End of July 2020

Epilogue: Ratio, Irratio, Motio, Connotatio, Commotio and "The Grey Species"

Following Hamlet's last words there can only be an afterword still. 
Why using more words? Ultimately Laertes' sword puts the final nail in the coffin.

And it answers the question of being or not being.

For the time being. At least regarding the Prince of Denmark in Shakespeare's tragedy. 

But particularly in the case of Hamlet I used to ask myself, whether the smart adaption of archetypes
of myths and legends of mankind by the man who is supposed to have lived and worked from 1564 to 1616 primarily at Stratford-Upon-Avon might not be called a comedy. Despite the assumed bad luck. Just because of its depth and its miscellaneous complexity and because of the catharsis of the "honorable audience". 

Noam Chomsky, "Scientist and rebel" is speaking about "Deception as a crucial element of media and that way also political campaigning". "Public opinion" as important player and commentator in many Greek tragedies and comedies long before William Shakespeare also gets humbugged. But then it also recognizes the moments of humbug. Sometimes quite strongly retarded. Nevertheless. DISappointment caused by a false promise more often is more painful than the state of being unconcerned. Particularly as the alleged indifference mostly like DISappointment itself just constitutes a phase over time. Insofar the rather static condition of an "attitude" has to be scrutinized in a most sceptical way here too. Also having in mind the anger and rage of the disappointed confronting the one(s), who have deluded them. Albeit many humans seem to forget yesterday's catchpenny promises quite easily. Ultimately "public oppinion" also is an object of research of media and political campaigning. And their control also is supposed to hide many facts. Particularly regarding consequences of decisions in mid and long terms, exceeding the proximate legislative and election period. Therefore one might even tend to call this kind of decision making "intriguing" or even "plotting". Just the way, Chomsky also emphasizes it again and again. 

"Generative Grammar" as universal human principle of language and communication actually is the fundamental (r)evolutionary cognition of Noam Chomsky's scientific work. The beginning of him taking effect at the MIT at Boston. His public being. The "view of Marsians" on English and Hisuaheli, as Chomsky points out also shows, that we are actually equals amongst equals as human beings. And that "cognitive change", which he and his fellowmen and -women started about 60 years ago particularly in times like these needs some fresh impulse. That things in reality are much less complex than most people think or sense. That this also is crucial for complex action of humans of different origin. Action, which also should carry patterns of identification with them. Action, which is decisively minted by multiple patterns of experience made by the own tribe, the own family. Action, which in that sense urgently always requires communication itself and according to that motivation of the people acting. For enabling them to learn and to evolve. For not having them repeating mindless behavioral patterns, they do reflect and understand less and less over time. As Chomsky also strongly emphasizes hinting towards Alexander von Humboldt, Adam Smith, René Descartes and other great minds of humanity. 

“Doing good labor means being curious, researching and learning from ambiguities”, as Richard Sennett describes the “good Craftsman’s work”. (German edition,© 2008, Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin, p. 71).

Which are the irrational mechanisms though blocking "reason as rational manner"? 

What are the moments of (dis)appointment effectuating us for how long: the deceived ones as much as those ones, who seduce others? Who is a perpetrator then, who's the victim? Is grey within that a color or a characteristic feature? Maybe even a condition?

"The Grey Race", one of my favorite Punk-Rock-albums back then, 1996 by "Bad Religion". 

What does the color grey conceal and what does it reveal, when the evolution of us seeing colors, thus the development of rod cells and cone cells in our eyes actually enables much more sophisticated neuronal relations? Whereupon rods principally only do tell us, that all cats are grey by night. And only knowledge and experience gained by different cones disproves, better specifies that. So that also humans, who have lost their capacity to see or who might be born blind also can see and sense colors?

What does the narrative on one hand and its suppression on the other hand conceal or actually reveal? Which shade of grey with what shade of color emerges from that? For us as a species? Thus humans? Perpetrators and victims in changing sense of the actor's dignity fighting the own dead faint also against all odds, apparently facing most awkward premises. 

Are Pandemic and virus then rather part of the narrative or rather part of suppression? Or asked the other way around: how are they used in the sense of Herbert Marshall McLuhan's media and message? 

