My American father has lived in the Netherlands for 50 years. After the first election in which Trump won, he and his wife went through the naturalization process and became Dutch citizens. Nevertheless, the conversations at their house are still about politics, especially American politics. Fear dominates, and conversations consist of statements and predictions: ‘Who is going to win?’, ‘They won't be that crazy?’... And especially now that Trump has won: ‘We are going down.’

At age 38, I began to seriously examine for myself where I stand in the world and what this means for my political choices. In the process, I discovered two things. One: ‘I'm not crazy, the world is just upside down! And two: the global political game is all about power and ownership.

In this context, I did not feel at home in right-wing liberalism, but neither did I feel at home in left-wing moralism. I am in favor of a free market, but against shareholder capitalism. And I am in favor of fair wealth distribution, but not if it is determined from above.

Between these extremes you see a constant interaction, in which people and nature are squeezed out. Just open any newspaper: health care, the housing shortage, trees that have to make way for solar panels - everything is increasingly caught up in the madness of the state/market combination. Actually, it has long since ceased to be about healthcare, housing shortage or nature, but about the powers behind the property behind it.

Imagine if property (money, businesses, land, real estate) were truly ‘their own,’ free from the grip of those in power... Then a basis could emerge for a truly fruitful new society.

‘Of itself’ means: removed from market speculation and state interference. This goes beyond the polarization of left and right. It works as a reversal of everything: from the ground up, we look for new forms of living together and allocating money, land, property and businesses. The nice thing is: money then flows only to people who themselves add value to society.

I still don't feel at home on the left or the right, but I've spent ten years now searching for how this ‘being of oneself’ can work. What does such a society look like? Freedom is expressed through development (rather than materialism and ownership). Living together becomes a process of shared inquiry (rather than imposed norms and values). ‘Equality’ emerges from an open, shared allocation of property (instead of imposed rules from the supposedly free market), with the health of the Earth as a self-evident condition. We call this: Free, Equal, Living Together.

‘Isn't this just the Rhineland model?’ people sometimes ask. Although Rhineland thinking takes as its starting point the well-being of the whole, I see elaborations of it that lead to a fragmentation of power and ownership for each stakeholder. What I think is missing is the fundamental reversal that we are part of a whole. And within that whole, each person should be able to have a dignified existence. That requires a neutralization of power and ownership relations. I see it this way, that the Free, Equal, Society carries within it a further perfection of what was once pursued with Rhineland thinking.

The results of the presidential election took my breath away for a moment... Until I thought of all those entrepreneurs, initiators and seekers who are trying to make their ideas, land or businesses really ‘their own’... As I quietly blew out my breath again, I thought back to early November, when we worked with a group of them to set up a capital body. With this we want to practice, free from power structures and free from private ownership, how money can flow in such a way that it benefits society as a whole. This does not require politics, only the willingness, openness and willpower of a human being to want to search for his own place in the world and really meet the other in it. 

Granted; taking ownership of that reality is super exciting and comes with waves of fear, doubt and issues of self-worth. But now we have outsourced our self-worth, fear and doubt to politics and the market... You could almost say: ‘nice and easy, to get worked up about it over and over again’ when in fact you already know for sure that they are definitely not going to solve it for you there! 

I see it this way:

• Society is too important to be left to politics.
• Society is also too important to leave to today's free market. 

And you, as a co-creator of this society, can yourself begin to examine how you want to live together.

There is hope.

Jennifer Benson