We aspire to a federation that is alive in the way a thriving neighborhood could be said to be so. We sometimes use technical terms like autopoiesis to describe this only to find that German has a better word, leben, that has all of the right connotations, at least to a German. wikipedia 
Helmut Leitner tells me that Germans know this word well and understand wiki more quickly because they can name it when they see it. wictionary
Alexander struggled to describe the quality which he ultimately called the quality without a name, later shortened QWAN. wiki
| Leben pronounce slow and relaxed like "layban" | life |
| Lebendig like "laybandic" | living, vivid, vital |
| Lebendigkeit like "laybandic-kite" concatenated "laybandikite" | quality of living systems, vitality, liveliness, aliveness, vividness, vibrancy, qwan |