Categoria: general

How Europe slides down further …..

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Taken from the Euroactiv-Brief

Today’s EU policy news, 28.10.2016, 5PM

Commissioner mocks Chinese and gay marriage

By James Crisp

Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger has mocked the Chinese, gay marriage, and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s divorce in a shock speech.

Oettinger is infamous for putting his foot in it. But after footage emerged today of the jaw-dropping tirade, it very much looks like Germany’s man in Brussels is guilty of a gaffe too far this time.

He said at a speech in Hamburg, “Last week Chinese ministers visited us […] nine men, one party, and no democracy.

“All of them in suits, single breasted dark blue jackets. All of them had their hair combed from left to right, with black shoe polish on their hair.”

Germany has a quota for female representation on company boards. “There is no quota for women [in China], and there were consequently no women [among the ministers],” Oettinger said to nervous laughter.

The source of the embarrassing footage claims they began filming after Oettinger used the term “Schlitzaugen” – slitty eyes – in reference to the Chinese.

We could not independently confirm he used the racist term on Wednesday. Oettinger’s communications advisor told us she had no comment to make.

To nervous laughs, Oettinger ploughed on. Discussing German politics, he sarcastically said, “Perhaps obligatory homosexual marriage will be introduced.”

He said that Gerhard Schröder, who now works for Gazprom, would have time on his hands after the collapse of his fourth marriage.

“Now he has time. North Stream 2 won’t be built and his wife has left,” he said, referring to the controversial plans for a Russian-German gas pipeline, which is under European Commission scrutiny.

Oettinger also bemoaned the loss of the good old days when everyone read a newspaper, instead of their smartphones. Soon we will have more committees than people, he added.

And it was all going so well for him in Brussels recently. Expect this story to run over the weekend.

The no-problem-society II – Beautification of teaching, administrative nonsense

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, social quality, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Well, still not married – though what seems to be absurd (at least marrying a robot), is in fact something that is not really soooo new. At least other people thought about the topic as for instance Alberto Sordi in Io e Caterina, long before lawyers went for it.

But there are other issues that are more serious in terms of the need to switch thinking – this is not about robot marriages, but about perspectives for cities. Usually it is an issue that is dealt with under the heading of some form of prolongation of the old. And yes, I am honest: here I am very much European, bound to the vastness und confusion of the old cosy places like Vienna as the seat of imperial power, the claimed incarnation of everlasting beauty and natural hosting of eternal papal virtue of Rome and even more so the philosophical flair one may sense while walking near to the Acropolis in Athens, the law&orderly Berlin, undisturbed defying its revolutionary adversaries, or the Paris with its truly successful revolution, so successful that it allows itself to laugh about some of its ridiculous sides of an ongoing human comedy as for instance about The Chinese in Paris and even the melancholic Joy(ce)fulness of Dublin … – all this is a world that actually does not exist, the world of an air castle,

High above, in a better world,
Void of suffering, void of pain.

Oh Heinrich, can you still be found? We would need a Winter’s tale for Europe now. The first time that I really experienced this was many years ago – we have had a workshop-meeting in Brugge, interesting debates and even an interesting look at some historical facts, hidden for those who only see a city as beautiful as a child’s dollhouse: animated by the tourists, but not allowing to live due to its alienated exoticism of a tainted history. But more serious was the experience during the recent weeks, visiting amongst others my …, well, somewhat my favourite of all cities: Amsterdam. I always – during short visits for work and when staying there for a while as resident – loved the vivid atmosphere, the conviviality and joyfulness, openness and tolerance … a bearable, even attracting lightness of being. Returning now was a bit strange … perhaps the distraction by the fact that there would be too many things to do during the short stay. Leaving the train station, walking to the next tram station …, it has something of crawling through the crowds of tourists who were shoving along the wide pedestrian way. The many new shops: national and international chains, including the one that I saw already when I had been here last time: selling the main domestic traditional good: cheese. Sure, the tulips are next to it: wooden standalone, as handle of umbrella etc. – tourists buy nearly everything, even the Dutch grandmothers and grandfathers and their children and grandchildren, standing in front of each other, pursed lips, ready to kiss. Well, some of these touristy things are funny, and even cute: representations of a past time, of part of the history of the country: it is actually that part of the history that happened amongst some of the simple minds, away from Napoleon’s conquest of the town hall, settled in the results of the religious wars, and at least seemingly not concerned by the contradictions between classes and the internal and external exclusions, bearing the daily hardship and making the best out of it, emerging to a kind of conservative Wolfish Humour.

Finally the Netherlands had not been an exception: religious cleavages, at times on the knife’s edge, social cleavages between the rich Burgers and the impoverished peasants and being the country with an ‘outstanding’ colonial history, of which parts are revealed in the Tropenmuseum, still, even in self-criticism too often in an unchanged attitude of hubris. And still, only made possible by the rings of exclusion: the centre of the Burgers, the inner periphery of the peasants and the external periphery of the colonies, still an ongoing issue for little islands.

It had been for a long time an exception in some respect though: perfectly hiding contradictions by tolerance, even allowing itself living the paradox of exclusion by inclusion …, or perhaps it is more correct to say inclusion by exclusion, making the place somewhat cosy by not allowing anybody to ask ‘What Time Is It Over There?’

