Having received first feedback after the launch of The Mindful Revolution, it became clear that I would translate it and publish a German version, too. Due to many technical terms, most of the neuroscientific area, my thesis becomes easier to transport and understand when delivered in a native language.

For me, personally, it was a highly interesting experience to first of all write The Mindful Revolution in English — and I’m totally aware that I’d never match the style of a native speaker, but it was a nice challenge, anyway — and then to re-translate it into my native language, German. In principle, you could compare this endeavor to the “Whispers” game: one person starts telling something to another person, and so on. The final output always differs greatly from what was originally put in. In my case, I had to re-word much of the original The Mindful Revolution content in order to produce not only a comprehensible but a fluent reading experience in Die Achtsame Revolution.

I hope, my German readers have fun reading Die Achtsame Revolution, and I’d be happy to receive their feedback!

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The issue here is no scaremongering but resolving global challenges that each of us is confronted with, individually. There has been an ongoing migration of poor, desperate people from regions unliveable due to the climate crisis, poverty, and wars. We can watch — live on TV — how people drown in the sea, being prevented from reaching safe land. We also watch live on TV how incompetent, corrupt, but democratically elected heads of states issue rules and guidelines while ignoring domain experts and scientific advice. We, in the first world, discuss, demonstrate, and donate in order to add our fair share to the fight against global threats. But, is that enough?

Many of us share a feeling of an increasing exasperation, the notion that even our aggregated efforts could not suffice to save planet earth as a liveable habitat. Some have started working on escape plans by exploring other planets as potential habitats. But, even the best of these alternative scenarios would most probably translate in very limited living spaces for a fraction of the 1%. So, let’s forget about these, for a moment.

In The Mindful Revolution, I share my thoughts about how human beings must — and can — change in order to save our planet. My perspective is a very individual one: I don’t try to solve global problems by operating giant levers, e.g. by influencing the heads of the United Nations or states to improve their regiments.

The Mindful Revolution — Entering the next evolutionary level.

My perspective is, first and foremost, inward-bound. Based on my layman’s knowledge of neuroscience, combined with my entrepreneurial experience in several technologies, I have developed the thesis of a possible reconnection of our brain with our body (or: intuition) that allows for entering a higher level of understanding and addressing global challenges. As with all technologies, after a certain duration of development, each technology reaches the final stage of its inherent potential. For instance, look at combustion engines. Car manufacturers have fine-tuned car engines to the max — we have now reached the point where each additional incremental improvement would take tremendous efforts that, in turn, would overcompensate the gains. Thus, the advent of the electric vehicle: a completely different technology is needed to move forward and to allow for individual transport in the future.

In the same way, EVs displace the combustion engine, a higher level of awareness attained by leveraged human capabilities through the reconnection of brain and body can take over from our limited, linear, first-order-thinking-based strategies to run the world. There’s no time to discuss and ponder, we have to act. In The Mindful Revolution I propose a peaceful, scientifically-proven, and low-cost way to enter the next level in the evolution of mankind. Looking forward to your feedback!

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Mankind has learned to develop technology that adds convenience to life by instrumentalizing inherent human capabilities, such as language and storytelling — during the phase of the Cognitive Revolution, some 70–30,000 years ago. However, humankind found itself at the top of the food chain of all living beings in a blink of history; whereas other animals used millions of years to develop further, humans succeeded from eating bigger animals’ leftovers to build AI-powered machines within a few thousand years. This evolutionary short track is the main reason for today’s challenges, such as the destruction of our ecosystems and wars. As Yuval Harari puts it: Humans aren’t wolves but rather resemble a sheep flock that — thanks to a freak of nature — have learned to build tanks and nuclear weapons. And sheep armed with weapons are far more dangerous than wolves. Humans have neither learned to cope with these challenges coming with their new abilities nor have we learned to use our brains in an adequate evolutionary way.

Now, being confronted with obvious, imminent challenges, such as climate crisis, migration, and global political tensions, we can’t rely on improving technology further in a linear way. We can’t rely on building slightly better tech when giant challenges are looming. We must initiate a paradigm shift, a change of our own inherent system — we must improve ourselves — since our current human capabilities prove to be insufficient for solving these challenges. We are overwhelmed, and we are only starting to realize this mental overload. Unfortunately, the typical human reaction of being overwhelmed is either to ignore the problem, to run away, or to be panicked. None of which is helpful. Think about it and you will find many practical examples for each of these three coping strategies.

