# 13 Maya Guide To Sustainability

Relationship Management Series
Vital Village Series
13
A Maya Guide to Sustainability
Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de
S umma ry
We reckon the world is as we perceive it, but reality depends on our
capacity to see. We feel enriched by travelling to other places, other
cultures and we claim to value the difference we perceive. Yet, at the
same time, the culture we represent monopolises the world, destroys
other ways of thinking, undermines the exotic cultures we pretend to
cherish. It creates war, both against people and against nature.
The present paper tries to open the view on who we are and why we
behave as we do. It sheds light on some of those people and civilisations that still hold some the secrets of being different in this globalised
world. Analyses of different concepts of sustainability serve to exemplify
those contrasts, showing that we will never attain a sustainable development as long as we do not tackle the root of the evil: our culture relies on creating inescapability. It segregates where resilience and
sustainability demand integration. It threatens where emphatic understanding is needed.
If we wish a more peaceful world, if we truly want to engage in stopping
environmental destruction, if our empathy towards the poor is strong
enough to make us change for the sake of a more equal economic development, then we must also consider changing our views of who we
are. The deepest joy of voyaging and exploration lies not in perceiving
new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Bernd Neugebauer / Bernardo DelMonte
Home ............................................................................................................................5
Trees .............................................................................................................................7
Destruction ....................................................................................................................8
Why did the Mayan Society Collapse? ......................................................................10
The Economy of Inescapability ...................................................................................10
Lack of Resilience .......................................................................................................12
A Second Look at the Maya ........................................................................................13
The Law of Entropy .....................................................................................................13
The Law of Empathy ...................................................................................................15
Living Sustainability ....................................................................................................16
What can you and I do? .............................................................................................18
Personal Change ........................................................................................................18
Cultural Change .........................................................................................................19
Political Change in the Maya World ...........................................................................20
Political Change Today ...............................................................................................21
The Way Ahead .........................................................................................................22
Outlook: Rebuilding Vital Villages ......................................................................25
Dedicated to Eduardo Galeano

who brought me to Latin America.
Asking him
Why did the Mayan society collapse?
he probed
go and investigate the answer yourself.
So I did. It took me four decades.
Eduardo died April 13th, 2015.
Thank you Eduardo,

we shall live your dreams!
How to create a long living society
My rainforest HOME office in Chan K Vergel, little village in paradise, recreated on devastated land in the center of Mayan Yucatn
Home
As a young man I rented an old cabin in a Yucatn village to spend 4 years learning Mayan
agri-culture. Two of my children were born in a fully indigenous surrounding.
I still live in the Yucatn forest because some elders asked me to stay and
tell the world what happens here!.
These elders helped me discover my own cultural assumptions. I so realised that my cultural
imprint encouraged me to feel proud of dominating nature. We take from the earth what we
need. We kill what we dont need. We call it progress and find joy in our power, just by habit,
without even thinking about it. Thats how I acted, and all of us do, it is our cultures imperative.
The old American cultures follow
different paradigms. The MAYA
and KOGI very clearly express
another relationship with nature
saying The corn plant fell in love
with people and therefore gave up
its independent reproduction to be
with man forever.
Accepting that we are made of
what we eat and exist because
other beings want us to be we live
in synergy. The corn plant needs
A KOGI elder, called MAMA, keeper of the knowledge and over 110 years old
cultivation and people need to be

nurtured by nature itself.
The secret of the Mayan culture therefore lies not in its big pyramids but in their synergetic
life and culture. In some areas the Maya supported 40 times more inhabitants than Yucatn
has today. They created a world of abundance, not of scarcity as modern society does.
My private space in the Mayan forest of Chan K Vergel
I try to apply the Mayan principles on my farms tree-gardens. They are a bird refuge with
thriving fertility and precious forests, a small model for what the whole of the peninsula of
Yucatn once was and can be.
In 2003 our little village was granted the title Chan K by the elders. Chan K, little village, is
a title given to a new community established of 7 houses. Historically Chan Ks were the
core of the Mayan societys political organisation. Those who organised a sustainable community were accepted as leaders. In a community of leaders they improved the cultures adaptability and transformation. It was at the village level that the Mayan synergistic practices
were trained, experimented and passed on to the younger generations.
Today, in my neighbouring communities, I witness environmental and social destruction. The
main source of income is brought in by Mayans working in the US. It is not produced locally.
The contrast with the old Mayan world could not be bigger. Still in around 1980, when I lived
with the Maya, their vibrant markets, personal dignity and joy were deeply impressive. The
women wore beautiful embroidered dresses and heavy golden jewellery, the men shiny white
suits. That has all gone. Mayans do not dance at their own fiestas any more because they
lack enough money to buy the appropriate dresses.
Tr e e s
The modern societys rules were introduced by Westerners, they are all but Mayan. I grew up
in the Western world and had the opportunity to investigate its background from a very peculiar angle. Growing up in Germany after the war I knew about poverty and witnessed the
country's rapid industrial development, but luckily I also grew up surrounded by trees.
My father grew trees,

