Yesterday, 15th May, the real Olympic Spirit was installed within the Olympic Village at Stratford, London. The eighteen-foot hight bronze sculpture stands on a solid base of marble in the athletes accommodation area. It looks across to the Orbit Tower and the Olympic Stadium as final preparations are made for the opening of the London Olympic Games 2012.

With more than 50 public sculptures on display around Europe, this is the first of Anna Chromy’s sculptures to be erected in the UK. Its significance will not go un-noticed by the thousands of athletes, trainers and coaches who are living all around it for every day of the Olympic Games.

The positioning of Chromy’s “Olympic Spirit” in the very place where Olympians will live, eat, sleep and train every day, is a compliment to their determination and endurance.  This edifice of human strength and achievement will surely inspire and motivate every one of them.

The Olympic Spirit will remain at the Olympic Village until further notice is given by its new owner.

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Humanity has made immense progress over the last decades. The starting point for setting a future’s agenda can be anchored in a healthier, better educated, more prosperous, and better informed and connected world than ever.

Humanity finds itself at an evolutionary crossroads. The choice is between a perfect storm of progressively deepening crises and expanding perspectives of unprecedented opportunities.

Viewed from the perspective of the past, the current crises predict a gloomy future. Viewed as an evolutionary opportunity to break with outmoded ideas, values and institutions, they provide the essential conditions for the rapid transition to a more peaceful, prosperous, equitable and sustainable future.

The recent failure of collective action to address international financial instability, climate change, unemployment and food insecurity seem to justify pessimism. But this failure has been the result of a piecemeal, fragmentary approach to both understanding and addressing the issues.

The root causes of the crises we are witnessing rest on outmoded theoretical concepts, values and institutions. The remedy lies in the formulation of a new theory appropriate to the radically different conditions of the 21st century, commitment to progressive values that integrate individual freedom and equitable cooperation to maximize the welfare and well-being of all, and establishment of more effective national and global institutions.

There is a growing understanding and an increasing consensus of the kind of world we want to live in. A global society which has moved beyond hunger and suppression, a world that manages to live off the resources which the finite planet and the infinite human ingenuity provide, an equitable society which lives sustainably and is a lot better off and happier than today. The vision of the Club of Rome is one of an enlightened world guided by values of cooperation.

The world in 2052 can be a much safer and resilient place than it is today. Humanity has the opportunities, the tools, the science, technology and the insight to overcome the systemic crisis and to move into a better world. Whether we manage to do so will depend on each one of us.

“Et dabo vobis cor novum et spiritum novum ponam in medio vestry. Et auferam cor lapideum de carne vestra et dabo vobis cor carneum”. (“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put into you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36.26). This is the phrase I engraved in the bottom of my sculpture “Heart of the World”. It is illustrated by a pile of discarded hearts of stone and the Cloak filled with our Conscience. Above rises a heart with the portrait of John Paul II, holding a child protectively in his arm.

The Holy Father had a special love for the children of our world, for those suffering from sexual and economic exploitation, from hunger, disease and malnutrition. They form an army of millions of innocent beings, lining the streets of our megacities and fighting in armed conflicts. It’s first and foremost them which we have to love and protect. It is not paradise in the sky, but acts of selflessness and love that bring God’s sacred space and grace to a broken world suffused with tragedy, until the unknown hour when the world is made whole again.

It was an unforgettable day on May 18th 2002, when I was invited, in the company of my husband and the Archbishop of Salzburg, to the Papal Audience on Saint Peters square in Rome. When it was my turn to kneel in front of Papa Wojtyla, and explain the meaning of my sculpture, my present for his 82nd birthday, I thought I would faint. I knew in this moment, that I had encountered the Conscience of our World, a Heart embracing all of us with his immense Love.

On this Morning, in front of Pope John Paul II, I made the vow to transform my Cloak sculpture into a chapel, where everybody would be able to meditate and rediscover his inner self. The idea was reinforced in a discussion with the Abbott of the Monastery and Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, where he encouraged me with a phrase of the Saint, suggesting “to use our own body as a Cloak, in the absence of an appropriate place to pray”.

I believe that we artists have a special duty to labor for the improvement of this world. Aleksandr Solzhenyzin expressed this beautifully with the following words: “ Artists possess a sharper Conscience of the Harmony of our world than us others, a conscience that they have to transmit to others. This permanent harmony is the reflection of God, which preserves us from brutalization. This is also the meaning of Dostojewski’s “Beauty which will save the world”.

