Categoria: thoughts on life and its philosophy

Stop Austerity

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

One of the many answers needed on BREXIT – “it is not about Britain and the Brits”, anyway.

Stop Austerity!

The outbreak of the crisis in 2007 led to many states having to take out emergency loans in order to save banks. Money was tight and interests were increasing. Therefore, some EU countries had to face serious economic problems up to illiquidity. The usual response of relevant institutions and many economists is that this undesirable development can only be corrected by wage reductions and by cutting welfare expenditures. Based on this idea, their solution strategy consisted of strict austerity policy and put high pressure on labour markets and welfare systems which impacted the living conditions of people in a massively negative way.

For this reason, many institutions demand to cut public spending, be it pensions, wages and salaries or unemployment benefits. This policy of savings leads to a permanent repetition of cuttings of public and private expenses and therefore to reduced social security. It is not, however, a solution for the actual problems of rising inequality, unregulated financial markets and recession, but reinforces the negative social impacts of the economic and financial crisis.

We demand solutions which do not consider the economy as an end in itself but serve us, the people.

 *******

For a way out of the crisis we demand:

  • Coordinating economic policy: A common, socially compatible economic policy for the Eurozone is needed. The implementation of a democratic and European economic fund is needed. Its aims are to coordinate monetary and fiscal policies in the interests of humans instead of corporations and banks, to remove imbalances and ensure a fairer distribution in Europe. Therefore, more people will benefit from prosperity.
  • Rebuilding the banking system: Banks must be brought into service of the people again. For this reason, commercial and investment sectors have to be separated. This enables banks to fulfil their main task again – collecting deposits and granting credits. If banks work badly, they have to be able to go bankrupt in an organized way so a bailout paid for by the public will not become necessary.
  • Introducing Eurobonds: Introducing Eurobonds means that Eurozone countries issue joint bonds for government financing and are also jointly liable. As a result, interest rates on government bonds will decrease and government financing as well as financing public projects will be facilitated. Joint liability strengthens the position vis-à-vis financial markets and takes the rating agencies’ influence away.
  • Regulating financial markets: Clear regulations for financial markets are needed in order to reduce the enormous complexity. Thus, financial products and business models which endanger the stability of the financial system have to be controlled or forbidden. The financial system has to be brought into service of the real economy again.
  • Introducing a financial transaction tax: A financial transaction tax adds a percentage surcharge to every purchase and sale on the financial market. Short-term and speculative trading on financial markets therefore becomes unattractive. This leads to more investments in the real economy and therefore to higher employment and additional revenues for the states.
  • Enforcing fair distribution: Fair distribution means to redirect capital from the financial capitalism to the real economy. This ensures the financing of public goods from education to health care. The people therefore can share in the surplus value they, ultimately, produce themselves.

We demand to break with the neoliberal policies of austerity and speculation. We demand a Europe of social equalization and perspectives. We demand to #StopAusterity!

Die Letze Reise/Last Journey

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, contemporary socio-economic situation, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski, ….

… hat mit seiner Umwälzungswissenschaft unseren Blick auf Imperien, auf ihre Kriege, auf Richistan und ihre Geschichte verändert – neugierig, spöttisch, lachend, skurril, charmant, klug, tückisch, gebildet, nachdenklich und auf alle Fälle in Schwarz, meistens mit Rundgläserbrille und manchmal als Irrläufer, in Cowboystiefeln, der durch alle Praxen, Theorien und Imaginationen zappte und surfte, die er kriegen konnte. „Une autre fin du monde est possible“ stellte jüngst ein Nuit Debout-Graffiti richtig. Ein Ende ohne ein Vorleben in einem Imperium der Milliardäre wäre ein guter Anfang – auch für eine letzte Reise.

Ein Nachruf, geschrieben von Rainer Rilling.

The other dimension

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

The other day I was sitting together with a friend, chatting about human and artificial intelligence and the calculability of everything. We talked about Her and life emerging Ex Machina. Emotions – they play a role, and we have, can, should simply enjoy them. That moment, I could not agree more, did not want to think about rationalising every single step, did not want to stop enjoying the moments, loving the people when they are lovable and showing the anger  when anger is appropriate … – Isn’t it finally true?: Wer denkt, ist nicht wütend.  Here for the first part of the Docu in Theodor W Adorno, Der Bürger als Revolutionär.