restoring the damage inflicted by World
War 2.
My grandfather produced trees

following the devastations of World War 1.
His grandfather restored

Destruction in Germany a few years before I was born
what early industrialisation had destroyed.
I lived with hundreds of millions of trees learning that life was all about sustainability. In my
Western world, however, sustainability was about repairing damages. Destruction seemed to
necessarily occur before anybody thought about soothing the relationship with nature. We
destroy and then we become concerned to repair.
When following the family tradition I became a man of trees myself, I studied the next wave of
massive destruction, the depletion of rainforests. Just as any of the wars it was not an accidental phenomenon. People with names and addresses made it happen. In our culture the
old growth forests, like rainforests, are considered useful when they are chopped down to
make money. The forests are not just dying, they are being killed. Scientific and economic
justifications guiding these murderers were even taught in my University. The intention was to
produce prosperity. It did for some, yet in the former rainforest areas we harvest poverty.
For ages this kind of exploitation was a miserable yet a tolerable habit. Our culture was only
one of many, some millions of people existed on earth. But then during the past 150 years,
the number of human beings increased 600fold, fuelled by the use of fossil energies. Now we
are 7 billion, all governed by only one dominant culture on earth. Trying to maintain this culture we increase violence and the number of wars, both against people and against nature.
Destruction
In Yucatn I witnessed the
final and total destruction of
its forests 40 years ago. The
Peninsula was originally
covered by valuable Mahogany and Cedar stands.
Their timber was a profitable
export article. The last massive timber extraction in the
state of Yucatn was conducted in the 1960ies. Since, not a single big old
Mahogany tree remains. All
Deforestation: a Yucatn forest after felling and burning the remnants
profits went abroad.
A similar forest collapse had already happened in Germany 300 years earlier when the country's early industries grew and large amounts of firewood were needed. Their energy demand
was declared a national priority and people had to sell timber until nothing was left. Money
lenders assured these operations. Forests disappeared, soils eroded, floods destroyed and it
all resulted in hunger and poverty. Millions fled to other continents while the commercial and
banking organisers enriched themselves.
In 18th century Western Europe, however, responsible politicians acted to recreate the necessary conditions for a sustained human livelihood. To end destruction they restored the
forests and the conditions for food production. New property laws, communal constitutions
and specific local incentives ended rural hunger. Programs for cultural education, land reform
and forest management boosted timber and food production, timber revenues became a major source of income for all cities' and communities'. Villages, towns, cities since own and
manage forests - and my family started growing trees.
Some 150 years later,
as a child I appreciated
how these trees had
grown i n t o t h r i v i n g
forests. I loved playing in them and saw
them growing. Yet it
was not until I came to
Yucatn that I truly realised the deeper sense
and impact o f e v e r
repeating destruction
New forests in the German Black Forest after 250 years of sustainable management
and constant repair.
I slowly began to see history as part of my own being. 900 years before I was born, my European ancestors had established the most prosperous societies ever known in Europe. In their
medieval towns the local crafts and industries thrived. Inspired by Arab scientists and supported
by Jewish commercial skills 800 Christian cathedrals were built. Local responsibility and natural
productivity made the effort possible as long as adequate monetary systems supported the
process.
Later in the middle ages these well functioning systems became the victims of greed. Europe
entered the dark ages, centuries of war. The Arabs were expelled or killed as were the Jews,
cities and nature destroyed, people died in epidemics resulting from poverty and filth. Warriors began to dominate society and colonised those who still preserved any values until much
of Europe was poorer than ever before. Money lending fuelled the destruction process and
created a debt based centralised economy run by a few Western European families.
New sources of income were urgently needed to support the economy when the indebted
Spaniards took off to the Americas. They arrived in Yucatn, supposedly discovering America, and found a most vital Mayan society, rich and productive, with cooperation based commercial networks throughout the continent. The Mayan society was thriving. Their social
structure, their management approach for water, soil, and forests were impressive. Early European descriptions reflect awe and amazement for the discoveries.
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Not that everything always worked perfectly yet for many centuries the Maya had always returned to a truthful interpretation of their basic rules and reasoning. Their transformations
never involved phases of such deep destruction as we Europeans had seen. Mayan people
were very much aware of the constant transformation their society went through and renewed
their institutions periodically. Their priests supervised and reflected the development.
Its transformational character was the opposite of our Western power structures.
Following their so called discovery the Maya, Aztec, Inca, Amazonians, Kogi, Arahuac and
hundreds of other civilisations were all denied their rights and historic role. Their achievements were equally forgotten and destroyed as our European roots and origins. We lost our
sense of history, the sense of who we are, that was my sad conclusion.
Why did the Mayan Society C o l l a p s e ?

