The Potsdam Denkschrift is a declaration of Hans-Peter Dürr, J. Daniel Dahm and Rudolf zur Lippe under the patronage of the Federation of German Scientists-VDW. It is the base – the “mother” of the abstract condensed version, the Potsdam Manifesto ‚We have to learn to think in a new way’ what was up to now signed by more than 130 scientists and personalities from all over the world. Both were presented to the public in Berlin in autumn 2005. The collapse of a course of action legitimised by the materialistic-deterministic world view of the classical physics is elucidated in several chapters. The "progressing uniformity of all ideas of value and affluence, habits of consumption and economic strategies on the pattern of a Western/American/European knowledge society" (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift) and its hazards is accentuated and a rethinking towards a more holistic view and behaviour is claimed. Creativity, differentiation and connectedness are basic characteristics of life. The future is essentially open.
Process For the initiation, scientific feedbacking in content and composition and for the multiplication of Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto an intensive international scientific discourse was carried out since beginning of the Einstein-Year 2005. An interdisciplinary symposium in Potsdam to discuss a first draft of the “Denkschrift” (therefore Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto) was carried out in June 2005. The resultant development of the critical and bracing symposium was the full backing of all participants, as well as the decision to publish a short Manifesto additionally to the “Denkschrift”. On October 14, 2005 both - the short Potsdam Manifesto 2005 "We have to learn to think in a new way" and the more explicit Potsdam Denkschrift 2005 - were presented to the public in Berlin. In the following months various international signees of the Potsdam Manifesto were contacted and successfully mobilized as supporters.
Background Denkschrift and Manifesto connect to a central but not expanded appeal of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, published on the 9th of July 1955 in London: "We have to learn to think in a new way". The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was an ultimate calling for a new way of thinking that would guarantee war, in the future, to be completely banned as an instrument of politics and conflict resolution.
Starting situation Following the basic ideas of Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto the global situation at the beginning of the 21st century, 50 years after the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, confronts the humankind in an even more dangerous and more complex form. "Our deep worry that we, as members of the species homo sapiens, are increasingly reducing the living diversity of our earth and of our creative developmental possibilities, thus irreversibly endangering our survival in peace and our mutual exchange gives us the courage, and our awareness that we have to take new paths gives us the occasion, to compose this manifesto." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift) In this spirit it is not adequate just to answer - to give symptom remedies - to the diverse and escalating endangerments for humankind and more over for its carrying biosphere. It is urgent to detect the deeper causes covert behind these various crises syndromes. They have to be searched in the grave failures of the dominant strategies in our thinking and actions. It is obviously that the existence threatening problems of humankind are human-made too.
Re-orientations for Sustainable Development In accordance Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto enquire for the deeper sub-structures of the diverse crises symptoms. They show radical and deep going re-orientations for the sustainable development of humankind and for our thinking. "This wide variety of crises today confronting us and threatening to exceed our ability to cope are the expression of a mental crisis in the relation between us humans and our living world. They are symptoms of deeper causes that we have thus far neglected to seek and reveal. They are closely connected with the materialistic-mechanistic worldview favored all over the world today and with its prior history." (Potsdam Manifesto & Potsdam Denkschrift) Potsdam Denkschrift & Potsdam Manifesto charge a unidirectional narrow-minded western-European-North American modelled way of thinking to stall the living co-action between humans and creatures and to hinder their viability via centralisation trends and averaging of living complexes from biosphere to anthroposphere.
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