– The Netherlands? Yes, perhaps in some way a perfection of a halved hegemony: exclude as little as possible so that you can maintain it when it comes to the essentials. Far from the German Bismarckian stick and carrot policy or the new-wave Northern American McCarthyism under the name of Tea Party and Trump. A soft strategy of governance that is well suitable to perfect exclusion. The simple means – veiling. And in this way – between pragmatically standing together, protecting against the crevasse, and letting everybody freely walk across the vast hinterland – a specific European attitude developed: individualist, fragmented and allowing, even pushing everybody towards doing her and his own thing and at a pinch ready to stand together. Sure, the European-ness of this pattern was broken in multiple ways, also marking the national borders: national traditions, including the caveats based on religious and family issues coined by national combinations,[1] the Alpine mountains that frequently may have limited the hinterland to the length and width of valleys, the seemingly eternal feeling of offense of a supposed looser of history who lost the will to look forward and to move forward, clandestinely celebrating the internal periphery and dancing to the gipsy-music or equally clandestinely behaving somewhat Mafia-bossy … – many other deviations, all only confirming the fundamental commonality of the main route: individualism … it is economics and law of every day’s life, the reality of a contract society, where everything is commodified, at least commodifiable. In a recent lecture I presented the four elements to each:

Contracts as (i) agreement based on free will between 2 free, formally equal partners, (ii) establishing mutual obligations (iii) and mutual benefits, (iv) limited to the expressed issues.

Commodification as (i) maximisation of individual utility, (ii) referring to maximising opportunities, (iii) based on rational decisions, (iv) grounded on being completely informed.

We often forget that this is as well about the determination of the way of living together – not only as matter of relating to each other, but also by way of designing and shaping space. The detailed analysis can probably be found somewhere, in the books of regional planers and architects. But in social science it is not a main topic (if it is a topic at all), especially when it comes to studying globalisation. Urbanisation is issued, the global flows of migration are looked at, but I am frequently wondering if the details of everyday life are sufficiently considered – not as particular topic, but as part of this larger picture, mingled.

Those days, walking through Amsterdam, history glimpsing through some gaps and peeping around some corners – relative strong when one walks in the centre early in the morning, the bearable tranquillity of silence, not really interrupted by the workers: sporadic early deliveries, the humming of the cleaning machines which has replaced the humming of the singing sweeper of the olden times, but at some stage a silence made somewhat unbearable by the chime of the church bells – suggesting something that never existed but could serve for a long time as veil, sufficiently covering the harshness of the existing hierarchy and exclusion, the hegemony of church and state: oppressively guaranteeing law and order and liberality and freedom of the small place.

Unbearable now, as it is in stark contrast with the quest for new spaces: the new generations, larger in number, different in wants and expectations, released for the Warholian world of celebrating consumerism, confronted with, and also confronting a world of trade, ‘homeliness’, not easily (if at all) in a position to meld and weld into the world of the traditional home and homemaker. The homemaker represented the contradiction between the opening economic spaces for trade on the one hand and the closing of the home, now emerging as space of protected individuality. It is the

quiet domesticity about the Young Woman Standing at the Virginal or the Woman with the Pearl Necklace which reveals a new outlook. In Holland, the houses were smaller, there were fewer inhabitants per house – four to five people, rather than 25 was common in Paris. Doors were closed and visitors were often kept out. … In seventeenth-century Holland far more time was spent at home, together with family members, reading, making music or tending the garden.[2]

This idyll is now replaced – retuning people into the open spaces: it is about the consumption-maker – but the consumer being also producer, and living in the privatised public spaces, where the borders are blurring – for the internet-coffee worker as well as to many people working in the production line, being now part of the new management structures: his or her own secretary, supervisor …, besides fulfilling whatever the core o the work is.

– Wrong to rebuke an apparent idyll of the homemaker? NO !!

– Wrong to demand new space of self-realisation? NO !!

The point is a different one: the remaining need for a dialectical solution. Indeed,

11

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

But it is equally necessary to move to another pursuit:

11 B

Urban planners, planning officers and architects have hitherto only reshaped existing spaces various ways; the point is to change them and create new spaces.

The old idyll is now the pure alienation of the homo laborans and homo serviens, the idea of an equality that once existed in a very specific form:

The polls was distinguished from the household in that it knew only ‘equals,’ whereas the household was the center of the strictest inequality. To be free meant both not to be subject to the necessity of life or to the command of another and not to be in command oneself. It meant neither to rule nor to be ruled. Thus within the realm of the household, freedom did not exist, for the household head, its ruler, was considered to be free only in so far as he had the power to leave the household and enter the political realm, where all were equals. To be sure, this equality of the political realm has very little in common with our concept of equality: it meant to live among and to have to deal only with one’s peers, and it presupposed the existence of “unequals” who, as a matter of fact, were always the majority of the population in a city-state. Equality, therefore, far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership and to move in a sphere where neither rule nor being ruled existed.[3]

A typical example of the efforts to reshape space is the regulation of accessibility. But there is little idea of questioning the underlying pattern of a centrist society, maintaining the centre-periphery economy, reproducing it on the various levels: the ‘strong’ societies of the centre standing on the shoulders of the ‘weak’ societies of the periphery; the ‘strong’ cities of the centre standing on the shoulders of the ‘weak’ cities of the periphery; the ‘strong’ districts of the centre standing on the shoulders of the ‘weak’ districts of the periphery; …, until the dog stands on the shoulders of the cat that stands on the shoulders of the mouse. And so it is only logical what I read the one day in the Dutch newspaper, the headline of an article that pleads to remind tourists that they have to ‘behave orderly’. And of course not allowing questioning the understanding of strength, weakness and orderliness. That is the law of the jungle – we can learn it already as child, reading the Jungle Book, offering looking satisfied at a life of Bare Necessities as escape for those who are a bit dull, an escape that with its temporary character lets the harsh realty fade away: the law of the jungle.

