Diary food is common good.

Henry Kissinger's "Diplomacy" (1994) as classic example of a basic flaw in modern America's political ideology: Confusing or deliberately trying to sell post-war liberalism (liberal democracy à la Smith, Madison, and Rousseau) with/ as pre-war idealism (republican democracy à la Rousseau, Hegel, and Wilson)

2012-01-01T08:57:00.000+01:00

Albeit his extraordinary broad as well as deep knowledge of world history, his understanding of political mechanisms not only through an outstanding academic curriculum but furthermore unparalleled practical experience in the diplomatic service, and as a result, the easiness and clarity with which he manages to present a comprehensive picture of international politics which gets straight to the point of today's situation ("The New World Order") and delivers necessary (of course partially biased) concepts and theories on the side-track without any confusion, and last but most importantly the foresight in his outlook on international politics in the 21st century, Henry Kissinger's "Diplomacy" is a classic example of America's basic flaw in political ideology: confusing or deliberately trying to sell post-war liberalism, that is liberal democracy in domestic and classical realism in international affairs, with/ as the idealism the young, resourceful and isolated "New World" could afford until the 20th century.

Importantly, Kissinger himself admits the special circumstances of pre-war America in which Wilsonian idealism could grow in, but ascribes so much importance to the resulting path dependency in those early ideology in the decades after the Great Depression and World War II (which he again agrees to have radically changed economic, political, and social environment in the U.S.) that the subsequent U.S. hegemony, the taste of victory in blood and iron, and dominance in power politics and big capitalism in the Cold War era, would have not changed U.S.-American leaders' and politicians' ideals and morals! And at the point when Kissinger mentions U.S.-President Reagan as icon of such Wilsonian idealism based on strong morals and committed to people's freedom and rights, the basic argument of "Diplomacy", the U.S. as defender of a highly ethical idealism in a resurging concert of great powers, appears to derail in a satire of the blackest type of sarcasm.

But then again, just like most Americans tend to mix up "irony" and "sarcasm", the difference between "idealism" and "liberalism" is often lost - from discussions to textbooks. So, let me get this straight: Idealism, "democratic idealism", or - given the highly biased and politically charged connotation of the term - "republical democracy" as termed by Jürgen Habermas, is the concept (and not theory) that people can overcome their state of nature by creating and organising themselves in political institutions (an institution is a set of rules) and - most importantly - and that within and despite those institutions, must try to better themselves for their own and mankind's sake. In other words, for an idealist, it is not sufficient to create and comply to political institutions (law for example), for the people need to be "good" and "righteous" as well. Otherwise, every institution will be corrupted and exploited. This concept was particularly coined by Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's republicanism ("volonté générale"), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idealism, or Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations.

In fact, the League of Nations reflects the logical expansion of idealist concepts in the sphere between states, thus the inter-national environment, with the promotion of international and supranational institutions, hence the theories of "Institutionalism", a term which replaced the ambiguous and biased "Idealism" in post-war theories of international relations. (Pushing the logic of international institutionalisation in a single supranational organisation to the limit, however, ultimately results in the abandonment thereof as people around the world become socialised (internalised in the people's moral) in a world society wherein a world government can be disbanded - hence anarchism. (Of course, from a liberal point of view, anarchy is a state of disorder. But for an anarchist, disorder arises from uneven power capabilities on the one hand and bounded rationality on the other: If individuals do not concentrate their power in states and anticipate mutual loss in a 1-on-1 fight, nobody may go to war in the first place. Hence, anarchy is understood to be the ultimate stage of idealism free of government control and restrictions. Ironically, this colludes with the liberal ideal of "free market economy". The difference hence does not lie in the ultimate goal but the initial axioms and the subsequent approach.)

Note something? Those are French and German philosophers of the 18th and 19th century! Kissinger argues that Americans perceived their "Idealism" in contrast to "Europe's travails to the balance-of-power system" - although Idealism had grown exactly against the backdrop of Europe's history and geographic situation. In fact, the ideas reach much further back to Moore's Utopia, Augustinus' Just War and thus originally, Christian ideals. What is more, Hegel was crucial for Marx's Communism! The roots are obvious: Communism works because people do not try to be better than others and exploit the system ("relative gains" as in political realism) but try to better themselves every day ("absolute gains" as in idealism and ironically, Nye's "neo-liberalism"). (There is a good reason why Christianity is often deemed the foundation of Communism.) Hence, the general argument against Communism that the transitory Socialist "dictatorship of the proletariate" becomes power-hungry or that people turn "lazy" reaches short to the basic axiom that people are expected willing to better themselves and not just being opportunist.

Now, taking opportunism as the basic axiom (an unquestioned assumption for a theory or whole paradigm, that is a school of theories) of human nature brings us to "Liberalism", or "liberal democracy" as termed by Jürgen Habermas. While Liberalism shares Idealism's basic idea of overcoming people's natural state by means of political institutions, the concept does not believe in people's ability or willingness to better themselves for their own and society's sake, but considers these political institutions necessary as well as sufficient in order to restrict and constrain the inevitable selfish, opportunist, and asocial nature of man. Most notable contributions to this concept are, of course, Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" ("homo hominis lupus est"), John Locke's "contract theory", Smith's "invisible hand" and "homo oeconomicus", Baron de Montesquieu's "checks and balances", and James Madison's combination of these political and economic ideas in political economy (politics as just another market for votes: People do not vote with society's progress in mind but their personal tangible gains whereby the outcome is democratic since every market participant has only one vote, hence "liberal democracy").

Outside of these state institutions in the inter-national environment, people's selfish, opportunist, and asocial nature consequently runs wild. States cannot be further expanded because of differences in race, religion, culture, and other beliefs or simply the distances for effective coordination and control are too large (too high transaction costs in terms of liberal economics). What is worse, with people's individual power concentrated in their state's government, the power struggle is exacerbated in the international arena. "Realism" is the political theory that has grown on a view of anarchy based on liberal axioms.

Kissinger himself circumscribes the concept of "liberal democracy" as following: "Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, maintained that an 'invisible hand' would distill general economic well-being out of selfish individual economic actions. In The Federalist Papers, Madison argued that, in a large enough republic, the various political 'factions' selfishly pursuing their own interests would, by a kind of automatic mechanism, force a proper domestic harmony. The concepts of the separation of powers and of checks and balances, as conceived by Montesqieu and embodied in the American Constitution, reflected an identical view. The purpose of the separation of powers was to avoid despotism, not to achieve harmonious government, each brand of the government, in the pursuit of its own interests, would restrain excess and thereby serve the common good. The same principles were applied to international affairs. By pursuing its own selfish interests, each state was presumed to contribute to progress, as if some unseen hand were guaranteeing that freedom of choice for each state assured well-being for all." (Kissinger, 1994: pp. 21-22) (Note that axioms such as for example Smith's "invisible hand" which implies perfect markets have been relativised by scholars which are considered to be of the liberal school.)

Note again: Those are predominantly English and American philosophers. No surprise that "Liberalism" is often deemed an "Anglo-American" concept by Continental European, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese scholars. Of course, Liberalism also flourished on the Continent and Asia, but were never established in the government until the end of World War II, both because of the distinct legacy of aristocratic rulers and again, the lack of space to develop liberal ideas. (While U.S.-American liberalism could grow on the "New World", English liberalism ironically grew on British Imperialism. Smith's economic principles were also strongly inspired by British overseas trade.) U.S.-Americans themselves appear to be much less aware of these distinctive roots and the specific circumstances required to the liberal concept. May it be due to the political reason of British hegemony in the rest of the 19th century world, the theoretical reason of lack of consistency and uniformity in idealist, Marxist, socialist, syndicalist, or anarchist concepts, or simply language barriers, but definitely the predominance of U.S.-America in the post-war world order and their occupation and reform in economic power houses such as Germany and Japan (where Hegelian and syndicalist perspectives had strong legacy), their views became the leading paradigm and as usual for mainstream, were less receptive to system-extrinsic criticism. It would require to live at the ideological crosslines such as Adorno's and Habermas' Frankfurt school to stay aware of the distinct axioms of the different paradigms. This appears all the more striking given that Kissinger himself was born in Germany!

Thus, in conclusion, Kissinger and his "Diplomacy" is caught up in a clearly Anglo-American liberal paradigm and lacks the system-critical and constructivist perspective to identify the radical changes in 20th century U.S. politics. Kissinger declares U.S. international politics as "triumph of faith over experience". But while 18th and 19th century American leaders may could indeed live the idealist dreams of a Rousseau or Hegel, their post-war disciples were playing the same game as 19th century Metternich or Bismarck: not the people, but state power at the centre of interest in international competition, subsequent leverage and support of international and multinational corporations, including the oil and arms industries, necessary expansionism, and the prepondering role of lobbies at home.
And while Kissinger brands Roosevelt as a student of 19th century Europe balance of power politics, it was in fact this man that warned the U.S. of the decline of American ideals and morals. By the time of Hans Morgenthau's (strikingly another German immigrant to the U.S.) "Politics among Nations", the U.S. had already succumbed to classic European Realpolitik.

Backtracking from the liberal vision: the case of post-Cold War Japan

2011-11-16T16:58:00.001+01:00

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Against the backdrop of Japan's modern history, its development in a world first dominated by European imperialist powers and then by a the paragon of the liberal paradigm seeing the biggest advantages (first and foremost for themselves and then their allies) in a globalising free market economy, the importance of these news cannot be understated. "Japan Display" signals that Japan has lost faith in Western liberalism once again and is about to return to its strategy of neo-mercantilism established at the verge of the 20th century and proven in the decades thereafter and again in the postwar era.

It was the burst of the bubble economy in the 1990s and the following "lost decade" that had shattered Japan's self-confidence in its system and made it listen to the sneering criticism of Western liberal powers that Japan's economic strategy was neither sustainable nor for the best of their people. As a result, Japan sincerely endeavoured to reform its system, not against path-dependent resistance and opposition from vested interests of course. But looking at the reforms in commercial law and economic policy makes it difficult for every economist to point out the continuities in Japan's business and economy even in the comparison of the changes in the 1930s (wartime planned economy) and again the late 1940s (U.S. occupation).

