The Founder

A Brief Autobiography

My name is A. Nicholas Frank. I was born in Budapest, Hungary. My father was an attorney, writer, lecturer, and dreamer. He wrote about the need for the workers of Europe to unite – an early dream of a united Europe in the 1930s manuscript he left behind. I lost him to illness when I was four years old. My mother’s devotion and heroic determination allowed my sister and I to survive the Holocaust and World War II.

Following the defeat of our revolution by the Red Army, in 1956 I escaped from communist Hungary. After six years living in Montreal, Canada, I moved to Los Angeles, California. The many unanswered questions my mind collected through my growing up during those turbulent times of the mid-20th century prompted me in 1972 to begin a project to answer as many of life’s questions as I could.

From 1975 to 1985 I studied and experimented with stress to understand the neuroendocrine process and the psychological effects of stress on human behavior. While I have learned a great deal, it became evident to me that there was something more important beyond the stress mechanisms of psychophysiology that has a greater impact on individual behavior and the functioning of society. In the spring of 1985 I took my wife and two small children on a year-and-a-half thinking, writing, and camping tour of Europe.

Upon our return from Europe I retired from all commercial work, living off of our investments and devoting the following twenty years to the search for a unified answer to personal, social, economic and environmental questions. Realizing that stress is merely a failure indicator of complex systems that are experiencing some degree of dysfunction, I turned my attention to understanding how complex socio-economic systems work. For a long period of time I believed that the concept of synergy would shed light on that subject. However, when I realized that synergy does not fully explain the nature of complex emergent systems, and that synergy had come to be associated with corporate and commercial concerns, it was once again time for me to move on.

A satisfying and unifying answer developed in the form of the Holigent work and life concept. The holigent organizing concept is modeled after natural self-organization. Holistic-emergent (holigent) evolutionary self-organization is in essence nature’s building code. It is the energetic primal self-organizing mechanism that enables simple parts and particles to come together and build our complex universe.

The holigent socioeconomic self-organizing concept transforms the top-down, reductionistic and fragmentary command and institutional approach of our current socioeconomic system. The Holigent Solution can gradually reorganize our existing system to function more like robust and sustained natural systems do: to develop through self-organization from the nucleus out and roots up, and function in balanced reciprocity with all other parts of the manmade and natural life support system. I introduce and explore this concept in my upcoming book, Holigent Solutions – The Transition Race to Peace and Sustainability.

I live with my wife in Los Angeles, California, we have two children. My full-time occupation now is to make the Holigent concept and materials available to any individual, institution, organization and government willing to experiment and work with this transformational concept. Recognizing the urgent need to find solutions for humanity’s problems on our endangered planet, I am engaged in laying the foundation for the Los Angeles Peace and Sustainability Project as the first entry into a projected global Transition Race to Peace and Sustainability.

About Holigent.org

Holigent Transition to Peace and Sustainability.org (Holigent.org)

Holigent.org is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization developing and offering programs that help rearrange the way we live, work, commute, consume and govern ourselves while facilitating the development of a socioeconomic alternative that promotes economic security, social harmony and sustainability.

On a conceptual level, we recognize that capitalist-consumerism, in its present form, has become an over-consuming and hyper-polluting unsustainable global economic monoculture. We realize that humanity does not have a well-defined Plan B for pursuing a sustainable and peaceful alternative.

Therefore, we encourage the formation of nonprofit organizations to partner with governments and philanthropists in order to develop Transitional Urban Villages. Such developments propose a new urban approach to provide high-quality affordable living and other solutions for the multiple problems that cities face in the U.S. and around the world.

In a more advanced proposal we offer the Holigent Solution, which provides a sustainable alternative for residents to further rearrange the way they live and work. Holigent communities develop a human resource barter-based local system that works in parallel with and, to a degree, separate from the global economy. As a result, a hybrid socioeconomic alternative is developed that will secure a high standard for quality of life, affordable housing, economic security, and social harmony all with a reduced carbon footprint on the environment, even during severe downturns of the general/global economy.

Holigent.org is taking a lead in developing this solution. We are committed to raising funds and developing our plans for the construction of a model Holigent Urban Village community on the banks of the soon-to-be revitalized Los Angeles River near downtown Los Angeles.