapes and biodiversity elements have now remained outside of the protected areas, receiving no conservation status and no attention from conservationists (since they focus on protected areas…). This type of conservation approach thus will result in a ‘forced binarization’ of the ecological space, which is not desired.

How can we solve the problem of biological conservation in areas characterised by traditional farming and high biodiversity? Maintaining those farming practices and traditional knowledge would be a possibility, sounds quite simple – but is it? If we somehow could maintain those traditional systems, we will likely have: (i) life supporting (and many other) ecosystem services, and (ii) adaptive, resilient ecological systems with well pronounced ‘internal-’ and ‘external memory’ (resilient e.g. to climate change, disease outbreaks etc.). But we can’t rid ourselves of that huge potential for conflict: people will want to develop (not nice to be trapped in the Middle Ages when others have satellite TV!), and acquire a similar level of material wealth as other people elsewhere (e.g. in western Europe).

Financial incentives are the solution most commonly envisaged. These incentives also symbolise an invitation for traditional communities to join the big, EU-wide (and indeed, global!) system of money and markets. Not only to be a part of it, but to depend on it. With all the consequences. Although financial incentives may be a solution in short term, they don’t seem viable in long term.

How do we tackle this dilemma?


miercuri, 6 iulie 2011

Perception about life and the trajectory of traditional rural societies and landscapes in Romania (and possibly Eastern Europe)

Tibor Hartel


The original post was published here:
http://ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/perception-about-life-and-the-trajectory-of-traditional-rural-societies-and-landscapes-in-romania-and-possibly-eastern-europe/



Many rural communities in Romania are still tightly connected to landscapes, e.g. a great percentage of their basic food (egg, milk and milk products, fruits, vegetables, water, meat etc.) comes directly from nature.

Small scale agriculture as practiced by these people is the key driver of the species rich and unique landscapes of Eastern Europe. Small scale farming is more than a human activity generating basic resources: it is an ecological function in these landscapes. A number of organisms which are dependent on these agricultural activities are still abundant in these landscapes (such as the corncrake, cotton grass, many orchids, amphibians like the yellow-bellied toad, which inhabit temporary ponds, but also symbols of wilderness like the brown bear and wolf), yet endangered in many countries of Western Europe due to land use intensification infrastructural and other developments.

And the good things don’t end here. Natural elements remain a key part of the diversity of traditions, folklores, traditional ecological knowledge, and many other aspects of a rural life (from stork to plants, sun, rain etc.).

Yet it seems that subsistence farmers – the people who maintain these rich landscapes – don’t feel well in these times. Many have told me that life was much better before 1989 (during communism) than after the revolution, in the democracy. Why? Because life after `89 is much more unstable, and harder than before. And that ‘you can get 300 euro per month much more easily from a nearby factory than from working the land’. Money was the core of the problem: there is an increased need for money in everyday life.

During his recent visit, my colleague and friend Ioan Fazey asked me: ‘Are you sure that life after `89 is really harder or it is just the perception of people about the past?’

With this, he opened the box for a number of questions and issues.

If people’s perception of life changed, what might be the reason for that? Is it possible that the quick release from a socialist-communist world (and isolation) and the accessibility of Western Europe (its wealth and lifestyle – how people look, their behavior, the possibilities for children etc.) hit these people in a way that they suddenly feel poor and lost?

Aside from perception, there is no doubt that life is increasingly dependent on money. And things tend to be expensive. For example if parents want to educate their children --  in 2011 this is more important than it was 50-60 years ago and the financial constraints are very real.

Perception about ‘reality’ is an important driver of people’s lives. The social-economic surroundings (i.e. the European Union) are important in shaping the perceptions of people about their own reality.

To meet the type of expectations which are induced by the ‘western lifestyle’ money is needed.

Sometimes I call the very biodiverse landscapes of the Saxon area ‘dead landscapes’. Because it seems that people don’t feel comfortable with their life (anymore), and they dream about a different lifestyle – and they have the right to do this. They continue to do traditional farming but most of them dream about something else. And part of that something else is land use intensification, infrastructure development and other changes associated with a more modern life. Through such changes, however, the days of the wolves, bears, corncrakes and yellow bellied toads might be counted. The same is true for the knowledge and lifestyle which created and shaped these landscapes for centuries.

