The Driven Renegade or The Way of The Cult

Ambition. What is that word? What does it sum up in your minds eye? You want this so you gotta do that, right? Oh look, there's you enjoying the benefits of jolly old life in your imagination, you'll morph that into a reality firstly by believing it is entirely possible then taking the neccessary steps to achieving that goal, simple! Without any further ado let me apologise for talking about ambition. It's a thoroughly boring subject or perhaps it is just that word, which to me seems to suggest you reap the benefits of life when you hit retirement. And those posters they put up around the workplace? "if you have no direction you'll end up nowhere" Please. If I want to read stuff like that I'll go to the Mind, Body & Spirit section of Waterstones.

On a contradictory note I am fond of ambition. Well, the idea of wanting something, working towards it and then eventually getting it more specifically. It's one of those natural abilities we posess. The word ambition however seems too self-conscious, a concept stamped on the process of 'wanting something and working towards it' that becomes championed by faceless corporate entities & implemented into the ethos of working life, where your ambition is subject to some severe bending like when you attempt to snap one of those non shatter rulers.

But what of those whose ambitions refuse to be subject to severe bending, or in most cases, any bending at all? I could supply a list of famous/infamous renegades right now, but just imagine if you will a student's halls room bedecked with iconic posters symbolically defiant of their parents values. The Malcolm X's, the Guevara's & the Hitler's of this world didn't cause an impact by operating in harmony with the status quo, though the latter sprung up when the status quo in his German-speaking country of choice had all but crumbled thus giving the little barborous demon an unfair advantage. And if there were any students who had a poster of that daft clown in their rooms chances are they are now safely locked away in a medieval dungeon, or they work in advertising.

Those bad boys (and girls) aside, I would like to focus your attention on a more enigmatic character going by the name of Amdi Petersen. A name more infamous throughout Scandinavia. Yes, he too flew in the face of the status quo, a very ambitious renegade. In the late 60's he & a group of teachers dissatisfied with mainstream education decided to travel the world via modest modes of transport, to learn more about the third world & see what they could do to combat poverty. An alternative school was set up in Denmark which proved to be successful & consequently saw expansion and state support from a then very liberal Danish government. After establishing a base in the north west region of Jutland (central Denmark) an area dominated by farmland and not much else, the now established 'Tvind' organisation (named after the area of farmland where the new schools were situated) continued to thrive and gain popularity with youth counter-culture. It was in the mid 70's that the organisation, with Petersen as the spearhead, decided to undertake the ambitious project of constructing the worlds largest electricity producing windmill on the school grounds. Sounds like a pretty right on guy?

An epic chronology of events is being cut short here, I do not have the patience to go into detail but it involves the renegade protagonist going into hiding for a good 25 years, international expansion, pyschological bullying, an alcohol ban, Africa, the succesful endeavour of developing aid into free enterprise, damaged teens, a fatal boat accident, a shared economy, court cases, insane amounts of profit and cult status. These things would not have happened if it wasn't for Mr Petersen himself, a man guided by Maoist theories towards education and organisation.

Petersen's ambition was so virile he in effect created his own status quo, his own normality within his organisation, which spread across the globe (Tvind/Humana have schools in all continents) He created and influenced a whole culture among the people involved within the organisation which to this very day is still going strong. The organisation has earned itself a cult status since the 80's & has been scrutinised and vilified by various world governments ever since: Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, UK and America have all hit Tvind with cult allegations and recognise AP as the mastermind. You'd be hard pushed to ever find the elusive character who could literally be in any part of the world including his condominium in the Cayman Islands, unless he's attending court in Denmark for a £15m fraud case.

So where does ambition and all of it's supposedly positive implications lead to in this scenario? One mans ambition is now being measured against the state and other regimes, this championed characteristic can be the very thing that will bring about the abolishment of those institutions that champion it! And meanwhile, the rest of us who are quite content to get on with life are subject to emerging power struggles between what are essentially ambitious individuals with a will to controlling their environment. It becomes clearer when you've spent a bit of time in a cult, an experimental alternative to society as we know it, run by an ambitious egomaniac, in this case Amdi Petersen: a charismatic bully with pseudo-socialist ideals.