For long time I haven't authored here. The reason is I was really busy during 2009-2010. And I feel it is time to deliver a small update about my ongoing projects. But let me first briefly recap what happend: Last September,  I was admissoned at IHEID-Geneva to the PhD program in Development Studies, which turned out to be highly intense. During fall semester I attended the doctoral seminar ("Epistémologie des sciences sociales"-12 ECTS), including an academic writing workshop and professional interview training. In addition, I also completed courses on "History and Development", "Development Economics" (yes, once more...), and in spring semester ,"Indigenous Histories and Anthropology". Jeez, I've learnt a lot - not only in terms of academics, writing and language, but I have also met a whole bunch of new friends and inspiring people from all over the world. I applied for three scholarships and  throughout the year continued working as German Language teacher in Lausanne.

Finally, last June, I quit the job there, because I went to Uganda (July-September) in order to construct a chicken farm for a very poor orphanage in the suburbs of Kampala. (see www.breedingopportunities.org). Miriam and me were able to realize our first small project due to a nice sum of about 15.000 US $ we managed to raise in spring! This was a rich experience, cause we had to implement a whole proper project set-up, while following our specific participatory approach to development...yes, we are doing what was promised at the time of launching this website!

Furthermore, during last spring semester, I organized an inter-disciplinary "Café des philosophes" here in Geneva together with my friend and colleague Kars Aznavour (http://kars.aznavour.de/) following an approach called "polylogue" offered by inter-cultural philosophy. Even though the success did not really meet our high expectations (a summary and explanation can be found in an article I wrote for Austrian's KEF) it  nevertheless sparked some new movement at the IHEID which is now manifesting in the form of our new project: A weekly inter-disciplinary PhD seminar (for students from International Law, Economy, History, Political Science and Development). I really enjoy working with so many highly-skilled professionals, having such diverse cultural backgrounds and I am looking forward to the results of this year.

What concerns new journeys, I can report that besides Uganda, I also visited Germany (participated in a solemn summerschool with Martha Nussbaum), Egypt (2x), Israel and Jordan last year. Especially Egypt (could make use of my growing Arabic skills) and Israel was special experience, because, I think, grasping the political and social circumstances of the region is only possible, if you are really there, meeting local people. My personal network of highly educated and well-informed people gives me the opportunity to discuss the situation of people in a deeper sense, I guess, than by reading or travelling alone. All hail to that!

For 2010-2011 journeys to the following countries are already envisaged or even partly planned: India, Pakistan, Iran (big question mark), Bhutan..Ghana, Brazil, Columbia. Hopefully my travel section on this website will be launched soon. I am thinking of buying a new and better photo camera and I want to present my best pictures including comments on the countries I visited here on my website!

Back now to Geneva for a month, I am working on my MPT (Mémoire préliminaire de thèse), a 60-pages research proposal which I hope to present on my website very soon. It contains my further research for the next 3 years in much detail and is, at the same time, the result of the last two years of researching an studying. Can you imagine, I eventually found my "intellectual home": I can admit now that I am offficially working in the field of Development Ethics, a sub-discipline of Global Ethics, Global Justice, Cosmopolitanism and Global Cititzenship!

In particular the Capability Approach (as developed by Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, David Crocker, Sabina Alkire, Onora O'Neill and many more) became meanwhile an interesting issue to invest my time.... It's main  idea is to take really serious what a person "has reason to value". Starting with an assessment of one's situation, what are the resources and capabilites available in order to achieve which goals? This strictly libertarian (highest value on freedom and potentialities) and indiviidualising approach has the advantage to address the issue of development everywhere, not only in "developing" countries. And it focuses rightly on the aspect of self-responsibility. This way of thinking someone's needs, desires and aspirations subordinates suddenly all economical, political, energy-related, etc. issues under a sound ethical outline - quasi through the backdoor. But of course, there are also some shortcomings, because what someone has reason to value is to a large extent also formed through social interaction. It is therefore to ask, how certain moral norms are created and how this creation between individual and collective level  really works. Therefore, for me the main question ist: WHAT IS MORAL PROGRESS? How can it be triggered, measured, initiated, operationalized? Is there a way to work with individual and collectice moral progress? Which moral norms serve for  positive development (and all countries and cultures are developing)? What role do human rights play in these processes?Which alternative ways of development, in a more encompassing manner going beyond just political, economical and cultural approaches, are already existent or can be initiated? How can the dimensions of intellectual, educational, spiritual, technological and ethical advancement successfully become incorporated?

And these questions are not least the reason for this article. I feel like I have to articulate an extensive and loud call, or rather scream, to the world out there!! Where are you, you visionaries of all countries and cultures??- I need you! The world needs you! Yes, you.

It is time to come up to present the world what changed consciousness really means. It's urgent time to construct new ideas for the world in the face of a deceasing capitalist global order, of pressing environmental changes, of increasing run to the last resorts of right wing, nationalist and religious extremist demagogues, to name just a few reasons...

