Frequently Asked Questions

No. Sageocracy is not a political party, fields no candidate in any election, and does not seek to take power in the classical sense of the term.

It is a civic protocol, a mechanism of social transformation founded on individual consciousness and collective coherence. Its aim is not to govern, but to render obsolete a mode of governance that no longer corresponds to the reality of contemporary human consciousness. The distinction is fundamental: where a party seeks to occupy existing power, Sageocracy seeks to shift what societies consider legitimate, to the point where the structure of power itself must evolve in order to remain credible.

No. Sageocracy proposes no compulsory belief, no deity, no ritual, no figure of spiritual authority, no initiatory community.

It is accessible to the most rigorous atheist as well as to the most profound mystic, because it addresses what is observable, verifiable and shareable, independently of each person's metaphysical convictions. A Sageocrat may be atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, animist or mystic. Sageocracy requires no conversion and no confessional affiliation.

It nonetheless recognizes a philosophical and spiritual dimension, developed on the site's Spiritual vision page, for those who seek an articulation between their inner life and their engagement in the world. This dimension is available, not required.

Sageocracy does not oppose other movements of social transformation, it does not seek to absorb or replace them. Its singularity rests on four points that are not nuances of degree, but differences of nature.

• A precise and public protocol : not a general philosophy or a collective aspiration, but a democratic mechanism with public rules: individual registration, worldwide counting (see the counting method), the threshold, then, in each country, the people's decision by referendum, within the framework of its democratic institutions. It is not an appeal to consciousness, it is a structured protocol founded on the dynamics of complex systems.
• An integrated alternative measure of value : Reliances are not one more local currency. It is another way of seeing value: recognizing the quality of a contribution without going through market exchange, and making visible what all monetary systems leave in the shadows.
• A worldwide dimension from the outset : the shift that Sageocracy proposes cannot be local. A single register, a global World Map, simultaneous translations in the world's main languages: the planetary dimension is not an ambition to be reached, it is a structural condition of the project's effectiveness.
• A coherence between substance and form : non-hierarchical governance, real transparency, accessibility without financial barrier, openness to all cultures. This coherence is not an ideal to be reached, it is a founding principle, verifiable and exposed to criticism.

Syntony is the moment when elements that seemed to oppose one another stop opposing one another. No one has given in, no one has settled the matter: one simply sees them, at last, as the parts of a single whole. It is neither consensus, nor unanimity, nor compromise.

Unlike domination, a system that imposes itself, and unlike fusion, two systems that merge into one, syntony maintains the singularity of each while creating a dynamic, adaptive and creative relationship.

Within Sageocracy, syntony replaces competition as the fundamental mode of relation between individuals, communities and institutions. It applies at every scale: the relation to oneself, to others, to collectives, to institutions, and to the natural systems of which human society is part. Syntony is the living expression of the first principle, the awareness of bonds, applied to collective decision. It is one of the most central concepts of the book. A decision is said to be taken in syntony only if no one maintains an objection; failing that, a vote is held, and the objection that was not lifted remains written with the decision.

The book Sageocracy, Toward a society founded on an awareness of our bonds and respect for the living world is a philosophical and political essay. It does not present itself as an academic thesis. It is in dialogue with many works, cited throughout its pages or gathered in "To go further", which the book presents not as a foundation but as companions along the way. Among them:

• What no longer holds in our systems : David Graeber (debt as a political instrument) and David Wengrow (the complex human societies that existed without top-down hierarchy).
• Decision and thought : Daniel Kahneman (the two speeds of thought) and Robert Kegan (the development of adult consciousness beyond adolescence).
• Cooperation : Frans de Waal (empathy and cooperation inscribed in the living).
• Complexity : Edgar Morin, who articulates what the separate disciplines cannot connect.
• Contribution and meaning : Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and the state of flow: the human being reaches their highest level of engagement when they contribute to something that surpasses them, within a framework where their contribution is recognized.
• The economy of the living : Kate Raworth (the doughnut economy) and Herman Daly (an economy that stops growing beyond what the planet can bear).
• Consciousness and presence : Richard Davidson, Tania Singer and Matthieu Ricard (the measurable effects of contemplative practices).
• The spiritual dimension : Sri Aurobindo (the evolution of consciousness) and Neale Donald Walsch, whose work awakened the vision of Sageocracy.

Anyone, whatever their nationality, culture, religion or political convictions, can become a Sageocrat, on the sole condition of freely deciding to orient their life according to the three principles of Sageocracy. Registration is open from the age of 12, with a parent's consent under 15. Only adults are counted towards the threshold that can open the way to a referendum, because they are the ones who vote. The Sageocrat Card is reserved for people aged 18 and over. But registrations decide nothing by themselves: it is the people who choose, by referendum. But everyone's voice is counted and heard, as soon as their email address is confirmed: the counting method explains what is counted, and how.