Over the years I've posed these and similar questions in straight or indirect ways. Emphasized specifically mostly in their certain paradigmatic way.  I've asked urban planners and architects, political and Micro- and Macro-economists of all schools of thought, sociologists, state officials in this or other authorities, politicians and state clerks, people like you and me. Long time before and while the change of time named after a pandemic took place. A change of time without times changing, where also established politicians speak about grievances representing themselves evidently as if we were zooming in with a magnifying glass. Grievances and an inequality amongst the "grey species", which have increased in the most striking way. 

Suppressed wounds caused by war, misery and destruction also arise from continuous inequality and the permanent state of not standing any chance for getting away from that. They can effectuate an anaphylaxis which is capable to emerge up to being completely committed to everyone's mercy but one's own. Resilience therein is the capacity to defend oneself against that condition of anaphylaxis and being committed to the mercy of others. 

What can be learnt in there, what is genetically determined? What is genetic dis- or exposition, what is a situational element of the assault on the organism, causing the crisis? How does the organism act in the different phases of cell division, thus mitosis and meiosis? How can resilience actually increase instead of being diminuished? In the current situation as much as in medium and long term? 

"Trauma research: inherited Wounds" is an article by Sonja Gibis in the pharmacy-journal. 

In the subtitle is said: "War leaves traces in the soul - even at humans, who haven't been witnessing it directly. Because psychological wounds can become a heritage."

Officials here tend to emphasize, that the crisis named by the pandemic isn't a war. Nonetheless the crisis might evoke feelings of being at the mercy of things and events. Feelings of faint facing an invisible, malicious opponent, blindsiding and assailing us in the least expected moment. How does it come, that inside of a family one sibling is tough and resilient, whereas the other one eventually comes down seriously with an illness, which later is diagnosed as a dominantly inherited illness according to family history? In which moments does the organism offer the vastest contact surfaces for the outbreak of such a disease? How can the organism protect itself even in case, the dominantly inherited disease has become clinically manifest? Also regarding ongoing life and its perspectives? Also regarding future generations, thus own children? How might the family, how might society react to that? How can resilience of family and society be increased for invigorating the weak and apparently powerless instead of delivering more and more people to the mercy of "invisible enemies" and to lacking any protection? 

Continuation and transmittion of narration also of fears and trauma, someone has gone through is a way for sure. A pathway though, which sometimes rather requires a certain alienation by the fine arts. Representing "scars in the soul", just like a sculpturist and friend of the expressionist draftswoman Käthe Kollwitz once told a former friend and colleague ask for a medium, that is making sense and giving beauty to pain and horror. Nevermind whether the medium then is the potter's clay shaped in her hands or the India ink pen on the limestone and the cutting knife in the wooden board. Whether these are the words, the sound of tones, the drive of the paintbrush, the scratch of the needle on canvas or harder more solid ground. Whether it is the way, the streetsweeper sweeps the street, as Martin Luther King Jr. expressed it once in a beautiful allegory. 

The four central canvasses of the exhibition "detracted (entzogen)" by Walter Maria Padao in the apsis of Salvator Church at Duisburg here for commemoration of the Love parade tragedy, which happened there 10 years ago. At the end of the day also Walter's main intention is giving the 21 casualties, their families and relatives and the many traumatized survivors, who witnessed the tragedy directly the possibility to get over pain and bemoaning their fate in a dignified manner. He's doing that by juxtaposing his interpretation of a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, the "Triptych of the Descent from the Cross" from the Cathedral of Our Lady at Antwerp  with painted  counterpleas of press photos of the tragedy and the simultaneous salvage happening in there in the same size. Simultaneously he shows us outsiders also quite plainly the event's immediate tragic for participating witnesses and survivors and the ongoing question of human and the legal state's responsibility.  

Reality of some narrations and their stories sometimes is stronger than the invention of fiction. Particularly as the assumed fictional story all too often is some kind of "alienated reality". Nothing gets lost. Everything is always there. Although some singular parts might be submerged or buried and hidden behind many dull frosted mirrors and other screens reflecting blinding light: They are and have always been there. Just in a new combination they enable a new synthesis within the generative grammar. Based also on lingusitic affinities and systems of kinship, Chomsky and his colleagues once have developed. Although in the biological sense for some we are rather "gregarious animals living in small flocks". As the "grey species" however we hold much more mutual commonalities in our diversity than many really like to admit. 

