Moving On …

2019, now 2020
the year of the pig, now the year of the rat

the time of old years coming to an end and new years taking their commence is often and commonly the time of thinking back … – the year that just come to its end and the early years of our personal lives and the lives of societies, ach and all with thither own dreams of “once upon a time ….” – some of the dreams possibly became true – and probably more that had been disappointed – what else could be the reason behind the new-years-resolutions: he hope for change and at least the little one can do oneself.

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Recently a friend (acquaintance, colleague, somebody I occasionally meet and like to meet, just to chat with across so many borders that mark our completely different backgrounds and lives) … , well, already last year she had been a bit in despair “…. I hear a problem.” – “Tell me!” and she did: her mother was going to retire – 55 years old (as it is [going to change now] the retirement age here in China. So young if we are honest and in many cases marking such an obvious break, evidencing that employment is not only some time we spend in some place, doing something defined in a contract and getting remunerated according to the same contract); it is a complex social relationship, also – at least very often – defining our “lives beyond” (this evidencing the simplification that is entailed in the formula of “work-life-balance”). And when it ends … – well, presumably especially daughters taut come up with what she said : “I have a problem”. The parents now expecting … – well, what do they expect? That the children compensate for the social loss: permanent visits, invites “wouldn’t it be nice …”; overacting the grandchildren or even moving into the same house: making their own loss to the loss of the children, in turn loosing their children just in order to get another time lost (mind the subtle though difficult to understand formulation of this formulation of the multiplication of loss). All this actually a consequence of justifying the alienation by auch nonsense of speaking off work-life-balance, affirmation and celebration of that fact that the worker

feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home.
(Marx, Karl, 1844: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844; in: Karl Marx. Frederick Engels. Collected Works. Volume 3: Marx and Engels: 1843-44; London: Lawrence&Wishart, 1975; 229-346: here: 274)

Instead of work-life balance we should investigate more the question of individual and society in the spirit as Norbert quasi-implanted it into my thinking (Norbert had been surely grater influence than Niklas Luhmann although I had been occasionally classified as pupil of the latter, also with some justification).

Recently the said friend came back to this her problem, though she did not draw the link: My mother is getting more and more child-like …

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– for some time something popped up again and again seeks for a rest, wants to be resolved in one way or another – small things, and perhaps such blog is a way of resolving one issue, perhaps also by way of leading to a resolution …?

One or the other reader will remember what is still rather common here in Asia – I remember it from my childhood in the West: The Henkelmann, or as we usually said Düppe.

A simple container made from metal. Where I had been grown up it had been used by the workers: meals, having been prepared at home, had been carried to work and often heated up in large water basins – the workers sitting together, munching their individually prepared meal together. Today and here they are still used – but supposedly for carrying food from restaurants home, to be consumed then there. But what seems to be here and there the dominant pattern is different: the container is replaced by plastic bags and paper cups and the consumption …, well it seems to happen – while the various traditions of the family meal, the we-meal, the luncheon and you name it still play an important role, another and perhaps increasing role plays the throw-in-meal on the way: consumed out of throw-away crockery, throwing away the breaks between events and activities by focusing on the title plastic bag that send up in a bin …  seen from today’s perspective the vocation of an archeologist in hundred, two-hundred or five-hundred years time appears to be promising: looking at what is left a long time after there eis not much left of us individually and exploring what we just throw away today, not only materially.

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Is it justified to say it is the ability of togetherness that depends on the ability of independence and vice versa? Does this not suggest, that such break as entering retirement-age brings up all disappointments, all the unrealised dreams we have heard at some time and that remained unfulfilled while growing into a society that did not allow us to make them becoming true in mature forms. I do nit remember the exact wording – Pablo Picasso said something like the following:

It to me three years to paint like an artist that is recognised by the academy – but it took me ages tor paint like a child again.

Highly recommended reading on this occasion the work by Norbert Elias, it least that part that is directly addressing the question of individual and society.