There is no selection criterion, no test, no compulsory membership fee, no training condition. Registration is an act of personal coherence, not membership in an organization, not an ideological affiliation, not a militant commitment.

The only relevant question is this: do I recognize that the current framework no longer suffices, and do I choose to inscribe this within an organized collective endeavor?

No militant commitment, no membership fee, no obligation to take part in meetings or events. Registration is a personal civic act: you decide to orient your life according to the three principles, and you bear witness to it by joining the worldwide counter.

It is not membership in a political movement. It is a decision of coherence that each person embodies in their own way, in their daily life, according to their own capacities and circumstances. The Ethical Charter, available on this site, describes twelve commitments toward which each person may choose to strive; registration itself commits you to nothing beyond taking a position. These commitments are not obligations imposed from outside: they are the practical translation of the three principles into everyday behavior.

Yes, entirely and unconditionally. Registration in the worldwide register of Sageocrats is free, requires no financial consideration, and involves no subsequent subscription.

The Sageocrat Card, your personal supporter card, optional and paid-for, is available separately for those who wish to contribute financially. It supports the project and grants no particular rights: free registration is enough.

Yes. The data collected at registration is used exclusively for the management of the worldwide register and the communication of the project. It is never sold or transferred, nor used for commercial, political or ideological purposes, and the association passes it on to no one: not to an employer, nor to an administration, nor to a party, nor to a future government, unless the law requires it to. If the association were to cease, this list would be destroyed, never handed over. Having registered, or not, will never bring, tomorrow, either advantage or disadvantage.

The World Map of Sageocrats, when it is activated, makes visible only the counters by country, never individual identities. Every registration counts, but remains confidential.

The infrastructure is secured according to current standards: regular backups, protected administrator access, and permanent monitoring of vulnerabilities. Technical reinforcements form part of an approach of continuous improvement. The protection of registrants' data is an absolute priority of the project.

Yes, at any time and unconditionally. Sageocracy holds no one back. A movement founded on freedom and coherence cannot function with members who have not freely chosen to remain in it.

Deletion is done directly from your member area: a "Delete my account" button is available at the bottom of the page. A confirmation by entering your email is requested to avoid any accidental deletion. The deletion is immediate, complete and irreversible, your personal data, your photo and your Sageocrat Card are permanently erased.

Yes, provided one understands what a tipping point is. It is not a seizure of power, nor a revolution. It is the progressive inversion of a society's center of gravity.

Historically, the most profound social transformations did not come from wars or elections, but from the moment when a sufficient number of people began to function differently. The abolition of slavery, women's access to civic rights, decolonisation, these shifts were first of all individual decisions to refuse a legitimacy that had become untenable.

Sageocracy proposes a precise, voluntary and democratically verifiable protocol so that this process occurs in a conscious, coherent and non-violent way. Researchers who study great social transformations, sociologists, historians, theorists of complex systems, observe that a society maintains its configuration for a long time, even when it is failing, then shifts rapidly, at a moment that cannot be precisely predicted. This sheds light on why such a shift is not only possible, but coherent with what history shows us of the great transformations.

The book sets no number: it speaks of the moment when, in a country, enough adults are registered for the existing democratic paths to be able to open. This threshold does not reduce to an absolute number, it depends on the geographical distribution of registrations, on their progression over time, and on the ratio between the number of Sageocrats and the adult population of each country.

Two distinct thresholds must be distinguished:

The cultural threshold : relatively low, beyond which the movement becomes visible, credible, and constitutes a reference in the public space. This threshold can be reached with a minority fraction of the population, provided that the people concerned are sufficiently visible, connected and coherent.

The democratic threshold : the one at which registrations, once numerous enough among the adults of a country, can lead elected officials to initiate an official procedure. Registrations decide nothing by themselves: an assembly of citizens drawn by lot publicly examines the project, then the people decide by referendum, by a large majority, at least two thirds of the votes cast, with a minimum turnout written into the text put to the vote, and the revision of the Constitution that such a change requires. All of this takes place within the framework of the country's democratic institutions.

The two thresholds follow one another: the cultural threshold makes the project credible and grows the movement; the democratic threshold transforms this legitimacy into concrete institutional change. The World Map of Sageocrats will make these thresholds visible country by country, as they are reached.

Power structures resist, and the book names this resistance of vested interests. But they do not block shifts in the long run: they find themselves surpassed by them. Some, people or institutions, draw a real advantage from what exists, and some of their arguments deserve to be heard. But the path also runs through elected officials ready to open the door to the people's choice, not to take power, but to give it back to them.

