So much talent is wasted by a world that confines abilities to purposes that do not make the world better – sometimes even making it worse for some, or all of us when it threatens the future we share.
So much intelligence is exhausted by a world that rewards strategising against each other over solving problems through each other – for the sole reason that “they” are not part of our community, of our country, or do not share our beliefs.
So much hope, drive, and passion are tamed – often to extinction – by a world that mistakes renouncement for realism.
If any – or all – of those thoughts ever came to you, we have to talk.
We believe there is a world where we can rewrite our entire social foundations – challenging how we relate to everything and everyone, and how each generation passes its heritage on to the next.
A world that has shed the – so inhuman – need to make most relationships transactional, rather than keeping them – well – human.
A world that has understood that passing knowledge from one generation to another can only be balanced by an equivalent measure of inherited wisdom.
We also believe such a world would not have to give up on technological progress, even when it includes a measure of inherently human megalomania – so long as it is wisely bounded. It would ask for even less individual coercion – beyond a few shared social and environmental rules to keep us in balance – with one another, and with our planet. In fact, it would likely offer far greater individual freedom over our life choices than any society has ever allowed.
What we dream of belongs to something so much deeper, more boundless, and more universal than any political party or grand economic theory. It is the realisation that we, as a species, must evolve towards a fundamental shift in how we relate to one another, to our planet, and to our universe, if we do not want to risk erasing our very existence – and many others – over the next few centuries.
Humanity is a six-year-old child with a finger on a nuclear bomb.
We shine at inventing and building powerful things, at an ever-increasing pace, but we never take the time to ensure they will be universally useful and accessible, to assess and prevent their potential harm, and to build guardrails that limit the price our world will inevitably have to pay for their existence.
Worse! We applaud ourselves for it. Like a sociopathic genius validated by an over-cheering crowd, we progress at any cost, ignoring the wreckage we leave behind.
Our technological achievements make us ever more powerful – and ever more dangerous – for ourselves and for all life on Earth, all the while we concentrate a tremendous amount of power in the hands of a few very fallible humans, as we all are.
We excel at inheriting knowledge, but we fail at inheriting wisdom – condemning ourselves to repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Our species is caught in an endless swing of reactions, rather than genuinely evolving. Because we live in societies that never unconditionally prioritise promoting humanity, valuing patience, or rewarding helpfulness over everything else – without making someone, or something, pay the price.
Being human is – by definition – what we are supposed to be best at. How did we end up making it the least valuable trait to have? Why are the most humble, altruistic, and singular individuals so often the most overlooked, undervalued, and unheard members of our societies?
The answer lies in the fact that we are fundamentally educated into making almost all our relationships – with one another and with our environment – transactional.
Imagine a world where we don’t “work”. We help!
Why wouldn’t you want to work out of a sense of accomplishment, solely because it helps our society – and because this same society cares for and respects what you do – with no hierarchy beyond how much it helps all of us?
And for the many activities where passion makes sense, why wouldn’t you work out of passion – simply because you are passionate about it?
Imagine a world where we don’t “produce”. We provide!
Have you ever thought about how many people, how many lifetimes, and how much social power are wasted to produce useless things? Not only does it bring little to our societies, but it also makes them worse through human and environmental exploitation.
Now think about what humanity could achieve if, instead of making more than half of the eight billion people living on this planet waste their potential producing useless gadgets, we used even part of that energy to improve our societies, to care for one another, to improve the environment, and to advance science, knowledge, and useful technologies.
We would already have set foot on Mars years ago, all the while living in happier societies and on a healthier planet.
Imagine a world where we don’t “study”. We grow!
Donaldson – and later Gandhi – spoke of knowledge without character, and science without humanity, as “sins”. Beyond the religious framing, we believe that knowledge without wisdom is what makes the difference between radiotherapy and Hiroshima, between mRNA vaccines and CRISPR babies, between Wikipedia and Cambridge Analytica.