If we use the ‘sustainable development’ concept as ‘normative’ (to cite Joern Fischer), what can be done?
                      
Thanks to Joern Fischer, Ioan Fazey and Jacqueline Loos the inspiring talks about this subject.

miercuri, 29 iunie 2011

Landing in a foreign cultural skeleton?

Tibor Hartel

Months before I read a book of Dawkins entitled ‘The extended phenotype’. In this book Dawkins argues that the extended phenotype goes beyond the phenotype (‘body’) produced by genes. It will include all the changes in the environment made by organism(s), which is more or less governed by genes. The beaver for example is able to modify landscapes by creating dams and ponds. These ponds will be there till the beavers will persist in that landscape.

The extended phenotype idea came back in my mind recently in a different context: while talking with my friend and colleague Joern Fischer about rural societies and the rich cultural-natural heritage produced by these – a heritage which easily seduces any conservationist.

Below the ‘cultural skeleton’ metaphor will be presented in a nutshell. It may look weird and not useful. And this is why it is shared!

Human societies produce culture and traditions. The culture and traditions are measurable things, for example songs, stories, traditional knowledge, dances and traditional costumes. Culture maniphest even beyond these: the structure of buildings (e.g. houses, church), the structure of the village, the way how people use the natural resources (land management, landscape management) can be all culturally driven. Together, these various cultural manifestations and landscape structure will give identity and uniqueness for that society and landscape.

What if the traditional society suddenly collapse (e.g. by massive emigration) and the cultural vacuum resulted from this is quickly filled by people with multiple and different cultural/ethnic origins? What will happen with the huge cultural and natural heritage produced and maintained by the previous society in the ‘new’ cultural-societal conditions?

This is how the term ‘cultural skeleton’ comes into the discussion.

Many conservationists are struggling to conserve the sharply deteriorating Saxon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons ) cultural and natural heritage of southern Transylvania. Since the society who produced and maintained this heritage (namely the Saxons) almost completely disappeared, one can wonder how efficient this conservation work can be in long term. The new society is a mixture of people with many cultural and ethnic origins (mostly Romanians, Hungarians and Rromas), some of them being ‘forced’ by a political context to immigrate in this area while others were already here but were mostly defavorised with respect to rights.This new mixture of culture doesn’t seem to truly fill and fit the ‘Saxon cultural skeleton’ (e.g. settlements, houses, landscape) left behind the Saxons. Moreover it seems that the group oriented behaviour (so characteristic to the Saxon society), and some traditional cultural behavioural maniphestations and knowledge (which are still present in the székely communities from Eastern Transylvania) are completely absent in these new communities. And this has consequences.

Below some examples showing the transformation of cultural (Figure 1) and landscape (Figure 2) heritage under changed cultural-societal conditions in the Saxon area of Transylvania.

Figure 1. A massive change in the cultural heritage such are the buildings is visible in the Saxon area. In many Saxon settlements, including Sighisoara there is a growing number of buildings restored in a way to have different shapes, colors and sizes. According to many local people, this may be due to the lack of community cohesion. Note that the picture series is not about the same house, just the overall trend is represented.
Figure 2. Wood pastures from Southern Transylvania were historically produced and maintained by the Saxon society. These lands were created by rearing the existing deciduous forests. Some oaks were maintained across the pasture and were used for shadow (for animals), timber and acorn production while the pasture was grazed. A massive deterioration of the old, scattered trees mostly due to lack of management and direct injuries caused by people are observable in the recent decades. Their fate goes hand in hand with the fate of the built heritage presented in Figure 1, due to the same reasons. According to some local expert opinions, if the current deterioration continues, most of ancient trees and wood pastures will completely disappear in the coming decades.

Cultural and landscape heritage undergo changes even without sharp cultural turnover, in the sense mentioned above (e.g. in the Székely land ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sz%C3%A9kely_Land )– although here it seem to be slower and not so drastic than in the Saxon area). I admit that lots of cultural and biodiversity values are lost due to these changes and these changes pose their own challenges to conservationists. The increased wealth of the developed western European countries certainly represents an ‘attractor’ for many traditional societies of Eastern Europe: many Eastern European people from rural areas after experiencing the ‘western lifestyle’ still tend to put more weight on messages like ‘How poor you are’ instead of ‘Look around how destroyed our nature is. Try to not repeat our mistakes’.