But now, twenty years later, Japan is still stagnating, people speaking of "lost decades". What is more, while the Western countries themselves, ahead with the U.S. as the paragon of free market economy, is struggling in crisis, China and Korea have surpassed their former colonial masters - by exactly copying their imperialist and neo-mercantilist, non-liberal economic strategies.

Do not kid yourself: This is not Japan's response to China's Rise and Korea's Challenge. As even Western economists often lack a solid background in economic history, especially in a perspective other than the postwar Anglo-American liberal ideology, they often fail to understand that those countries were modeled according to Japan's so-called Developmental State Model once the ideological heat of the Cold War had passed. In fact, South Korea's Park Chung-hee's policies even adopted prewar Japan strategies with Korea's chaebols like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG Electronics following respective Japanese models. Deng Xiaoping also revived prewar Japan strategies and there is a reason why Singapore is often tagged with the label "Inc.".

The point is not that the rest of Asia has been copying postwar Japan for the last 40 years. The point is that Japan half-heartedly abandoned that model in the beginning of the 1990s. And now, after 20 years of reforms and nothing getting any better, they have started thinking: "Wait a minute! This doesn't work, either! Not only for us, but also the U.S. and Europe! Meanwhile, our Asian disciples enjoy splendid growth rates. Liberalism and liberalisation just brought trouble for us."

Again, this story has a precursor in Japanese history: The 1920s were Japan's attempt to endorse Western ideals and fit into the international system. What happened afterwards is well known.

Liberalism is just another ideology.

2011-11-16T16:56:00.001+01:00

Just like communism, liberalism was never realised anywhere in this world to this day. After all, the term was coined and ideologically charged by the leading imperialist power of the 19th century and purported by its heir in the 20th century. "Free market economy" first and foremost meant exclusive access to cheap resources and sales markets respectively for those dominant powers. There was not much competition to be concerned about anyway. From this point of view, there is little difference left to mercantilism, may it be ancient Chinese, Colbertism in 18th century France, the National Economy of 19th century Germany, or the developmental state model of postwar 20th century Japan and South Korea and now early 21st century China.
How liberalism is just a disguise for a new, more sophisticated type of neo-mercantilism may be best exemplified by the financial industry whose advanced level of globalisation is often celebrated as the epitome of liberalism: In the hope of acquiring and consolidating this most profitable industry of them all - extremely profitable not because of unique competitive advantages (especially in an age of highly mobile human resource capital) but high agency costs and subsequent potential for charging fat margins, Anglo-American countries, their Asian hubs, and soon enough every developed country that did not want to miss out on the booty, fostered and pampered their stock markets and banks with relaxed regulation, special tax benefits and the like. Blame it on your professors and politicians. They allowed them to happen. Every country wanted to secure the rewards of high profits and prestige - and ironically, got neither of it as agency costs did not only trick the other countries but the own people as well.
Hence, "liberalism", or put more appropriately and ideologically charged "capitalism" is no cure to poverty, great power politics, and ultimately war, but rather just another cause. Yet, even now, years and years of graduates from business and law schools are indoctrinated with biased and historically unquestioned positivist theories of market economics, politicians propagate the benefits of deregulation and "more market competition" and reporters on the local media chant the most recent news from Brussels and Wallstreet - with barely anyone knowing what they actually mean. Don't blame the bankers for their fat boni. Don't occupy Wallstreet, but start thinking about you allowed the rest of the world to be occupied.

On proverbs

2011-11-16T16:54:00.001+01:00

不聞不若聞之，聞之不若見之，見之不若知之，知之不若行之；學至於行之而止矣(不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣。 - Tell me and I [will] forget. Show me and I [will] remember. Involve me and I [will] understand. (You can only understand something by trying it yourself.)

Heideggerian hermeneutics - Chinese proverbs beat us to it again!

On this note, I also remember that back in my school days, I lived by the motto that knowledge would be power, power would grant freedom and freedom the space to develop one's abilities to the maximum. Yet, by the time I stepped out of the strict and narrow-minded curriculum of positivism and realized that all knowledge is constructed and hence just constricts you further in ideologies, I quickly came to live by the motto that wisdom comes from personal lessons, that is experience. Of course, living by the motto of knowledge for power first was an experience in itself, a crucial one.

Positive socialisation through electronic games?

2011-10-27T18:30:00.002+02:00

Electronic games are often deemed an epitome in purporting modern Hobbesian realism and materialism: Focusing on tangible achievements and rewards, best exemplied in the dominant genre of shooting games wherein the player acquires weapons with particular features in order to kill ever more challenging foes, such games are said to promote no intellectual, least social skills or norms, but nothing but a medieval world view of a "nasty, short, brutish" life.

The concern about intellectual skills has long been picked up by the players and industry alike. While the former tried to defend the inherent challenges of computer games as some kind of soft skill training, the latter often sought to actively counter with new more sophisticated or downright education-oriented games - also in search for new market potential, of course.

On the other hand, social skills and norms appear to be a "hot iron" no party dares to touch. It almost seems like the players and industry acknowledge the asocial, brutish nature of their hobby or business respectively - or have been successfully taught to think so. Indeed, there is little argument against the claim that people play electronic games to detach themselves from their orderly, regulated life and live out their fantasies - all the more their violent and asocial ones.

However, that does not mean that electronic games could induce social skills or norms in this process. Prominent example are team-oriented multiplayer games wherein players must quickly realise that they will not get any far without division of labour and cooperative gameplay. What is more, with sophisticated integrated social platforms, the "shadow of the future" looms large in these games: A player risks to find never ever support again if he displayed uncooperative or downright harmful behaviour before. Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) and the topic of "team killers" and "loot ninjas" may be the best examples.

Yet, just recently, I have come to realise about another, much more subtle since already internalised process in the game mechanics and story itself that does not require any other real players. Specifically, I refer to so-called role-play games (RPGs) wherein the player develops an in-game character through decisions and specific actions in a predefined story-line. This is where the trick comes in: Game designers can and actually constantly do include choices in the story-line that confronts the player with social and moral implications. What is more, depending on the decision, the rewards and achievements, that central aspect of electronic games, vary. Given that game designers themselves are human beings educated and socialised in a social environment, it is little surprising that their own social norms and values are reflected in the allocation of said rewards and achievements, specifically, players tend to receive more points and better equipment if they act what the designers deem socially and morally correct. Of course, the concept can be either exploited by malevolence, with the "gangster games" such as the GTA series and Saints Row as good examples, or by glitches wherein the player happens to receive better rewards and achievements by the game mechanics.

The case rests, however, that game designers can and do intend to reflect their own social and moral convictions within the game and in this way, they actively shape the world view of players, particularly of younger age. The impact should not be underestimated, all the more if we think across cultures! A constructivist perspective is in place here. Given that most game development is done in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, it is little surprising that the story environment of electronic games, the characters and their personality, the events and challenges are often closely associated with those countries, their societies, and cultures. Now, imagine what happens if a player in the Middle East plays a vampire slayer in medieval London or a secret agent in the service of the U.S. government? The player inevitably associates himself with that character and picks up the personality in the process. Basically, it is a similar process to movies, just much stronger due to direct and personal interaction by the consumer. As constructivism teaches, every decision is based on social and moral principles. Yet, if the player wants to success in the game, he must adjust to the system of rewards and achievements designed by the developers.

Hence, the inherent social or moral principles in electronic games, or better put, of their developers always leaves an impact on the players' world view. Those inherent social or moral principles may be included on purpose, maybe even distorted deliberately, but it is much more likely that they flow in unconsciously as nobody is fully aware of his world view all the time.

On Asian countries being entrapped in Western paradigms

2011-10-27T18:28:00.002+02:00

In the light of Western countries and their institutions, from market economy to democracy, struggling, Asia has already claimed the new millenium for itself.
Yet, as even Western scholars, politicians, and entrepreneurs turn to the Far East for a cure to the crisis in social paradigms, Asia itself reveals to have few genuine ideas and neither the will nor capacity to establish a new world view and order. In fact, success stories like the "Japanese miracle" or Asian regionalism have come to be seen as neo-mercantilist free-riding on U.S. economic power (SEE Pyle (2007) or Samuels (2008)) or realist strategies in the context of "simple" economic interdependence (as opposed to the theoretical "complex interdependence") respectively which has also stalled or deliberately been stopped in the meantime, by the way (SEE Ravenhill (2008) for example).

Thus, it is little surprising that the notorious enfant terribles of social sciences, post-structuralism and -colonialism, have started becoming more and more acceptable even among renowned scholars, notably in the paradigm-wise more contested field of political science. Dent (2008) for example even argues that Asia failed to produce a new paradigm so far, also because its own researchers are trained in Western paradigms in the West: "Such a debate is related to the notion of the post-structuralist view of contested rationality, in that the accepted 'truths' or precepts that prevail within the mainstream discourse of any field of study should always be open to challenge, especially when new significant empirics demand it. Accordingly, new studies and thinking on regional leadership in East Asia could lead to a paradigm deviation from mainstream thinking on international leadership per se, or even a paradigm shift over the longer term. As Neil Renwick, for example. noted in Chapter 10, there is a sense that 'East Asia is different' with regard to its structures, processes and culture of political governance, and hence does not often fit comfortably with mainstream Western thinking on such matters. As he further argued, 'leadership' in the region is conceived less in terms of assertive hegemony, and more in terms of 'cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity and, increasingly, a commitment to multilateralism'.
However, one of the problems of discerning East Asian theories and ideas on regional leadership is that most East Asian scholars themselves still tend to draw upon Western-derived theories and concepts when studying the subject. This is indicative of a wider predicament in East Asian social sciences in that most of its leading lights have been PhD-trained in American and (to a lesser extent) European universities, and thus often use mainstream Western analytical reference points in constructing their own approaches on IR and IPE analysis." (p. 204)

Inoguchi (2007) seconds this view but points out that Japan, much in contrast to the other colonialised countries in Asia, was not as much influenced by Anglo-American positivism and rationalism as by German Staatslehre (political economy) and Marxism. Yet, he also argues that Japan preserved a genuine tradition of very detailed historicism and that due to Japan's early industrialisation and attempt at own imperialism which was not accepted by the West, Japan came to develop post-structuralist and -colonialist criticism in the prewar era already: "Japan's IR research is a most bumi putra IR in East, South-east and South Asia because it was not colonized by the West. Colonialism was an avenue to acquiring foreign language which tends to facilitate IR study. The US-led Allied occupation during the period 1945-1952 was conducted by indirect rule. By which I mean that Americans stood at the top while Japanese bureaucrats were mostly kept intact except for some small percentage of those regarded to have been tainted by war crimes. Indirect rule is too shallow to change many things. This is most conspicuous when we compare IR in Japan with those in Korea, Taiwan, and China, let alone in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The major difference between Japan on the one hand and Korea, Taiwan, and China on the other is the extent of ease with which they absorb largely from American style IR theories."