Being nowadays a proud member of IDEA (International Development Ethics Assosciation) and HDCA (Human Development and Capabilities Assosciation), I am actively searching for interested students, professors  and professionals who don't care about their career, employment possibilites or their reputation, but who are truly commited to change and ideas of global sustainability. It is time to lift inter-disciplinary to a new level!

Here is my vision:

I want to live in a world where sharing know-how, technological knowledge and tools necessary for it (software, machines, mobile phones, etc., agricultural knowledge, knowledge about traditional competitivea advantages) are openly shared. Exclusivity should be downgraded to the sphere of ideas only - but then shared and distributed to the world as a whole. Why are there still almost no construction machines available in Africa (or only for big money?), why are collections of links in your browser, citation data bases, documents, reports, books, movies and music not openly and freely shared among the peoples? Why is property still such an issue when it is clearly just an obstacle to global development? The argument that people have to sustain from their income can be debunked by pointing to policis of granted basic income. You are asking where the money should come from? Well, I think you have recognized that our economic system is already on its last legs, right? The motor of issuing money on the basis of national debts is probably not the most sustainable idea human civilization ever had, and it is economically against all ideals of dynamics and growth, if interest is taken only from the safest and best secured innovations that are financed....

I want to live in a world where global principles are established by balancing them with global ethical standards, where mental, spiritual and physical well-being is explicitly the main goal of all subordinated and applied discourses - and where hierarchies, binaries, dichotomies, subjectively-felt fear and uncertainity just belong to the past, or are at least, well integrated in a balanced general system according to the principles. I want to live in a world where politicians, multilateral institutions AND corporations are committed to long term plans of development, not simply changing after a few years due to the pressure of re-election and short term election periods. I want to see politicians working closely and participatory with civil society, trying to establish local direct democracy and self subsistance, I want to abolish political parties and having them replaced by free floating unions of working expertise or pressure groups of common interest - having politicians and bureaucrats then elected according to their expertise. 

Talking about expertise: This is not a matter of knowledge, experience or education, because science itself, the separation into clearly detached disciplines as well as the ongoing fragmentation of study programmes, needs to  be changed. The way it is nowadays is completely inadequate of grasping the conplex and interrelated processes created by (wo)men in the world, therefore offering no serious solutions or visions anymore. Is it surprising that interest for inter-disciplinary study programs is booming all over? People feel (and many know) that the time for exclusive answers or analyses from only one or two epistemological perspectives is up... The approach to development of any given society must follow the imperatives of qualitative improvement, of bringing people together instead of separating them, of making transport, business, communications all subject to sharing knowledge, because it is the only way serving us all. Money and loans, as social entrepreneurship shows, do not have any end in themselves, they are only means for higher goals. Ask Aristotle. Same is true for industries, infrastructure, politics, social policies, agriculture, and so forth. The question is in which qualitative way are we defining these higher goals, how do we organise our political lives based on which values? Everyone has to ask him/herself, to which values I am referring to in my decisions? Everyone is responsible not only for his/her life but for the life of anyone else out there at the same time, because world became entirely inter-dependent. Small changes in the environmental system of Brazil can immediately affect the daily life (weather, business, IT,..) of people in Europe. Selling of some currency reserves in China will immediately jeopardize our life, selling oil in € instead of $ triggers wars... Imagine a world without electricity or oil, the lifeblood our planet's organism. Have you ever seen the pipelines running out everywhere of the Amazon similar to drips running out than in from a human body's metabolism? Heeello, is anyone out there able to understand the world  indeed as an immense metabolism, a living thing, but far beyond simplistic anallogies to the human body, with its mycelium of different systems all being connected to each other (if you want or not)?  But is there also someone able to see the way through, how ethical standards can play a role as organizing guiding priniciples, along to which lines all the sub-systems of infrastructure, administrative IT, economies, markets, politics etc. need to be arranged always asking the questions of "by which quality a process A-->B is done?" and "how is it related to B-->C (--->A)?"

I want to live in a world where polylogues, open spaces for debate and negotiation of basic  epistemological and ontological principles and notions among cultures, regions, traditions and believes are created everywhere. I am convinced that if this were really the proven goal of leaders of integrity who are approaching leaders from other cultures, people would not have to escape into the talons of separatist demagogues.  I want to live in a world where people can freely follow and choose their individual and social capabilites, the aspired realisation of functionings (doings and beings), where the concern for making humans flourishing is of prime importance. I want to live in a world where people can freely enjoy their religion, exactly because religion is also sub-ordinated to the general rule that there is no absolute truth, and everyone could be wrong at anytime. I want to live in a world where binary logic is abolished and paradoxes are openly debated and accepted. And I want to live in a world where  (global and not just Western) human rights serve as a global constitution where international relations are liberated from notions of national souverignity (but not human rights related souvereignity!) and realpolitik. Last but not least, I want to live in a world where "global citizenship" became subject in every school of our planet, where borders only serve as administrative enclosure (for which a new word has to be found, without -closure), where every single person can freely move, migrate, life and work wherever she/he wants at any time, where passports and visas are made unnecessary, where asylum rights became unnecessary and where there is competitveness understood in a singular process aspired by the whole planet at once....

Are you prepared for the dawning of a new age? If you understand what I feel, contact me.