Anyway, the Confucian era is over – something also ‘the west’ has to acknowledge for itself, and where in both worlds the ‘three bonds’: ruler – minister, father – son and husband – wife cannot and should not be maintained as indeed, another world is possible, thoroughly considering that

8

All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

and

9

The highest point reached by contemplative [anschauende] materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society [bürgerlichen Gesellschaft].

Of course, the is only a tentative impression, and of course it is not meant to celebrate anything and of course it is not about forgetting the conditions – as for instance some special privilege of being born late, being thus able to learn (sure, some see Chinese learning as copying, easily denying that much of it is merging, and even more is avoiding mistakes that had been made) and also – coping with the extreme velocity and qualitative leap of the recent Chinese development – tempting to move on with a ‘steam-engine-policy’: maintaining culture, appreciating a rich heritage may depend on destroying the weak soil on which it stands and offering a firm ground on which it can really stand, a space within which can be lived instead of containment in a museum that also captures the thinking within the same limitations.

Indeed,

We can only understand life by looking back; but we can only live it by looking forward.

Doesn’t Europe and don’t look European tourists (including tourists coming to Europe) back – seeing and celebrating an enormous beauty and grandness. But importantly, doesn’t this also mean to fade one important point out? This was my impression at least, looking these days at Denmark, the Netherlands: so much beauty and greatness (I am not talking about power though it is at stake too) was established on exclusion. And now those excluded arrive, tourists, not necessarily ‘educated’, not educated to be open (can one learn that in closed societies?) …, but also: not being able to cope anymore with accepting to be excluded. The alienation from oneself – and the exclusion of today’s power centres and today’s real beauties is part of it – is reflected in the alienation of a consumerist mass tourism for which noting is a problem, which does not allow to ask Questions from Worker who Reads. But it is also about something more, and different:

Painless and effortless consumption would not change but would only increase the devouring character of biological life until a man- kind altogether “liberated” from the shackles of pain and effort would be free to “consume” the whole world and to reproduce daily all things it wished to consume. How many things would appear and disappear daily and hourly in the life process of such a society would at best be immaterial for the world, if the world and its thing-character could withstand the reckless dynamism of a wholly motorized life process at all. The danger of future automa- tion is less the much deplored mechanization and artificialization of natural life than that, its artificiality notwithstanding, all human productivity would be sucked into an enormously intensified life process and would follow automatically, without pain or effort, its ever-recurrent natural cycle. The rhythm of machines would mag- nify and intensify the natural rhythm of life enormously, but it would not change, only make more deadly, life’s chief character with respect to the world, which is to wear down durability.[4]

Still, those questions may return, when alienation is getting real, i.e. visible, the very same moment when the Unbearable Lightness of Being becomes immediately palpable, for instance in the atmosphere already mentioned: the chime of church bells, heard at 5, 6 or 7 in the morning, while nearly everybody is still sleeping, becomes a reality … what a paradox … the least real, the most mysterious power-game appearing as reality …, simply because reality is alienated from itself.

Aren’t there glimpses in the modern cityscapes of China, tackling well the tension between closing space – urbanisation seems to be by definition about such closure – and opening within an enclosed space. Considering the mere figures of new Chinese cities, it is surely remarkable that there still exists the courage to provide openness, forms of bounteousness, readiness to some forms of liberality as matter of seeing city spaces – from shopping malls to estates with high-risers. Of course, one can go on now: is it the liberality of the market or a new liberality offered to cope in other ways with the Unbearable Lightness of Being; or is it the liberality that reflects the quest for creative participation? So far there is much evidence for what may be called incarceration in freedom: the freedom of the market, opening space for the wolves of the market.

And then, of course, the incarceration comes to mind, taking different forms, space possibly offered as new playground for the new bourgeois, not limited to the bourgeois of the producer, but that of the consumer. Confining the previous bourgeois – the producer citizen, was much easier; it did not need much space. As well reflected in Hesse’s Steppenwolf

The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.

It is clear that this weak and anxious being, in whatever numbers he exists, cannot maintain himself, and that qualities such as his can play no other role in the world than that of a herd of sheep among free roving wolves. Yet we see that, though in times when commanding natures are uppermost, the bourgeois goes at once to the wall, he never goes under; indeed at times he even appears to rule the world. How is this possible? Neither the great numbers of the herd, nor virtue, nor common sense, nor organization could avail to save it from destruction. No medicine in the world can keep a pulse beating that from the outset was so weak. Nevertheless the bourgeoisie prospers. Why?

