Evelin's Publications
All Publications | 2006 Book on Humiliation and International Conflict

Summary of Lindner's Humiliation Theory
Short Narrative | Short Table | Executive Summary | Longer Paper
Concept of Globalization & Egalization

Evelin's Pictures
These pictures are meant to document Evelin's efforts and whereabouts to the HumanDHS network
2008 pictures
Pictures until the end of 2007


Picture taken by Evelin Frerk, www.evelinfrerk.de Please see more pictures here

Evelin Gerda Lindner, M.D., Ph.D. (Dr. med.), Ph.D. (Dr. psychol.)
Founding President (*)

Life & Work

It is my life-project to build Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) as a global fellowship of concerned academics and practitioners. We are now ca. 1000 people, globally. The vision for our network is to serve as a global enabling platform, giving space and encouragement to people who wish to dignify our world and transcend humiliation.

We attempt to "walk the talk" also within our network, which means that we invite diversity, not least diverse approaches to studying our very topic, namely dignity and humiliation. I contribute my very broad historical and transcultural approach, however, this does not mean that others have to "sign up" to my approach. We warmly invite other approaches into our network, also those that are completely different. Our motto is Unity and Diversity, or, more precisely, MORE unity, combined with MORE diversity.

In other words, I do not wish to dominate our network in any way, not in its theoretical work nor in practice. I am our network's principal pathfinder, ambassador, and servant so to speak. I personally am not interested in building a "career," get "tenure" (I consider myself to be the first professor of a World University), or publishing articles, or defending a "turf," or "making money" (I live almost without possessions and money, and would need only marginally more funds in order to not be caught in humiliating situations, for example, I would like to pay resonsibly for a health insurance for my self, or, be able to take a taxi when I am tired instead of the bus), in short, I connect no self-interest with my work other than that I wish to nurture the vision of a new world, a world of equal dignity for all.

A very warm welcome to all like-minded people to use me as your ambassador for your work!

Let me share a bit more about my background with you.

Usually, science, at least until recently, has been dominated by Western scholars. Therefore, much research is situated in a Western cultural context. A Western scholar typically begins research within his or her own cultural setting and then makes some allowances for historic and cultural variations. Larger cultural contexts and an analysis of historic periods in human history are less emphasized. Dialogue and bridge-building with other academic fields and other cultural realms are not easy to achieve even in today’s increasingly connected world.

I have lived as a global citizen for more than thirty years (due to being born into a displaced family), and have thus acquired an understanding not just of one or two cultural realms, but of many. The result is that I paint a broad picture that includes historic and transcultural dimensions. In my work, the usual approach is inversed: I use larger cultural contexts as they were shaped throughout human history as lens to understand the human condition, including emotions, with particular emphasis, in my work, on dignity and humiliation.

I believe that this broad long-term and transcultural approach, an approach that rests on a hard-earned global idenitity, which in turn heals a family history of displacement, makes me suitable to be the founder and nurturer of a global fellowship such as HumanDHS.

I was born in 1954, into a family that is deeply scarred by the two World Wars, particularly World War II. The trauma that engulfs my family in many ways represents a never-ending "normality." I believe, at least in hindsight, that this suffering gave my life its direction. "Never again" or "how can we build a sustainable bio- and sociosphere for the global human family" was to become central for my life. Already as a schoolgirl, I was interested in the world's cultures and languages, and I eventual learned to familiarize myself (to various degrees) with many languages, among them the key languages of the world. My aim was to become part of many cultures, not only "visit" "them." I wanted to develop a gut feeling for how people in different cultures define life and death, conflict and peace, love and hate, and how they look at "others."

When I finished school, I studied for ten years, first psychology and then medicine. I used both studies for my own anthropological explorations. I studied and worked in New Zealand, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Israel, West Africa, USA, Germany, and Norway, as a student of psychology and medicine. I graduated in psychology in 1978, and in medicine in 1984, both from Hamburg University in Germany (later I gained my doctorate in medicine in 1994 from Hamburg University, and my doctorate in psychology from Oslo University, Norway, in 2001, see more here).