Hence, Japan may well be a good place to start finding a solution for today's world view and order after all.

On the naturally constructivist mindset of the German language

2011-10-27T17:54:00.001+02:00

I just love the German term for perception, "Wahrnehmung" (literally "taking for real" with the adjective "wahr" meaning "real" and "true" and the verb "wahren" "to protect"). It tells so much about the world, or better put, the German view of what people think of (read perceive) as their world. Constructivism pure! Asimov may have well been right about calling German the language of philosophy.

On the hypocrite nature of liberalists

2011-10-27T17:50:00.000+02:00

It appears to be a general trend among liberalists to turn nationalist-realist (imperialism, mercantilism) when the ideal of a global free market faces new obstacles. This indicates that many liberalists actually are pragmatists - subsequently undermining their own ideals. (There is a reason why "liberalism" in politics is associated with "idealism": The premises and expectations are as idealistic as those of socialism.)

Discovery of the day

2011-08-30T11:48:00.005+02:00

Socialism is said to have been and still be strong in intellectual circles in Japan due to the historic circumstance of having been the first comprehensive socio-economic theory introduced in that country. The striking conclusion, however, is that on the other hand, liberal and republican concepts of democracy and economy entered by means of empirical models, that is each country's implemented system, rather than by ideas and theories of philosophers and scholars (Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Stuart-Mill) - albeit, liberal and republican theories are far less consistent than the Marxist paradigm, of course! Thus, Japanese learned about Western socio-economic systems through different methodological perspectives.

Strikingly, these days, the tables have pretty much turned: Everybody reads about liberalism, but nobody about socialism. Nobody looks at the imperfect implementation of liberal systems, but everyone at the failure of the Soviet Union.

The restrictive nature of science

2011-08-23T08:04:00.001+02:00

When algorithms control the world

Consider this: Every time you click on a suggestion on Amazon or Steam, the server registers your choice as confirmation of general preferences. The result is that people's decisions, from search queries to product purchases, become gradually streamlined - maybe for the sake of pabulum solutions, but certainly not a considerate, broad foundation of our view on the world.

Modern science has come to gradually narrow down our views and according decisions in the world. Of course, it does not restrict the possibilities in our way of thinking. But it certainly does constrict the common and prevalent approach. And in how many areas don't you just "follow the crowd"? After all, the universal critical mindset is a myth.

An outline of my theory of financial mercantilism

2011-08-15T19:36:00.000+02:00

The basic issue of the recent, or better put ongoing financial crisis

2011-08-15T19:33:00.000+02:00

Consumer empowerment in support of Habermas' rather than Huxley's future

2011-08-15T19:30:00.000+02:00

Consumer empowerment - market-dominating consumer associations banning brand products, government agencies supporting price transparency websites, or internet subcultures attacking company platforms. This phenomenon sure comes as an unexpected twist to today's popular picture of a post-state globalised dystopia dominated by big business conglomerates as both the cyberpunk genre in arts as well socio-economic studies in science have drawn in such detailed and all the more frightening way. Yet, just when Huxley's ignorant, materialist masses, satisfied and indifferent in excessive consumption, in this dystopian world view was declared natural law, we see individuals rising and grasping the possibilities of empowerment lying in information technology. What a great argument in support of Habermas' deliberative democracy!

The dilemma between ethical upbringing and materialist-positivist-rationalist studies

2011-08-14T10:52:00.000+02:00

"Yet Kawakami's final resistance to Marxist science was expressed in a subtle fashion. Prevented by the discipline of scientific socialism from allowing his subjectivism to spill over onto the pages of economic analysis, he took to using the introductions to his Marxian studies to explain to his readers the course of his, painful road to Marxism. The autobiography was his last effort to reintroduce his ethics (and himself) into his scientific research."

"Like so many of his generation, Yoshino was disappointed Japan had not made 'spiritual progress' since the Restoration. The Meiji leaders had opened the country to the material benefits of modern society, but they had neglected, perhaps deliberately, to encourage the moral and religious values that lay at the base of Western civilization. [...] The problem of political reform ultimately reduced to a problem of finding the proper men to do so, and the institutional innovations he advocated-universal suffrage and all the rest-were largely directed toward this end. This stance laid Yoshino open to accusations of elitism. To a degree this criticism was accurate, but it should be qualified by the observation that Yoshino embraced a 'moral elitism' rather than an intellectual or social elitism. The last point is worth stressing since it is tempting to see Yoshino as spokesman for the new bureaucratic middle class trained at Teidai. Down until the end of World War I, when the Shinjinkai was organized, Yoshino deplored the narrow careerism of his own students there [at Tokyo Imperial University]. They excelled at their studies, but they seemed to know little of what was going on in the world around them, and they lacked "well developed personalities" with a broad view of life. They certainly did not constitute the kind of elite Yoshino had in mind."

More and more I recognize in Kawakami Hajime's and Yoshino Sakuzō's dilemma my own between ethical upbringing (The character matters!) and structuralist studies (It's all about the institutions!). With studies in corporate governance focusing on agential issues of moral hazard and bounded rationality, I seem to have taken the popular root of my times (rather than Christianity or Marxism back then) to challenge the "hominis lupus" and "homo oeconomicus" of rationalists and positivists.

I rest convinced that as long as people shall enjoy moral upbringing, they will face this fundamental conflict between the "warm" personal morals and the "cold" theories and institutions of modern materialism, positivism, and rationalism, thus perpetuating Kawakami's finding that "[i]n the history of economic thought, I have discovered my own mental history".

Liberalism is just a belief after all.

2011-07-31T16:55:00.002+02:00

Liberalism is indeed a most consistent and thus compelling world view. Not surprisingly, it has thus celebrated sweeping success throughout the world.
Yet, as the world has come to live according to it, the time has come to acknowledge - as a truly enlightened man in Kant's tradition - to dispel even this world view as not the truth but belief.
That is, grown on the ground of classical liberalism itself, information theory with the concepts of information asymmetries on the societal level and bounded rationality on the individual, has provided sufficient evidence to refute the liberal theorems of efficient markets and the "homo oeconomicus" respectively. What is more, constructivism, namely critical theory, has uncovered the bias in positivist research that established the liberal paradigm.
Simply put, as noone will ever know and understand his world to the full extent, he cannot claim to make decisions to the best outcome, but only to his best intentions. As such, liberalism falls back in line with all other ideas on social and individual welfare. Liberalists cannot claim to make the world and each life better.
Thus, we shall overcome the liberal belief. Overcoming the liberal belief does not mean to abandon it, but acknowledging its shortcomings and supplement theories and laws that appeal to man's ratio with more traditional, "conservative" of morals and ethics implicitly and sublimely guide people in a direction as you simply cannot reason with a man that does not know, understand, and most importantly, experienced important insights yet lying ahead. Of course, such morals and ethics must be limited to smallest amount possible. Otherwise, we may well prevent explorers to discover new paths.

Lessons from a 100 years ago

2011-07-31T15:21:00.001+02:00

I have just learned a very important lesson in foreign politics and how to deal with China's rise in particular.
When Japanese intellectuals a 120 years ago came to think that the only way to avoid subjugation in international politics is to "enlighten" (「文明化」) and "Westernise" (「欧化」) their own country (even at the expense of their traditional "spirit" (「国粋」) that haunts Japanese identity so much these days), the Western great powers grown wary and reacted with further suppression. Yet, this reaction just made the intellectuals within the country that promoted that "enlightenment" and "Westernisation" in peaceful terms, in the view of an enlightened "merchant nation" (「商業国」) in particular, to turn to and succumb to the more nationalist and militant ideas of their intellectual opponents. As a result, instead of liberalism, militant imperialism received the undivided voice of the country's intelligentsia - leading from the Russo-Japanese War to the occupation of Manchuria and finally to the Pacific War whereby the arrogant, discriminating reaction by the great powers, again and again like running against a wall (Triple Intervention, Treaty of Versailles, the U.S. Gentlemen's Agreement, Roosevelt's Japan policy), only proliferated the turn to nationalism by each new intellectual generation (徳富蘇峰, 石橋湛山, maybe even 福澤諭吉?). In this view, the complete defeat by the hands of the U.S. power and the unconditioned surrender gives plenty of fuel for future nationalism - although effectively contained by the GHQ demilitarisation and democratisation policies and continuous pacifism.
Yet, today, not only the Western nations but also the very same Asian nation that experienced this spiral of nationalism now confronts a rising China in a similar way like Japan those ten dozen years ago. Unsurprisingly, Chinese nationalism and militancy is on the rise and the suppression of liberal voices receives little attention by the common people therein.
What is the conclusion? If you do not know the intellectual debate within the country, don't you dare to interfere! How many of the Western leaders speak Chinese, Urdu, or Arabian?
This all reminds me of Heidegger's hermeneutics again: You mustn't be lectured, but do things yourself. Only your own experience gives true understanding (in Weber's sense of "verstehen") which you yourself won't be able to pass on. All you can do is providing an environment helpful for others to do things themselves. What is more, this understanding of enlightenment is ancient, not only already reflected in ancient China's cyclical (60 years to be specific) history view, but also in the very characters of the writing system of that cultural hotpot. Just look carefully at each character of my idiosyncratic attempt to translate the quintessence of those hermeneutics into 學脩不如理解不如覺悟.