The Mindful Revolution — How To Manage Complexity

The systemic change we have to initiate now is that we enhance ourselves in a way that enables us to solve these challenges, quickly. Obviously, the challenge lies in being unable to solve existing problems with the same level of consciousness that created them. The good news is that there is a way of self-enhancement that can be embarked on by everybody. Each individual can (and should) start working today on her personal improvement. By unleashing our inherent human potential that we have only fractionally materialized by now, we not only improve ourselves, our performance, but we consciously contribute to the next evolutionary step of humankind, the Mindful Revolution. The Mindful Revolution will prove to become a similar quantum leap for humanity as the Cognitive Revolution 30,000 years ago. Historians aren’t completely sure, why Sapiens survived and Homo Florensis, Neanderthals, and others did not. Presumably, Sapiens succeeded because of their greater capabilities, mainly derived from their bigger brains. Now is the time for the next evolutionary step of  Sapiens: we can choose: complete distinction of our species — or The Mindful Revolution.

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The impact of this so-called perceptual learning is bigger than most of us imagine. Not only literacy and language but also such fundamental brain activities, such as sight and perception, are changed by culture. This fascinating impact of culture on our brain has been shown in several inter-cultural experiments, by Richard E. Nisbett. These experiments showed that Westerners (US Americans) perceive words or images differently from Easterners (Japanese). While Easterners approach words and images „analytically“; i.e. by dividing what they observe into individual parts and therefore perceiving objects in isolation, Easterners approach the world „holistically“, seeing objects as related to each other, perceiving „the whole“.

Our Functional Cognitive Architectures Are Modified By Our Culture

However, if people of one culture emigrate to another, after a few years they start perceiving as people of the newly adopted culture do. Perception, as it turns out, is not a passive, bottom-up process, but already starts when energy from the outside world reaches our body’s sense receptors and move on to the perceptual centers in our brain. While perceiving, the human brain is active and constantly adjusting itself.

The fact that culture changes perception should lead to a much higher tolerance and better understanding among human beings. If I know that my neighbor does not perceive the same while looking at the same object, I might be called upon to have a conversation about the object’s properties first, before getting into a potential argument. Let’s always remember Darwin!

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Weather is a phenomenon beyond the reach of human beings. It is broadly predictable but unforeseeable in its details: what exactly does a 40% rain probability mean? Will we be able to play tennis? Weather is a perfect topic to start within conversations since it unites people: lots of fresh snow forces house owners to clear it early in the morning and finding ways of not banking it up in their neighbor‘s driveways. While many adults feel stressed since heavy snowfall forces them to change plans, get late to work, etc., most kids enjoy throwing snowballs, go sledding, or simply savor snowflakes falling on their faces.

I personally love heavy snowfall: it forces people to change their plans, to think differently, to find alternatives: work from home, skip the ride to the mall, reschedule your meetings. From neuroscience, we know that changing routine behaviors from time to time has tremendously positive effects on the human brain that is able to rewire its neurons which are called neuroplasticity, and on our mental abilities in general. However, human beings don‘t like changing their behavior. We mostly do it when being forced to. That‘s where snowfalls come into play.

A snowflake never falls in the wrong place

One of my favorite Zen proverbs — A snowflake never falls in the wrong place — adds another dimension — time: it combines the symbolic snow and human subjectivity, and therewith leads us to question the value of the events of our past and the judgments we tend to make about them. By changing plans, we are forced to try new ways and see where they lead us to. In most cases, that could simply result in realizing that taking the subway is more efficient than using the car. Or, you experience that working from home is more efficient than being present at the office and you plan to ask your boss about the idea to agree upon one day of the home office.

Then, there are are other, more subtle, characteristics of snow. A closed snow cover has a great visual effect: it lights up the night sky, and even during an otherwise grey winter day, the snow‘s glimmer adds to a more positive atmosphere. Compare that to grey-black rain-soaked roads! Additionally, to the visual effect, there is an audio effect. If you live near a road with some traffic, you know — during winter — if there is a snow cover on the roads because you don‘t hear the cars, or at least they sound softened, or quilted. Since I am somewhat allergic to perpetual noise, I really appreciate the cushioning effect of snow here.

Let it snow!

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