Conscience, as the Echo of the Spirit in our Free Will, shall radiate from my Cloak; and the most appropriate place to do so would be at “Roma Caput Mundi”, the spiritual capital of the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is the practice of nonviolence which these days receives the most attention among the values brought upon us by Gandhi. The endemic violence in today’s world makes the commitment to nonviolence particularly difficult, but all the more important and urgent.

The Mahatma’s nonviolence teaching is not only a code of conduct for individuals but also for social institutions, religious communities, governments and other organisations. In the face of today’s problem with international terrorism, nonviolence in the spirit of Gandhi cannot be an attitude where we beg the aspirant terrorists to renounce their cruelties, and not even an open discussion in a pacific mode with potential enemies.

One of the primary teachings of Gandhi is that you cannot defeat violence and cruelty as long as you have not yourself completely renounced this ugliness. “Satyagraha- the Truth Force” allows breaking laws which are suppressive, but disallows violence! Therefore the high moral status of the defenders of democracy is of utter importance. The loss of this status provides an immense strength to their violent enemies.

Seen under this aspect, transgressions of the defenders of democracy, and dirty behavior of those who pretend to fight for democratic values and human rights, have greatly helped terrorists to recruit new combatants and to generate public sympathy und understanding for their ugly acts. However powerful the armaments of the defenders of democracy might be, the loss of their moral status undermines substantially their strength.

Another, more long-term aspect of Gandhi’s teaching is the effort to unite Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Schools and similar institutions cultivating hate towards other communities or groups of people have to be closed. This is true for Coranic schools, but not only. These principles have to be applied to any structure which promotes a strong sense of sectarian identity, which distances one human being from the other, based on religion, ethnic belonging, or other beliefs.

It has therefore been decided by the Board of the Conscience Institute to organize the Chromy Awards ceremony each year in the honor the Mahatma, celebrating his teachings and the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (or Spiritus Mundi as Anna Chromy calls it), the philosophy which understands the whole universe as one family.

“To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour” (William Blake).

In his wonderful book “Le Cosmos et le Lotus” the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan shows us that, “we are all dust of the stars, that we share the same cosmic history with animals and plants, and that we are all connected throughout space and time, giving us an acute sense of interdependence inducing compassion into our hearts. We realize that our happiness depends on all others. It makes us aware of the vulnerability of our planet and of our isolation in the universe and it gives us the understanding that our industrial poisons, our nuclear scores and the greenhouse gases affect us all, independent from any national, cultural or religious boundary”.

So why is it then that humanity is not living according to this insight? Is it all Prometheus’ fault or also our own? When Prometheus stole the fire from Zeus and gave it to humanity, the Gods took a terrible revenge, by inducing Pandora to open her box containing all evils of the world. The box is still open today, and the evils described above are spreading uncontrolled across the globe. Once out of the box they are almost impossible to put back. Albert Einstein, the father of nuclear fission, has made this sobering experience, when he tried to stop the development of the nuclear bomb based on his scientific discoveries.

We are therefore all sitting on a volcano, like the Kung-Fu monks of the Shaolin Monastery, shown in my painting. We should listen to them, because the Monks know from their practice of Zen Buddhism, that our lived interdependence requires irresistible compassion towards all beings. The Monks teach us, that, like in Einstein’s case, it is not enough to know, because scientific, rational thoughts have their limit. They must be complemented by mystical or religious intuition, the arts and poetry in our approach of final reality.

Of the trilogy Love, Faith, Hope, essential for life, the only thing not to escape from Pandora’s box was Hope. So Hope is still there, hope that humanity will hear the Voice of Conscience and rediscover the Force of Love. Should we fail, we can still try to follow the example of Prometheus in my painting: Burned by fire, and unable to close Pandora’s box, he decides to escape to the Moon.

“Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger) is the Motto of the Olympic Games. It was De Coubertin’s, the founder of modern Olympics, belief, that everybody should compete against themselves, not for money or other rewards, but for the satisfaction to give ones best in fair and peaceful competition.

The Olympics are still today a shining example of this spirit, but cannot help to get more and more entangled with the hunger of money devouring our society, where an individual is not considered anymore for his human values and his creativity, but for what he has, how much he makes. Today the Olympic Motto could quite well be confused as a description of the bonus system in finance and industry.

When I created my Olympic Spirit no material consideration crossed my mind. My sole aim was to portray in this sculpture the benefits of peaceful and fair competition through cooperation. The fact that thousands of athletes from all countries and continents come together in the Olympic Village and live side by side for several weeks is in my belief an all-important aspect of the Games. I therefore imagined from the beginning only one adequate location for this sculpture – the Olympic Village of the London 2012 Olympics.