From 1984-1987, I was a Clinical Psychologist and Psychological Counselor at the American University in Cairo, and from 1987-1991, I had my own private practice in Cairo. I offered clinical psychology and counseling in English, French, German, Norwegian, and, after some years, also in Egyptian-Arabic. My clients came from diverse cultural backgrounds, many from the expatriate community in Cairo, such as Americans, Europeans, Scandinavians, Palestinians, and citizens of other African countries, as well as from the local community, both Western-oriented, and traditionally-oriented Egyptians. Part of my work was "culture-counseling," meaning that foreigners working in Egypt asked me for my support in understanding Egyptian culture, Arab culture, and Islam. My doctoral thesis in psychological medicine (1994) systematized this quest and addressed the topic of quality of life in a comparative manner (I examined how the notion of a "good life" is being defined in Egypt and in Germany).

In 1991, I found myself again in Europe. Perplexed by the lack of a sense of global responsibility in Germany, I founded the NGO Better Global Understanding in 1993 in Hamburg, Germany, and organized a festival with 20 000 participants under the motto "Global Responsibility." In 1994, I stood as candidate for the European Parliament, again with the wish to further global understanding.

The more than 30 years of learning how to be a global citizen were no easy years. Particularly my failed attempts to integrate having a family were extremely hurtful and exhausting (please see To my Children and the Children of the World). Yet, more so, renouncing old yearnings and beliefs, building a global identity, and making the planet my home, not only theoretically, but also in practice, was hard - see the geographical and chronological vision of my global life design. It was (and still is) like building a ship while at sea (Otto Neurath uses the ship metaphor in his work, see his "Protokollsätze" in 1932).

There is a growing number of people today, who, like me, are developing a global or at least multi-local identity and become citizens of the world. I feel that I have learned valuable lessons on the way, lessons that are relevant not least for scientific inquiry. I have learned that human beings share deep commonalities and are thus perhaps much less divided than is often assumed by those who are residents in one country and "visit" "others" as tourists, for business, diplomacy, or fieldwork. As long as one "visits" "others," or lives in expatriate ghettos, one stays "outside".

Over the years my intuition grew that basically all human beings yearn for connection, recognition, and respect, and that its withdrawal or denial, experienced as humiliation, may be the strongest force that creates rifts between people and breaks down relationships. I believe that the desire for connection, recognition, and respect unites us human beings, that it is universal and can serve as a platform for contact and cooperation. I suggest that many of the rifts that we can observe stem from the humiliation that is felt when recognition and respect is lacking. I do not believe that ethnic, religious, or cultural differences create rifts by themselves; on the contrary, diversity can be a source of mutual enrichment - however, diversity is enriching only as long as it is embedded within relationships that are characterized by mutual respect. It is when respect and recognition are failing, that those who feel humiliated are prone to highlight differences in order to "justify" rifts that were caused, not by these differences, but by something else, namely by humiliation.

I began developing this intuition already when I started working as a clinical psychologist with individuals and families in Germany (1980-1984). My experience indicated that humiliation is of crucial importance in human relations - both as act and experience - and that cycles of humiliation may permeate people's lives with an all-consuming intensity. Vogel & Lazare (1990) illustrate this point in "The Unforgivable Humiliation - a Dilemma in Couples' Treatment." Later, particularly during my time in Egypt, I understood how relevant these dynamics are also at the group level, or even at the macro-level, between nations or whole world regions. The example of the Treaties of Versailles, humiliating Germany after World War I, is but one example, perhaps among the most known ones.

During the years, I increasingly felt that the severity of rifts caused by humiliation call for research. I started designing a research project on humiliation in 1995/6, and conducted it at the University of Oslo, beginning in 1997, and concluding in 2001 with a doctoral dissertation in social psychology (reaching into anthropological psychology, philosophy, sociology, and political science). The research project was entitled The Feeling of Being Humiliated: A Central Theme in Armed Conflicts. A Study of the Role of Humiliation in Somalia, and Rwanda/Burundi, Between the Warring Parties, and in Relation to Third Intervening Parties. In the main phase of the four years of research I carried out 216 qualitative interviews, addressing Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi and their history of genocidal killings. From 1998 to 1999, the interviews were carried out in Africa (in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland, in Kigali and other places in Rwanda, in Bujumbura, capital of Burundi, in Nairobi in Kenya, and in Cairo in Egypt), and from 1997 to 2001 also in Europe (in Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, and in Belgium). Since 2001, I am adding other parts of the world, for example, Southeast Asia and United States of America.