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Name one real Japanese Philosopher! I haven't found one yet. (Western or Greek/Roman) Philosophy is for me the art of asking good (direct) questions, while Japanese is never direct. By frequently using ambiguous particles (-ne, -na, -ka, -no etc.), Japanese makes dualistic dialogue practically impossible. Instead of a thesis and an antithesis leading to synthesis, there is the ideal of telepathic communication (以心伝心), where there is already synthetic agreement from the beginning and thus nothing to argue about.

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You ask the wrong guy. Positivism and structuralism have kept me away from reading much about or of Japanese philosophy, humanities in general, so far, I'm afraid - maybe, yes, right because of the different conceptualisation hidden in the language barrier, but definitely the awful political subversion in Japanese social science. (Honestly, all this nonsense about 系列 or 甘え sent me diagonally away from searching for genuine theories in modern Japanese social science. And mind you, even scholars in Western universities, like Fukuyama in political science and Aoki and Ramseyer in economics, say so.) Yet, that does not mean by any means that I would deny philosophy, deprive it of, conceptualisation different to what you suggested and is Aristotelian dialectics, I guess. In fact, different approaches influenced or even determined by linguistic and its path-dependent restrictions become more and more important for me every year - right because Western social science is all too focused on specific modes of research, namely American positivism and structuralism. Contrary to those claims, Asian political and economic models might be not simple bastards of Western theories after all. If we dug deep enough, we might find genuine concepts to other ways structuring our political and economic system. In this view, Japanese 思想史 has a lot to contribute - and indeed, it's fascinating how fast Japanese scholars in politics and economics caught up with Western theory and went forward to ask questions ahead of their Western counterparts - right because Japan had developed so rapidly. (For example, while U.S. president Wilson is presented as the uncompromising incorporation of idealism in Western political science, he must have appeared like a damn racist or at least puppet of domestic immigration politics to Japanese. Japanese scholars were quick in recognizing the hypocrisy of Western liberalism. However, always thinking that challenging "the more powerful" in his inconsistent views is of no use, each intellectual would eventually support further Westernisation just to reach the level where Japan does not suffer from those inconsistencies anymore. Japanese politics - even in science - is most pragmatic. This is all the more interesting when comparing things with recent policy-making in China which I recognize as post-structuralist: rejecting everything that comes from the West right because of fear of theoretical subversion.) While Japanese and Asian 思想 (philosophy/ science) in general may have sacrificed genuine epistemology for the sake of quick recognition in the "Western club", their political, economic, and socio-cultural environment remains distinct enough to cast questions upon Western theories we cannot even think of.

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Great Speech! I'd only like to add a 3 points: a) All the Thinking Schools in Japan are cheap copies of Western thought (e.g. Takeo Doi's Amae-concept based on superficial Freudian thought, Nishida Kitaro's Kyoto School based on superficial Kant etc.). Japanese strength (due to its vague language) lies in a poetic understanding of reality, where a Westerner has severe problems to fully understand. b) If you talk about American Positivism, don't forget American Pragmatism (Charles Sanders Peirce, William James) and Analytic Philosphy (Hilary Putnam). c) Sorry for simplifying, but with my superfical knowledge of China, it seems to me that they are having just the "right" mindset in this globalized world: Maximum straightforward capitalism married with absolute totalitarianism. There are no Chinese, only China and its GNP.

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Your point on American pragmatism is well taken! Positivism has celebrated a sweeping success in Western social science, however, and it is exactly based on this compelling paradigm, that I beg to disagree to your argument that Asia has never produced any independent one. Your reference to China's national policy makes a good example: China's neo-mercantilist "GDP-maxime" roots in the political theory of 「富國強兵」 developed in the 8th century B.C. which again was revived and adjusted to modern global free market theory for exploitation by Japanese theorists such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Okubo Toshimichi, Matsukata Masayoshi, and Yoshida Shigeru. In fact, to the extent that it (to this point) successfully exploited free market mechanisms, it proves well that it does not fit into the Western liberal paradigm (although it has encountered and was dealt with it in the case of French Colbertism and American and German "national systems" before Japan's remodelling).
Rather than denying Asia any genuine theories at all, I would make the case that they have been largely muted or absorbed by the extensive and most articulate body of work of the Western paradigms of liberalism and positivism. Just because there aren't many books doesn't mean that the ideas didn't exist! Look at the clearly realpolitik tradition of Chinese statesmen or the rice markets of Tokugawa Japan.

A simple metaphor for my constructivist world view

2011-07-12T18:30:00.002+02:00

Your world is a fireplace in the endless night. What matters to you is what you see the fire feeding on. What doesn't is the dark void beyond. You cannot care or think of what light doesn't reflect in your eyes. It doesn't exist.
Yet, do not stare in your fire alone. Look out into the night for others' fireplaces. Those fires feed on different matter, casting a different light. The more you see the larger your world, the more enlightened you become.

On the information age

2011-05-23T23:59:00.014+02:00

"An information revolution is currently transforming world politics. Four centuries ago, the English statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon wrote that knowledge is power. At the start of the twenty-first century, a much larger portion of the population both within and among countries has access to this power." (Nye, J. (2009): Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation. Boston: Longman.)

"The effects of mass communication and broadcasting, though not the telephone, tended to have a centralizing political effect. [...] These effects were particularly pronounced in countries where they were combined with the rise of totalitarian governments that were able to suppress competing sources of information. Indeed, some scholars believe that totalitarianism would not have been possible without the mass communications that accompanied the second industrial revolution." (Nye, 2009: p. 271)

"As far as countries are concerned, most information shapers are democracies. This is not accidental. Their societies are familiar with free exchange of information and their institutions of governance are not threatened by it. They can shape information because they can also take it." (Nye, 2009: p. 275)

"The explosion of information has produced a 'paradox of plenty.' Plenty of information leads to scarcity of attention. When people are overwhelmed with the volume of information confronting them, they have difficulty discerning what to focus on. Attention rather than information becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from background clutter gain power. Editors and cue givers are in increasingly high demand, and this is a source of power for those who can tell us where to focus our attention. Brand names and the ability to bestow an international 'Good Housekeeping' seal of approval will become increasingly more important." (Nye, 2009: p. 286)

Indeed, access to information is no longer the primary issue of empowerment in democracies, but the increasing (transaction) costs of processing and making sense of the information that each individual has access to. As such, efficient methods in information management, namely a structural and critical mindset, have become more important than ever. Such methods can be trained, but of course, a broader form of education through socialisation (post-materialist values such as active and critical discussion culture, creativity, and innovation) is far more effective.

My take on social science (and political science in particular)

2011-05-22T11:21:00.006+02:00

What makes social studies on East Asia so difficult.

2011-05-22T11:13:00.001+02:00

"Scholars seeking to explore these renewed relationships [in international politics in East Asia] in a dynamic and uncertain international context face a double challenge.
One challenge is to bridge the gap between the rich comparative and foreign policy scholarship on China, Japan, and the United States, on the one hand, and the wider world of international relations theory on the other. The two worlds of area specialty and international relations theory often do not meet. As a result, policy debates about the stability of Asia-Pacific relations tend to be under-theorized, while theoretical arguments about the region are often undertaken without the benefit of historical or comparative perspective. [...]
In doing so, a second interesting challenge emerges. International relations scholars, particularly those trained in the United States, employ theories that emerged in the context of the Western historical experience. American international relations theories are deeply rooted in Western philosophical traditions and betates, with an intellectual lineage traced back to Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant Locke, Marx, and other classic thinkers. It is not immediately apparent - nor should it be taken for granted - that these theories or intellectual constructs are relevant to understanding Chinese, Japanese, or Korean calculations and behavior." (Ikenberry, G. J.; Mastanduno, M. (2003): International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 1-2.)

"The question is not whether theory is relevant to practice, but which theories and how aware practical people are of the origins and limitations of the theories they inevitably use." (Nye, J. S.; Welch, D. A. (2009): Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation. Boston: Longman. p. ix.)

"Historians who believe that understanding comes from simply recounting the facts fail to make explicit the hidden principles by which they select some facts rather than others. Equally mistaken are political scientists who become so isolated and entangled in a maze of abstract theory that they mistake their mental constructs for reality. Only by going back and forth between history and theory can we avoid such mistakes." (Nye, J. S.; Welch, D. A. (2009): Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation. Boston: Longman. p. xi.)

"[A]ll the theories have a history, though not always within the discipline of IR. These histories mean that comparing theories is not easy, since they emerge from very different intellectual traditions. Therefore many of the chapters use the word 'theory' in specific ways: we need to stress this to the reader, since the different usage results directly from the historical and intellectual heritage of each approach." (Smith, 2007: p. 8.)

"The role of meta-theoretical debates is frequently misunderstood. Some see metatheorizing as nothing more than a quick precursor to empirical research. Others see it as a distraction from the real issues that should concern the discipline. However, it is impossible for research to proceed in any subject domain in the social sciences in the absence of a set of commitments embedded within positions on the philosophy of social science. In this sense, meta-theoretical positions direct, in a fundamental way, the manner in which people theorize and, indeed, 'see' the world." (Kurki, Milja und Colin Wight (2007). International Relations and Social Science. In: Dunne, Tim; Kurki, Milja und Steve Smith (Hrsg.) (2007). International Relations Theory: Discipline and Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press: pp. 13-33.)

"Our survey of the literature, much of it written by and for Japanese (although it was not as extensive as we would have liked), did provide background and corroborative evidence of what the Japanese were thinking." (Fukushima, F.; Oh, K. (1993): The U.S.-Japan security relationship after the Cold War. Santa Monica: RAND. p. 5)

What makes social studies on East Asia so difficult in the 21st century is not the lack of willingness to reflectivism anymore, but the lack of literature and genuine voices from the region that this reflectivism could start with. In order to find ideas and opinions not explicitly or implicitly determined by Western paradigms, we may need to dig into early or pre-modern literature.

Objektivismus deckt das Paradoxon der Normativität des Positivismus auf.