Thus: what is currently happening "under the magnifying glass of the pandemic"?
"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." 
Once more Tancredi's quote from Giuseppe Tommaso di Lampedusa's "Gattopardo", the "Leopard" hints far in excess over the background of the story's intrinsic sequence of events, thus the physical action of "Italy's unification signed by civil society and its middle-class" on Sicily by Garibaldi's troops in the 1860's.

Are "change, development and progress the true driving forces of history"? Is the "magnifying glass" rather a catalyst, thus a  "reaction accelerator"? The tunes and vibes, which are created these days about a virus, which definitely isn't completely harmless: does that also help to camouflage the much more tremendous turmoils of a highly dysfunctional rebuilding process? A demolition and reconstruction, which for us here on the "old continent" means, that we have to find our way in between two completely differently shaped autocratic patterns? 

The fact, that we haven't truly reliable partners neither in the US nor in China somehow has become quite evident recently. But don't we ultimately have to find our own way through the debris of demolished faith and confidence? Or what else?

"But the issue of an enormous existing and further growing inequality already appears in many countries these days and nowhere more evident than in the USA. The last thirty years of American history depict explicitly, that incresing inequality isn't a side effect of technological change we cannot control: it's the consequence of political decision-making."

("Good Economics for Hard Times" - "Gute Ökonomie für harte Zeiten"; © 2019 Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, © of the German edition: 2020 Penguin-publishing house in the publishing group Random House GmbH, p.357, 358 ff.)

Following the (de-)construction of many "myths of economical growth" and a scholastically sober closer look on TFP, thus "total-factor productivity" as economic explanation model for "being and not-being of particular GDP-growth" hidden in the depth of the chrystal ball and the high frequence of vibrancy of the "building of the world" in the course of the rise of developing economies and against the background of climate change speeding up the recent winners of the Nobel prize for economic sciences here relentlessly disclose, how "customary right" of redistribution from the bottom to the top since the 1980s finally has become a kind of "autonomous proceeding". 

That is significantly valid for the US. But at a progressive rate this goes also on in Germany. And that way or the other in all other European states and societies. Particularly these days meanwhile the crisis named after the pandemic is going on with Germany assuming the Presidency of the European Council. 

"Corona bonds" now and the struggle regarding allocation of "Corona funds" succeeding to those: 

Is the former Greek minister of finance Yanis Varoufakis right, when he says: 

"Europe will be sad and divided". And in the subtitle to that is written, he believes, "that mostly Oligarchs will benefit from the new Corona-billions, but not workers?"

Does the current "rebuilding" allow for the specific historical situation of the "Old Continent" here? 

Or is that situation rather suppressed? Do revanchism and ignorant old recipes rule or is there a spirit noticeable which is capable to build a new house by evaluating the debris of the old and elapsed one?

The "new feudal state" though is also in progress in China. Particularly as strict Confucianism itself there embosses completely different patterns of action following a completely different tradition, which sometimes appears very strange to us. Particularly as we got used to our patterns of action, which recently were embossed mostly by "liberal democracy" corresponding to our heritage line.

Does the "heritage of enlightenment" attested again and again express itself by a growing dissociation from China and the preparation for harder and harder measurements of economic warfare against the "Middle Kingdom", the Chinese Central State struggling to find its center again, as Sevim Dagdelen, German MP of the left describes or are new forms of collaboration to be found for dealing with the multiple focal points? Particularly looking at climate change speeding up and the many fire sources between us on the "Eurasian massif"?

As I already said elsewhere more than once: just the subject "water shortage as casus belli" and the role of Lowgar, the province bordering the Afghan capital Kabul in the South and its importance for water supply of the fastest growing city in Central Asia is a "magnifying glass" for the conflict between the different "global players" and local and regional interests and a locally situated "World heritage site" there. In Germany though I was never allowed to report or to lecture about things like that. Because nobody is interested into it? Because it's better to keep the silence about procedures like that, leaving the people on the ground there in that dilemma? 