But there is another important aspect: I strongly believe that our exaggerated individualism and egoism has led us into a dead end. We have to realize that we all are residents of the same global village, that we depend on each other and have to cooperate with each other. The three athletes of my Olympic Spirit can only remain upright, in their precarious balance, if they trust and support each other. They climb high and fast with a happy mind and in harmonious cooperation.

Why can’t this work in the same way for everybody? Not everybody can compete in the Olympic Games. But why not measure the happiness of people and nations through something like the Happy Planet Index, which allows measuring success in other than monetary terms, just like the Olympic medals?

The three athletes of my Olympic Spirit are protected from evil by the Eye of Horus, just like the London Games in its center. They have trained relentlessly to show their prowess and portray the best of themselves to the world. They are happy to have achieved their goal and to participate in the greatest games on earth. May my Spirit inspire many others that – yes, they can do it as well.

Shirin Ebadi

This is the speech Paulo Coelho wrote in honor of the Peace Nobel Winner 2003, Shirin Ebadi, words, which according to the author, can be applied to all those who are working to create a better world. The text, taken from his wonderful book “Like the Flowing River”, describes a conscience fit to be honored with a Chromy Award:

“The Persian poet Rumi once said that life is like being sent by a king to another country in order to carry out a particular task. The person sent may do a hundred other things in that other country, but if he or she fails to fulfill the particular task he or she was charged with, it is as if nothing had been done.

• To the woman who understood her task.
• To the woman who looked to the road ahead of her, and knew that hers would be a difficult journey.
• To the woman who did not attempt to make light of those difficulties, but, on the contrary, spoke out against them and made them clearly visible.
• To the woman who made the lonely feel less alone, who fed those who hungered and thirsted for justice, who made the oppressor feel as bad as those he oppressed.
• To the woman who always keeps her door open, her hands working, her feet moving.
• To the woman who personifies the verses of that other Persian poet, Hafez, when he says: Not even seven thousand years of joy can justify seven days of repression.
• To the woman who is here tonight, may she be each and every one of us, may her example spread, may she still have many difficult days ahead, so that she can complete her work, so that, for the generations to come, the meaning of injustice will be found only in dictionary definitions and never in the lives of human beings.
• And may she travel slowly, because her pace is the pace of change, and change, real change, always takes a very long time.”

I would like to add as an encouragement a citation of the Bhagavad Gita from the same book, which reflects the meaning of the Void in my Cloak:

“Man is not born, nor does he die. Having come into existence, he will never cease to be, because he is eternal and permanent.
Just as man discards old clothes and puts on new clothes, so the soul discards the old body and puts on a new one.
But the soul is indestructible; swords cannot pierce it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, the wind cannot dry it. It is beyond the power of all these things.

Since man is always indestructible, he is always victorious (even in his defeats), and that is why he should never be sad.”

Anna Chromy

Over the centuries many philosophers and other great spirits have dealt with the problem of conscience and given us their definition. Today we can define Conscience as Ethically driven energy (C = E x e). This ethic Energy/Conscience is based on Love and Beauty. It can be found in individuals, but also in collectivities and corporations.

It will be the fuel of the third millennium. Individuals can improve their energy and conscience through spiritual exercise, physical activity, healthy food, empathy with all creatures of the planet, and control of their ecological footprint in order to reduce its influence on the biosphere. By doing this they take control of their life and become masters of their destiny.

Seen collectively, this will “give back the power to the people”, by creating millions of individual entrepreneurs who decide freely to interact and cooperate between them, wherever their counterparts may be located. They will be aware that to live in a secure and none polluted environment, where we maintain our biodiversity, they will have to come to terms with the other inhabitants of the globe, a truly decentralized globalization.

The conscientious citizen already produces and retrieves his individual information through the Internet. In the future he will also produce his own energy from clean, renewable sources, in order to heat and condition his home, fuel his electric car and other machinery, and share his surplus with others through intelligent grids. He will act as his own banker through the access to micro-credit and similar facilities and he will choose small enterprises respecting the code of conscience to provide their financing.

The artist Anna Chromy has created the symbol for the third millennium – The Cloak of Conscience an archi-sculpture five meters high carved into a single block from the famous Cave Michelangelo. This space of meditation will be covered by a glass pyramid based on the “Golden Section”.

The proportions of the golden ratio, largely ignored in our times, are the precondition for beauty which instills love into our hearts. The shape of the pyramid has also come to symbolize knowledge. The Cloak in the Pyramid will radiate the combined energy of harmony. The trophies of the Chromys are small reproduction of the Cloak of Conscience. They will honor personalities which we can rightly consider the Conscience of the 3rd millennium.