What Sageocracy builds is not an attack. It is an inversion of legitimacy, the moment when the old framework costs more than it yields, because a more coherent alternative has become sufficiently visible. At that moment, power changes nature: not through overthrow, but through obsolescence.

The detailed argumentation is developed on the Understanding without beliefs page.

Honestly: it cannot spread there in the same way. The registration mechanism described on this site presupposes a minimum of civil liberty. Where a regime blocks access to the site, monitors users or prosecutes those who register, the democratic mechanism cannot function directly.

But this does not mean that Sageocracy has nothing to say to these societies. Because it does not address regimes. It addresses people.

In every society, even the most closed, there is a population, often a majority, simply silent, that aspires to live differently. That sees the contradictions of the system in which it lives. To this population, Sageocracy offers what it can offer: the proof that it is possible. A proof that circulates, despite the filters, through diasporas, through travels, through images, through comparisons.

The Berlin Wall did not fall because a Western general knocked it down. It fell in particular because, after decades, the gap between what the Eastern bloc regimes promised and what their citizens could observe among their neighbors became untenable.

Sageocracy, in these societies, is the visible horizon. Not a strategy of interference. A coherence that can be seen from afar. And people, everywhere, end up having the last word.

Yes. A society founded on respect for the living is not a society without defense.

A sageocratic country retains defense forces. But they change nature. They become strictly defensive: no doctrine of aggression, no preventive war, no territorial expansion. Their mission is to protect the territory, the maritime and aerial spaces, the vital infrastructures, and, an increasingly crucial domain, digital sovereignty. Their doctrines are public and debated: the only thing kept secret is what, if revealed, would put lives in danger, under the oversight of an independent body. Recourse to force remains possible, as a last resort, with proportionality, and in full awareness of what it entails.

This position is part of an old debate. Gandhi defended a near-absolute non-violence, a position of immense moral force, which transformed history. Sri Aurobindo, another great figure of conscious transformation, held a different discernment: in certain circumstances, faced with truly destructive forces, doing nothing in the name of pacifism amounts to letting the worst come to pass.

Sageocracy integrates this discernment. It is not pacifist in the absolute sense. It is non-aggressive : which is not the same thing. There is a time for speech. A time for mediation. And sometimes, a time to firmly protect what must be protected.

The horizon, for its part, is clear: a world without armies. For a country that possesses nuclear weapons, the choice to renounce them belongs to the people: it is one of the first questions that will be put to them. And choosing Sageocracy entails leaving every military alliance: it is the country, always through the vote of its people, that decides whether it takes part in someone else's conflict. Leaving a bloc does not mean leaving an attacked neighbor alone: it is the people who decide, each time, whether to come to its aid when that neighbor asks.

A final honesty: Sageocracy does not claim to resolve active armed conflicts nor situations of immediate political violence. It acts upstream, on the conditions that produce the imbalances of which violence is often the culmination. This book does not promise immediate peace. It describes how to build the conditions of peace.

Reliances are the situated recognition of a real contribution to the balance of the living. Neither currency, nor points, nor rating: they are not bought, not accumulated, not ranked. They open up responsibilities, never a larger share of what is scarce.

Three words define them:

• Recognition : not measurement. A contribution is not quantified like a production. It is recognized as it is.
• Situated : not universal. A contribution has a value in a given context, at a given moment. What serves one collective is not the same as what serves another.
• Real : not symbolic. A well-meaning intention does not generate a Reliance. Only what actually produces an effect is recognized.

Three properties characterize them structurally:

• They do not accumulate : they accompany the contribution over its duration, and fade when it ceases: what fades are the responsibilities they opened up; the proof of what has been recognized remains.
• They are not transferable : what has been recognized in a person remains bound to them.
• They are not convertible : they can neither be exchanged for money, nor transformed into capital.

Their complete architecture is developed in the book. Their actual implementation will take place progressively, as the movement reaches the necessary thresholds.

No, Reliances are not a currency and do not replace money. But in the path the book describes, from the day the shift comes into force, on a date set and announced in advance after the people's decision, the old currency ceases to be legal tender inside the sageocratic country: it is replaced by a transition currency specifically created for the crossing. Holdings in the old currency are not converted: those that keep a value abroad go, in return for the common compensation, into a common fund for external exchanges, which serves everyone. Through the common compensation, a single rule, the same for all, each person receives, in transition currency, the value of what they cease to have, up to a ceiling set by the people. This is only one possible path: none of this applies today, and no one is invited to stop honoring their contracts.