The answer runs: Because of the Steppenwolves. In fact, the vital force of the bourgeoisie resides by no means in the qualities of its normal members, but in those of its extremely numerous ‘outsiders’ who by virtue of the extensiveness and elasticity of its ideals it can embrace. There is always a large number of strong and wild natures who share the life of the fold. Our Steppenwolf, Harry, is a characteristic example. He who is developed far beyond the level possible to the bourgeois, he who knows the bliss of meditation no less than the gloomy joys of hatred and self-hatred, he who despises law, virtue and common sense, is nevertheless captive to the bourgeoisie and cannot escape it. And so all through the mass of the real bourgeoisie are interposed numerous layers of humanity, many thousands of lives and minds, every one of whom, it is true, would have outgrown it and have obeyed the call to unconditioned life, were they not fastened to it by sentiments of their childhood and infected for the most part with its less intense life; and so they are kept lingering, obedient and bound by obligation and service. For with the bourgeoisie the opposite of the formula for the great is true: He who is not against me is with me.

It is the self-containment of the individual, strictly separating the private and the public, and denying that it is the private capitalist interest that claims to act as pursuance of the public weal, presented as common wealth and even as Commonwealth. However, the new dungeon, if working, is in need of addressing the new citizen, the consumer citizen. In the old industrial society it had been only the producer who strived for extension – as matter of imperial power, looking for spaces abroad: colonies of the periphery as space for the producer; this quest continued and is still valid today. However, it is now equally a question of exploring and exploiting the markets of the periphery: the internal peripheries, making everybody a valuable and in this way valued consumer; and similarly the external periphery, that is now not only an undervalued producer but equally valued consumer, the savour now, the Steppenwolf of the competitive market of people selling their labour power; instead it is the pack of the wolves, in need of space to act out another nature:

If we now pause to test the soul of the Steppenwolf, we find him distinct from the bourgeois in the higher development of his individuality—for all extreme individuation turns against itself, intent upon its own destruction. We see that he had in him strong impulses both to be a saint and a profligate; and yet he could not, owing to some weakness or inertia, make the plunge into the untrammelled realms of space. The parent constellation of the bourgeoisie binds him with its spell. This is his place in the universe and this his bondage. Most intellectuals and most artists belong to the same type. Only the strongest of them force their way through the atmosphere of the bourgeois earth and attain to the cosmic. The others all resign themselves or make compromises. Despising the bourgeoisie, and yet belonging to it, they add to its strength and glory; for in the last resort they have to share their beliefs in order to live. The lives of these infinitely numerous persons make no claim to the tragic; but they live under an evil star in a quite considerable affliction; and in this hell their talents ripen and bear fruit. The few who break free seek their reward in the unconditioned and go down in splendor. They wear the thorn crown and their number is small. The others, however, who remain in the fold and from whose talents the bourgeoisie reaps much gain, have a third kingdom left open to them, an imaginary and yet a sovereign world, humor.

It is the humour of the internet coffee shop, of those who live in the virtual and real globality – both characterised by the multiplication of alienation, and the veiling of alienation by hiding the lightness in the new, open, non-dimensional, seemingly unlimited openings of the spaciously shopping malls and parks and …, any other place that is opening up behind the toll-station of motor highways or the price tag at the goods that signals who is welcome. – And still, there is another dimension – it may be part of a somewhat strange coincidence: While reading the Steppenwolf, Hesse had been mentioned to me by a friend, pointing on a special poem

In the Mist

Strange it is, walking through mists!

Lonely are bush and stone:

None to the other exists,

each stands alone.

Many my friends I kept calling

when there was light in me;

Now, that my fogs are falling,

none can I see.

Truly, only the sages

fathom a darkness to fall,

that, as silent as cages,

separates all.

Strange it is, walking through mists!

Life has to solitude grown:

None to the other exists:

each stands alone.

I replied with another poem, one written by Nazim Hikmet

To live like a tree in solitude and free and like a forest in solidarity, this yearning is ours.

Nâzım Hikmet

Indeed, the problem we face when looking for defining new spaces is not about a matter of simple mechanical-material issues of spaces but the fact that we are dealing with issues of a rather distinct relationality that concerns at least the following aspects

  • the changed social existence as matter of changing our being – as defined and defining mortals – we remain to be homo laborans, homo faber, and dealing with the vita activa; the meaning of work and labour and all the related aspects as pleasure, avoidance etc. are not fading away, but still: they are changing their meaning – they are changing how they define us and how we define with it ourselves as ‘creators’. And with all this, the relationship between the socio-political animals are changed, now presenting themselves as love affair of wolves and angels
  • the organic environment – being temporal and thus final – is increasingly taken into account as entity that has own rights, follows at least its own laws that has to be respected not only as matter of guaranteeing utilisation and exploitability but also as matter of securing sustainability of relational existence: it is the matter of overcoming a utilitarian individualism and a simplified understanding of contractualism
  • the recognition of all this, the fact that we take the elements more consciously into account and that we take more elements and the relation between them consciously into account we find at the very same time – without any inclination to deny the consumer citizen – the consciousness of cosmopolitan, cosmospatial, cosmotemporal existence: standing in the mist, we are reflecting on the shadow, being aware of it magical clout:

These three hours that we have spent,

Walking here, two shadows went

Along with us, which we ourselves produc’d.