The initial research questions were: What is experienced as humiliation? What happens when people feel humiliated? When is humiliation established as a feeling? What does humiliation lead to? Which experiences of justice, honor, dignity, respect and self-respect are connected with the feeling of being humiliated? How is humiliation perceived and responded to in different cultures? What role does humiliation play in aggression? What can be done to overcome the violent effects of humiliation? Where can I observe cases of humiliation? If humiliation played a role after World War I for Germany, is humiliation just as relevant in more recent cases of war and genocide, such as Rwanda, Somalia, Cambodia, and so on? Is humiliation also relevant for relationships at even higher macro-levels, for example between "civilizations" or cultural regions such as was described by Samuel P. Huntington (1996)?

Since 2001, I have concentrated on building a Theory of Humiliation (please see background reflections from 2004, as short summary, short table, executive summary, and longer paper) and through this work I have in many ways contributed to creating a new multidisciplinary field in the academic landscape, namely humiliation studies, not as "single interest scholarship" but as entry point into broader transdisciplinary analysis. Humiliation, this is the insight, permeates everything, from micro to macro level, from the global and local political realms, to the inner workings of organizations and corporations, to our private lives, and even to every person's inner dialogue and how we frame our selves.

In 2001, I met Morton Deutsch, whose work I had admired for years, and was deeply touched by the encouragement that he, together with Andrea Bartoli, Peter Coleman, and Betty Reardon, extended to me as to found an institute or center or global network for humiliation studies and affiliate it, among others, with the Columbia University Conflict Resolution Network (which had been founded by, among others, SIPA, ICCCR, and the Peace Education Program).

Since we wish our fellowship to be global and not local, we since have expanded our affiliations globally to many universitites and institutions (see, for example, our Links page, as well as the affiliations of the members in our Global Staff, Global Core Team, Global Advisory Board, Global Partners, Global Supporters, as well as Education Team, Research Team, and Intervention Teams).

Initially, we developed a long list of tentative names for our institute or center or global network or fellowship, such as Global Network of Humiliation Studies, International Humiliation Studies, or Humiliation Watch. We finally homed in on Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (or HumanDHS, see how we developed our logo). I am since working on building our network, fellowship, and program, writing book/s and articles, teaching, and giving lectures. Our aim is to invite academicians and practitioners to contribute to our HumanDHs fellowship and to knit together academia and practice in innovative ways, helping to prevent and avoid cycles of humiliation, instead promoting a world of equal dignity.

Since we wish to emphasize non-hierarchical structures, I do my utmost to model a new form of leadership. After Don Klein passed away in 2007, Linda Hartling urged me to honor his insistence that I ought to accept the title "President," however, I do not wish to do that in an unreflected traditional way. I prefer to be a facilitator and nurturer of our fellowship as long as I am needed, and step back when others can take over (Linda recommends the following book as background reading: Barbara Pachter, and Susan Magee (2000). The Power of Positive Confrontation. New York, NY: MJF Books. Please see also Michael Britton's, Brian Ward's, and Francisco Gomes de Matos' reflections on this topic). See also Mary Robinson making the point that our notion of leadership needs to be enriched, that it needs to be more enabling (she makes the point that women leaders are particularly called upon to carry this new aspect of leadership forward).

In newsletter 10, I spell out in detail that my role is two-fold: 1) as an enabling nurturer of our entire network, I promote diversity, 2) as a researcher on my own, I have my own approach. It is of crucial importance, not to mix both roles. In particular, I do not wish our members to "subscribe" to my personal research approach, because this would hurt our diversity. As a researcher, I am merely one among many, hoping that my approach is useful, and wishing to encourage others, through my work, to develop their own perspectives. As an enabling nurturer of our overall felowship, I wish to bring to the fore the flourishing of a rich diversity of approaches to our topics of dignity and humiliation.