Betrayed by Spanish priests, in a town called Man in 1562, several thousand Mayan spiritual
leaders, their coordinators, were slaughtered and burnt on one single day by order of the
holy inquisition and the Vatican. The Mayan economy lost its backbone. All its wealth went
into the hands of the church and financed Europe's major commercial empires, German, British, Dutch. History was then written by the conquerors turning the facts upside down. The
people in Europe never knew, and when you do not know you must believe what you are told.
Opposite to what our history books say, the Maya fought back. Their last big war against
colonisation started in 1848 and lasted into the 1920ies. Even then they still had to encounter
the strongest colonial weapon. The Western interest based money lending economy
occupied the last remnants of autonomous organisation and destroyed all remaining social
and political Mayan structures during the past 100 years or so. The Mayan collapse was
finalised when since 1980 Mayan fathers had to leave their families to work in the US
because there was no economically viable alternative left.
The Economy of Inescapability

Modern science teaches that the world is a closed controllable system, perfectly designed by
those who lead and govern. Business leaders are trained to efficiently run extractive and therefore destructive production processes. They are not provided the tools needed for an integration, repair or cascading of production processes or wastes. We are proud of innovation,
but the innovations effects on the very productivity of the raw materials we use are never acknowledged. Destruction is what we get and it is directly related to mistrust, fear, violence, death.
Our modern culture and politics support the process. The exploitative Western economy has
always been incompatible with Mayan culture, its food and forest production systems.
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The old Mayan society was, quite to the opposite,