2011-05-05T08:41:00.000+02:00

Schaut Euch mal diesen Artikel in der NZZ an.

Die Referenz zu Rand liegt nahe und deckt das grundlegende Paradox moderner Sozialwissenschaften auf: Man glaubt blind, respektive religiös, in die Axiome eines alten Smiths oder Schumpeters, ja sogar die Kritik stützt sich auf Adam Riese (Bedenkt, dass Mathematik eine Geisteswissenschaft ist!), und kreiert daraus ein "liberales" Wirtschafts- und Sozialsystem, das auf konstantem Wachstum beruht, obwohl jedermann klar vor Augen hat, dass die Erde und damit die Resourcen begrenzt sind. Neoliberale flüchten da ins Wachstum der Bevölkerung und blasen alles mit Serviceleistungen, dann Internet, schliesslich der Quantifizierung von Frischluft und -Wasser auf.
Die grösste Tragödie ist, dass der moderne Student in den Sozialwissenschaften in diesen Tagen keine Onthologie und Epistemologie oder sonst philosophische Ansätze studieren, sondern einfach nur noch Weber, Smith, Friedmann und Porter auswendig lernen muss. Eine Armee positivistisch-religiös indoktrinierter Studentenzombies in Staat und Wirtschaft!

Birds

2011-04-29T12:30:00.004+02:00

My father wrote a many poems
both beautiful and deep.
Amongst there's one that kept my mind
and may here well fit.

The poem is about the flight
of two migrant birds
that kept a bond a life-time long -
it’s my father’s vow to my mom.

My mother liked the portray for sure
and must have felt the same
for as the poem’s kept in a frame
their bond has to this day endured.

And it's thanks to this stalwart bond,
this nestling could take his time
to hatch and grow, to fledge and oh,
he's taken off to Asian clime!

Why, their bond inspired this bird
to travel all around the world
to seek a bride of the same kind
who'd share his love and thoughts in mind,
to build a nest, to form a covey,
and set out on his own flyway.

And mind you, these days, it's not easy to find,
a merlin, heroine, crane or peregrine
among flocks of pigeons and peacocks,
cackling chicks bound on the ground,
all the trouble to have the girl here found!

Yes, Maya is my perfect match,
the heroine for my dream,
that complements and reflects,
the yang to my yin.

Not only gives comfort, support,
but more and far wiser,
considers, suggests, my thesis to the test,
my personal adviser!

And so, I turn to you, my love,
to thank you for today
to seal this bond, to look above,
and lift off to our own journey.

I have a dream, my dream is us
flying side by side,
along the ever-rising sun,
birdgroom and bride have joined as one
as king and queen of our realm,
for sure an awesome ride!

We feel the air and what is more,
trust each other’s wings,
sail far, glide fast, soar high, encore,
on the crest of winds!

There’ll surely be the casual stir
and we’ll have our feathers ruffled,
but we'll clear the fumes and groom our plumes -
no problem to handle a scuffle!

And should a thunderstorm arise
set us off course, the radar black,
we will stay close, best nature's force
together we'll find back on track!

Together there’s nothing we couldn’t weather,
no lesson that we wouldn’t learn from
better ourselves in whatever the matter,
and reach a broader horizon.

With this dream, let me conclude
with my own vow
to be true, to stay with you
and never let you down.

What God has joined, men shan’t divide,
enjoin the old scriptures.
Yet, it’s not rules that shall make abide,
but our both dream for this great flight,
for nothing else will meet this!

The hidden benefit of being a Super Power

2011-04-13T09:03:00.002+02:00

Everyone is talking about how being a Super Power in the modern world allows you to threaten your enemies and bully your partners. But the real benefit is that you can borrow money from all your partners and they will not be able to claim it back - because your default is a systemic risk that threatens everyone's demise (provided there are still enemies).
So, it may actually pay off for a country to waste a large junk of their majority on military expenditures if they can expect to borrow at least as much from partner countries to build domestic infrastructure: Spending your money on weapons that (indirectly) force your allies to build cities and streets in your country that can never be taken away.

Who animates the faces for Dreamworks productions?

2011-03-20T13:40:00.002+01:00

I am just watching Megamind and I enjoy the movie as much as Rapunzel. Guess why? The animation of characters' faces. It is so natural and so versatile. What is more, it beats the mimics of any average Hollywood actor these days hired only because of nepotism or good looks. With such awesome animators, the future belongs to animation movies for sure. Now, who is behind the face animation at Dreamworks?

Well-being as the pit trap of Western scholars' insight

2011-03-20T10:23:00.005+01:00

Students in Switzerland and other developed countries waste years and years of study life to highly philosophical questions whether business or society came first, whether man is an egoist homo oeconomicus by nature, a wolf to his peers, and so on.
Now, I have learned to understand that what clouds our all understanding is not as much the bounded rationality of man in general but our own distorted world view as a result of abounding wealth.
18 years ago, social scientists were afraid that the U.S.-Japan security alliance would fall apart because of the end of the ideology conflict underlying the Cold War. They did not anticipate how economic crisis would be much more imperative to policy-making than some feeble ideological views on how the world should be. These days, we are afraid of a rising China that could undermine the universal superiority of our democratic principles.
In general, we do not realize about the imperative character of economic facts that influence daily decision-making in politics and business by probably 99%. In fact, the same applies for anyone who first needs his basic needs for food, shelter, and (emotional) security covered before he can start pondering about ideologies in the first place.
But no, the wealthy is not aware of this anymore and thus, misses the most important ingredient to history. Thus, it is basically the scholar's own safe-guarded well-being that prevents him from observing, learning and eventually anticipating real-life events.

Limits of Rand's philosophy

2011-03-18T15:28:00.000+01:00

Ayn Rand's objectivism is a philosophy as extensive as integrated: Pursuing personal ambitions yields the highest value - both for oneself as well as society. Seeking success for recognition by others is no ambition of one's own. (Keating) Suppressing others' success does not increase one's own. (Toohey) Helping others to succeed is no success of one's own. (Halsey) Making one's own ambition to increase another's success is of no value for anyone./ Sacrificing oneself for another's success does not allow oneself to participate in his. (Francon) Giving up one's true personal ambitions and pursue those of others, namely those of many, more easily yields success with no value at all. (Wynand: "The saint in a cloister sacrifices only material things. I wanted power over a collective soul and I got it.") Suppressing one's personal ambitions and working for others, preferably those of the largest number, until one is at the top and can pursue one's true personal ambitions freely is too late. (Wynand) To pursue one's own ambitions, not to mind about other's impact or one's own on others ultimately yields success in such purity that it serves everyone. (Roark: "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life." - "Your strength?" - "Your work.")
It is important to notice, however, that this philosophy bears a fundamental presumption rather illusive: This world is large and rich enough, in fact, is becoming larger and richer so that everyone has enough room or resources to succeed without infringing each other. There must be enough room so that you can escape a displeased power's control and seek success somewhere (geographically) else. As long as there is new space to explore, the current place does not require democracy or meritocracy. There must be enough room so that your success does not hold off another one. There must be enough resources so that nobody needs to clean the toilets in the future. Obviously, this is illusive: Man is a social animal. Its success lies in social collaboration. Collaboration is not the pursuit of one's personal ambition alone or if so, on the costs of another. In terms of political science, this is where we cross the homo oeconomicus' line from profit seeking to rent seeking. Given the ever more limited resources of this planet, your success inevitably is on cost of others. Smith's and Ricardo's win-win game is not perfect. If not history than globalisation teaches us that. To the extent that you can live with that, you may still agree with Rand's ideas.

I only miss my family.

2011-01-30T02:31:00.002+01:00

Apart from that, I am little inclined to return to a continent where everyone's effort has come to exhaust in attempting to charge the state for as much of their needs and expenses as possible: Everyone wants tax-cuts. Everyone wants full (alternative) healthcare coverage. Everyone wants subsidies. Noone wants to work extra, work out for fitness and try to pay his bills in full. Political rent-seeking is the perversion of liberalism. I'm about to turn libertarian.

The End of Democracy II

2011-01-08T08:25:00.004+01:00

Three months ago, I have come up with the idea of a soon end of modern democracy. I blamed it on bounded rationality.
However, such reasoning demands an utilitarian, reasonable character of each individual, something that modern "positive" theories deem "normative".
Thus, I have redesigned my argumentation and blame it on the devastating effects of rent-seeking in democracies.
The argument changes in that people consciously try to reap premium profits from government in form of tax cuts, subsidies, uncontrolled deregulation, etc. In the process, the state becomes more and more hollowed out and weakens.
Subsequently, the government fails to ensure necessary socio-economic stability (through sustainable redistribution) or even law enforcement!
In this weakened state, socio-economic exploit, corruption, militancy and radicalism rises.
In due time, people will seek for restabilisation by a totalitarian regime, either of fascist or religious nature. In this context, it is most interest to notice that current trends point to religious orientations rather than the typical 20th century nationalism. This may lie both in the failure of recent paradigms of social sciences, namely neoliberalism (Reagan and Thatcher were funded by the most vicious rent-seekers of these days.) and free, unbiased information (The press was once called the fourth, independent power, but at present appears more politically biased than ever), as well as widening socio-economic gaps within the countries. Right because the devastating effects of socialism and fascism are in fresh memory, people hence may go medieval again.
Modern democracy failed at developing efficient measures against its own members' exploitation, and ironically, it was the descendants of its most vivid supporters, the liberals in Western countries such as the U.S., the U.K., and France, that have exploited it first. They inherited the money but not the vision of their forefathers.