The less revolutionary version coming to mind is the one we know from Einstein:

Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.

wisely popularised as “You can’t blame gravity for falling in love”.

Love or show anger …, carpe diem and give the answer …

****

Anyway, a few days later a headline hits the news, informing that a

Tesla driver dies in first fatal crash while using autopilot mode

Surely a sad occurrence, but what makes it remarkable for me here is a sentence I find in the article, saying that

America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an inquiry into the accident.

It leaves  me with a silly question. As sociologist I know that that NHTSA is an institution, following administrative and juridical rules, without “human intelligence”, reflecting law that is without consideration of right. As driver of a car I know that there is no point in asking the truck and trailer; and the sky …, it does have as many answers as it lacks having limits. So, at the end it may then be the driver of the truck who may be be blamed for being, for taking the freedom of being in the way of artificial rules …

****

Part of the limitations of artificial intelligence, in its excess child of bourgeois enlightenment, is surely that it established a certain inability to think unity as matter of contradiction. 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.”

It may then be that The Fall comes before The Stranger.

Churchill: This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

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

While many are still ventilating the meaning of the BREXIT, doing the statistical analysis and presenting them more legible form, and reflecting on perspectives from Finish to Slovakout, the next decisive step in terms of global des-integration is on today’s agenda and we have to look at Spain.

You may also look back a few days, to look forward.

The first reaction from Paris.

BREXIT – is that actually the real topic

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

I was just approached by Yang Yuhan, asking for my opinion on the results in the UK.

I mentioned in a brief note some of the problems, e.g. that the result may be just the date of preparing a new referendum (as it happened so often), that the claimed economic strength by the “leavers” may be just another illusion but also that it is a strategy of one country to look for advantage on the back of others.
And then I said, “as it had been the case with (in particular) the German-Greek relationship.
As Yang said she would not know about Germany-Greece-relationships
 I answered in a nutshell – more is barely possible via QQ:
Perhaps we meet at some stage again, and we can chat. Too much to write …: Germany forced Greece to take loans, knowing that they would not be able to repay. Germany also kept the economy of Greece down, not allowing them to develop – we talked about world-systems, center-periphery etc. in the workshop. After a while the Germans said: now you have to return the money. And because you cannot do it “easily”, we dictate the conditions under which you do it. In consequnece, for instance, the social security systems had been dismantled (people getting 60 % of the retirement they expected, and it must in many cases serve the entire family; the health system is deteriorating; children cannot go to school, or they cannot concentrate because they are hungry …), the ariports had been “bought” by the German FRAPORT (Frankfurt airport), without proper pay …
Of course, the Germans could rely o their “European supporters” and the IMF and the World Bank but still they had been the main drivers.
And I directed her to things I wrote earlier – about Two Dreams and One Nightmare, there looking in particular at the second dream. Indeed, many things had been not known to the public, they had been veiled in populist disguises, hiding the
 And so we may even take up on people like Churchill who said, in a different context:
This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
And as Henry added in the mail he sent a few minutes ago:
the beginning of the complete disintegration of the EU….
Cunning of unreason – including the unreason of populist movements back in the other home? There was one star in Bethlehem, now there are five in Rome …
Just received another mail . actually taking up on the point I alluded to in the blog entry:
“The triumph of malign populism and a betrayal of the younger generation.”
Yes, there had been some betrayal, and my generation is guilty, if not directly betraying, allowing those others they dirty business …
Seeing all this in a wider context, I just feel miserable, actually since a couple of days already, the BREXIT is only a small part. It is about “us” – the elderly, the Europeans, the “better Europeans” … all these … “superiors” who claim to know everything and know everything better, and in which way ever, it is differ difficult to “escape”, difficult to remain sane and honest, and the only thing ome can do is to talk to some students, encouraging them …, to do what we cannot do anymore to the extent to which we want: move on and be honest …. – but also considered, not following the populist tendencies that lurk around everywhere, making education to a fun-park.