Also regarding these questions I never got an adequate answer. Is "the grey species" thus completely overloaded with the matters of a globalized world? Are "magnifying glasses in the jungle of 'diversity of opinion'" set up by the media also aiming at using this state of confusion and being overloaded of the public for their own purpose?

Where does the "heritage of the Age of Enlightenment" stay in there? In dealing with "demographic majorities" as much as with many other people living in Central Europe? People, who actually also have chosen to live and to have their home here?

In the last 121 months I 've mused a lot and wrote a lot about us and the world and our places therein. Particularly the apple of discord "climate change" and the way it was dealt with alienated me a lot. There were times, when you couldn't speak out the German compound noun "Klimawandel" (climate change) any more without vehemently becoming an object of hostility. Thus one left the word out.
Nonetheless, in these first years of the 2010's it already became clearly evident, that rather modest prognosis and calculations from the enormous pool of data of climate researchers from geology, paleontology, archeology, biology and meteorology and the evolution of all those and many other branches of sciences in consideration of the way, media and poltics were dealing with that apparently were much too conservative. The pullout from coal here, scheduled for 2038 with the priority on high payoffs for energy suppliers is such an example of slow political movement, where first of all safeguarding the upper class is on the program. Miners, pitmen's buddys in the East German Lausitz or at the Ruhr here in the West as anywhere else have just a vague position on these programs. Concepts for invigorating or just keeping their dignity and their labor power within an essential rebuilding though need to be there at first and foremost position. 

Dignity, respect and appreciation, humans gain from labor as a social task though are also guiding Mme Duflo and her husband, Mr Banerjee through one of the smartest discussions around the "universal basic income" for "developped post- or rather late-industrialized societies" I've found so far. The "rudimentary basic income", they propose for poor countries lacking the tradition of the welfare state though is something completely different, they also reconsider with evaluating many case studies at different places. (I.c. p. 440 ff.)

For implementing demand-oriented concepts of that kind also a clear discussion about terms like "common welfare" and its priority towards "economically strongly secured private stakeholder's rights" has to be led. Here as much as there. One of the state's key tasks, which also ask for "enlightenment" and  continuously pursued common sense, explaining people that a colder summer month like July 2020 in Central Europe isn't a sign of weakening of climate change at all, while permafrost soil in Sibiria is melting away at temperatures about 5-8° C above the average annual temperature and in the Sahara not only in Morocco many oasis and their farmers are fighting a hopeless fight against desertification, as also the "world's mirror" shows "in the magnifying glass of its reporting". 

"Inequality, poverty, migration, trade dispute, weak growth and ecological devastation" are the "six matters of survival", also Mme Duflo and Mr Banerjee are exemplarily reconsidering in many case studies based on their  "Poor Economics" as "Good Economics for Hard Times". The hard resistance against any change becomes quite evident. But also other "transformation deficiencies" regarding concepts for tackling these matters are revealed in an intriguing way.

The emphasis on the terms of "human dignity" and "respect of peoples' lifetime performance" gives their teaching a moving moment. Completely different to many other sober economical studies. "Representation of interests" and finding "balance of interests" in this sense requires multilateral and multilayered considerations. Ignorance, suppression and deception of existential interests of the "grey species" per se don't want to have that on their radar. Exploitation of the pandemic significantly is looming in the staccato of repetitive buzzwords such as "conspiracy theories" and "waiting for vaccination" or "for the second wave" etc.

But this shouldn't be picked out as a central theme here. Naked maintenance of power as prioritized motive of action is opposing most other humans' creative will and their dignity. Mme Duflo and Mr Banerjee also point out clearly, that the quote of many people from the "left" here with unshakable inertia, that there weren't any alternatives to the status quo beginning to show on the horizon aren't true at all. Are too many officials too much trapped in themselves being "functionary full-time officers" for not being able to perceive the hard labor and the essential learning processes of change at all? The couple, who in 2019 received the Nobel Prize for economic sciences with their many case studies by all means just goes a bit further than David Graeber and Thomas Piketty in their work pointing the way ahead. 