Let me return to my continued experience of living as a global citizen. I believe that it is not peace-inducing to define the essence of our selves to be national, ethnic, or in any other "local" way. My friends of color tell me, for example, "I wait for the day, where I am not referred to as a 'black lawyer' but when I am just 'me,' just a 'human being'!" Therefore, I now refuse to connect "I am" (my essence) with any local identity. I limit the use of "I am" to "I am a living creature, a human being, a member of the family of humankind." I would not even say "I am a woman." To my view, all these characteristics are details that do not merit to define our essence. They are important, yes, and they deserve much more of our attention, yet they need to be secondary to our inclusive humanity. I have developed a "Unity in Diversity" identity, or as I call it, a "Sunflower Identity": at the core I place my essence of being a living creature (as part of the human family), and at the periphery I am proud of three circles of petals that signify my diverse connections with a) the people around the world whom I love, b) with the places around the world that I cherish, and c) with the cultural achievements of all humankind that I admire. In this sunflower conceptualization, the core trumps the periphery, yet, though secondary, the periphery flourishes better than if it were primary.

My concept of my identity is identical with my vision for the world: "Unity in Diversity," or, more precisely, a win-win framing of "more Unity AND AT THE SAME TIME more Diversity" (as opposed to a win-lose framing of "Unity at the expense of Diversity," or, even worse, a black and white mutually exclusive "Uniformity or Division"). This is achievable through the application of what we know as the Subsidiarity Principle, on which, among others, the European Union is built, meaning that the lowest or smallest competent authority attends to what it is competent for).

In other words, I wish to strengthen both, global and local identities, however, this can only have benign effects, to my view, when it is clear that our shared humanity, our common mindset of humility, and our mutual respect for equal dignity for all, trumps the potential for divisiveness that is entailed in diversity. Developing a global identity does not mean erasing local identities, on the contrary, it means adding a global layer on top of local layers, and at the same time strengthening those local layers of identity. It means "harvesting" from all cultural spheres their wisdom in support of Unity in Diversity.

By distancing myself from local and national identity, I do not wish to indicate that I intend to disengage from responsibility. On the contrary, I accept more responsibility. I identify as much with German history as with Russian history or any history of the planet. I feel responsible for not repeating atrocities perpetrated by Stalin, or Hitler, or any other dictator. I define Russian history to be as much my history as Japanese or German history: my history is all humankind's history, and I wish to carry the shame and disgust for the destruction that all humankind ever perpetrated, and shoulder the responsibility to build a better world for all humankind. The world believes that Germans during World War II ought to have stood up and not stood by when Jews were transported away. Six million people died in the Holocaust. Today, millions of children die each year before they are five years old, of preventable diseases and poverty. I identify with that. I do not want to stand by, I want to stand up. To do so, I have to identify with all of humankind, I have to make all of humankind my primary identification, and relegate local identities to a secondary place.

Today, I design my life as a global citizen without a house of my own, moving around in the "global village," being housed by our HumanDHS network and supporters of our work, living digital (not using paper), and with a minimum of possessions. Wherever I am, I need only three things: 1) a mattress, 2) a fast Internet access, and 3) BBC World on TV, or at least BBC World Service radion (the latter two representing my two "umbilical cords" to the wider world). I decline being full-time part of any national institution. I wish to stay globally flexible (which means that I forego a full-time professor's salary).