But, now the sun is just above our head,

We do those shadows tread,

And to brave clearness all things are reduc’d.

The emerging ‘generosity’ of new city spaces – bringing huge numbers of people in relatively small spaces together and still allowing surprisingly large spaces to ‘live’. However, there are – amongst others – two issues which are easily forgotten: the one is about the underlying model which is bound to the consumer citizen as general orientation of the modern city. The model of the ‘old European centres’ – externalisation of shopping centres into the periphery does not work simply due to the mere extension of the citiy-spaces So it is a return to the ‘old centres’: the city centre as centre for gathering, cinema-ing, eating, shopping … – missing is the church, evolving are entertainment hubs. Of course, it is questionable if such entertainment hubs may offer a functional equivalent to religion; however it shows in any case what secularisation is also about, namely the new drugs of consumerism and entertainment-ism – being merged to commercial forms of sociotainment. The second issue is about the fact of social exclusion as large parts of the population are left outside of these spaces – even a kind of cleansing can be seen. Parts of the population are completely excluded, others are …, should one say expelled to estates, the high risers still offering ‘living spaces within’: park-like, playgrounded, and utility-oriented – the term ‘convenient shop’ says a lot. The challenge is to move on, detecting a merger – the old challenge was clearly formulated in thesis

10

The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.

In this light there may be a good reason for the fact that we find on the one hand Smith being in Beijing, and we can also see good reasons for Hesse being as well in China, encouraging the search for a way out of the various dilemmas of life, be it in rural or urban areas

The necessary way to be looked for can be seen from here

10 B

The standpoint of the old materialism is consumption society; the standpoint of the new is global human sustainability or sustainable social quality.

based in and fostering of

Conditional Factors (Opportunities) Constitutional Factors (Processes) Normative Factors (Outcomes)
Socio-economic security Personal Security Social Justice (including Equity)
Social Cohesion Social Recognition Solidarity
Social Inclusion Social Responsiveness Equal value
Social Empowerment Personal Capacity Human dignity

Yes, the Stepenwolf had to learn

But you will learn humor yet, Harry. Humor is always gallows-humor

– though they should have told him as well that this is only true as long we are bound to specific formations, those that keep the spaces closed for Harry, and did not allow him to really explore the spaces beyond the cages.

This way – as said – by standing in the mist, we are reflecting on the shadow and its magical clout

**************

[1]            e.g. Todd, Emmanuel, 1990/1996: L’invention de l’Europe. Paris: Éditions du Seuil

[2]            Ringmar, Erik, 2005: Surviving Capitalism. How we learned to live with the market and remained almost human; London: Anthem Press: 34

[3]            Arendt, Hannah, 1958: The Human Condition; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press: 32 f.

[4]            Arendt, Hannah, 1959: The Human Condition; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press: 132

The no-problem-society I – Beautification of teaching, administrative nonsense

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, joys - what we usually take for it, quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

The superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
Confucius

Of course, working with slides and even pleasing the eyes as part of it, has some benefit while lecturing. Not least in the context of courses and presentations in a ‘foreign language’. It may be beneficial for lectures, and it surely is beneficial in the eyes of students. And of course, this way it is possible to make use of some special ‘brain features’: some visual effects make memorizing easier.

And of course, there is nothing wrong with nicely presented slides, simply for the sake of beauty as value in itself or possibly as matter of entertainment. And as so often there is a but. Put forward as question: Even if we agree that it had been an ongoing dream of humankind to

liberate mankind from its oldest and most natural burden, the burden of laboring and the bondage to necessity’[1]

– as Hannah Arendt expressed it – the fact remains that the necessity is not defined by the unbearable lightness of being, by the beauty of the past but by the fact – taking it from Kierkegaard that

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Doesn’t this also mean we should recover the pleasure and excitement of learning, of comprehending? I remember having observed together with my daughter for a long time, squatting on my haunches, a snail: slow movements, nothing ‘eye catching’ – to be honest, I was a bit annoyed when she first asked to stay and watch. Still, it was ‘worthwhile’, exploring the slow way. There is, of course, a special reason for mentioning it, a reflection that came up, getting manifest during the last days and weeks. I started to think of it in terms of

the no-problem-society.

It is so often that I hear this term: transporting stuff and storing it in some new place, rescheduling teaching hours, internet-blackboard services not working, transferring money and being confronted with strange fees, charged on the European single market … and then of course, a major financial crash and economic meltdown. Sure, the latter finally had been recognised as a serious problem, after ignoring early warnings with the comment

‘No problem’.

Too late, some still managed and made profit even from the problems others faced, some under all (their own) problems, committing suicide. – No problem, right? As much as all the small incidences are

‘No problem’ …

Behind all this is the increasingly virulent statement of

No problem.

Actually something else is meant: if difficulties arise we deal with them as problem, not allowing to see the problematique, the fact that many singular issues are actually part of a much wider setting with structural and processual deficits, the core issue being the loss of the ability to act socially, even: to act in terms of making any positive social contribution.[2] And it is not possible to wrap them nicely up and maintain the complex connection: in the Netherlands they spend now huge amounts of money for some minor changes in the treatment of psychiatric patients, without considering the underlying causes that brings people into the situation: that makes psychiatric treatment necessary and makes it for a while even ‘efficient’ when it is done this way (I know, we discussed this for instance in connection with the lege Basagli, see also here).

