Dieter Duhm - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Dieter Duhm, sociologist, psychoanalyst, art historian and author, is one of the co-founders of Tamera

Tamera

Tamera is a peace research village with the goal of becoming “a self-sufficient, sustainable and duplicatable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all." It is also often called a “healing biotope." ...

, a peace research center in southwestern Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

Life and work

Born in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

in 1942, Duhm lived through the bombing of Berlin

Bombing of Berlin

Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, was subject to 363 air raids during the Second World War. It was bombed by the RAF Bomber Command between 1940 and 1945, and by the USAAF Eighth Air Force between 1943 and 1945, as part of the Allied campaign of strategic bombing of Germany...

as a very young child, as well as the poverty and hunger in the postwar period, and those experiences would shape his thinking and actions throughout his life.

In 1969 Duhm completed his B.A. in psychology and in 1973 he earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Freiburg

University of Freiburg

The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...

.

But it was the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

that catapulted him into a leadership role in the Marxist Left of the German Student Movement

German student movement

The German student movement was a protest movement that took place during the late 1960s in West Germany. It was largely a reaction against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the German government and other Western governments, and the poor living conditions of students...

and made him a staunch critic of western capitalism. He wrote an essay called, The structure of material goods and destroyed inter-personality, which was published as a book in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Germany

Germany

in 1975, and Fear in Capitalism: A second attempt at a social substantiation of inter-personal fear in material capitalist society, which became a best-seller three times: in 1973, the 14th edition in 1977, and the 17th edition in 1984.

The anti-imperialist struggle and the attempts within this to develop new forms of community and real socialism failed because of human conflicts. Without building a human basis that can support this, the continuation of such political work no longer seems useful.

Despite offers of a professorship, Duhm decided to leave academic life and his political activism in 1975, explaining his reasons in The Human Being is Different: Reflection on much ridiculed, but necessary contents of a holistic theory of liberation; critique of Marxism.

In this book I concentrate on the question of whether the human being is changeable and what possibilities emerge after a change has taken place. I do not deny the necessity to change the society. But both parts – the change of society and the change of the individual – have to come together in order to create a revolution, through which a society is created that really fulfills the needs of its people.

He retreated to an isolated farmhouse in southern Germany and spent the next three years in research, developing the basis of a theory to create a future without war for the Earth, using many different sources of thinking and wisdom.

Influences

During this period, Duhm says that he found inspiration in the works of Nietzsche, Hegel, van Gogh, Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...

, Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, Laozi

Laozi

Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...

, Prentice Mulford

Prentice Mulford

Prentice Mulford was a noted literary humorist and California author. In addition, he helped found the New Thought movement.- Biography :...

, and Teilhard de Chardin; and he spent time in the Aktionsanalytische Organisation

Aktionsanalytische Organisation

The Aktionsanalytische Organisation , commonly known as the Friedrichshof Commune, was an Austrian far-left commune in Friedrichshof outside Vienna and authoritarian sect that was founded by Otto Muehl in 1972 and dissolved in 1990...

(AAO) with Otto Muehl

Otto Muehl

Otto Muehl is an Austrian artist, who is best known as one of the co-founders as well as a main participant of Viennese Actionism. In 1972 he founded the Friedrichshof Commune that existed for several years before falling apart in the 1990s...

at the Friedrichshof community in Austria, and with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Focusing on the question how war and violence can be overcome on a global scale, Duhm became intensively interested in the theories of the Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

. His contention with and eventual renunciation of Reich led him into a deeper study of Asiatic traditions, such as different meditation practises, Yoga

Yoga

Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...

, T'ai chi, and others.

Early theory

As indicated by the titles of his published work, Duhm was never a purely Marxist economist, but had always been interested in the individual, psychological issues underlying the world’s problems. For example, Duhm has said that “before we can solve the ecological and technological problems of the Earth, we must first solve the more basic human issues, like competition, jealousy, and fear that prevent human beings from living and working together in community.”