open and transformative. You can only be so
when you are truthful, constantly learning and
adapting - which makes you vulnerable to the
deadly sins of gluttony, greed, envy, lust, wrath
and sloth characterising western behaviour.
The Christian religion emphasises the contrary,
but Pope Francis is the first one on his chair to tell
the truth about the little impact this religion has
had. We have been lying to ourselves. We have
not taken the effort to reflect who we are and what
we are doing.
Thats what cultural agreements are, they mould our default assumptions and our way of
thinking in very deep ways - and they are instrumented by the monetary system and
subsequent technology while peoples' eyes are blinded by ideological story telling. As Karl
Marx correctly said, religion is used a hallucinating drug for the people while it carries the
potential of a spiritual awakening to becoming true subjects of our being.
Amongst other beliefs people are made assume that the monetary system has the status of a
natural law. But it has not. It was intentionally designed to implement our cultural beliefs. It
creates dependence and concentration of power. People get trapped in the system. Its lack of
resilience is fully intentional. Its objective is not sustainability but inescapability - one could
well call it slavery.
Everybody talks about sustainability. The term has been defined and abused in many ways.
The many discussions blind us from what the situation really is. The Western society cannot
attain sustainability as long as inescapability is it's real objective. Sustainability must rely on
respecting the natural mechanisms for productivity and health. That is not truly intended.
We cannot therefore achieve a viable future as long as we do not accept profound cultural
changes, new paradigms for production, cooperation and living. Yet this is what people are
most afraid of. Being fearful already, any profound change is perceived as a threat and even
the most necessary changes are avoided, postponed or forgotten. It is a vicious circle.
People are trapped in the system and they are also trapped by their own ignorance about
what is going on in the world. For hundreds, maybe for thousands of years they have never
been told the truth about their real role and history. Now that we become aware of the need
for change this ignorance collides with all impulses for change. So lets look at a possible
way out.
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L a c k o f Re s i l i e n c e
Our economy repeatedly invokes major financial crises. 500 years ago these crises were solved importing Gold and Silver from Mxico. Boatloads of precious metal helped Spain pay its
debts, and yet the country remained poor. Only Europes commercial and financial corporations raised their wealth enormously.
Things have not changed. After the 2008 collapse 4 trillion dollars of tax money needed to be
spent to rescue the banks. Debt based monetary systems create these situations and they
will continue doing so as long as we do not learn our lesson and create a different kind of
money and economy.
Sustainability, the avoidance of such crisis, implies change, and change can only come from
a new kind of leadership. Change-makers are the true leaders we need today, but our society
still has severe difficulties accepting them. Those who name a difficult truth are often abandoned, they are said to commit career suicide, put to jail, menaced and harassed. Personally
we often mock at people who call for change. The present system not only traps people, it
also uses social pressure to avoid transformation.
No wonder so many people fearfully hide instead of speaking up to fight for their truth. Fear is
implanted in most of us by deep reaching mechanisms. It is the one thing that can hold people back from looking at what they want and who they really are. Fear keeps us from exploring
our culture, our belief systems, unconsciousness, full senses and emotions. I was full of fears
myself when I started finding my own ways in life. It took me decades to understand that becoming fearless was my most important task if I ever wanted to grasp how this world works.
The codes of fear are extrapolated to the political and social sphere. They allow the destructive armament industries and banking systems to gain the support of politicians and voters
alike. Public fears are kindled when they want to go to war, overthrow yet another government or occupy yet another territory rich in natural resources.
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A S e c o n d L oo k a t t h e M a y a
How did the Maya and other cultures manage living without fear?
When the first Spanish captains and conquistadores arrived in Yucatn and Mxico they
were marvelled by its prosperity, its beauty and liveliness. Cristbal Columbus and Hernn
Cortez personally left elaborate records of bountiful forests, cities, trading activities and cultural events. They saw no personal reason to destroy all this until they were engaged by their
home countrys political and economic rules to do so. The law of force was stimulated by debt
and need and the old Mayan world's ending was thus directly related to the collapse of the
European sustainable economies. In Europe there was no resilience to its profound crises.
The origins of destructivity in the Americas date back to our own and deepest cultural origins.
Only if we begin understanding those can we avoid running into even worse situations and
total collapse.
What happened when the Mayan world was colonised? Little is known about the destroyed
civilisation, its books were burnt and its knowledge erased. Only 3% of their major cities have
been partially identified. Yet, so much we know, the reason for the Mayan collapse does not
lie in their own but in their colonisers culture. Yes, there was a phase when the Maya depleted their natural resources. It led to the end of a strongly centralised phase in their development through regionalisation. The Mayan collapse, however, is a projection of what our globalised economy is presently doing to the world.
Archaeologists documented changes in the Mayan past without ever understanding the Mayan cultural and social rules. They had never lived with these people, hardly ever listened to
them. Their Western experience and belief system made them assume a collapse. All indications of systematic transformations within the Mayan political society were neglected, even
though they were rather intriguing:
Every 50 years the Maya and other Mexican societies abolished and transformed their institutional structures. Transformational processes were, in fact, the main lesson the Maya had
learnt from nature, and it is, in fact the key to understanding real sustainability.
The Law of E n t r o p y
The old Maya knew their master; nature had long proven it knew how to efficiently manage
life's sustainably in complex multidimensional systems. The Maya adhered to its rules instead
of imposing new ones. Doing so they were wonderfully efficient.
Efficiency means to do things well, improving and growing with practice. But as we gain efficiency in a non natural way, we lose our capacity to adjust to the environment. Here is our
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modern culture's weak point. The secret lies in synergising the human and natural efficiency,
thus maintaining resilience or adaptivity.
The Maya think of themselves as space-makers for these creative processes. Mayan family
farmers always created a presence in nature becoming part of the natural productive cycle.
They know that to take from the earth you must give and be grateful. Their activities were
always accompanied by ritual practices emphasising this point, looking for a sound balance
between intervention and integration, efficiency and adaption.
Modern science has shown that this balance is reflected in the concepts of efficiency and resilience. For most of our scientific history, however, our Western laws
of nature left no room for this balance.
Nature was long characterised as entropy, disorder, chaos, as something stagnating and declining rather than alive and
thriving. When one looks at the world,
however, the opposite is true. The world
is full of wonders and natural achievements unsurpassed by man.
Only in the 1970ies Ilya Prigogine won
the Nobel prize describing how life is capable of setting apart entropy to create
harmony. It was a first approximation to
an understanding of life itself, but strangely, ever since, this message has hardly
being heard.
For many the entropy rule justifies destruction and avoids the trouble it would take to start
doing the opposite. Again, I learnt this through practical experience.
When I started my forestry career the Mexican government asked me to analyse the phenomenon of rain forest destruction. I gladly did so and believing that the result of my study
would help changing course I documented exactly what I found, namely state financed deforestation programmes, World Bank loans supporting them, corporations operating massive
timber extraction schemes. But while I did not find much evidence for small farmers destroying the rainforest that was the argument promoted by the media. Forest destruction was
being used as an argument to promote large scale farming and control the smallholders representing the Mayan culture. Obviously, the destruction process itself created the space
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needed for industrial farming expansion. Nowadays GMOs, genetically modified organismsand pesticides are being used for the same tools change, the intention remains the same.
My rainforest destruction study was classified, it was not to be seen by the public. There was
no official interest in stopping the destruction. My lesson learnt was that there is no way to
change the system being part of it. To heal it one must leave it, move out of the box, adopt
another way of thinking, feeling and seeing.
So I did, moving into the Mayan community of Oxkutzcab in the Yucatn peninsula for several years to start looking at the process from a Mayan point of view.
The Law of E mpa t hy