Searching for a new way of Thinking Society for Today

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

A new piece, written together with Vyacheslav N. Bobkov, is titled

Searching for a new way of Thinking Society for Today—Noospheric Social quality

It is published in Volume 12, Issue 2 of the journal Ekonomika regiona [Economy of Region], on pages 451-462 (doi 10.17059/2016–2–11)

The abstract states:

Obviously, we face an economic crisis that dominates the headlines of daily newspapers, academic journals and features as the title of TV-and-radio casts alike. And, not withstanding political differences, there is widespread consensus that the economic crisis is only the tip of an iceberg. However, there is little readiness to go beyond the inherited fundamental assumptions of a “modern industrial capitalist market society”.
The article argues that all the categories are increasingly under threat. The social quality, the quality of life and the noosphere paradigm of global social development offer space for considerations that question societal developments not only on the phenomenological level. Instead, the authors ventilate gnoseological, ontological and axiological prerequisites of sustainable global social development. The noosphere paradigm is
enriched with the theories of social quality and the quality of life, thus contributing to the wider and diverse debates on what can be called people’s humanistic socialism. In view of the complexity of the impending transition from the present to a future global society with people’s humanistic socialism, it is necessary to plan it thoroughly, beginning with the support of the processes and institutions that currently provide a seedbed;
developing new transformational forms of the future features of global society has to go hand in hand with this. It makes sense to carry on with the conceptualization of questions bearing on the formation of nooshpheric social quality and its design.

Further information cane found on the researchgate site – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Herrmann

Exam time

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

What we – as teachers and students – have to acknowledge, always and in particular the days of exams, even if we are not any kind of genius.

I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

(Isaac Newton)
It is not least a genuine sardino while we are pretending to and striving for living excellence of global imperialism where power and pretension counts more than excellence.
Acknowledging that we are dwarfs, standing the shoulders of giants, thus finding ourselves in a large machine, we still have to decide for ourselves if and to which extent we want to be a small cog in the wheels or if we want to throw a spanner in the works.
One thing I learned again from my students:  Real wisdom is the ability to ask genuine questions and the courage to ask them. So rare in a world of excellence that follows the rule of stating answers we know already on questions that are not relevant. To my students, the wide and brave amongst them:
Thank you all!

Democracy

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

Of course it would be silly to deny the value of democratic rules and mechanisms as free elections, representation and the like. But looking at countries where all these are in place, one may occasionally ask what all this really means.  A report on the situation in France and its labor reform may make us think a bit more. Quoted from the Telsur-aricle:

The plan, opposed by three in four French people, according to pollsters, has provoked weeks of often violent demonstrations and added strains on police who were already stretched by extra security duties in the wake of last November’s deadly Islamist attacks on France.

US – “world leadership in the care sector”

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

Surprising? Yes, it is indeed the United States of Northern America who are playing a leading in the  care sector — of course, one may have to look exactly at the definitions of “care” and “leadership”. Check yourself here for the

Black Alabama Inmates Strike Against Oppression and Slavery.

And do not forget to watch the embedded  film.

Airport Chat

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy
The only free seat, while waiting for the boarding to commence, was the one between brother and sister …, as usual I forgot the name. Unusual though that we talk about “the world” and that “there is something wrong, though I don’t know what.” My reference to the Evangelii Gaudium and an attempted “left interpretation” does not really move the communication forward – also it doesn’t help when I draw the direct line between this and the confrontation with the pressure today’s students are under. – Is she too distracted? Or is she convinced that the mobile phone she frequently looks at, provides the answer?

May be the brother from Kenya knows it, admiring the Chinese:

They are clever. Loosing no time, just looking around and implementing …. – that is what they do.

Sure, his reflections on his home country are interesting – and the endless trust of both of them:

You surely need a bishop to perform …

is somewhat perplexing.

— Sitting with the back to us: a father with his son …. – I have to admit that the permanent rattling  of the computer game they are playing, implementing shooting at, racing after, hunting for virtuality makes me a bit irascible …, nothing alluring about it ….