Duhm wanted to realize his vision of a thoroughly peaceful society and create a model – a prototype of a post-capitalistic, peaceful civilisation. This would include the peaceful cohabitation and cooperation with all creatures of nature (including bugs and vermin) and provide alternative types of energy supplies using inexhaustible energy sources rather than exploiting the earth, alternative types of architecture, of nourishment and of medicine, right up to a new understanding of the human world imbedded in a cosmic order.

Included in his basic theory was the concept of “free love

Free love

The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...

.” (Duhm has used the term "free love" to describe "love free of fear.”) He thus attempted to “overtake the communist idea on the left” by expanding it into the erotic area, and soon became one of the main figures in the so-called “emancipation debate” concerning the connection between political work and personal liberation.

Practical application

In 1978 Duhm began to put this theory into practise. First he created an interdisciplinary research center with a dozen experts from various fields, called the “Bauhuette,” located in southern Germany. Their goal was to find workable answers to the ecological and technological problems facing the human species at that time. However, within a few years they discovered that if their project had any chance of surviving, they first had to research more deeply into the core human relationship questions that lay hidden under all issues – such as competition, greed, and jealousy. So Duhm traveled around Germany

Germany

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, and Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

for a year, finding fifty willing participants who began a social community experiment in 1983 to research the possibilities of dissolving internal group conflicts concerning power, money, sexuality and love; and they spent three years in a remote area of the Black Forest

Black Forest

The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....

under Duhm’s guidance.

But in 1984 a slanderous campaign in the media began against Duhm and his projects, both in Germany and Switzerland. This increasingly impeded the research work in the Black Forest

Black Forest

, and finally disrupted it totally. The group’s attempt to have the information about them corrected remained unsuccessful, and the community finally had to disband.

Tamera

So in 1989 Dieter Duhm moved to Lanzarote, together with his life partner, Sabine Lichtenfels, and several friends. For the next six years he dedicated his time to painting and writing, and found the peace and quiet he needed to research and prepare his next project.

In 1995, Duhm co-founded the Tamera

Tamera

Peace Research Center in southwestern Portugal together with Sabine Lichtenfels and Rainer Ehrenpreis. It was finally his chance to create a working model that put all his research into action, which he called “The Political Theory,” based in part on such concepts as holography

Holography

Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that when an imaging system is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even when the object is no longer present...

, chaos theory

Chaos theory

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...

, systems theory

Systems theory

Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...

, and morphogenetic fields.

Political theory

Duhm’s political theory contends that the basic building blocks of matter are not atoms, but instead are energy, frequency, and information. Earth with its atmosphere and magnetic field, with its waters and landscapes, with its 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, Duhm believes.

This healing information, Duhm says, 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. Duhm feels that 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 are generated and maintained; and Tamera

Tamera

is just one of several places necessary where the conditions for peaceful co-habitation are researched and put into practice.

Duhm explains his political theory in two books available in English: Future without War: Theory of Global Healing, and The Sacred Matrix: From the Matrix of Violence to the Matrix of Life; Foundations of a New Civilisation.

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.

Healing biotopes

Duhm calls these places “Healing Biotopes” or "Peace Research Villages,” which act somewhat like acupuncture points to foster a new future in the body of Earth. His theory postulates that only a few such centers will be sufficient worldwide to tip over the “information field” of violence, for together these few centers will create the microscopically small change needed to have a large effect on the “Whole.”

Publications

The Sacred Matrix: From the Matrix of Violence to the Matrix of Life; Foundations of a New Civilisation. ISBN 978-3-927266-16-2, 464 pages, 2005
Man's Holy Grail is Woman: Paintings, drawings and texts by Dieter Duhm. ISBN 978-3-927266-21-6, 237 pages, April 2006
Future without War: Theory of Global Healing. ISBN 978-3-927266-24-7, 120 pages, 2007

External links

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