I discovered a parallel between Ilya Prigogine's Nobel prize winning law of harmony and the
Mayan attitudes to life. Entropy is overcome by dissipating energy, says Prigogine. To achieve sustainable progress we must use our own inner forces. The Maya show us what it means. When I meet any of my Mayan friends on the street I ask baax ka walik? Where do you
go? They answer: Mix baa, literally that is nowhere. But it really means dont worry, I am
sufficient, I go my own way! I do what I need to do. I do my part'.
While everybody follows this principle the community supports them by setting the stage.
Ample opportunities for fiestas and other convivial events reward the individual with recognition for his or her being the subject of their own lives. They live as autonomously as possible,
yet integrated with the society at large.
Living this way there is no comparative distinction between the qualities of different activities.
Any productive and creative job becomes an expression of oneself. One does not thrive for
happiness as there is no single reason for unhappiness. Tranquility, balance is the utmost
state. More is not needed and never less. Mayans dont hedge any fear. The answer 'Mix
baa, implies that one has all that is needed. Even very poor people share this attitude, and I
can assure, people with this attitude do not need psychological care. They know why they are
in this world. They know they are part of this world. They know they are the world, and they
know the only thing they need to do is to contribute to it dissipating energy and receiving society's energies in grace.
Westerners believe in competition and exclusivity. We fear the more the neighbour has the
less we get. But we all harbour excess energy in vast abundance. Eating we incorporate energies accumulated by plants or animals, dissipated to maintain us. That chain of life is the
baseline of natural growth and evolution.
The KOGI say "We are on earth because the other beings want us to be around!. Have we
forgotten? Is this, too, part of our fatal habit of forgetting who we are?
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Further analysing the more ancient civilisations in this world there are even indications that
providing people with even more subtle energies may have been one of the successful concepts for higher social organisation. We
may be depriving ourselves of these
options.
Think about another context. You meet
someone, things start making sense to
you and Glowing with energy you invest endless efforts to achieve a goal.
It happens when we fall in love and
there is no entropy because we love
what we do.
Isnt that everybodys experience? But
just when I say why not fall in love
with the world? I run the danger of being ridiculed.
Thats how cultural paradigms hinder learning and transformation. We are branded by our
monetary education. You must have money to make money we are told! It is the financial
value attached to things that is more important than the matter itself. Love is foolish, get over
it! Go back to work!
The world of harmony and cooperation is very different. Things are what they are. You simply
need to give love to receive more of it, contribute to the community and receive more. It's as
simple as that. Try! And come to my poor little village if you dont see it happen elsewhere.
Living Sustainability
On my farm I reconstruct a 2000 years old Mayan village. Intuitively following the places patterns we seem to awaken abundance, prosperity, beauty and knowledge. Slowly the integration of old and new experiences, memories and cultural consciousness turns it into an island
of hope for sustainability. Especially young people identify with it.
The whole world needs this transformation. Yet we continue to let ourselves be governed by
greed, crisis and war, slowly decaying while the truly human achievements, art, beauty, music and awe diminish significantly and old treasures are being destroyed. The destructive
process is not commanded by people like you and me. Anonymously supported by worldwide
media networks owned by only a handful of banks and armament companies thousands of radio, TV stations and newspapers convince people to support their quest for power. They
achieve it by spreading fear and explaining the world to us before we know it, often contradicting our own perception.
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Our ignorance is the iceberg that transforms the Western society into a Titanic. We know the
ship is sinking and yet we continue drinking the last bottles of Champagne, empty the coolers
and grab as much gold as we can. Ignorance was once meant to be overcome by free journalism, one of the grand inventions in the quest for democratisation.
But just this free journalism, based on the separation of news and opinion, has been overtaken by propaganda and education in indoctrinating schools. Sustainability finds no place within these mechanisms.
While scientists agree on the severity of the non-sustainability threat, environmental destruction, climate change, health problems and economic chaos, major corporations even maintain
specialised propaganda troops to place false information about the real changes happening
in the world. Powerful leaders prefer war to careful listening. War is the utmost extreme of
their inescapability strategy.
Indigenous people tell us that planet earth will finally survive, but not necessarily shall we. A
Noahs ark may be needed protecting our own species from the floods we create. Strategic
escape roads have already burn built. Scenarios exist for only one out of ten surviving the
coming collapse. But is that a solution?
No emergency plan will help when the whole earth enters the state of emergency. Confronted
with a major catastrophe the people's suppressed wrath and anger will most likely lead to
civil war, undirected mass migration and a breakdown of the civil order. Military planing prepares for such times to come, concentration camps have been built for those who may try to
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resist when the rich start saving their lives as they did on the sinking Titanic. Letting the poorer people drown is a practice already witnessed on the southern European and US borders.
But as the rich may have a higher chance for immediate survival they will not prosper. The
essence of their being will be lost - with no obedient slaves left to control.
What can you and I do?