Seems to be far fetched? But is it really: Consider you are studying and there is a change of the schedule. One day before the lecture newly scheduled time, you learn that the next day you have to turn up to a lecture. Effects on motivation? Effects on success of learning? … Of course, it is difficult to follow lectures on a new topic, take up the challenges to look in a different way at reality. But to which extent does it really help to play problems down, referring first to the ‘we always did it this way’? The first impression is always a lasting one. And should the first impression then be about problem-solving by playing them down?

– But don’t blame the students! Allow them to have and talk about problems.

About their own problems, the problem they have and they have with us – different toothless problems we create for them. Of course I know and appreciate the difficulty that occurs when being confronted with writing, listing to and presenting something new, something unknown: and personally I usually do not want to start again and again with what people should and could know, trying to develop things further. And I know and appreciate that it is easy to challenge people – and seeing that some of them are indeed over-challenged. Then, however, making things clearer so that everybody understands may not be the solution – it reduces the suggested solution on what is immediately possible – here and now, not allowing to think about the there and tomorrow. Anyway, many people still do not do anything with the recipes, handy to solve a problem, but not allowing moving easily beyond. It easily ends in the attitude:

No problem

Allowing us to move on, working on some patchwork answers:

  • chasing students to the next-day seminar, where they can enjoy the latest slide beauties
  • making up some administrative rules that allow to drawer everything (well, I mean with this: put everything into its own drawer) from where we can push and pull it around according to immediate ‘needs’
  • to find interim storage space, fading out that life is as such a matter of interim being
  • learning for the next-day’s seminar instead of learning for the future
  • colleagues plagiarising, and not really heard when talking about it with other colleagues
  • seeing articles that are obviously written on the basis of the material easily available AND that is not causing difficulties in pursuing the own ‘argument’ – ‘making things fit’
  • leaving students alone, not giving the information, the review of exams with which they can see there strength and weakness, beyond the schematised SWOT-analysis
  • …

All this and much more … it is

No Problem

we hear. This no-problem-society emerges as the

Visibility of Nothingness

celebrating the form, celebrating the external beauty of smoothness instead of looking at the eternal beauty of contradictoriness and its dialectical overcoming in the Heraclitian river which is a matter of permanent  challenge and thus change …

Many are walking away, nodding about the need to radically rethink issues and … the reference to the well known ‘But we always did it this way’ and cannot change things easily. Finally we have to accept that there is

No problem

Always offering the perfect solution. We are easily trotting away like donkeys.

Over- and under-challenge is somewhat a catch 22-situation which is a serious problem. Not least as we are indeed educating people within institutions that offer mass-education, are setting up administrations that are part of a hegemonic system that controls masses of people – finally we all have to survive.

Slow reading does not fit into such educational setting (though many students love it when they are allowed as it challenges them to think and to talk about themselves); complains about administrational issues does not fit into the framework and so they are met with ‘Thanks … for your good suggestion’ and presumably a fist in the pocket and the attitude of ignoring – ‘Yes, sure, I will come back to you ..?’ The attitude of ignoring? But of course not, things that do not exist cannot be ignored (though the fish complained while suffocating, lacking water). Surely Kierkegaard may come to mind again, having stated, that

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

And this is reflecting the increasing amount of streamlined language, presented on beautified slides, offering food for thought that is already digested …, not ready to enter contest and contestation, not allowing to recognise that the student who does not walk half of the way by him/herself did not learn anything – Socrates said something like this, in a way similar to the words of Confucius, contending

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand

Also Hannah Arendt comes to mind again – her reflections are as follows:

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. If we would follow the advice, so frequently urged upon us, to adjust our cultural attitudes to the present status of scientific achievement, we would in all earnest adopt a way of life in which speech is no longer meaningful. For the sciences today have been forced to adopt a ‘language’ of mathematical symbols which, though it was originally meant only as an abbreviation for spoken statements, now contains statements that in no way can be translated back into speech.

What once became known as Potemkin village, presents itself today as designer market for people who do not have any problems. Finally there are always computers and robots that can help – or should I say: who can help? Finally we are now discussing in law the prospects for the marriage and divorce law for cross-marriages between human and robot …

… but let’s wait and see …, and continue on this later … for time we acknowledge

Jezelf een vraag stellen, daarmee begint verzet. En dan die vraag aan een ander stellen. (Asking yourself a question, that is how resistance begins. And then ask that very same question someone else.)
[Remco Campert]

______________

[1]            Ahrendt. The Human Condition; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1958: 4

[2]            “Social contributions” – we hardly understand the meaning anymore – we cannot really grasp that they are going beyond ‘doing good’ for individuals that face ‘social problems’

Realities and perspectives of the progressive and leftist processes in Latin America

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general

In the context of the XIII Conference of Latin American Studies “Realities and perspectives of the progressive and leftist processes in Latin America”, taking place from today until the 21st of October 2016 in Havana, Cuba, an article I read recently, comes to my mind.

