Press

PRESS CONTACT: A. Nicholas Frank nicholasfrank(at)holigent(dot)org Los Angeles, CA

Dear Journalist,

My name is A. Nicholas Frank. My story and the story of Holigent is wrapped around each other. Here I present to you this long and winding story of my life wrapped around the development of the Holigent Societal Reconstruction story from seed and roots to its current budding and hopefully soon blossoming branches.

I need to begin with my father. He was a lawyer by profession and a dreamer by passion. I lost him when I was 4 and missed him terribly all my life. I got to know him well through his 1930s book manuscript he left behind. While it is an academic work about the evolution of civilization — the subject is wrapped around his dream of a peaceful Europe while the continent was drifting toward fascism and World War II.

I read his manuscript multiple times. The most memorable read was during our 2019 visit to Budapest where I carried a copy of his manuscript to the library’s reading room of ELTE University where he earned his jurist doctorate. His spirit is my guiding star.

I survived fascism in hiding, lived through World War II in Budapest, and grew up in mindless and murderous communism. After the defeat of our short-lived revolution in 1956, I escaped from Hungary to the West across the partially dismantled Iron Curtain. I live in Los Angeles with my angel of a wife, Marsha; we have two lovable, grown children.

The roots of my lifelong search for answers go back to the spring of 1945. Near the end of the War, I climbed out of the deep bunker under the old fort of Buda and saw Budapest bombed to rubble. My eight-year-old self asked:

Why would grownups destroy a beautiful city and kill innocent people?

Decades later, I became sharply aware of my long fermenting semiconscious question during a 1972 late evening walk on the west side of Los Angeles. I decided then that I would answer that question even if it should take the rest of my life.

I realized early on that they don’t teach the answers to that question in schools, so I was on my own. It all began by reading The Stress of Life by Hans Selye (“the father of stress”). I devoted ten years studying and experimenting with stress and stress management. I learned much about the stress factor in human health and behavior. Perhaps the most important conclusion in my exploring the subject is the realization that during high socioeconomic stress, collective human behavior turns predictably ugly. This is our evolutionary legacy: Reason and morality go up in smoke as our primitive fight or flight aggressive stress response takes over and often leads to conflict and war.

Toward the end of that ten-year period I realized that while understanding stress sheds light on the problem, it provides no answer to my core question. So, I needed some fresh air and finding a new track chasing down the answers.

I closed my windowless garage office, packed up and with my wife Marsha and our two toddlers, in the spring of 1985, took a flight to Amsterdam. There is where my thinking and our year-and-a-half RV camping trip around Europe began in an old VW camper van towing a travel trailer twice its size. Pulling all that weight with the small air-cooled VW engine was not supposed to work. I made it work by developing an understanding relationship with Fritz (our VW).

Hours of walking, thinking and searching for answers were my daily routine. I made some notes but did no serious writing. During the eighteen months, we traveled through much of Europe from Amsterdam to Budapest; ferried across the Adriatic from Yugoslavia to Italy; continued through France and across the Channel finishing our trip in England.

Oh, yes. How can I afford to take off a year-and-a half? Years earlier while I was working for a major commercial airline, I developed a sideline of buying and renovating homes in bad shape. (Remember the "fixer-upper" business) I was good at it because I new framing, carpentry, electrical, plumbing and the rest. Over the years i sold some and kept some and developed a modest fortune of income properties that still provides a comfortable living in self-employment. More important, this allows me to devote full time of unlimited hours, months and years to search and find answers to the most pressing questions of of life and society.

Back in Los Angeles I felt refreshed and full of ideas. I knew that beyond stress, I needed to understand how society works. With this in mind I picked up Buckminster Fuller’s big book Synergetics. The fascinating concept of synergy kept me busy for twenty years. I put my thoughts into two books, Biosynergy and Socioeconomic Synergism (both out of print now).

During that twenty-year period, I still did not find a satisfactory answer, so it was back to the drawing board. The following years produced the breakthrough for me. I came to understand that the only truly credible source of wisdom is nature. So, came the idea of searching to find nature’s building and sustainability knowhow that propelled evolution for billions of years from the simple to the complex.

I had a great urge to understand nature’s creative process. I collected my thoughts in my third book The Holigent Solution. This is an excursion outside the Box into the mysteries and “magic” of the evolutionary process—the emergence of something out of the near nothingness of cosmic vacuum followed by the evolution of that simple something in the bellies of stars into matter; followed by the evolution of complex matter to organic matter and the evolution of life from simple to complex life here on Earth. The essential result is that I managed to get a peek into nature’s building and sustainability knowhow.

Then I realized that there was something wrong with my effort: Too many words but not enough action! That prompted me to write an action guide: the Holigent Reconstruct America, Europe, the World.

Still there was something wrong: I fell into a pattern with so many others — sounding the alarm and protesting, waiting for politicians, bureaucrats and others to fix the world’s problems. Finally after a lifelong search for answers I believe I got it: I have to get away from my desk, computer and books — get out there and do it! Save the world? Yes! Are you nuts? May be. Single-handed? No, you have an indispensable part and I know (hope) you will help.

So came the idea of building two Societal Reconstruction Experiments, one in Budapest and another in Los Angeles. When successful, expand it to become a Holigent Village/Campuses; when that succeeds, build it to become the Holigent Global Village — a permanent live world exhibition. Invite young people from around the world to live in the Holigent Global Village and learn the art, science and skills of Building a Better Bridge to their future of universal quality of life, global peace and systemic sustainability. The details are in the Holigent Initiative contained in the book Dear Billionaire, available in pdf on this website.

NOTE about grammatical errors in my writing — I write in “hunglish” (Hungarian-English ;-) There is no time for the back and forth with editors and proof readers.