Arend van Campen

The 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris just ended. We have an agreement everyone says. We will finally join hands to save the planet. The agreement is legally binding. But are other agreements in trade, commerce, economy or the environment that are also bound by law not being ignored or broken by those who benefit from non adherence? Are energy companies paying their fair share of social costs for exploration, transportation or distribution when they pollute the air, soil or sea? And are bankers paying social costs when they evict people from their homes, when they lose their jobs because of economic cutbacks? And what about massive unemployment? What on earth are we going to do with all these peoples? What do we have to do about millions of refugees that roam the earth without a compass? How are we going to save this earth, this planet, its natural beauty or ourselves as humanity from self destruction? Immanuel Kant wrote many years ago in 1 788, ‘no mode of...

Systemethics, an introduction : Our world is an interpretation of our mind’s projection. When we read a newspaper, watch the six o clock news or observe our common world, we cannot help but notice that everything seems separated from everything else. We look at a white man as a white man and at a black woman as a black woman or we see the car we are driving in or the bus we are riding on as machines that have nothing to do with each other. The bus, the car and those people are separate entities, things perhaps or machines that have only in common that they are means of transport and these people are being transported. We may conclude that transport is the only connecting variable, nothing else. But if that is true, are the bus, the car and two people of a different skin colour truly separated? This essay says no. They are very much related and connected. We can’t see it with our own eyes, but we do know that from within. The word transport connects the people with means of movem...

We have to start to think in Relationships, an inescapable new paradigm Good Will or Ethics is the relational condition for the sustenance of Human and Non-Human Life Why wisdom, science and human inner knowing are ignored. Carl Gustav Jung wrote: ‘how difficult it is to be simple’. Despite numerous publications, books, video’s, key note speeches covering thousands of years of insight and knowledge, scientists, philosophers, ethicists, system thinkers or others concerned with life on earth are being ignored by those who would be motivated to do so. Economics and financial control have become principal goals supported by governments that can never be balanced with our earth systems. Possessions, i.e. things such as houses, gems or companies that human beings have found on this earth or were created, have become more important than people. People are killed to protect such possessions. Hospitals are attacked because collateral damage has become an acceptable term. Destruct...

The workshop will offer a way out for commodity traders, NGO's, The Swiss Authorities and everyone else involved in or connected with Commodity Trading. The issue of reputation risk, social costs of trading, human rights and the way to a more sustainable method of balanced trading will be discussed under supervision of experts on CSR, Business Ethics and Sustainability. The date planned is. October 15, 2015 in Geneva. By using all the sciences and common sense, a new and balanced method of transparent trading will be introduced, reducing the risks involved for the traders, the government of Switzerland and concerned NGO's, The method offers a way to Re-Humanize the business without jeopardizing economic expectations. This 'Systems View on Trading' is a significant step forward to create a trading hub that would be free of ever more demand for compliance. This 'freedom' is needed to allow the limitless human imagination and creativity to re-emerge. The ...

Human Factors in HSE & CSR By Arend van Campen, from his book; ‘Safety of Ethics’; which was nominated for the Energy Institute Award on Safety 2014. Astronomer and well known scientist Carl Sagan spoke of the fact that we all live on earth, the only place we know where life is possible; ‘ we live on a speck of dust caught in a sunbeam.’ He spoke about the necessity to cherish and preserve our planet because everything we use and everyone we know lives on it. Everyone, including managers of tank storage and energy corporations, commodity traders, politicians or bankers depend on vital resources such as drinking water, food and shelter provided only by our earth. Human choices or as they are often called in the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) world, ‘Human factors’ are decisive and ultimately responsible and accountable for ethical implementation of HSE and CSR policies. Human factors are a combination of human consciousness an...

Stel nu dat je opeens naar het ziekenhuis moet en er zijn geen medicijnen beschikbaar om je te helpen. Ook is er maar een dokter die het zo druk heeft dat ie eigenlijk geen tijd heeft voor je omdat de andere doktoren reeds uitgeweken zijn naar het buitenland omdat daar wel voor hun werk kan worden betaald. Denk eens even na over de mogelijkheid dat je niet bij je eigen, zuur verdiende geld kan, omdat de banken het hebben geblokkeerd onder druk van een buitenlandse, centrale bank. En wat zou je als ondernemer kunnen doen als je je crediteuren niet meer kan betalen of dat je niet meer geleverd wordt omdat de leveranciers garanties willen voordat ze hun vrachtwagens sturen. Wij in Nederland vinden zaken als deze vanzelfsprekend. Wij verwachten dat er water uit de kraan komt om ons te wassen of dat we onze maaltijden kunnen koken op gegarandeerd aardgas. We kunnen ons haast niet voorstellen dat we niet kunnen worden geholpen in ziekenhuizen, gemeentehuizen of scholen. Toen Alexis T...

Everything created, everything written, everything built, everything thought, everything imagined, felt, seen or experienced was done and determined by you and me, as human beings, using their human mind, human ability and human consciousness. A company, a religion, a political ideology or party; they are manifestations of human thought and are ideas. An oil refinery or car manufacturing plant will not produce without people. Ideas, or thoughts, have become more important than those who are thinking, i.e. you and me. Leaders claim to have found an answer somewhere in the future as long as we believe and follow the doctrine of an ideal world. Not now, not today, but soon..... So they plan a grand scheme as an ultimate goal and regard human beings as the means to that end. Collateral damage (human beings killed, the environment polluted) is accepted. This is wrong. The biggest mistake human beings make however, is that what we created in the physical world, became more important th...