It is about the US Blockade on Cuba being ‘Genocidal’ and the fact that it also violates international law and the human rights of Cubans – so the statement of The National Union of Cuban Jurists.
My small contribution to this debate is concerned with reflections on
Reactivating Existing Traditions for Progress
Indeed, the question of today is very much about finding a specific independence of opening economies – counteracting the American strive for another occupation of foreign terrain.
Then, approaching crisis analysis in a more complex way, we detect as one of the fundamental issues the frequent trend of reviving traditional forms of economy and society. This can be seen as matter of the grand narratives of historical development (the renaissance may be seen as one of the most pronounced ‘steps’) but also as matter of the narratives of the medium range.
Currently this pattern should be closely observed, encouraging us to make use out of the current developmental stage and crisis by way of analysing the contradictions of the mode of production. What is usually termed as industry 4.0, fourth industrial revolution and also uberisation and emergence of the big-data-society is surely a double-edged sword. In any case, this ambiguity means not least the emergence of potentials for new spaces of societal practice that allow the creatively-productive integration of economy and social activities on the one hand and the development of individuals in their communities and societal development on the other hand.
Referring to the French Theory of Regulation and the Theory of Social Quality, the contribution will suggest some perspectives for global development, where actually countries from the global periphery can develop an avant-garde position. At the centre, we the following topics will be looked at:
* Politics of New Technologies
* Precarity or a new work-life balances
* Wealth – Redistribution versus New Production
* Local and Global – Development in one country or many different worlds
* Small is Powerful – Potentials for small countries and niche economies.
Matters, narratives of the grand narratives of historical development, the narratives of the medium range and the present moment, merging at times.

Disenchantment …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or enchantment …?
In sociology we know latest since Max Weber about the disenchantment of the world. And still we cannot completely grasp it … – You may remember an entry some time ago, when I wrote about a chat with a friend, looking at The Other Dimension.

There it was about emotions, the exceptional and the part of life we cannot and do not even want to explain. There is again another dimension, the enchantment and fascination we overlook so often for which we do not have the time. The enchantment by something that seems to be just routine, perhaps even left to the autopilot, and as it is part of daily life we forget to approach it – sure, not least a metaphor, but there is indeed some fascination in so many things that may seem so very ordinary, from approaching a another country by plane to the landing, looking into the eyes of friends. Don’t we do it nearly every day, and don’t we easily forget about it ?

Quoting again from the mentioned Other Dimension:

To take it from Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

There is surely some Madness of Sincerity of which I learned again – finally

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”

And isn’t the ease with which we are forgetting this also one of the major wrongdoings when we as teaches stand in class, not fully respecting the performance of the students, also by not teaching them that failing in the courses does not mean “to  be a failure”? And moreover, to teach indeed fascinating innovations, making easily forgetting the foundations that are needed tallow them to evolve? In a recent lecture, part of the teaching BA-students at BCC, I tried to do exactly the opposite.

Migration

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, projects, works, works, projects, publications

Over the last year or so, a working group on Migration of the Scientific Council of attac –  Association Pour La Taxation Des Transactions Financières Pour L’Aide Aux Citoyens, elaborated a working paper on issues of Refuge and Migration. At the core of the work stood the elaboration of a document that evaluates and assesses the controversy of the topics Refuge/Asylum/Migration from a non-nationalist perspective. It can be seen as an important contribution against the raising nationalism and strengthening of right-wing movements in Europe, which is not least a futile ground of international terrorisms.
A short version of the document – in German language –  is now published in the journal Sozialismus (43/10): 26-30. The full document (also in German language), which is explicitly understood as working and discussion document, can be found by following this link.

War – the political intercourse carried on with other means — 9/11/1973

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy
While writing, just before the 9/11 date, I can only assume that there will be another series of memorials … — and the one nearly complete amnesia: September 11, 1973 is the date which marks much more than just another violent rebuke of an alternative to business as usual as capitalist is called — and it is called even more so today, while the hegemony of this kind of business is barely contested in real terms.
What makes the Coup in Chile special?
To begin with, an important point can be taken from a piece by  Ralph Miliband, published in the Jacobin. He makes us aware of the fact that Chile was a showcase. We read
When Salvador Allende was elected to the presidency of Chile in September 1970, the regime that was then inaugurated was said to constitute a test case for the peaceful or parliamentary transition to socialism.
And leaving the different interpretations Miliband utters aide, it is surely true that
class struggle also means, and often means first of all, the struggle waged by the dominant class, and the state acting on its behalf, against the workers and the subordinate classes. By definition, struggle is not a one way process; but it is just as well to emphasize that it is actively waged by the dominant class or classes, and in many ways much more effectively waged by them than the struggle waged by the subordinate classes.
Gabriel García Márquez out this into the wider context in his piece Why Allende had to die?

Chile had long been a favoured area for research by North American social scientists. The age and strength of its popular movement, the tenacity and intelligence of its leaders and the economic and social conditions themselves afforded a glimpse of the country’s destiny. One didn’t require the findings of a Project Camelot to venture the belief that Chile was a prime candidate to be the second socialist republic in Latin America after Cuba. The aim of the United States, therefore, was not simply to prevent the government of Allende from coming to power in order to protect American investments. The larger aim was to repeat the most fruitful operation that imperialism has ever helped bring off in Latin America: Brazil.