121 months aren't a lot of time. Ten years and a month. Actually I've started to write already in 2006. None of my books ever found an editor. Particularly randomized case studies are at the basis of my "dissertation without doctoral advisor", I couldn't find any doctoral advisor for despite of many requests for finding "academically protected space" at universities and their institutes and an unhesitant advisor there. 
Today, a bit more than five years after finishing "Fragmented Urban Development 201_" I would rather name it "Fragmented Urban and Regional Development" or "Moving from Fragment to Fractal: Cities and Regions in the 21st Century". 

Besides that particularly after having read Manuel deLanda's and Graham Harman's "Rise of Realism" in 2016 I wouldn't speak about a synthesis between "Anglo-American pragmatism" and "European Idealism" any more, the way I still do it in one of the preliminary chapters. The core requirement of "New Realism", as deLanda and Harman also postulate according to their own schools of thoughts is also made accessible by the massive cumulation of crisis, the "grey species" now at the beginning of the 2020's of the 21st century is facing. 

Particularly my work in and about Afghanistan has caused a lot of alienation and hostility here. Balancing and mediating strong private land and property claims, which after decades of war and neglect often are submerged and destroyed as much as weak community and neighborhood claims of settlers, tenants, dwellers, day laborers and migrant workers by carving out singular case studies for then moving authorities to install "rudimentary building laws" in my eyes are still a key moment for shifting to balancing interests at such a place of a human tragedy beyond compare. And I think also for us in Central Europe here developing such pathways is existentially necessary for moving towards rebuilding of countries in the Near and Middle East, which have been seriously impacted by war and neglect. Ignorance and suppression and permanently looking away doesn't help any further. Human dignity at these places is the dignity of other members of the "grey species". Humans like you and me. 

For (re-) installing the essential infrastructures alone regarding urban and regional water management and their circles in the 21st century many instances of adaption are necessary. First of all state and private initiatives are required for arriving at balancing interests at the particular spot. Having said that the political will to get over stagnation and suppression in the name of unconditional protection of vested rights is the first step. 

Once more regarding the matter of "dignity", Mme Duflo and Mr Banerjee always put forward I'd like to hint towards my memorable collaboration with Kabul fire brigade at that time. When in the first days of December 2009 my Afghan senior engineer and me visited the fire station bordering the Presidential Palace close to our work place in the old town we first entered a room, where there was just a "buchari", a round iron stove. An old man was sitting there in front of the oven. His body and his head were covered with a blanket. First he didn't notice our arrival at all. Soon then we started the talk with slowly hinting towards the reason for us being there. We spoke about the importance of bringing together our knowledge and experience and our technical skills in the framework of our old town regeneration project. Soon then the old man's tongue got easier. He spoke about fire hydrants on the streets, the river giving the city its name seemed to be a clear and nourishing body of water. Then we were interrupted. The chief of Kabul fire police came back from an exercise. We went on with our talk about operational procedures and tactics of the fire brigade and fire protection as built measurements to integrate into the first decentralized sewage and low-tech treatment plant project maybe in the whole world, we planned in the four hectar old town slum. Soon the eyes of the highest ranked fire fighter of the fastest growing town in Central Asia were shining with joy. He bid farewell outside at the station's gate with dignified words. Words of a kind, I've heard more often from Afghans of his kind. Words full of dignity, I haven't heard that often to be spoken out in the last ten years in the West. Words calling for action. 

Before, in the room with the round iron stove the old man had listened attentively to our talk. He was the old chief of Kabul fire police. A lonely, maybe also widowed old man, who was kept alive by his dream of better times. At the warm fire place at his old work place he dreamt of a florishing town with fire hydrants on the streets and pathways and functional infrastructures. That way he could somehow still bear the reality of state bankruptcy, war and neglect of his deeply wounded town. 

"Afghanistan, the wounded land" has many people like him and his followmen. The West has ignored and suppressed their dignity and has missed action according to the respect for that dignity. Same way as all other invaders and assumed "helpers" before them "the West" became once more an occupying force. 

Particularly considering Art. 1 of  Basic Constitutional Law of the Federal Republic of Germany and Art. 1 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights from December 10th, 1948 this is very painful. And it calls for decisive improvements. No looking away and suppression but accurate closer inspection.