Fortunately, there are alternatives to this scenario. We do not know if there is enough time to
implement them, but it is certainly better jointly finding peaceful paths to transformation now
than to wait until the conflicts burst out. The Mayan spirit may show us ways to attain abundance and forget the ever present menace of scarcity. We may gain an appreciation of true
prosperity, unity and inner peace with ourselves and the world. The essence of sustainability
lies within us if we act, every one of us.
Per so nal C h a n g e
There is a big popular movement already present all over the globe. People are beginning to
ask What drives me? Why do I suffer? Why should you and I need psychological care? These people enter a path of search for their own and for their cultures origin, and doing so learn
how to become responsible for themselves. A big spiritual awakening has thus begun and
many people find unknown happiness in the results.
Other people realise a schizoid divide. Feelings and intuition guide their truthful perception,
while their intellect is persuaded to believe differently. Unconsciously mirroring the outer
world, education and social conformity make them struggle with a divide between the outer
and inner worlds. For good reason has psychotherapy become a wide-spread necessity. But
Mayan tradition tells us that we are just one: all that is in me is part of me and should be
equally respected. What I perceive must never be discarded. Secondly, we are all one, you
and me, every being in this world. Therefore, what troubles the world troubles me also, and
when I overcome my fears, creating sense and perspective for myself, I also contribute to the
healing of the world.
We must integrate all people and all cultures, all and everyone have a right to be in this
world. That is what makes them equal. In front of all differences and diversity we must make
an effort disguising people down to the core, perceiving them all as humans thriving for the
same, all brothers and sisters to our own endeavours. This is what spirituality is all about.
Rituals developed by indigenous people who knew about this schizoid support the practices
of spiritual inquiry. The Temazcal ritual recodes negative imprints and leads us towards our
own inner perceptions. It helps people recall their original emotions and the messages guiding them when they birthed into this world. It is one of the many possible practices helping
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to overcome erroneous habits, misbeliefs and deep rooted traumata. It re-connects us with
our original tasks and motivation. It makes people equal helping them to identify themselves.
We humans come from thousands of years of life in duality and control. Small children give
us an idea of how creative and joyful we can really be, but our minds have been guided and
even controlled by the mentioned experiences and many more, conscious and subconscious.
Even the fears experienced in our mothers womb influence our inner coordination centre.
Located in the limbic brain it helps us discover behavioural and emotional patterns. As we
come from a fear and violence stricken past, fears and negative expectations are then expected for the rest of our lives. They often overrule much better experiences making us slaves to
negative imprints - which is why the media can so easily trigger fearful emotions and even
motivate mothers to send their sons to war.
The potential for change is inside all of us. Trust your own perception, be emphatic, trusting,
assertive. Find your own language, develop your own values. The Maya simply call it love
what you do! and do what you love! Be a facetious innovator, do what feels right to you.
Cultural Change
Westerners educated in competitive thinking may ask Where does wealth originate when
everybody prospers?. Must I not limit the neighbours wealth to assure my own?
The Mayan answer is People can jointly solve any problem by themselves. I am that I am!.
We can create alternatives, but they have to be created, they are not given for free.
Our little Mayan village reconstruction is a
small life saver initiative. It has a tower, just like
the medieval towns and villages. Anybody climbing a tower a thousand years ago oversaw
80% of the production area where all consumption needs were met, developing a sense of
responsibility for the communitys sustainability
and resilience.
Nowadays the tower would have to be too high
to even see any of the production sites. We
constantly build higher towers for farther sight
but continue ignoring our footprints. More of the
same does not solve our issues. Only small
village towers create a level of perception we
can truly handle.
Applying the same principle to our economy we
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would not have to rely on money but create a local economy truly within our means of care
and control. The economy would become part of the way of life we want, the potentials we
see and the capacities we develop. With everything in sight all people want to contribute and
make sense with what they do. There is no exception to this, sloth hardly ever occurs when
there is motivation by social recognition.
Social recognition is peoples highest need as long as the basics of food and shelter are met.
Some 80 to 120 inhabitants lived in the old Maya community we reconstruct. Following the
sophisticated Mayan calendar they worked intensively for 20 days and then jointly took a 6
days break from their chores and routines.These days were dedicated to regional fiestas and
other events at the mayor market places, centres like Labn, Xlapak, Sayil, Kabah, equipped
with large plazas, high pyramids, ceremonial streets and beautiful sceneries. Here they went
to market, offered their surpluses, participated in public cultural events, music and theatre,
spent time at their Universities, listened to public lectures, participated in political assemblies
and joyfully gathered in many sorts of convivium.
The essential functioning of these fiestas and markets can still be observed today in the highlands of Guatemala, in Chiapas and in Yucatn. In essence, going to market, even today, is
less about making money than about being together, exchange impressions, experiences,
show the love for what people are doing. Work in this context is the essence of people's lives.
Archaeologists were puzzled when they realised no money was used on the markets of the
older Mayan world. Instead, cacao beans served as a means of exchange. Yet they would rot
or rather be eaten after the market days. There was no value attached to them, they could
not be preserved, nor would any interest be charged for lending them away. These cacao
beans were a simple means of recognition and calculation during the transaction period. The
real value was within the products and services themselves and had to be reproduced with
new products and services during the next 20 day period.
Western society was said to be best characterised by Ren Descartes saying Cogito ergo
sum, I think therefore I am. Mayans have little understanding for this philosophy. They might
rather say, we do not see how you can ever find joy and happiness in thinking. We are because we work!
The Maya teach us never to forget to look inside. The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes [Marcel Proust]. Taking the courage to do
so we can yet become the masters of sustainability and assure a prosperous future.
Polit ical Ch a nge in the Ma ya Wo r l d