The basic flaw in Rand's philosophy of Objectivism

2011-01-03T10:55:00.005+01:00

In her books, Ayn Rand promotes a theory that people and society prosper the most when they pursue their personal interests only based on a strong free will and fair terms of competition.
There is a fundamental problem in this view: Self-fulfillment is an option that can be achieved and born only by a few in any society. Or as Fontaine in Bioshock put it: "Even in the greatest society, someone has to clean the toilets."
Thus, as Rand's theory rejects ideas of social equalisation as "socialist lies" to cripple free will, it also implies radical competition in which the winner takes it all. Yet, how can the outlook of losing anything if not beating everyone else promote a stable society, or safe and happy relationships? Humans are a social breed after all. (Her personal hero Howard Roark does not really present this attitude, though.) It is biased and flawed to presume that fulfillment of one's personal dreams is enough to become completely happy. After all, you gain a lot more when sharing it with others.
Thus, regardless of other problems like inherited differences that forestall a level playing field, higher social stress due to increased competition, or limited resources, Rand's theory is not optimal, not only from an utilitarian, but also individual point of view.
The alternative suggestion in Bioshock appears much more feasible - and familiar: Screw any ideology, may it be in religion, economics or society, in the first place and instead, love and care more for what's dear to you.

About Rand's Fountainhead

2011-01-03T10:43:00.003+01:00

Rand's book "The Fountainhead" features half a dozen of in-depth character analysis to promote a basic idea. The characters of Howard Roark, Peter Keating, Catherine, Dominique Francon, Ellsworth M. Toohey, and Gail Wynand are attributed the values of a) inherited traits, b) talents, c) will strength, d) support, and e) goals in life in different, surprisingly less dichotomous ways. The basic conclusion is that regardless of inherited traits and talents, only a strong will to pursue genuine personal goals yields self-respect. Strong will again requires a strong belief in free will.

Lesson 1.

2010-12-08T15:19:00.000+01:00

Don't ask questions for the sake of it.
Ask questions to learn.
Don't ask questions to challenge the teacher or look critical. You do not learn that way.
I need to apologise to a lot of people in my past.

About democracy.

2010-12-02T06:16:00.003+01:00

Thomas Jefferson said that "the two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
I dare challenging his take and argue that the biggest enemy to the people never was any government, conspiracy or crime, but their own laziness. Democracy takes a personal effort starting with Enlightenment. Yet, as such an effort does not pay off in materialistic value in the immediate or short-term perspective, people do not invest in what they cannot reap short-term profits or status symbols. Such is the fate of an ever more closer spiral into egomaniac and thus unsustainable development.

For my future career.

2010-11-22T02:49:00.001+01:00

I seek a job that requires the analysis and scrutiny of a comprehensive system of people, interests, and influences, in a systematic and onwards-oriented approach.
That is my strength and interest: Being systematic and seeking the big picture. Compiling it from the bits and pieces and keeping it. Without distractions. I think of it as my strategy for success.
I like the Swiss mountains above the forest line. I don’t like the sea that much. I cannot overview it.

My take on the next two years.

2010-10-22T07:32:00.004+02:00

The way out of this story would be a debt-relief programme for US households in which the US government issues bonds and other countries buy them up, Prof. Shin Jang-sup suggests.
Yet, the questions remains at what interests rates those bonds must be valued and whether the US can afford interest rates high enough to reflect the risk and attract other countries, Asian countries in particular, to invest into such bonds in the first place - after all, Asian countries want to promote the development of domestic markets and introduce social welfare systems to rise their peoples' living standards and be reelected or maintain social stability at least.
Given the fact that currently, all Asian countries are selling US dollar, this is not likely.

The current state of the global economic system

2010-10-19T05:37:00.014+02:00

I have grown more and more in what is a mix of interest and concern about the current state of the global economic system.
In short, how the mechanisms of free trade inspired by neoliberal market theory are corrupted by national legislation in a realist mindset is not as much to be condemned as fully expected by the impact of political rent-seeking.
Yet, the biggest problem is that in this game of opportunistic rent-extraction - on international as well as national level - nobody is committed to rules of fairness and equality: Autocrats indulge in corruption, MNUs and the rich escape to tax havens while unions and workers insist on their hard-fought social welfare system.
In this regard, neoliberalism appears just like the communism of modern days with its economists believing in the high spirit and solidarity of merchants, tradesmen and bankers of contributing to a fair global system. If not on international level between countries, this system is set for conflict on the national level.

Source: The Straits Times, 12.10.2010.

Source: The Straits Times, 14.10.2010.

The End of Democracy

2010-09-29T12:33:00.001+02:00

Francis Fukuyama was wrong: Democracy does not end history, but eventually itself – just like the dinosaur kingdoms and feudalism and eventually, the whole human civilization yet another step in the perpetuating cycle of (r)evolution.

The reason for this evident conclusion lies not in structure or process of democracy, but a dilemma between those more and more sophisticated institutions of broad and fair decision-making and the everlasting bounded rationality of the human being: While the globalisation of economic, political, social, religious, climatic and health-related issues turn decision-making more and more complex, more and more entwined and interdependent, education and behaviour of the common people have evolved much slower: Students still memorize the same text-book concepts and adults still rant in religious strives and racism. The human psyche is all too natural for such a sophisticated concept like democracy, let alone direct democracy. And this world will always need spirits modest and mean enough to do the toilet jobs of every society – from a third-world country to Rapture.

Yet, ironically, the common spirit has grown more interested and self-confident in politics than ever: He is concerned about and scrutinizes politics and policies in every field, considers their impacts on his personal life and discusses this with his peers. Populism takes hold and tries satisfy all particular interests in unsustainable policies. The development in the European social-market states throughout the last sixty years is paragon for this development: huge welfare-states with farmers’ subsidies and industry export support also spending in education and culture. No tax money alone could afford such spending in the long term – all the more as the really rich citizens were about to leave as they felt not to profit of the public spill-overs into their private lives enough. It became cheaper to pay for security personnel and huge fences in third-world countries to afford the same level of safety and security like in the democratised home. In the US, the fading middle-class had been desperately trying to maintain the “American dream” with private debt. They all stepped and fell in the recent financial crisis that put private debt in the US and public debt in Europe under pressure.

As the example of the US, Greece, Sweden and the Netherlands show, the democratic state would not easily give in to austerity plans and strict saving. Rather, the people seek hope in populistic voices promising to stretch that lucky roll just a little bit further.

Meanwhile, business has grown desperate about the unreasonable and unsustainable weavering in domestic politics and is shifting business abroad to states where totalitarian governments of billions of poor people lured them to. They, too, do not contribute to sustainable development, but at least, their short-sighted business yields some profit for the time being.

One cannot reason about sustainability with totalitarian states sucking on global wealth like leeches, yet instead, it would need to be democratic states that make the first step ahead towards more considered politics and policy-making. Associations appear to the early days of democracy when wealthier, more educated strata in society wielded more weight in decision-making. Democratic weight depending on the voters’ education level would be a modern variation of such an approach – although the impact on socio-economic diversification is bound to follow at some point. It does not go along with human rights that are so closely entwined with democratic rights. An alternative would be to root out the reasons for the recent crisis of democracy: globalisation in all its forms. But a loss of economic efficiency, cultural diversity and technological innovation is a sacrifice many may consider larger than their democratic rights.

In any case, if democratic institutions do not face soon reforms to increase responsibility and sustainability in decision-making, its own end will be brought about by the success of the totalitarian state-model. Popper’s nightmare would be complete after all.

Where, oh, where?

2010-09-19T05:38:00.003+02:00

Where in this country are the places of romantics, of melancholy? Where can the nice sunrises be seen? The light food of an early Sunday morning be savoured? A sophisticated talk over a stroll in the afternoon? The sad music at sunset? Where does the heart lie in this country?

Indoctrinated economists (and bankers in particular) still struggling with the end of their paradigm

2010-09-06T11:16:00.004+02:00

Oh, now that comes as a surprise! It's not like the superior Anglo-American market system would have faced any systemic failures to recover from. After all, scholars of the neo-liberal "global market" system argued that Japan's "lost decade" and slow recovery was due to inefficiencies in their peculiar system where a tight government control through large bank intermediaries promoted growth and eventually empire-building.

Apparently, neo-liberalists still haven't understood that for economies that are highly developed, face a stagnating or even decreasing population, and where the largest turn-over of real goods, not services of secondary importance, is made by mature companies, annual growth rates of 3 to 5 percent are not to be expected normal anymore! Talking of "natural growth" and "sustainability" in such a context is highly paradoxical - and simply shows how market system-indoctrinated economists and most market players with similar expectations cannot get out of that overcome thinking pattern.

Principles and her.

2010-08-22T12:30:00.005+02:00

A great man is said to have principles, to stand for something. I always thought that people are secondary or downright unimportant, that it’s the greater things they stand for that make them interesting.
Now, I realized that she had come to stand for me, nothing greater. Thus, she couldn’t show me anything more but what I am and what I did. She does not walk along with me, but stands by me.
Does that make her uninteresting? Mediocre? Yet, me responsible for her? Or isn't it much less mediocre, much more exceptional after all? Perhaps, those high principles are actually of much less substance than a person’s well-being. What’s martyrdom for a cause compared to sacrifice for others?

What's the fascinating thing about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

2010-08-21T03:42:00.011+02:00

Basically, the group's music reflects the supernova of what I would like to call the "millenium turn tweenage": High anticipation of a new millenium reflected in crazy punkish noise, but soon enough abating into a mixture of melancholy and apathy with sudden jerks and bursts of that initial energy until fading out into the dark void.
Think of it like those times when you went along to a club even though you felt too old and tired already, saw through the nonsense but keep trying hard just to get that feeling again, to prove that you can still enjoy - failing more and more with every try. Eventually, you will step out into the cold breeze and accept or even embrace the feeling that you had burnt out, cooled down. That's when the melancholy kicks in - although lethargy is not far away and that's where their recent albums get really boring.

