I just read an insightful comment on weissgarnix.de:
Der traditionelle Faschismus fordert Ordnung und Unterordnung, der moderne Faschismus schmeichelt den Individuen, er fördert die Illusion von Freiheit und Selbstbestimmung und steuert die Menschen in der Regel gewaltlos durch Konditionieren. (Tina, comment #111 on “Geht’s noch tiefer” on weissgarnix.de)
Why do I post this? I think I got ensnared by this conditioning “new fascism”. My last two years have been about money (working as a freelancer). And the longer this goes, the more about money, and the less about real life. I feel that it makes me dumb, non-creative, conformistic, … . A major sign of this is that this blog has been quiet for so long … “no time to think about life, too busy living”. Huh? Stop this …
A more rational approach to choosing my desired lifestyle would not hurt. So, what are the pro’s and con’s of living inside the social system of this society, versus escaping it in my style by living and traveling in an expedition vehicle, working from on the road with an Internet-connected computer?
A need to think more ’bout this, but here’s my first impression. Outside “this way”, you lose a good deal of social reputation, and a good amount of money. I will never be really “well-off” in this world, financially. However, I also do not need that additional money, as I have a lifestyle that soes not consume that much of money. And I also do not need that social reputation, as I will have worldwide network of cool people and friends to travel to.
I “do not need” social reputation: this is a strange view, but grants a lot of freedom. Normally one accepts that social reputation in ones society is something like a basic need, and strives to meet this as an “external demand”, like obeying a command. However, looking at this from a utilitarian perspective: what does it hurt to not have it, if you have good friends? Nothing.
That said, the pro’s seem to outweigh the cons: a more flexible, mobile lifestyle. Which is also able to survive also in harsh conditions, and to quickly react to local crisis situations by moving places. And which is more free, in the sense of independence, by low consume and therefore also low demand of income that has to come from other people. Of course I need to take some care to somehow create a “neat and tidy” environment in the truck so that I can invite also “normal” people …
Many people like to be free and independent. Some even to the degree that they prefer self-employment over the security of employment, and friendships over the long-term responsibility that living in a pair relationship brings. Of course there’s always the danger of loneliness, but also always the benefit of flexible, agile, simple living. You gotta agree with only yourself if you want to cancel your job, sell your car, move abroad, travel for years or anything like that.
With one exception. If you’re Christian, you entered a relationship to Jesus. You’re no longer totally free and independent; instead you will now act in a way that you know is compatible with Jesus’ values and ideas, or else ask Jesus if some decision is o.k., or what he proposes.
Even “worse”, this kind of dependence will not cease for all eternity. But as every kind of relationship, this can also be a highly valuable experience that you’ll never want to miss again.
I’ve heard somebody say about Marburg, Germany: Such a beautiful city, but so many ugly people. Relating to the left-wing people there.
While I think, to the contrary, that many left-wing people look stylish and individualistic, the quote is interesting because it compares the beauty of cultural objects and human beauty in one sentence.
Which I would do this way: visit any average city in Germany and walk through its streets, and you will find that most faces look wrecked. Exhausted. Stressed. Strained. This includes people in fashion clothes, suites and sexy clothes. This includes street persons and the high society. And me. They all miss the beauty of the human race.
In addition, this also relates to people’s outfit. Nearly all people in highly civilized societies are either too busy with maintaining their stressy consumerist lifestyle, or too depressed to take part. In both cases, they lack the time for giving themselves an intentional, individualistic (!), stylish outfit – this is of course luxury, a part of self-actualization, but surely one that is granted by nature to everybody. As it needs only time and creativity, not much money or other resources.
To sum up, people look captive and stressed because they are captive and stressed, lacking time for living life in any way. Brave new world!
Christian folks often have a blessed ignorance when it comes to heaven. O.k., the Book says not much ’bout it, but we missed to make us some warmer thoughts on that topic. Most folks did not even see what all is wrong on earth, so expect too much stuff in heaven also and then start to wonder if God is love if there is hard work in heaven? Or even worse, if God prohibits us in heaven from knowing each other, or from loving our mate from earth in a special way?
But now, for the alternative. Do we dare to think heaven is a place that is a permanent blessing for the senses? And without toil in the work? Like Schlaraffenland but with love instead of laziness? If yes,we think that Gods wants a permanent (eternal) sensual blessing for us. Then, we cannot at the same time think that anything “less than heaven” in this world corresponds to God’s character, or even, in the full sense of the word, is a gift of God. If it’s “worldly good”, it is what God can give us while we live here (constrained by the state of the world as it is), but so much less than what he wanst us to give. If it’s “worldly bad” (natural catastrophies etc.), it has nothing to do with God’s character at all.
To express this kind of insight, or I want a 30min movie clip that expresses this “heaven” feeling when views in comfortable position on a big screen and with good audio equipment. The mood when starting to view this clip is of no relevance however, as such a clip has the power to communicate the desired feeling in any situation. The clip should use instrumental music in the background, sounds of nature, and probably no spoken words. It should be about people’s daily lives, filled with love and adoration, without any pain, toil, illness and death.
Such a movie clip, and others of that kind, could be the best kind of stuff to make people think about life, love and God.
One of the most difficult tasks on earth is, how to communicate emotions between human beings as exact as possible. So that the receiver gets the message (the emotion) as close as possible to the one intended by the sender.
People say music is a means for communicating emotions. This is partially true, but music can just communicate an emotion without its semantic context; which is a vague, undifferentiated emotion, and one without meaning.