And this is the core of such class struggle: undermine systematically any success story that shows that another world is possible. So we read

During the first year, 47 industrial firms were nationalised, along with most of the banking system. Agrarian reform saw the expropriation and incorporation into communal property of six million acres of land formerly held by the large landowners. The inflationary process was slowed, full employment was attained and wages received a cash rise of 30 per cent.
Hegemony, we know too well from Gramsci, is linked to two ways: the direct control, using violence where needed — and this is the force making sure that oppression is maintained if the soft means of hegemonic control fail to fulfill their duty. The geopolitical constellation was clear — The Time Magazine (October 19, 1970) brought it on the point, titling:
Marxist Threat In The Americas – Chile’s Salvador Allende
Indeed, as Márquez points out,
For the Christian Democrats, it was proof that the process of social justice set in motion by the Popular Unity coalition could not be turned back by legal means but they lacked the vision to measure the consequences of the actions they then undertook. For the United States, the election was a much more serious warning and went beyond the simple interests of expropriated firms. It was an inadmissible precedent for peaceful progress and social change for the peoples of the world, particularly those in France and Italy, where present conditions make an attempt at an experiment along the lines of Chile possible. All forces of internal and external reaction came together to form a compact bloc.
At the time, and I remember it well, everything was clear though undocumented – and there was still the attempt of denial – the denial of the obvious fact that this was a geopolitical strategy with many heads behind it. And mentioning those heads, pointing out that it was a coup that had been prepared for some time, had to face too often skeptical answers — but at some stage the truth cannot be denied anymore.
—–
Actually, what is true for the hot war is also true for the cold war. Chile was, at the time of Pinochet, celebrated as blueprint for what is now known as neoliberalism – to on a pedestal by Milton Friedman; and fostered by the IMF. But even in the IMF, some people wake up, seeing in tendency the wrongs for which they stand today:

An assess- ment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions:

• The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly dif- ficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.

• The costs in terms of increased inequality are promi- nent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.

• Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustain- ability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.

—–
Back to today’s main stage then where it had been
against Chile as well — for Cuba it had been already the known strategy for a while.
And the new strategy after the democratically elected government was overthrown, was clear. The Pinochet-regime, after first establishing itself by bloody measures, established the new reign – present in an article published in The Guardian:
After Allende’s enemies finally claimed their victory against him on 11 September, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, well favoured now by Washington, turned to making themselves fortunes from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack.
Indeed, Clausewitz new it and spelled it out:
War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means.
And it is in this sense that we have to learn about the “invisible financial and economic blockade” Allende spoke of, addressing the UN in December 1972.
— A topic Paul E. Sigmund discussed in Foreign Affairs (Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jan., 1974), pp. 322-340)
And that the war reports today – those on the ‘cold war’ – are not necessarily widely discussed, though fatalities and winners easily can be seen. And we should also not forget that THIS war can be found in many places around the globe – North and South, and often enough not really just as cold war. And Michael Hudson analysed this issue of Finance as Warfare.
Coming back to Ralph Miliband’s article, we read at its beginning:
Of course, the Wise Men of the Left, and others too, have hastened to proclaim that Chile is not France, or Italy, or Britain. This is quite true. No country is like any other: circumstances are always different, not only between one country and another, but between one period and another in the same country. Such wisdom makes it possible and plausible to argue that the experience of a country or period cannot provide conclusive “lessons.”
But still, despite that there are many lessons we can learn from history, also from the history of 9/11 1973 – in particular when we see all these events, now and then, not as individual occurrences but as part of the ongoing history of striving for global hegemony.

Now available: Cohesion Instead of Integration – Shifting Borders and the Role of Communications

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general

A new publication is now available from Nova Publishers:

Cohesion Instead of Integration – Shifting Borders and the Role of Communications

(see also: 班戈学院Herrmann教授参与编撰的新书正式出版)

Abstract

The chapter presents some theoretical and methodological considerations regarding communication. The fundamental question is if – and if so, to what extent – communication is playing a new role in today’s societies, where borders have shifted in multiple ways. The aim is to provoke reflection on the multitude of shifting borders, incompletely captured by the concept of globalisation. Furthermore, some ideas will be developed towards the role of communication in overcoming the tensions that accompany globalisation. A guideline for achieving multilevel integration as line of reference will be made including a short presentation of the theory of social quality.

It is published in the book:

Eds.: Lu Zhouxiang and Peter Herrmann;  New York: Nova, 2016
Book Description: 
Focusing on the themes of conflict, communication, and globalisation, this book provides interdisciplinary studies of modern and contemporary Asia and highlights the latest developments in Asian Studies. Beginning with a discussion on the role of communications, the book offers theoretical and methodological considerations on dealing with conflict and communication. It then explores self–other relationships through an investigation of the ethical structure of responsibility in the context of globalisation. In the following chapters, contributors from China, Germany, Ireland, Japan and South Korea provide a clear grasp of conflicts and communications within and beyond Asia from political, economic and cultural perspectives. They offer insight on a wide range of topics including the Sino-Japanese conflict, the political and ideological struggles between the two Koreas, Asian countries’ responses to the economic crisis, the World Fair and globalisation, the development of NBA culture in China, and Sino-Western comparison on mother-in-law–daughter-in-law dynamic. The book concludes that Asia’s rise should present more opportunities than conflicts and threats, and that it will eventually lead to the emergence of a multipolar world. (Imprint: Nova)