Dieter Duhm: Future Without War

Is there a realistic chance for worldwide peace?
Is it possible for all arms on our planet to become silent in the foreseeable future?
Will rivers follow their natural paths in a not too distant future, will animals be freed from their cages and will children grow up in stable homes?

Deeply moved by the extent of global violence the author Dieter Duhm withdraws from  academia during the seventies, turns even down a number of professorships offered to him to take the time to radically and quietly conceive a social model for a future without war. He develops the “Plan of Healing Biotopes”, a concept for global peace.

Amongst others the concept is based on the idea of modern natural science and its essence that the building component of mater it is not the atom, instead it is “information”. Earth with her atmosphere and her magnetic field, with her waters and landscapes, her creatures, biotopes and human societies is an integral, oscillating and living body that can be healed, just as a human body can be healed if the appropriate medicine, i.e. the appropriate information is administered.

The healing information is wanted most at the points where new wars are created daily: in the cohabitation of human beings. In this area far reaching change is necessary. Words and appeals alone are not enough. True peace does not ensue from slogans and true peace is far more than the mere absence of war. The peace information needed will emerge from social structures whose ethical basic values of compassion, trust, mutual support and solidarity are no longer being destroyed, but rather, they are being generated and maintained. In its innermost core peace is the experience of trust amongst human beings, above all trust amongst man and woman. It is like learning a new alphabet after ions of fighting amongst men ad women, after oppressing women and after separating the divine and the erotic aspects of creation. To reconcile man and woman the deepest and most sensitive healing work is demanded since “there will be no peace on Earth as long as there is war in love”.

Peace again is an experience of trust between man and nature. Where man fights animals, including vermin, structural war, exclusion and enmity are reigning. All creatures have a right to live in freedom and dignity. They are all part of the large family of life. Peace asks for a change in our living habits, beginning with the choice of our nourishment, with the handling of the elements and the natural resources up to the provision of energy, to medicine and the cultivation of food.

Marx said: "The social state of being decides upon the level of consciousness." At this point Dieter Duhm has remained a true Marxist, when he says: "It will be a new social state of being that is created and that will, more than anything else, decide upon whether the human being will rediscover his original humane soul and his pure heart and be able to live according to them. Good intention alone is not enough. 2000 years of Christianity and the honest attempts  of millions of people are proof enough."

Places are needed where the conditions for peaceful co-habitation are researched and put into practice. Dieter Duhm calls them “Healing Biotopes”. These act rather like acupuncture points to foster a new future in the body of Earth. Life energies which in a culture of war have been opposing each other shall be made to flow coherently towards a mutual vision. By doing so big forces will be unleashed.
Dieter Duhm assumes that worldwide only a few such centres will be sufficient to tip over the “information field” of violence. He is not the first one to see this possibility. David Bohm, a quantum physicist, had too mentioned this possibility, so did spiritual masters, such as Sri Aurobindo (India), Satprem (his deciple) or Dhyani Iwahoo (Leader of the Tsalagi, USA), or Teilhard de Chardin.
Therefore, the “Plan of the Healing Biotopes” takes up the idea to develop various centres on Earth with a few hundred community workers each. Together they create the microscopically small change that is based on certain structures of reality which may and will have a large effect on the “Whole”.
Dieter Duhm: “Decisive for the success of such peace projects is not how big and strong they are in comparison to the existing apparatuses but how comprehensive and complex they are, how many elements of life they are able to combine and to unite in a positive way. In the field buildings of evolution it is not the law of the strongest, but the success of the more comprehensive that counts. No new developments would otherwise have been able to assert themselves had they not all begun small and inconspicuous.”
The development of the first such centre - "Tamera" began in 1995. After years of preparation and together with his partner in life, Sabine Lichtenfels (theologian), with Rainer Ehrenpreis (physicist) and others, Dieter Duhm founded the “Tamera” in Portugal. Today approximately 200 people are engaged in the development of a life form which is to be free of fear, lies and violence. Many facilities have been built up, amongst them the Institute of Global Peace Work, the Political Ashram, the Art Centre, the Place of the Children, the various ateliers and workshops, the reforested grounds, the hostel for pilgrims and the school of love. The development and construction of a model “Solar Village”, a settlement with an autarkic energy supply, is being prepared.
Tamera supports peace projects all over the world, cooperates with the peace village San José de Apartadó and the “University of Resistance” in Colombia; with initiatives in Israel and Palestine (amongst others Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam in Israel, The Holy Land Trust in Palestine); maintains contacts with the Global Ecovillage Network, with the Barefoot College in India, with Tibetan Buddhists and peace activists in Dharamsala, with representatives of indigenous cultures from all over the world, with inventors, solar technologists, peace journalists and futurists.

The book “Future without War” gives an overview on the basic ideas for the possible healing of the planet. It is meant as support to all those who wish to participate in a worldwide cooperative. Help to make the “Plan of the Healing Biotopes” known and to realize it!