Education should never be utilitarian. It should teach as much wisdom – ethics, sociology, psychology, history – as it teaches theory.
This is where we grow, and where we inherit more than just knowledge from one generation to the next.
Imagine a world where we don’t “lead”. We reflect!
France experienced a unique political episode in 2019 when its government launched the Convention citoyenne pour le climat – a citizens’ assembly of 150 randomly selected people tasked with consulting, thinking, debating, and ultimately proposing 50 measures to reduce France’s greenhouse gas emissions – all within six months.
Many were convinced it would be a failure. Well, it was not. According to opinion polls at the time, all but one of the propositions were approved by the population.
Our societies remain trapped in a mindset where we wrongly assume only a few of us are capable of leading, and that individual leaders are the most efficient way to make progress – in politics, in institutions, and even in companies.
We are far better governed when we collectively reflect on how our societies should evolve than when we passively wait to be led by others.
Imagine a world where we don’t “patent”. We open!
Which model do you think is the most efficient way to make progress in any field of theoretical or practical knowledge?
A model where actors build siloed enterprises, hide their discoveries, and patent them to prevent others from expanding on them – or a model where everyone is free to share, to clone, and to iterate on one another’s ideas?
The internet itself was built on openness. So was most of the software that runs our world. We already know which model wins — we simply refuse to generalise the lesson.
Imagine a world where we don’t “transact”. We act!
Would you need transactions in such a world? Would you need money, ownership accumulation, or overconsumption?
Transactions are a waste of time and energy, and they are a poor way to qualify contributions. They reduce life to dumb numbers, or to subjective comparisons. And they add unnecessary friction and conflicts.
On a human level, what counts is what is achieved – and how much society gains in terms of a universally net positive outcome. Here, positive means a blend of – in that order – individual well-being, social cohesion, shared knowledge, and material progress. Universally net positive means the gain does not come at someone else’s expense, and keeps environmental costs minimal.
As long as we need money to value and motivate one another’s contributions to the world,
As long as we consider a surgeon more deserving than a sewage worker,
As long as we have conversations rather than discussions,
As long as we need concentrations of power to lead our societies,
As long as we believe destructive competition is the best way to maximise innovation,
As long as we make someone – or something – pay for our progress,
Humanity will remain an immature child, unable to grow past its own self-centred limitations.
This is why we call on whoever resonates with these words – and whoever is ready to dream, and to experiment with what a new humanity could be – to join us.
Whether we are ten or thousands does not matter. We are not here to fight the current society. We are here to build the next one – to open doors for a future generation, whenever that may be. A generation that will have realised how fundamental the changes must be if we are to break free from the infernal cycle of our history.
As Europeans, we have lived through everything humankind has done – at its best and at its worst. We carry the richest political history on Earth, by the sheer number and diversity of regimes Europe has seen. That is why we believe the European Union may be the best place on Earth to – once more – open a new era, on the shoulders of thousands of years of experience.
An era of Holomutualism – a form of social organisation in which relationships are primarily built on helpfulness, where balance between the living and the non-living world comes first, where freedom grows through decentralisation, and where the aim is for humankind to prosper – in happiness, wisdom, and knowledge – on Earth and beyond.
For that, we are ready to rethink and challenge everything – especially what we have never even thought to question.
And it starts with a conversation.
You do not have to be a sociologist, an economist, or someone with an extensive political education. The human in you is enough. We are here to discuss, to seek, to debate, to propose – and to experiment with new worlds – with no requirement beyond respect for one another, and the will to aspire to something other than transactional relationships.
As for the form it will take – and how we will do it – we will decide together. And whenever we disagree so deeply that consensus becomes too hard to hold, we will decentralise our experiments a little more. The more we diversify our circles, the stronger European Dream becomes.
So – what about a coffee, or a tea?
Online or offline, drop us a line – or a dream – at you@european-dream.eu ☕.
Ivan Gabriele, Founder of European Dream