A closer inspection of mischief there will inevitably also cause a more accurate look on us here in Central Europe and elsewhere in "the West". And vice versa.

"We still have to learn a lot. But as long as our aim is clear, we can make it",

 Esther Duflo and Abhijit V. Banerjee are saying at the end of their book (I.c., p. 483). 

Before their acknowledgments then comes another "ending", where they actually put their essential message in a nutshell once more: 

"The appeal for action doesn't just address economic scientists. It's adressed to all of us, who want a better, healthier and more human world. Economics are too important for just leaving them to economists."  (I.c., p. 490). 

An evident extension of the term "Economy" in the sense of Joseph Beuys' "expanded concept of art"? Maybe. The expanded concept of architecture in the sense of "every human is a master builder, architect and urban planner" this also became one main synhesis of "Fragmented Urban Development 201_".  In times, when egoism up to narcissism are rather to be supported than solidarity and empathy quite a difficult thing to point out. But not hopeless at all. The two winners of the Nobel Prize for economic sciences, the couple with French and Western-Bengali background demonstrate that in a highly impressive manner. 

In the end now here once again a highly personal and private statement.

Also returning to this epilogue's beginning: Hamlet seen as a comedy. 

In the framework of "Corona ministerial bureaucracy" many people round here feel compelled to hint towards their own risk factors regarding Sars CoV-2. That apparently also has a reason. At the same time it's definitely evident, that the virus causing a pandemic, which now is the answer generator for a global crisis (of economy, politics and first of all of societies themselves) everywhere is meeting factors increasing its virulence. Many of these factors are dozing in everyday's "being or not-being" of humans. Individuals and communities. Genetic determination, retarded and protracted diseases and infections: there are many things to strengthen or weaken a human and his or her organism. 

When I personally had my first deep vein thrombosis at the age of 28 spontaneously the evening I returned from the funeral of my beloved grandmother I was deeply shocked. As a trained nurse I immediately could deduce from the explicit and clear symptomatology. But: could that happen?

The diagnosis then at hospital, the dissolution therapy on intensive care, the micro embolisms going with that: everything was a clear and evident warning signal. Over the years I had some more deep vein thrombosis and occasionally then also again some micro embolisms. 

All medication for blood thinning soon caused headache and with that soon then adverse effect on my capacity to work and to think. Insofar I don't take any drugs any more.

Lack of factors or any other dominantly inherited determination could never be diagnosed and laboratory-confirmed definitely. My physicians meanwhile know the score. Also regarding my own responsibility "against all medical advice". My death caused by an event of that kind also would completely be my own responsibility. 

I'm having my "hay fever" under control since about 2006/ 07. Lately in 2003-2005 it went along with a strong shortness of breath, thus "hay asthma". In 2003 just about four weeks after a marathon run I couldn't just run any further than 400-500 meters. Then I was already extremely short of breath. During the last years, particularly after some longer work stays at places with high air pollution I'm finding much more trouble with fine dust particles and other so called "environmental pollutants", particularly combined with eolian silt deposit and sediment dust in arid regions. Our region here is more and more becoming like that as well. But soils and their process of drying-out and hardening are just another symptom and part of a delayed chain of cause and effect.

There's many things to do. A lot to tackle and to go about. 

An Afghan quote is saying: "Raising a child is like building a whole town."

"We still have to learn a lot. But as long as our aim is clear, we can make it".

Danke, thank you, merci, dona bat. 
 

20.03.2020

Nouruz Mubarak!

To all my Persian and Afghan friends! We're living in quite weird times and that way I want to wish all of you and your families good health and resilience! You people definitely are having quite a lot of that, but: we're all getting older and sometimes also weaker, less immune against all odds.

Here in the West Nouruz is the calendary start of spring. But it's quite a weird one this time. 

The "Corona Crisis" particularly has inflicted China and Italy quite hard. 

Here with "German Angst" it reminds me a bit of China in 1989, when I travelled the country shortly after the crackdown on Tienanmen Square and the fear of civil war 20 years after Mao's cultural revolution completely paralyzed the country and its people. 

