Premise
We humans organise ourselves on many levels at once. On the near ones the goal is clear: a flourishing life. On the distant ones it blurs into borders, ideologies and money.
The tools of the Enlightenment, market, democracy and science, each carry an error correction. Two design flaws in money, a built-in growth compulsion and accumulation without ceiling, have broken the market's.
We run this civilisation on 19 terawatts, 85 percent of them fossil. Electrification alone does not scale: a mine takes decades, ore grades fall, the supply sits in few hands.
The largest economy on this planet moves 150 billion tonnes a year without a gram of waste, on 172,000 terawatts of sunlight. We call it nature.
Material can be made where it is needed, from sunlight and biology. A timber tower of 85 metres stands in Brumunddal. Roads of lignin are being laid in Norway. Houses of earth are permitted, in some places.
Decisions can be taken where lived life carries them. Drawn citizens legislate in Ostbelgien since 2019 and in Paris since 2024. Wales has a commissioner for people not yet born.
Binding decisions over scarce goods hold in small groups. Knowledge, designs and code circulate freely across the planet. Six layers follow from this, and protocols rather than commands.
People become who they are when material and coordination set them free. Places that form rather than train have done this since the first folk high school opened in Rødding in 1844.
None of this asks for permission or waits for a majority. It begins wherever people live in the distant what they already know in the near.
The world does not rise by itself.
What WELTAUFGANG is not
Not a return to the land. Not renunciation. Not a doctrine. Not an end state. It is the answer of this generation to the questions of this generation.
WELTAUFGANG assumes the diagnosis. It does not debate whether the market will correct itself or whether consciousness will. It asks what you have built.
For the moment when night becomes day we have a word. For the moment when a civilisation begins, we have none. We call it WELTAUFGANG.
Threshold
There is no date. There is a number.
150 builders, at least 30 in each of the three fields. The number is the size at which a guild holds, Robin Dunbar's 150, the span within which everyone can still know what everyone else does. Until it is reached the gathering has no date, and no one is asked to hold one free.
When it is reached, the date and the place are set with the register, within twelve months, at a place one of the entries can host. The programme is written from the column “what is broken”.
- Cell6–16consent
the gathering is here - Pod15–50sociocracy
- Guild50–150Ostrom's principles · the meeting at 150
- Civium500–1,500later
The gathering follows the layers of the book. It began in October 2026 as a cell of invited builders. At 15 it becomes a pod. At 50 it becomes a guild. At 150 it meets.
Register
Who builds what, where, since when, and what is broken.
Each entry is a person and something that runs. Names appear with consent; otherwise the entry is numbered and the rest stands. The register is the proof that the gathering exists, and the raw material of its programme.
| No. | Who | What runs | Where | Since | Field | Layer | What is broken |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 001 | name withheld | Implementing a market without money | Sarchi, Costa Rica | 2026 | Coordination | Pod | money will always skew morality due to misaligned incentive-structures. |
| 002 | SINA (Social Innovation Academy) gGmbH | SINA is ecosystem of self-organised learning communities where disadvantaged and refugee youth develop their own social enterprises while running the community itself. | Mpigi, Uganda | 2014 | Human | Federation | Many disadvantaged and refugee youth move through education and aid systems with little say over decisions affecting their lives and face few opportunities to earn a living. |
| 003 | Haakon Brunell | Longer lasting, cost saving and carbon negative roads: Autonomous recycling of existing materials, stabilized with locally sourced bio-binders into a new or refurbished road base. | Oslo, Norge | 2022 | Material | The world faces an ~$8 trillion road infrastructure gap — as aging roads, climate impacts and conflict drive costs higher. | |
| 004 | Eduard Muller | Global Partnership for Regenerating Life on Earth is a decentralized global learning community connecting teachers, mentors, practitioners, wisdom keepers, students and bioregions … | Rio Seco, Costa Rica | Apr 1994 | Coordination Human |
Commons | The reductionist, disciplinary approach and world view (Weltanschauung) lack the spiritual, multidimensional, holistic principles that can deal with complexity, thus leading us to … |
| 005 | Andrew Pollard - Nido Farms | Nido is an evolving bioregional regeneration initiative, centered on 4,000-acre landscape connecting the Pacific coast, protected mangroves, farmland, primary rainforest, rivers, … | Southern Pacific Zone, Costa Rica | 2023 | Coordination Human |
Pod | Our greatest challenge is that almost every institution involved in shaping a place operates independently of the living system it affects. |
| 006 | Montgomery Wagner | We produce LOVR™, a leather-like, plastic-free material. Natural fibres are combined with plant-based binders, pigments and fillers. | Darmstadt, Germany | 2021 | Material | Cell | The industrial infrastructure for materials is built around fossil inputs. |
Fields
Three fields. What already stands sets the bar.
Material
Material made where it is needed, from sunlight and biology. And the permission to use it.
- Mjøstårnet, 85.4 m Brumunddal, NO2019
- Carboncrusher lignin roads, NO2020
- Spiber brewed protein, Yamagata, JP2007
- Bind-X biological soil binding, München2014
- Earthship Tempelhof permitted as an experiment, DE2016
- Anne Meyer Lab bacterial nacre, Rochester, US2010
Coordination
Decisions where lived life carries them. Binding stays low, knowledge circulates.
- Permanent citizens' council Ostbelgien, BE2019
- First citizen law Paris, FR10 Jul 2024
- Future Generations Act Wales, UK2015
- Committee for the Future Eduskunta, FI1993
- Participatory budgets, ~11,500 since Porto Alegre1989
- Decidim 500+ installations, 30 countries2017
- vTaiwan 26 national laws2015
Human
Places that form rather than train, so that people can carry the other two.
- First folk high school Rødding, DK1844
- Highlander Folk School Tennessee, US1932
- Schumacher College Devon, UK1991
- Knoop Skolen for Livet Jutland, DK2018
- Klein Jasedow Vorpommern, DE1997
- Black Mountain SOMA Berlin, DE2017
Entry
What runs, where, since when, for how many. And what is broken.
Four things are read: it runs today; it follows a different logic in at least one dimension; you can say what is broken; you are willing to document and share. Not read: credentials, followers, title, sector, means. Eight people in a rented room running a cell for two years is as real as forty towns on one code base.
If what you do is still at the stage of understanding, the book is the right place to begin. It is linked below. No account, no password, no tracking.
Letters
From the register, every few weeks. Only about the gathering.
Every entry receives the letters. Anyone else can have them by mail too: one address, confirmed by a link, stopped by a link in every letter.
Foundation
For understanding, the book. For building, the register.
Amazon · PDF
weltaufgang.substack.com · worldrising.substack.com
delodi.net