I am the first candidate for a professorship at a World University for Equal Dignity, of which our HumanDHS represents a seed. Since this World University does not exist yet, this means in practice that I welcome being affiliated with many universities around the world, as long as they agree to support my global quest. (Arne Næss, world-famous Norwegian philosopher, over 90 years old by now, looked back on his life in our 2003 Paris meeting and concluded that the one mistake he had made in his life, to his view, was to stay fixed at one university, instead of living a global life as visiting professor).
Or, I am a Peripatetic (NOT the French abuse of that word...), like Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens (I thank Sibyl Schwarzenbach for making me aware of this word!).
Or, I perhaps resemble a wandering monk (read more here, I thank Dennis Rivers for making me aware of this link!).
Or, I may resemble early humanists, who built their careers outside of universities, who, they felt, produced useless qualifications. Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1466/1469–1536), for example, declined offers to accept a permanent position at a university.
Or, Rosika Schwimmer was a citoyenne du monde somewhat similar to me (I thank Maggie McFadden for making me aware of her!).
Or, my life follows perhaps that of American theater director and nomad Peter Sellars.
However, there is a profound difference between me and wandering monks: I am not homeless, I do not feel homeless, and it is not homelessness that I wish to highlight. I am at home wherever I am, and this is not an idea, it is not a hope, it is my personal deeply lived experience.
I wander in the global village, because I wish do to more than decry the world's ineptitude in addressing its global challenges. I wish to adapt my personal life to the world's global challenges, "bring my life to scale." Living a global life is one of my ways of doing more than just talk, but walk my talk.

Often it is a challenge for me to stand up for this life-design. Not seldom I am treated (I exaggerate to make the point clear) like a young stupid student, who is a bit crazy, who therefore fails to have a permanent affiliation and a "normal" life, and who is therefore altogether a negligible entity. I am often advised, with somewhat patronizing pity, that I ought to become "realistic." (To me, this advice sounds like telling a medical doctor to become "realistic" and give up treating patients, since they will die anyway.) Typically, I meet mainstream disbelief, confronting me with claims such as "but one needs a base to stay sane!"

In other words, the novel elements in our HumanDHS vision (globality, egalitarianism, and so forth), which are expressed in my life-design, are difficult to make comprehensible. It is hard to explain that we are not lacking mainstream status markers, but that we have a different vision, a vision that might be crucial for humankind's future.

And, indeed, there are many advantages connected with my global life, both for me personally, and for our network. In the following, I attempt to spell out some of them, since my experience is not shared by many (I fact, I have not met anybody) and is therefore rather unfamiliar to most. Personally, I feel liberated by my nomadic life style, for example, liberated from having to accumulate possessions. (This does not mean that I do not cherish great achievements that would not have been created in a nomadic society, for example, built structures that stood for millennia, like the Egyptian pyramids, or pieces of art; in other words, what I feel liberated from is not possessions per se, but accumulating possessions just for the sake of accumulating). I also cherish being part of many families around the world and living many parallel lives (I avoid staying in hotels, so as not to remain in a bubble of isolation). I never look for "a place to stay," but always for "a way to be part." Having an extended global family, with members from many cultural backgrounds, all with diverse sets of perspectives on the world, teaches me first hand understanding and respect for the diversity in our world. This helps me bring my life to scale with the global challenges that humanity faces.

I cherish the beauty of humankind's cultural achievements, in all cultures (see the description of my Sunflower Identity above). They are my aesthetic home. What hurts me deeply is the fact that these achievements are not necessarily valued and visible locally. Currently, the desire for higher status, often translated into an urge to imitate the wealthy West, leads to global ugliness and dysfunctionality that often chokes much of the potential for local beauty and functionality. This state-of-affairs pains me deeply, and transience helps me tackle it. By deconstructing local environments, by searching for the often unfulfilled potential for beauty and functionality, I try to enjoy and nurture this potential for more diversity (see, for example, our World Clothes for Equal Dignity, World Design for Equal Dignity, or World Architecture for Equal Dignity initatives).

For our HumanDHS fellowship, the advantages of my global nomadism are numerous. To begin with, through my global life, I am pro-actively maintaining the "Inside-Outside" orientation that is crucial for our global work (both outside and inside perspectives are essential to leadership). In this way, I can better hold our global vision. Furthermore, there are lots of down-to-earth practical advantages. in order to find like-minded people around the world, to try to identify people who not only talk the talk but also walk their talk, it is important to get to know people within their social contexts, preferably not just via email or short visits. Living truly globally allows me to serve our network as a global "pathfinder," as a global "collector" of like-minded people. The fact that I usually stay in one place for a while, but not unlimited, enhances my ability to meet people. Many people make an extra effort to see me when they know that the duration of my stay is not infinite. A mixture of face-to-face meetings and appreciative emailing allows for building our global fellowship that is wider than a local network based on physical co-presence could ever be. This approach serves our aim to inspire many people and organizations around the world, and motivate them to invest in our vision. For example, we invite professors at all universities worldwide to motivate their students to do research in our area, and developed curricula that could feed into and help build our face-to-face and online education activities. However, I invite not only professors and students, but everybody who shares this vision to invest into building our alternative global community of dignity in a long-term manner (see also our applied ideas).