Anyway - for all of you there in the Middle East, which before 911 here in Germany always
was named the "Near East": the "Spanish flu" at the end of the terrible butchery of WW 1 in 1919 here in
good ole Europe killed more people than WW 1 itself. And it was named that way only, because the Spanish press first reported about that. As Spain was neutral in WW 1 they had more of a "free press" than other countries. The virus itself came to Europe from the US.

Having said that: never mind all my Chinese and American friends. 

The global recession, we're now moving into though: it's getting exploited by everyone. 
Maybe it will be called the "Corona-recession" soon. 

But: we will definitely have to stand up for our own safety, our freedom, our civil rights.

Thus: take care, stay healthy. Love. 
 

23.01.2020

"Confidence" and "Safety" also of one's own self first of all is generated by "self-differentiation" of the personal ego, the own knowlwdge, the own particular experience. The act of gaining "security" though is endangered to become an increasingly passively incurring loss, when knowledge and experience of the "self-differentiated myself" aren't shared any more. When attachment figures and reference frameworks are disappearing. For whatever reason this might happen. Levels of reflection and surfaces serving as projection screens then are becoming fragmented and decreasingly readable and less perceptible signs. 
The friend, who dispite of many attempts has failed to gain a foothold again in his job or another, who soon might be homeless, the sleepless refugee entrenched with the two little sons in her apartment on the other side of the  ocean: a WE that way scarcely comes together again. Nevertheless a WE is the only chance for giving US confidence and safety again. A WE or US TOGETHER cannot be found in the "realm of the shades of competition", but only in the will for cooperation. Within the semantics of suppression, acting in the range of aggressiveness to regressiveness the thin blanket of civilization is still kept slightly opaque. But a WE and US TOGETHER here cannot find a place in that permanently post- or rather intra-traumatic sphere. 

Christoph Schlingensief also tells about that in an interview with Katrin Bauerfeind from 2008. When he died in August 2010, I was at San Francisco at the birth of my first son. Christoph's death then initially let me fall into deep sorrow. On the other hand: one like him stays. 

This interview shows that more than many other things. 

"If God was an artist, then he already has had some defaults". 
Maybe. Maybe it's rather our own defaults, we have to work out as street-sweepers, artists, craftsmen and women working on sites of construction and in offices with our heads, hands and feet, male and female nurses and people on so many different places in so many different positions. Thank you. 

(Unfortunately the video just has German subtitles.)

22.01.2020

"Levels of scale" there is another term, which definitely has to be explained more accurately here. Also in its coherence with subjects like "resistance to any advice".  Because also phenomena of that kind are interacting on different levels. On the personal level as much as on the level of groups, communities and states and their societies. And just also between generations. Communicating groups and hosts or points, who in a less positive sense aren't singular elements communicating properly with each others. "Individuals" in that case, when we take human societies and their interaction amongst each others.
Here we now might focus on the generations. 

The concept of "commonly shared experiences of generations" developed by Karl Mannheim in 1928 actually stands in the way of continuous change of "Generation X, Y , Z" and other classifications of age groups by the media. Of course: every generation has to make its own experiences. "Self determination and autonomy" obverse "being heteronomous and other-directed" definitely is a decisive point. 

Amongst all cracks and chasms though  in this context  it's quite important to emphasize the continuities through the ages. To encourage exchange of experiences amongst generations. This also means, that a narrative doesn't only tell about the confining and restraining differences but rather aims at finding commonalities. Then we soon eventually find surprising intersections between completely different age groups and their life scripts. Their wishes and longings as much as the realities, they are or they have been facing through different times. Besides of that: We're all growing older. Our life expectancy is growing. For an aging human, who has witnessed many "shared experiences of generations" in the midst of them and then later also rather from outside nothing is more important as a remedy against dementia and Alzheimer and other serious age-related diseases than sharing that experience with his or her later-born descendants: "It's going on. And everything will be fine."

21.01.2020

"Resistance to any advice" apparently is something like the "little democratic sister" of "ignorance combined with the permanent threat of capital punishment" of oligarch governance up to open tyranny. 