An unsent letter to Lord Desai

2010-08-19T04:31:00.002+02:00

Dear Lord Desai,

let me not ask for your signature on your recently published book, not for your ideas on an open question, but your opinion on my ideas and let me offer a suggestion so that reading carefully through these lines yields some value for you, too.
Also, let me forestall that I consider myself as a thinker valuing humanism, that is the thinking human being as the only real existence, call it philosophy or belief, but certainly not science, not materialism in theory or even goods.
Having stated this essential mindset of mine, let me introduce my idea with the provocative criticism that today’s thesis of yours about the 500 years-lasting Western dominance over Asia due to a) technological development, b) statehood, c) national ideology, d) innovation and e) entrepreneurship, that is “breaking the rules”, that this thesis was perfectly right, but missed to hit the spot, that one word that may explain everything you talked about.
Obviously, your five arguments align into a gradual expansion of what the Western mindset is about. That is, you do not try to attribute Western success to natural circumstances, but search for a cause in the socio-economic and even philosophical setup.
In this setup, I inevitably came to associate all your arguments with one single aspect of the Western mindset and a distinct development in European history that may add up to the fundamental driver of Western thinking, the ultimate reason for Western success, “Enlightenment”, and I couldn’t help but to draw the conclusion out of your speech that basically, Asia is not enlightened yet, is it?
I remember your first response on this proposition: “Enlightenment is just a word. There were many movements in Europe, the Scottish enlightenment…” But, given your education in Western science and your long experience in Europe, you may agree that Enlightenment is quite substantial, both in programme and action, with the French revolution as its prevalent political expression and the famous definition by Europe’s forefather of modern philosophy, Emanuel Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.”
Isn’t that precisely what your examples were all referring to throughout your speech? “Breaking the rules” and “entrepreneurship” is nothing else but “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”. “Innovation” and the resulting “technological development” is nothing else but “one’s understanding without guidance from another”. All what you were talking about referred to that seminal movement that made Europe sceptical in all areas of public life and even people’s personal beliefs and principles!
The argument bears further implication: When putting “Enlightenment”, maybe the only word that deserves to be put in capital letters in English next to the liberal “I”, into a longer historical perspective, it was preceded by two centuries of humanism. Humanism was the Renaissance of antique disciplines of philosophy and put “human”, the human being, as the only true value, the only real thing in this void (!) world. Also, it broke with previously prevalent religious dogmas and subjected itself to a new principle, the principle of questioning all principles. Humanism’s great legacy is system-criticism and its antique tools, the “liberal arts”, are exactly what Mahbubani Kishore’s article in yesterday’s “Straits Times” upheld in times of radical change.
Next, Enlightenment and the French Revolution was succeeded by the process of democratisation in Europe. I do not consider myself as an advocate of political democratisation and would like to distinguish between democratisation of thought and democratisation of decision, the first one not requiring the second, although the argument that “emerging from one’s self-imposed immaturity” may call forth to make and to bear one’s own decisions is very compelling. Yet, again, let us consider that democratisation has a highly destabilising element both in socio-political and personal regard. After all, even in European history, democratisation brought along long, violent wars, French armies had to install “republics” by force and inculcate their people against their own will. Kant’s followers had to admit themselves that most people did actually not want to emerge from their self-imposed immaturity. Responsibility is a heavy weight. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their’s is the Heaven’s”, the still dominant Bible taught. (I write these words with capital letters out of respect to my social imprint.)
Yet, undoubtedly, democratisation of both thought and decision laid the path to the development of national states in Europe. You said that nations have to be thought of, have to be created. I would like to add that nations have to be recreated, scrutinized with every new generation – and that requires the common people to be enlightened.

Now, it’s at this point where my suggestion comes in: Given Enlightenment the new central aspect of Western success, the conclusions from 500 years of Western dominance for the future success of Asia does not lie as much in Western achievements in economy and science. Western business models and machine blueprints can be copied, you said yourself. No, it lies in the development of a critical mindset among all people.
This does not call for mere education. Literacy is of no use if you don’t want or can’t read critical books and even more importantly, cast your own criticism on it. In fact, a critical mindset is something that may more likely evolve among elder men at Sunday brunches or teenagers meeting up in their own club – or the internet! Oh, how internet censorship cripples Asian teenagers’ minds!
Yet, indeed, schools are the best place to start at: Schools can provide the facilities, resources and guidance to raise a critical mindset with care and nourish with knowledge.

This is where the Nalanda University comes in: In his introductory remarks to your speech, Professor Wang Gungwu encouraged all guests to ponder about what way of education the new Nalanda University shall endeavour.

With all these considerations, I am confident to suggest that the Nalanda University shall be dedicated to educate the “liberal arts” to support the students’ independent, idiosyncratic development of such a critical mindset. Defy the typical Asian school programme of ex-cathedra teaching and certificate-hunting! Put courses about the theory of science, methodology and linguistics on top of the academic curriculum. Ask students to read up the “hard facts” in books at home and summarize the findings and criticise the approaches in presentations and workshops. Graduation shall not be dependant on a number of tests, but real contribution to the current academic discourse. Also, the location and its legacy yield the highest promises for such an approach: Is not Buddhism the one philosophy, not religion, to think, in fact believe, that everything is void – may it be to accept and neglect worldly needs or may it be to set out for a whole new understanding of the world? Are there not striking similarities to humanism and even antique philosophy such as Platon’s? It is to question common principles and laws to set out for new innovation.

Create a new generation of Asian scholars in Asia for Asia and let them rethink and recreate the whole region. Start with “Asia” itself, this word that was given by the West, or even better, ignore this Westerner’s idea and start with something else.

Japan's "Lost Decade" is the new "Great Depression" for economists!

2010-08-18T02:28:00.004+02:00

This is just a keynote, an important one to any student of economics and Japanese studies, though: During a seminar at EAI NUS Singapore yesterday afternoon, I have come to understand that the recent financial crisis has been more analyzed in comparison with the burst of the Japanese bubble economy in the early 1990s, the subsequent Asia crisis and lost decade for Japan than the ever-impending Black Friday and subsequent Great Depression in the 1930s. Prof. Fung from the University of California, Santa Cruz, pointed out for example that recent nobel laureat Krugman's suggestions for US recovery are all orientated to Japan's lessons - which he wrote abounding literature about himself.

Clearly, liberal economics have absorbed the Japanese system and made it to one of its primary study objects in the last two decades - also for lessons for modern adaptation of their theories. This also goes for discussions on how to deal with China's rise for example. The references to the US-Japan trade talks are omnipresent.

As a sidenote, I dare to point out that European solutions for the financial crisis are less noticed - even though North European countries, including Germany, that one country that keeps resisting to fully adapt to the Anglo-American liberal system and remains much more similar to the "traditional" Japanese one, has fared much better in recovery!

They are all talking about the same: system-criticism.

2010-08-18T00:00:00.000+02:00

Call it liberal arts, call it breaking the rules. In the end, it's all about thinking outside of the box, system-criticism. I just feel glad that those guys get some credit for promoting such view - especially in Asia.

What is Inception about?

2010-07-30T18:36:00.001+02:00

Given this constrained complexity of the movie, one question becomes more pressing than ever: What was it all about? What’s the message of the movie?
A viewer still overwhelmed may recall some of Cobb’s lines about “facing reality” and “accepting the truth” by “taking a leap of fate”, yet: Wasn’t he left in suspense whether Cobb’s return to America was just another dream, the whole story played in Cobb’s mind?
No, provided that director Christopher Nolan developed the parallel’s between Robert Fischer’s and Cobb’s dream worlds on purpose and that he didn’t just added that final thrill as a cheap addendum, the message obviously goes beyond that platitude of “facing reality”.
Instead, assuming Nolan’s cleverness remained, it’s actually everything else in the movie that gives the message - starting from Cobb’s words about inception as an idea that is stuck in your mind and culminating in Mal’s and Fischer’s fate of living in a dream world: Inception is possible and just as Cobb achieved it with those two victims, he had fallen to it himself. That is, he came to believe that he was living in reality and that he could overcome Mal’s fate. In short, he was made to believe a belief, had managed to believe a belief. That’s what the basic concept of an idea is.
Starting from that point, the whole movie transposes itself into the opposite, the negative pattern: 1) Cobb was running from becoming Mal, 2) Fischer reflects Cobb, but before Cobb could get aware of that 3) Mal turns him into herself. Think of it: 1) Wasn’t Cobb running from US authorities in the whole movie? Who were those agents in Mombasa? Those were his subconscious defenses! 2) Doesn’t Fischer show precisely the same pattern and doesn’t Cobb force Fischer into further dreams to let Fischer paralyze his own defenses? A dream within a dream to overcome the first dream’s defenses. Well, wasn’t Mal’s appearance in all of Cobb’s missions (that are dreams within the dream-story) destroying the reality of the first world? Yet, in order to make Cobb believe that the dream-story was real, 3) he was forced into a dream (city of memories) after himself forcing a dream on Fischer (snow land). Remember: In the case of Fischer, Cobb wanted to create three dream levels to confuse Fischer. Why wouldn’t Cobb himself be in a dream of four levels where - right because it sounds so impossible - was forced into a fifth level (city of memories) by a very talented architect? Wasn’t it Ariadne who made Cobb enter the city of memories again - after ALLEGEDLY many years?
So, the conclusion is that in his missions, Cobb was not giving inceptions to other people, but was made to take down his own defenses to accept the first dream, his life without Mal, as reality.
Who could have possibly been the architect of such a complicated, five-level dream world? Remember that the architect is in the dream, too. Well, there are basically only two characters: the girl and... professor Miles, the old mastermind who brings back Cobb to the very same scene he left his children in. He is the man who staged the whole story as a dream for Cobb to accept the idea that Mal’s dead - for what purpose (Maybe she is really dead and Cobb cannot accept in the real world or maybe, he doesn’t want Cobb to be with her.) remains open.
In contrast to all the strong arguments that Cobb is living in a dream world all along (defenses in Mombasa, returning to the same scene with his kids after a long time), there’s one argument against this whole theory: Considering that Cobb was implanting inception into Fischer on a 20 hours-flight and that the first of Fischer’s dreams (car chase in rain) lasted around an hour, the second (hotel) 5 hours and so on, time in Cobb’s reality passes faster than in his missions - suggesting Cobb’s reality is the real reality. But that may be where Nolan’s cleverness stopped caring.

Great success is great.

2010-07-15T11:55:00.001+02:00

"The concept of hybridization refers to the innovative recombination of elements (Pieterse 1994) in ways that rejects both an economic determinism of a single best model, as well as societal determinism which suggests that practices can never be transferred across social contexts." -

This sounds like the key statement that gilds four years fierce opposition both against liberal theories on the one hand as well as cultural determinism with highest authority and tantamounts to a direct slap in the face of all paradigm-led scholars and their textbook-wise students - in economics, Japanese studies and political science.