With all these in mind, I think that the sharp cultural turnover recently happening in past communist-socialist countries like Romania adds a further and important threat on internationally important landscapes, habitats, species and cultural heritage – and represent an extra challenge for conservationists.

To put it simply: it is better if people occupy their own cultural skeleton than one made by others.

Some questions related to sustainable development and heritage (cultural, natural) conservation:
i) How, what and how much to conserve in rural landscapes where the rapid cultural turnover produced tensions between society and cultural-natural heritage?
ii) How could we – conservationists – help these societies to build a bridge between cultural heritage and them?
iii) How to help societies with multiple cultural origins to form a real community (i.e. informal institution)?
iv) What is the fate of the architectural and cultural heritage of traditional rural societies which were not affected by sharp cultural turnover – for example those from the Székely land from Eastern Transylvania? What are the limits and possibilities of cultural and natural heritage conservation in those areas?


Update (4 July, 2011): nice talk with my friend Hans Hedrich about cultural differences between people and the consequences of this. He was suggesting a nice thing: 'people generally act according to a kind of cultural code. It seems that in this area the Saxon cultural code was replaced by many other, different codes. And the consequences are obvious". After this I suggested the cultural skeleton metaphor - somehow we were talking about the same things. Hans, if you read this I hope I understood it well... (he suggested the book Daniel Quinn, Ishmael. I know (well) that book, warmly recommend to everybody)

vineri, 3 septembrie 2010

Conservation when change is inevitable: an Eastern European rural perspective

Tibor Hartel


Rural landscapes were shaped by human activity, which sometimes can be tracked back to centuries. These landscapes represent a fascinating subject for applied conservation and research. I consider as “conservationist” every academic person who is actively involved in the conservation of cultural values of these societies. This can be an architect or anthropologist or ecologist. Preferably all together in a mixed team. In this note I highlight some aspects related to traditional and new values, changes in these values (which we, as conservationists of Eastern Europe generally don’t like) in rural societies and their potential consequences for conservation thinking.



When is a rural community (with its “extended phenotypes” such are the cultural products) traditional? Difficult question, especially because of the many uncertainties around the word “traditional”. From an Eastern European and Romanian context it seems that the “cultural heritage” of the traditional rural communities can be tracked back for centuries. The traditional costumes, traditional songs and dances, poems, or architectural products (houses, churches etc.) and nevertheless landscapes are just a few of the many cultural values produced and maintained by rural societies. Although these may change during time (since societies are not isolated entities, infiltration occur from other cultures as well – see for example the Saxon-Hungarian-Romanian interface in the Southern part of Transylvania), traditional culture will always give an identity to societies. Institutional aspects are also important. Under institution I understand a coherent set of rules, produced and accepted by the community, adapted (and adaptable) to changes in order to maintain the integrity and identity of the community and its cultural, moral or other values. Therefore the institution is a very important thing and it is not easy to have it. It needs time to be formed, including many conflictual situations within the group especially in the first stages of its formation. Once formed, it may be quite resistant to change (especially fast, global changes which seem to occur now and “hit” these societies) and may even lead to the collapse of a society. So, the institution may be key element of maintaining societies but at the same time, it may cause its collapse in sharply changing times. (I have this insight after studying the Saxon institution and its collapse in Southern Transylvania but many other reports suggest that such collapses occurred in many parts of the world – see Jared Diamond’s book about collapse) Nevertheless, well built institutions can be found not only in traditional rural communities. Many Western European urbanized countries seem to have good institutions without being traditional in the sense of e.g. the traditional rural communities presented above. (this being, I think, the key of their economic flourishing as well)


What will happen when a community is sharply “released” from the (traditional) cultural control? (to adopt a term from ecology: “cultural release” occurs (instead of “ecological release”)). For example, this may happen by the sharp cease of the temporal continuity of a culture (and institution) caused e.g. by a sudden dilution of cultural values by new values. This dilution can happen e.g. by replacement of people with different cultures and value systems (e.g. massive emigration of one culture - resulting in a 'cultural vacuum' - followed by immigration of other culture(s)). Dilution can also happen with massive “invasion” of new values into a society. These newly formed communities may have very different behaviour from the above presented ones. In the worst case, they will start a kind of “vandalization” of the cultural heritage they received from the past society. Basically this is not a bad thing, from evolutionary perspective. Imagine that the major social and lifestyle transitions (e.g. the nomadic ->pastoral, agricultural -> industrial transitions) which resulted e.g. in me being able to write this text from my laptop, were something similar.