Just within the oligarchic forms of governance there's not only assassination, but there opponents are massacred discretely and tricky on open stage. As everyone though claims his or her "democratic character" and works on a) assassinations to never get published or b) directly pointing at other events and per se, the enemy "resistance to any advice" nowadays in democratic processes unfortunately plays a far bigger role than we might like it to play. 

The eternal presence of cacophony of everyday gossipping creates the random noise, behind which everything is disappearing. Experiences from flawed procedures of the past cannot and must not be, because a) the past per se is owned by the creators of the random noise and b) these mistakes could rather disturb the random noise too much. C) The enemy could profit from that weakness. And he or she's everywhere. Also breathing down one's neck. 

Fake calibrations at table-top radios from the Third Reich, thus moments, where the cacophony comes along too transverse and sometimes even in an ear-piercing way immediately need to be balanced and dubbed with new stakkatos - crescendi sforzandi up to fortissimi. Also euphonious harmonies rather sourcing from "common sense" then can be found. In the amok run though of stumbling basic noise "resistance to any advice" soon gets a grip on the listener of statistic-empirical data at table-top radios from the Fourth or maybe already Fifth Reich. At the end of the day the officers and willful helpers of the democratic process are only just humans. And they also close their ears, when it's getting too much. Well paid. But "ignorance combined with the permanent threat of capital punishment" of "free market economy" hiding behind the revolving door keeps much bigger promises. Insofar "resistance to any advice" is also an "adornment of democratic modesty" promising a greater future. 

20.01.2020

One of my most important partners and friends at Kabul has sent me that message, after I was desperate once more after another rather frustrating end of negotiations. 

Humbleness requires much more courage.

Looking at the bigger picture. And going beyond that. And more. 

Ending war and fighting for peace first of all requires this humbleness.

The German word "De-Mut" as translation for "humbleness" also has nothing to do with the English word "humiliation". For getting to "De-courage" it's most important, just to develop some courage first. And to demonstrate that. Leaving the anxious defilade of power politics by military strategics. Getting into the memoralization of our ancestors. Praising and honoring them. 

Without that "De-courage" wars in Lybia, Yemen, Syria and at other places in the Near and Middle East will last eternally. And they will cause the failure not only of these countries.

Never forget Afghanistan and its people!
Never try the patience of proud and honorable people!
 

19.01.2020

About White Elephants, Hammers and Nails 

In „The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness“ 
Paul Watzlawick describes a nice scene:

A man is standing at a street corner and clapping into his hands. Another man comes by and 
asks him, why he's doing so. He answers:

"I'm chasing away the elephants!"

The other man is looking around and then again looks at the clapping one:

"But here aren't any elephants around!"

The still clapping one answering:

"Well well. That's why!"

„When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem must be a nail." 

White elephants are more or less, what caller in the desert are seeing. Cassandra, whose warnings are unheard is such a caller into the desert. The curse by Apollo is darkening the sky.

In times, where a step through a flat puddle already can cause you loosing your leg, there are white elephants everywhere. When the false step into the dark wet doesn't make you loose your mind, but "only" takes you a leg, then there should be still some glimpse of hope. When the puddles aren't seen any more because you're afraid, that the false step will cost your job, the desert isn't too far any more.

The creeks and rivers then are about to dry out. The curse by Apollo then might last eternally. 

18.01.2020

After many things I tried, attempted and requested in the old decade I'm now starting to continue one page with "my diary of the 20's of the 21^st century".

"Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity" from Beethoven's Nineth and "Melancholy of the Infinite Sadness" by the 

Smashing Pumpkins are meeting there. The Tenth actually since the Viennese guy from Bonn is the horror of any composer. A sonic barrier for the deaf. Here and there. 

If my soul there with these daily recordings of mental states is alone: I cannot tell. It doesn't matter anyway. The cartography of wounded souls might depict some elective affinities. Maybe some people might discover that.

The whole thing will be edited both in German and English. Just regarding the time needed I won't be able to do that as well in Italian and Farsi, better Dari, those languages I also love a lot. Ultimately a diary is something like an intimate. Something like a prayer. Something confidential. Deeply confidential. And a prayer helps to clean the soul for the day. Clearing the dirt, the Froth on the Daydream couldn't wash away.