Change starts within oneself. Further change than automatically occurs on a local scale and
slowly spreads into a wider realm. The monthly fiestas described above resulted in sending
21
delegations to the bigger events at Uxmal or whatever the regional mega-centre was. Those
participating were well prepared. Not only had they been selected as local leaders based on
achievements in their villages, but they had also trained representing their own culture and
needs at various occasions. Proud to represent their people they wore clothes which identified their origin and reflected the pride of their village members.
The books about the Mayan political organisation were burnt in Spanish inquisitor raids. We
cannot be sure about the exact political means the Maya applied for their societys transformation. However, cultural and political relationships with the Aztecs and other Mexica indicate resemblances with their well documented mechanisms of transformation.
Again, the calendar served as a guideline. A political cycle was considered to last 52 years.
On the beginning of the 50th year, once in the lifetime of the average inhabitant, the government was dissolved and the rule handed to a group of priests. For 2 years these priests then
maintained a ritual sequence of demolishing old institutions and preparing for the selection of
new leaders. In all private households these steps were symbolically supported by the ceremonial shattering and replacement of all ceramics, restoration of public and private buildings.
Two years can be short when one seriously wants to delete all that has lost its sense and
true value. The transition years were a time of most intensive activities for all. A younger generation of leaders and politicians then had the opportunity to start anew. Priests and elders
remained in the background serving as advisers.
Polit ical Ch a nge To d a y

The quest into various aspects of sustainability has shown that a transformation of our societys organisation is long overdue. The general public has lost any sense for its need due to a
leadership interpreting conservative attitudes as preservative of once established structures.
In a globalised world the term developing country raises the question where the developing
effort is most needed. While all rhetoric concentrates on the poorer nations, is it not in the
decision making centres, where the conditions for economic and social development are forged, that the major changes should occur? International development aid has been proclaimed since 1949 and never has the world been in a state more miserable than today. International agencies have been dealing with rainforest destruction for 40 years and never have
more forest been destroyed than today. The Western world prefers to look at development as
something outside their own realm of life while, in fact, it is the outcome of the very system
that produces wealth at home.
Experts are deployed to help the undeveloped world, but experts are clearly people far from
home, far from the real concerns. Their efforts thus often turn into x-spurts rather than impulses for evolutionary development. Development work has too often tried to change the com-
22
plexity of any given society instead of learning step by step, adapting to the ever changing
conditions of our climate, soils, markets and so many other conditions.
True political change considers the wellbeing of all people and will only occur when we empower ourselves by taking simple steps towards the next evolutionary phase. We must be
practical, concrete and perfectly honest doing so.That is the basis for people from different
backgrounds and cultures to cooperate. We must become our planet's stewards and gardeners in every sense of the word, just as some ancient societies successfully managed to be.
The quest for sustainability may then slowly find its fulfilment and materialise as something
real, namely a spirit of human development in accordance with the natural world, its energies
and productivity.
The Way Ahead

If our civilisation had the capacity to regulate itself we would already participate in the endeavour. But obviously this is just what our system cannot do. Present power structures still follow the rules set by Rome when it began fearing its empires collapse 2000 years ago. The
Roman State was as deeply indebted as is the worlds leading nation today. When Julius Cesar wanted to simply abolish the monetary system and renew the imperial economy he was
murdered. Shortly after the Roman government declared all its creditors unworthy, struck
them by war or had them murdered. The present worlds situation is astonishingly similar.
War and terror well beyond our personal sphere of influence serve to stabilise the system
when it should long have been transformed. We want change? Then we need to disturb the
encoded functionality of non-sustainable practice by better examples. We must decode and
recode our culture to interrupt the constant stream of thoughts, prejudice and afterthoughts,
the constant thinking and talking that surpasses all other senses only to maintain the same
as before.
Society is composed by many codes, habits and traumata cementing the culture within us,
often contrary to our personal dreams or ambitions. There is a hen and egg problem to be
resolved. What comes first? Let me summarise the hurdles we meet:
in our culture sustainability is perceived as damage repair instead of referring to a