The Saxon area of Southern Transylvania (Romania) may be a very good example regarding the “fate” of traditional cultural heritage under sharp institutional change. Without too many comments (and it is not my intention to skew the message of this post toward buildings…), I will illustrate this e.g. by presenting some pictures about buildings from this area (Pictures 1-3, below and also Picture 4 for a Finnish architectural type).



Picture 1. Sighisoara, in the Saxon period.


Picture 2. The new Sighisoara. The arrow show an unfinished huge building which (i) occupies a lot of space and (ii) is “architecturally mutilating” the town. Source: internet


Picture 3. If the visitor come into Sighisoara (a town built and shaped by Saxons along the centuries) from Brasov direction, this is the architectural landscape what she or he will see. The buildings from the left side of the picture are very recent (<5-6>


Picture 4. I experienced a “remarkable constancy” in the architecture of Finnish (and also Swedish) buildings across that huge country. They were beautifully diverse but at the same time so clearly representative.


Societies are changing, and most likely nothing can be done to stop this process. What need to be done is to help societies adapt (their institutions) to change.


I don’t know how much from the old values will be kept in the newly formed society after and during the institutional change. Conservationists are fighting to keep as much as possible - and I dont know how 'fair' is this or not. If one can manage to “plant” these values in the “core” of the (new) institution (or, why not, to build one around these values) then we may be optimistic. But this is hard to do, and it seems that most of conservationists from Romania fail to do this in a proper way.


To be efficient in our conservation attempts in a changing world, we need to know what the major driver (or what kinds of drivers operate - since likely there is more than one) of change is. If we understand this, we can assess better our aims, limits and possibilities and also we could allocate resources more efficiently.


If I would try a quick attempt to identify drivers of (institutional) change this would be not hard at all. From individual perspective some short bits could be: The wish to work less and gather more (and more). To feel safe. To feel good. To be healthy. To be sexually attractive. To have money, power (as much as possible). To be independent. (or: to be in a level of social hierarchy which assure more and more independence) To travel around the world. To know more, think more. To have fun. (these are what I generally see around, and I am sorry if the reader lack any or all of them)


If the existing cultural products and heritage allow at least the illusion of having some of the above mentioned things, then it is likely that people will keep them. Otherwise, likely they will dissapear or be markedly changed.


Now, how many milliseconds should be spent to realize how much of these may have a family which is doing something like that presented in Picture 5 especially when they are young and know that in their surroundings there is a life which is presented in Picture 6?


Picture 5. Upper picture: young people making traditional farming in a Saxon village. Picture below: a short brake during agricultural work with my grandmother, mother and a villager who come to help.


Picture 6. Youth in a party in Bucharest (source: Internet). Parties (of this type) are generally organized to allow people know each other, show how attractive they are, to have fun. And “to escape…”. These kids generally will not be very happy to do farming in the sense of Picture 1 and if they are not obligated they will probably not even try it (unless they will find in it a – temporary – fun)


There are, of course, a number of global-institutional drivers acting more or less independently from the above mentioned ones.


To come back to our problem: how to conserve values when the societies and value systems are rapidly changing? First, I really think that conservation work needs to be done. Other way, we loose all the important reference points. But what and how and how much? As a conservation biologist I would say: life, before all! I would invest a lot of energy and resource to understand the 'behaviour' of a social and ecological system under various circumstances: how adaptive and resilient that system is. Which are the key features of that given system which assures resilience and adaptability. Building or forming, (new) institutions and value systems - dont forget: we live in sharply changing times - would be of critical importance to achieve this goal even if this would mean the “broke” with many traditional values (traditional “cultural packages” should be “filtered”).