In short, I wish to sow as many global seeds as possible, and multiply our message locally and globally, at all levels, and in all segments of society, and this in a long-term fashion, not as a short-term business or campaign.

To conclude, my global citizenship expresses the vision of our HumanDHS fellowship in many ways. We have to be cautious with old solutions when we wish to find new paths. My life respresents a search for new solutions, and I am proud that I avoid old solutions that are narrowly nationally defined, even though I am aware that this still often collides with the mainstream way of looking for solutions. Second, my global citizenship honors the fact that we need to go beyond local and national identities and embrace all of humankind as one family that is united in equal dignity. Third, it brings my life to scale with the global challenges that humankind faces, both ecologically and socially. And fourth, it is very practical for our aim to build an alternative global community of equal dignity for all.

In the early twenty-first century the world finds itself in transition from a traditional culture of coercion to a culture of creativity (though still in its infancy). Creativity will be central to building a sustainable future for the bio- and sociosphere of our human family. Art is a field that fosters creativity. My life could be labeled as a piece of art, an artistic experiment in serving humankind as a paradigm shifting agent (Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962). The Transformation Theory of Adult Learning (Jack Mezirow, 1991) explains how disorienting dilemmas can bring about transformation, dilemmas that unsettle our fundamental beliefs and values. Intercultural communication can have such unsettling effects. And I introduce disorienting dilemmas into my own life, through my global quest, intentionally, but also into other people's lives, for example, when I reply to the question "Where are you from?" by saying "I am a member of our human family, like you - I am from Planet Earth" (or something in this line). By ways of this reply, I introduce a disorienting dilemma between the culture of the past, and an envisioned culture of the future, a culture in which we define ourselves primarily as part of the entire human family, with shared responsibility for our home planet, rather than lending primacy to our divisions. My life design represents an experiment for a future world culture of true humanity and equality in dignity, not least through its distance to outdated unsustainable definitions of what is reality and what we should strive for. In many ways I validate the insights of, for example, William Ury (1999), who explains that knowledge as resource for livelihood brings back the win-win framing and wisdom of pre-agricultural hunters-gatherers prior to ten thousand years ago. The disruption and uneasiness that I cause by NOT catering to contemporary mainstream expectations, could be regarded as a measurement of the degree to which we are still anchored in past definitions, many of which may be dysfunctional for a long-term sustainable future.

I would like to invite everybody to try replying "I am a member of our human family, like you" (or something similar), when asked "Where are you from?" The effect will be a deep transformation, for you and your social environment, albeit not always a smooth transformation. I invite everybody to muster the courage to face up to the disruption that is entailed in shifting paradigms.

Summary:

I donate my lifetime to building our HumanDHS fellowship. Every year, I donate, in kind, the full-time professor's salary that I forego. I decline offers for a fixed position as a professor in any particular place in the world, since I want to stay globally flexible.
I do that in order to develop our HumanDHS network as a "seed" for an alternative global community that truly walks the talk.