deep healthy relationship with nature based on efficiency and resilience
the way we dissipate energy is essential to sustainability, yet our economic system
momentarily prioritises the opposite, control and inescapability
transformational processes must overcome those priorities, but systemic transformations cannot be planned, transformation needs space makers not system makers.
A complex society must pass through these three steps to change its guiding patterns. In this
series following editions we will create more elaborate guidelines for action. Never expect a
23
manual, though. Revolutions have never been planned. Planning them would not result in a
new revolutionary state but in totalitarianism. History is full of such examples and there is
much confusion about them. We are taught that our wealth stems from agricultural revolutions. These revolutions never happened, they were impositions of technologies proving to be
stronger than others.
Thousands of years ago the first encounters with such dominating technologies set the pace
for separation. It created divisions between people and divided them from nature. Those
technologies were and are tools of power and not of productivity.
Now the alienation has become intolerable and we can either continue running deeper into an
inescapable collapse or take the sustainability quest serious. We still have a choice. If the
system cannot be remedied by its constitutional mechanisms then we need to start working
through the opposite paradigm. A world that is upside down needs to be turned around. The
turnaround can only happen through the people.
Its through the true empowerment of our species that we can overcome our crises and create a sustainable world. This turnaround will make us assume that other people and cultures
have something to say about attaining a rich and fulfilled life.
In different parts of the world people respond the same, independent of regional, national or
cultural diversity. They say:
We love to work, yet we are treated as if we were lazy.
We are treated with false expectations.
Our experience and opinion are not valued.
We have knowledge that no one is interested in.
Underdevelopment is a cultural concept of control materialised in monetary relationships. It is
the result of gluttony and greed in an economic enrichment game. The prevailing economy
fills the pockets of few at the expense of the many. One of Berthold Brechts characters in the
1930ies expressed this in a simple dialogue between a rich man and a poor man on stage
If I were not poor you wouldnt be rich! Today he might add and you would not be destroying the world.
More than half the worlds people suffer from poverty, not so much for the lack of money, but
for loss of opportunities, experiences, energies and diversity. Poverty reduces not only the
wellbeing of the poor but is just one aspect of the whole worlds unsustainable exploitation.
The quest for sustainability is more than it seems to be at first site. It targets the top of an
iceberg that represents the essence of control in this world.
Control mechanisms reach far beyond the mere exploitation of people and resources. Military
intervention, communication and mind control are well established tools. Political activism
24
against these powerful structures has in the past never been more then partially effective.
Until the 1970ies all activism concentrated on the redistribution of wealth. Then the environmental threat to sustainability was discovered and a new generation of protests and reform
initiatives arose.
By many political activists of the older schools the environmental agenda was first perceived
as a betrayal of the real causes. They were right in as far as it took the environmentalists
many years to understand the relationship between redistribution and the natural resources.
But, in fact, the two issues are part of the same problem, an exploitation and control based
economy. They show the high complexity of the issues involved.
It is close to impossible to plan and direct the profound change of a highly complex system.
Despite all efforts and good will in the past, all revolutionaries, grand reformers and change
leaders resulted being on the losing side, contented with partial solutions, integrated into the
system without systemic change and easily controlled without expecting it. Whatever solution
can work, it must result from out-of-the box initiatives.
There are thus only two options: either we contend ourselves with small reform steps hoping
that the big environmental collapse can still somehow be avoided, or we start preparing the
creation of a new culture of resilience and moderate prosperity, to be in place when a general
change is needed. It may be sustainabilitys only chance and the Mayan example may well
serve as a practical guideline for the steps to take.
Chan K Vergel, Oxkutzcab 2015
25
Outlook: Rebuilding Vital Villages

When a systems complexity is beyond control, one should return to the basics. Yet even a single
step approach towards sustainability needs some organisational referential frame or structure.
Vital Village e.G. proposes village structures and social businesses set-ups for the purpose. Vital
Villages are places were people handle cultural change in a step by step approach instead of directly confronting the dominating economic and political interests. Villages are learning grounds
for new communicational practices, spaces where powerful knowledge is created, socially tempered and transmitted in a language understood by others.
New sustainability oriented initiatives in hitherto undeveloped regions can, especially in the tropics, create a high level of productivity and economic return, which will make them interesting not
for the local people alone but for the larger economy also. Restoring forests will uncap natural
wealth and improve local living conditions at the same time. The example of Germanys reforestation is a so far underestimated but repeatable example.
Financing such initiatives is then possible with the support of venture capital. Special social investment fonds are presently emerging. The missing link lies in the lack of leadership experience
for these communal projects. Specific support should focus on these capacities.
Communal or social business development incites peoples creativity, learning and constant engagement. The village context helps integrating the multitude of different processes and relationships. It is through this learning that civil organisations can then gain impact on policies and
institutional frameworks, improving them to their real needs.
Only a back-to-the-roots approach can assure the strategic re-organisation needed to guarantee
the coverage of all the crucial aspects that need to change in a sustainable regional economy. It
is here that the power of simple solutions can effectively oppose the repetition of ever the same,
making life easier and much more joyful than we know it today.
The Vital Village concept will to be further elaborated in the upcoming papers of this series,
covering organisation, technology, agri- and silvi-culture, food, health, housing and learning.

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Relationship Management Series

Vital Village Series

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Bernd Neugebauer / Bernardo DelMonte

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dedicated to Eduardo Galeano

Thank you Eduardo,

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

How to create a long living society

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

cultivation and people need to be

My private space in the Mayan forest of Chan K Vergel

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

My father grew trees,

My grandfather produced trees

His grandfather restored

what early industrialisation had destroyed.

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

profits went abroad.

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

and constant repair.

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Why did the Mayan Society C o l l a p s e ?

The Economy of Inescapability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

The old Mayan society was, quite to the opposite,

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

The Law of E mpa t hy

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

What can you and I do?

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Polit ical Ch a nge in the Ma ya Wo r l d

A Maya Guide to Sustainability

Polit ical Ch a nge To d a y

Dr. Bernd Neugebauer Chan K Vergel Oxkutzcab Yucatn Mxico b.neugebauer@xina.de

A Maya Guide to Sustainability