La bellezza è in un certo senso l’espressione visibile del bene, come il bene è la condizione metafisica della bellezza. E la bellezza di fronte alla quale “l’animo avverte una certa nobile elevazione sopra la predisposizione al piacere sensibile”(I. Kant, Critica del Giudizio). Bisogna parlare con un cuore carico di amore compassionevole, facendo esperienza di quella carità che dona con gioia e suscita entusiasmo; bisogna irradiare la bellezza di ciò che è vero e giusto della vita, perché solo questa bellezza rapisce veramente i cuori.

Nella sua “Lettera agli artisti” di 1999 Giovanni Paolo II esprime parole molto belle che evocano perché la società ha bisogno degli artisti:

“L’artista vive una peculiare relazione con la bellezza. L’artista rende un servizio qualificato a vantaggio del bene comune. C’è dunque un’etica, anzi una spiritualità del servizio artistico, che a suo modo contribuisce alla vita e alla rinascita di un popolo.

L’artista quando plasma un capolavoro, non soltanto chiama in vita la sua opera, ma per mezzo di essa, in un certo modo, svela la propria personalità. La società ha bisogno di artisti, come ha bisogno di padri e di madri che garantiscono la crescita delle persone e lo sviluppo della comunità. La società ha bisogno degli artisti perché ha bisogno di un supplemento di anima, ha bisogno d’ispirazione e di pace, soprattutto in questi tempi.

La capacità di scoprire, creare, irradiare qualcosa del fuoco della bellezza ha analogia con la folgorante bellezza del fuoco divino. L’arte è una ricerca, un anelito, una laboriosa trasformazione, che mette in causa l’uomo e le sue capacità per leggere ed esprimere la bellezza. Il massimo di bene, di bello, di buono è l’assoluto di Dio. L’artista ha la capacità di esprimere il visibile dell’invisibile, di consentire al mistero di farsi immagine”.

By now it’s clear to everybody, – we are all victims. Victims of our own greed, victims of irresponsible traders spurred by a thoroughly flawed remuneration system, victims of bankers who had a candid belief in the brain power of their geniuses in mathematics, of politicians who did not understand what was going on in their financial institutions, and many others. We are victims of a global financial system without control through a global political supervisory body, a system determined by big black holes in the form of offshore tax havens which siphon off the illegally achieved profits.

To cure a system burdened with an amount of dept (junk, trash, toxic……), which nobody ever will be able to repay, national governments heap on us even more dept, putting an unbearable burden on future generations. After the failure of social realism (communism) we are now getting the proof that unchecked capitalism is not the solution either. So what are the potential roads out of the mess for the worlds citizens? To support the losses where others have cashed the profits, and thus pay for a disaster in which they have no part, can’t be the ultimate wisdom.

We need a paradigmatic change which keeps the good parts of the current system and replaces the rest. The good parts are a social market economy, peace and security, democracy and civil liberties, protection of the environment and social justice. The economy and the capital have to serve the people, and not vice versa. Only a citizen who receives his just part of the cake is free.

Human dignity and the common good mark the natural limits for the unrestrained accumulation of capital. To express it in the incomparable manner of Peter Drucker: “Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something”.

When commodity prices fall because the speculators run out of cash, when scarce raw materials are preserved because of cutbacks on the superfluous, when manufacturing capacities are slashed on articles serving primarily the opulent, and thus preserve the environment, all cannot be bad. It gives us the best chance in a long time to modify our habits and direct growth to those parts of the world that really need it.

It’s time to wake up and act. We have to awake our conscience, shed our apathy and indifference, get access to clear, unbiased information on the key issues, and work for change, in symbiosis with our brothers and sisters in the global economy. Only then can the crisis become a chance. The artist Anna Chromy has created a symbol for this paradigmatic change – the “Coat of Conscience”, the image of our spiritual and moral achievements in life.

Among the different activities of the Conscience Institute a “Justice Label” is of special importance. There exist already many labels allowing the consumer to take environmental and health considerations into account when he makes his acquisitions. There is so far no label which allows consumers to buy with a social conscience. To fill this void the Conscience Institute plans to create the “Justice Label” in the form of the empty Cloak, which will permit consumers to identify toys, garments, sports equipment and other items who’s manufacturers and distributors have signed a “Social Fairness Chart”, disallowing the use of child labor, forced labor, of migrant workers, and other violations of human rights in the manufacture of their products.