In practice that means:
- As Founding HumanDHS Director and President, I manage our Globally Mobile HumanDHS Headquarters. I work on the nurturing of our network's relationships, on developing our global organization, and convene our two annual conferences via email (ca. 200 incoming emails per day)
- As Global HumanDHS Ambassador, I meet with people around the world in order to identify and invite new like-minded members into our network - see the geographical and chronological vision of my global life design
- As academic lecturer, I give lectures wherever my path leads me (I am usually invited as guest professor). I consider myself to be the first professor of a World University for Equal Dignity.
- As academic author, I write books, articles, and chapters.
As part of "walking the talk," I use my own life as a paradigm-shifting message: The human family faces global challenges, and in theory, this is accepted by many. However, only few dedicate their practical lives to the common good of all humankind. The largest global organization, the United Nations, has as its members not individuals but nations. Diplomats, though they live globally, have to serve national interests. Transnational corporations do not serve the global common good, nor do global criminal and terror networks. The average individual is usually fixed within national interests, if not simply by their mortgage. I wish to experiment with bringing my life truly to scale with global challenges.
Zest of life: The assumption is widespread that one has to "settle down" to be happy. I suspect that this is a myth that emerged through the past ten thousand years of agriculture as an argument to keep underlings put. Since only very few people today attempt to return to the more nomadic lifestyle of the first ninety percent of human history, it is not widely known how much zest of life is unlocked as soon as one puts the quality of global relationships first, and the accumulation of quantities of possessions attached to one place second. I experience an enormous increase of my joy of life ever since I had the courage to stand by my life design (that I live since I am twenty years old, but only dare to endorse as my "official" life since I am forty five), and finally rejected the notion that only a sedentary life can be satisfying.
Healing of trauma: My new-won global identity has healed my trauma of displacement and painful search for "who am I?" and "where do I belong?" The trauma of displacement that my family suffers (together with millions around the globe who ask "where do I belong?") can, to my view, best be healed by inviting all attachments and losses that are locally defined into the global care for a sustainable bio- and sociosphere for the entirety of our human family.
Academia: In order to face global challenges, global transdisciplinarity is urgently needed. This entails a call for global living, connecting, research, and teaching. I attempt to heed this call.
There are more aspects to my global life that would take up too much space to explain here. Please see for more my publications page.

Many people come to me with skeptic objections - please let me address some here:
My point is not that everybody should emulate me and live as a global citizen, physically. The point is rather that everybody needs to develop a sense for humankind's shared responsibility for our planet. We, as humankind, need to sit together and think through how we can protect not only biodiversity, but also cultural diversity (both are, of course, interconnected). In that context, we need to think, for example, through landownership. It might be unwise for humankind to give too much land to initiatives that exploit only one resource, say timber or ore. Perhaps it is important for humankind to give land to indigenous peoples with cultures depending on land. Many indigenous peoples have developed cultural knowledge of how to utilize a wide variety of resources of their land, knowledge that may become as important for humankind as biodiversity, which in turn often depends on cultural diversity. For humankind's survival, we might need to develop an all-encompassing sense of what is needed: some people may want to be global citizens also physically, like me, others not - what is important is humankind's shared responsibility for our planet.

As to planet Earth's resources and the fear that there may not be sufficient resources to support billions of global citizens, to my view, again, humankind has to sit together, gauge the "carrying capacity" of "spaceship" Earth, and design public policies, together, to reach a balance. There are many strategies available, from educating women (among others to alleviate them from having to produce too many children as a form of old-age security) to more creativity with regard to technological solutions for producing energy and food, and so forth. Basically, the solutions are on the table already, what is lacking, at the current point in history, is the "political will," around the world, to implement solutions. In other words, we observe a lack of informed citizens, citizens who push politicians to take care of the common good of all humankind instead of losing this focus in struggles at local levels.

As to the size of social structures and bonds the human mind is capable of handling, and the fear that people get too stressed if they have to deal with too many people, I lived in Cairo, Egypt, for seven years, and was amazed to see a culture of living-together so tightly packed that others would get insane: in other words, there is a cultural element here. And there is a personal element, too, of course. I personally have a network of friends that is about one thousand people strong and I guess that others may get stressed. However, there is no "obligation," even for a global citizen, to develop deep personal relationships to more people than she or he can handle. The important point, again, I would say, is the sense of shared responsibility, also with people I do NOT know personally.

Evelin Gerda Lindner, M.D., Ph.D. (Dr. med.), Ph.D. (Dr. psychol.) Founding President (*)

Life & Work

Main Sections

Evelin Gerda Lindner, M.D., Ph.D. (Dr. med.), Ph.D. (Dr. psychol.)
Founding President (*)