Good poems are another means, but you have to concentrate on it to get the intended emotion. Which makes them useless if you are in a mood unable or unwilling to concentrate. Also, poems create just an “image of an emotion”, by far weaker than what the sender felt.
However, if one adds other media to that, this adds much more possibilities for communicating emotions. The full possibilities are at hand when adding motion pictures (our richest medium) to music, that is, when creating movie clips.
Movie clips have the added advantage that they can communicate emotions nearly independent on the situation you are in … the medium is strong enough to get through all your current emotions, and you may just stay passive. Of course, one has to take great care not to get used to movies that much that they loose this force; which they did for probably > 90% of the population in modern societies.
Another caveat: the sender must not employ kitsch; which is everything where he presents an emotion that the receiver should also feel. This strategy loses has lost its force for nearly everybody now, and also produces only “kitschy” (undifferentiated) emotions. An emotion is more than its expression! Therefore, instead of the emotion, the situation should be depicted that triggers it. And of course, depicting emotions is everything that is bluntly meant to trigger emotions, including colors, symbols (heart, …), images and music; it’s not just about the depiction of human emotion.
Now, how ’bout some examples. I searched YouTube for over two hours now and, sad enough, I found not one example for what I mean here. All this highly symbolic, kitschy, graphic depiction of what they mean … I’m unable to feel with them.
However, here are the clips that get at least to 10% of what I mean … perhaps you get a clue. In descending order of “emotional communication quality”, some music clips:
- Söhne Mannheims – Vielleicht (probably the only video blogged twice in this blog)
- Glashaus – Haltes die Welt an (on somebody dying)
- Silbermond – Ich bereue nichts (also)
- Söhne Mannheims – Kraft unseres Amtes
- Eisblume – Leben ist schön
- Söhne Mannheims – IZ ON
- Silbermond – Krieger des Lichts
Just made a strange experience … at two o’clock in the night, but nothing to frighten you. Read on. The background is, that I used the the last two days mainly for “tidying up my thoughts”. Most people will think this is a strange activity, and that my flat would need it more. Anyway. Practically it is, sorting through my mindmaps that contain all the “operational” information and decisions in my life. They are sort of an externalized part of my brain’s memory, slower but more precise. When tidying it up, I write down some latent decisions and re-structure stuff into life components, projects, tasks and journals. And I finish some blog post drafts with thoughts that troubled me lately … hence the several posts here today.
I did this “thought cleaning” a few times already, with the gap of some months in between. After it, mostly I have a good impression of the current state of my life. The same happened now, and the impression came just yet, after reading through my blogroll’s posts since long.
The crazy thing is, for the first time in life my mind feels both free and complete at the same time. Let me explain.
Most of my life, I had oriented myself towards a doctrinal system (a form of Christian fundamentalism) to feel “safe and complete” in mind about my conception of the world. Then, practical problems and critical thinking made this system more and more unliveable; that was around 2005-02. It coincides with my entry to the blogosphere, meant to think out loudly my critical thoughts and questions.
Since then, I felt more and more free in my thought life because I left more and more human authorities alone. But I did not feel complete at all, there were all these nagging questions and doubts. There are more than 200 blog posts since then, most of them detailing an aspect of this stuff, and together they document some hundred hours of reading and discussing. Nearly driving some of my friends mad with all my bugging questions 
Ok, and what’s different now? In the last weeks, I found my position regarding a few of the most heavy questions (see posts “Why God might be silent“, “Deriving joy from meaning“, “Helping this world at system level?“). These answers also granted me a better basic mood and new motivation. And even better, these were the last bits to complete my position to the basic questions in life. Not that all this is necessarily true (it will develop), but for the first time, I feel “complete” in mind again. That feels good.
And now, looking through all those philosophical and theological blogs that had a huge influence on my thoughts before, I noticed that I got independent of them since my last visit. I still value most of them, but I have my own position now, for the first time a complete one. Which allows me to be independent.
I really don’t want to seem proud. I rather view this as a normal development: everyone, when becoming an adult, finds his or her own and complete position. This position is the basic set of answers that they will use for the years to come. It may be logical or not, well-founded or clumsy: because it’s complete, because it’s a closed system, it can be defended. Adults normally don’t leave that position, as there’s no force that makes this necessary. Except for crisis experiences.
Now that I found my own position, only God can correct me. (I hope he will if necessary, as he did in 2004/2005.) I cannot see big problems in defending my position against people’s logic. This part of my adolescence is now about 10 years too late, but in compensation, very detailed and, as I think, well founded. And, as a special but unintended attribute, it’s a “free” position: I have yet to find somebody else who holds a like set of answers regarding the basic questions of life. I seem to be a free thinker, but not as an end in itself: I just searched the answers.
With this part of “adolescence” finally finished, it seems that the next step is ahead: applying it, and teaching it. Also a normal development: every adult should be self-confident enough to teach his position to growing-ups, and to discuss it with other adults to publicly display its quality. There’s even an idea in my head how to apply and teach this stuff in a style that concords with the actual content (see also the post “Adult loneliness“): founding a mobile, high-power, educational-transformational community with native people in a developing country.
Of course, it feels good that these hard times of troubling myself with questions of all sorts are now over, for the most part. And I’m grateful to God for this!! But also, I fear that, if I err in an important issue, I am uncorrectable now. Which I really do not want to be … so if you think I am in error, talk to me and use good logic, and I will hopefully be able to see my error also and change … again.
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