On that day, the country enacts three things simultaneously:

• The essential commons are guaranteed, a share of the essential foods for a healthy life, which grows over time, housing, care, education, basic clothing, energy, water, access to communication tools. Without condition, without consideration. No one can fall below a subsistence threshold any longer.
• Reliances come into force as a system of recognition of contributions (see the previous question).
• A transition currency, digital, is created. Each adult resident receives an identical starting capital, paid out each month, calibrated to ensure dignity beyond the commons; children receive a reduced share, topped up when they come of age. It gives access to what is not yet covered by the commons, artisanal products, personal services, exchanges between territories.

This transition currency obeys three structural rules that make it radically different from classical money:

• The filter of the living : it can only be used for products and services that respect the living. This filter tightens as alternatives become available. It applies to what producers and merchants offer, never to what each person buys.
• A currency that melts away : what one keeps of it decreases over time (around 2% per year at the start, up to about 10% after some forty years). It prevents accumulation, hoarding and speculation from the outset.
• Non-convertibility with external currencies : it cannot be exchanged for any foreign currency, in either direction; it can be neither bought nor sold. The only exception, fixed and the same for all: the welcome share a visitor receives in return for their welcome contribution. It exists only within the internal sphere, which protects the sageocratic country from speculative attacks.

Over forty to fifty years, as the commons expand and Reliances take their full place, the transition currency progressively loses its usefulness and disappears. At the end of the transition, only the commons and Reliances remain.

And within this overall logic, the activities that degrade the living, toxic products, speculation, activities that make the living world and others bear their damage, corruption, cease to be fueled: they cannot generate Reliances, nor circulate in the transition currency. This is what the book calls an extinction without violence: not a prohibition first of all, but a rule chosen together, to stop paying for what destroys.

Sageocracy, Toward a society founded on an awareness of our bonds and respect for the living world, by Yannick Costechareyre, will be published in September 2027. The French text is complete; the coming months are devoted to its editorial preparation and to presenting it to the press and to booksellers.

People registered on sageocracy.org will be informed of the publication as a priority, ahead of the general public release.

Because that is the time a carefully prepared edition takes. The text is complete: it remains to prepare it for printing and to present it to the press and to booksellers.

That time is taken up by work on the text (editorial review, copy-editing, checking of quotations and references, layout, cover, proofs) and by preparing the release. Journalists discover a book several months before it comes out: the press office needs to be able to present the work to newsrooms, radio and television, and booksellers need to be able to read it before recommending it.

September was chosen for two reasons. The autumn season that opens in September is one of the great moments of the French publishing year, when booksellers, critics and readers pay particular attention to new books. And spring 2027 will be taken up by the French presidential election, which will concentrate the attention of the media and of public debate. A book that questions the way we decide together deserves to be read for its own sake, not as one more voice in an election campaign.

Yes, that is the very purpose of the project. It will be translated into many languages.

Each foreign edition will also need its own time for translation and preparation. Registered people will be informed of each new publication in their language.

The book is not yet available to the public: it will be published in September 2027. The site presents its foundations, principles and essential mechanisms, complete enough to understand and join the project, sober enough to make readers want to read the book in full when it comes out.

The World Map of Sageocrats is a worldwide map that makes visible the number of registrants by country. Each registration is recorded, dated and geolocated as soon as it is submitted. It is associated with a city of residence, declared voluntarily by the registrant at the time of their registration.

The counters by country will be made public when the movement has reached a truly significant threshold on the international scale. This choice is one of coherence: figures only make sense when they reflect a real dynamic at the scale where it counts.

In the meantime, each registration is recorded, dated, and will count when the time comes.

Because displaying figures makes sense when they can be real at the scale where they count. A movement that displays a few hundred registrants in a few countries creates an impression of fragility that may discourage precisely the people who would have joined a more visible movement.

The logic of the threshold is not wait-and-see. It is the same logic that the book describes about the shift itself: taking the time to grow, so that visibility, when it arrives, produces its full effect. Each registration recorded today will count in the historical register of the movement, as proof that it existed before being known.

Several forms of support are possible and equally precious.

• Share the site and the project around you, in your personal and professional networks, in your communities, with the people for whom the project may resonate. Organic dissemination, carried by people who speak of the project out of their own conviction, is the form of communication most coherent with the principles of Sageocracy.
• Contribute financially : the project is today carried by the association Sageocratie Internationale, without investor or outside interest; the platform was created, and is managed, by the company Aubremont, which the author runs and in which his wife is a partner, under an agreement that the association's council approved without the author or his wife taking part in the vote. The work ahead, the Reliances platform, international editorial dissemination, the scaling-up of the World Map, calls on those who choose to take part in it. Every contribution serves the development of the project; the use of the sums, including what the author's company receives, will be published on this site.
• Propose a partnership : editorial, academic, institutional or organizational, via the contact form, if your organization shares values and practices coherent with the principles of Sageocracy.

The Support the project page details all these forms of contribution.