Universities shouldn't teach anything else but methodology, game and information theory and some transaction costs economics. Anything else leads into scientific dogmas, scienticism.

What is the original ending of Neon Gensis Evangelion about?

2010-07-08T09:18:00.000+02:00

It's about overcoming your own fear of existence and acknowledging that you don't exist because you want or are aware of yourself, but because you have found your actions reflected in other people and that the socialisation therefrom has shaped your belief determining the view of the world. That is, you are only aware of yourself because you see your views and thoughts clashing with others in exchange (humanism: Nothing's real but people.) and that you conform to norms like gravity, marriage, etc. because of rather undeliberate learning. In short, the ending tries to diminish the concept of free will that has become so important in our world views.

Rand's archetypes

2010-07-07T08:10:00.003+02:00

From Elsworth to Howard - is it possible or does one end up at Dominique's? Simply put, how to find one's profession, that natural call, when interests nor needs never run strong enough?
In any case, one must feel glad not to start at Peter's for realizing, not to mention overcoming those initial gifts presents an obstacle, a gift turned into a curse, much larger.

Scienticism as a dead-end for a meaningful life - for you and people around you

2010-06-20T18:36:00.002+02:00

"the golden path is initiating a system where the obvious truth of reality is so complete that all succeding generations are aware of both their insignificance against all reality(and hence the importance of preparing and improving for the future) evenly balanced with the nesscity of enjoying the preparations laid for them by the provious generations"

I was once trying to explain life by all means of science. I had broken history down to sociological patterns, relationships to agency relations, emotions to chemical reactions and eventually, I concluded that life itself was a freak of creation and came to pity it for its "mean nature" of doing nothing but trying to procreate itself with no goal or meaning not even its own sake into all infinity.

What I had become was a scienticist. What led me to that approach was my strong belief in science as the most comprehensive and accurate world view. What I did was thinking too high of science, too far for its means, too deliberate for the circumstances and too large for one's own life.

Let me elaborate on those four points.
First, scienticists think of science too high for crediting it as the only approach for grasping reality and the real source of finding (logical) truth. Yet, what such view misses is to accept the deliberate, sometimes downright arbitrary axioms in theory, procedures in methodology and scales in measurement.

Furthermore, scienticists think of science too far for considering it not only as mere means but ends for explaining the world, for suggesting that it yields meaning and truth, giving sense to its observations and measurements. Yet, science tells nothing but the theories we put up in the beginning, based on our beliefs.
What made science so compelling for me is gaining understanding from not a single man's point of view, but an universal one.

Next, science is too deliberate that it neglects the conditions and circumstances people normally are involved in. A scienticist may trumpet about his worldly-wise view on human attitude, trivialize fear and love as simple instincts, mere chemical reactions, but in the very moment of personal involvement, he will succumb to his own instincts and emotions, will become a slave of his "mean nature" and won't be able to think either of scientific theories or models. This is what behavioural science and game theory has long come to call "bounded rationality" and put at the very basis of their thinking.
It is so easy and comfortable to do science if you're well-fed, well-treated and taken care of, that is feeling secure - emotionally, financially and politically. Yet, when the lower needs lack satisfaction, all those theories and models are futile - although they would be in most dire need at that point. I loathe those snobbish scienticists mocking religious people in despair without realizing that the strong belief in a higher being, real justice or a life after death yields more comfort than their aloof theories and models. At the end, it's all about feasibility, isn't it?

Finally and most importantly, science is too large for any individual's life as it puts "mankind's", some artificial concept of human entity, insight and enlightenment above an individual's. It's at this point where the initial statement meets its contradictory, unsatisfactory problem: Scienticism neglects that with every new generation, individuals must learn again, in fact, rather than simple learning actually EXPERIENCING and COMPREHEND, RECONSTRUCT, REPRODUCE - the English word "understand" does not live up to this crucial concept - scientific findings and conclusions again! "A child must burn its fingers itself.", "You only believe what you see." - Adages abound for the fundamental, if not for life essential insight that the most important insights, from feelings to ideas, from the most basic to the most sophisticated, cannot be taught but must be found oneself. I suppose this is what scientists have labelled with the hideous term epistemology. Thus, you cannot teach a child the chemistry of love when it had never felt the emotion. You cannot teach it gravitation if it never had an apple fallen on its head. And I daresay that it will never understand space if it has lived into eternity and travelled at the speed of light.

As a result, in taking science as true, meaningful, as a personal point of view, neglecting bounded rationality and the importance of personal experience and insight, I came to see the world as an infinitly perpetuating and thus, in conclusion consistent state of maintaining life and to ignore the life of each single being and what it goes through. I did not consider that every man and woman among me, every generation before and after me, will go through exactly the same pondering, reach the same conclusions just to refute them again as I do now.

While these perpetuating mistakes and amendments may again appear futile from a universal point of view, they are of such value to each one of us that it certainly lives up to a meaningful life. I won't mention any proverbs like "The way is the goal." as those platitudes yield no meaning as long as you've come up with them yourself. In this Platonian sense, even all these words are futile.

In fact, ultimately, one may even conclude that modern science impedes, complicates personal experience and insight, to come to such conclusions. The more comprehensive, universal and thus, compelling science becomes in our thinking, the less people look at themselves. In this view, science is an all too unproductive belief for our existence and the meaning of our lives.

What are the conclusions to be drawn?
Science provides no way of, not to mention meaning for life. It's a comprehensive, approximate belief to control and develop our society, but not our individual lives.

Stop teaching our children science, our own findings we take so much pride in. We had to learn them ourselves and so do our children! They deserve it! They deserve to come up with it themselves and take pride in that. Don't make them recite some dead folks' words as platitudes. Don't make them believe in science, develop it and pass it on according to your ideas. You are just forcing your own mindset on future generations that will struggle to question previous findings.

Instead, give them love and shelter - those conditions and circumstances so important to start thinking of their own - and don't teach, just let them be curious and critical, downright rebellious, as that's the path that will lead them to their own conclusions - maybe even better ones than these.

7 billion people, 7 billion beliefs, not one religion.

2010-06-20T18:36:00.000+02:00

7 billion beliefs, every one exchanging, 7 billion combinations.

Why would you want to join a church? Why would you want to follow, to accept, to live the belief of someone else? Why would you want to cede your privilege, your right, in fact your duty to give purpose to your life, to find the meaning of your own life, to become mature, to someone else or worse, an artificial institution?

There's no universal truth in this huge world we all understand just tiny bits of. There's no way that the human mind has the capacity to grasp all bits in the first place. And there's never the moment where we aren't distracted, biased, stuck in the same moment leading to bounded rationality. There is no truth, just every single one's. Given that, why would you want to give up your own truth and take another?

It's people's weakness, people's insecurity, people's fears that lure them in giving up their own free mind and finding confirmation in sharing the same will as a dozen, a hundred, thousands or millions of others.

More basically, people seek association in larger groups to confirm their own views and any association requires consolidation, concessions and agreements on common terms. It is understandable that the free mind is willing to sacrifice own views for the advancement of his relationship, his family and society. But why would you want to sacrifice your own purpose on life?

Religious institutions demand an unnecessary sacrifice and in seeking more confirmation for their disciples, their acolytes and zealots, are set to convert and extinguish even more. Evangelization, crusades, holy wars - all out of personal insecurities preferring death over a life in uncertainty.

What does it need to make people strong enough, willing to endeavour in the creation of their very own belief, to listen and learn from their ancestors but interpreting in their own circumstances?

Certainly, stability plays an important role, but what kind of? Mere financial? Social? Emotional?

"If there is no god, it would have been necessary to invent him." - There's a new full-length trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution out.

2010-06-05T16:34:00.005+02:00

Have a look at this.

How does a die-hard fan of Deus Ex feel about this impressive trailer?

Well, for me, there is no doubt that Deus Ex was the best (RPG-FPS) game ever made to this very day. As a game that was based on a well-grounded and still entertaining scenario of the future (terrorist attacks on New York just one year later, problematic health policy in the containment of recent virus pandemics, etc.) and enriched with a rich literature of conspiracy theories - also included into the game, next introduced in a smooth plotline with multiple endings, diversified through a clever skills system and finally, kept intuitive with smooth controls and lots of environmental interactivity, Deus Ex offered an immersion into a computer game I have never ever experienced again. Indeed, not even games like Bioshock or Half-Life 2 can live up to this masterpiece.
It is also noteworthy that in many of those respects, Deus Ex could profit of its immediate predecessor System Shock 2 that taught many lessons.

In this view, it's also understood why many die-hard fans took the sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War and the subsequently defranchised Project Snowblind as a lowblow to the strengths of the original game - although in my eyes, a many players have ignored the profound philosophical content of the first one that certainly surpasses the original AND Bioshock.

Now, if an old fan watches this trailer, the graphical opulence yet old-fashioned, overused comments about corporations and conspiracies, the platitudes about people's lives in modern society may remind them of the intro-trailer of Deus Ex: Invisible War, and make him expect the worst.

Yet, I stay positive: The developers sure have learned from Deus Ex: Invisible War, and with a setting of some much dirtier cyberpunk, an anti-hero protagonist that smokes and drinks, much more technical design reminding of the everlasting genre leader Ghost in the Shell, we see stark contrasts to the all-pink perfect world with the slick n' smooth young heroes of the previous game.

Deus Ex has left a rather ambivalent legacy: Expectations are huge and have been disappointed already, but the setting, the story content and the game mechanics stay promising enough for another superior game.

This one might make it.

My only concern is that Square Enix is a Japanese company with roots in console game-design. Console-adaptation ruined Deus Ex: Invisible War - and a many other RPG-games.

Mindfuck - a favourite movie genre of mine with its peak just around the turn of the millenium

2010-05-20T23:49:00.001+02:00

What a surprise! First, I'v figured out that plenty of my favourite movies are summarised under the subcultural term of "mindfuck". While this genre primarily refers to a rather unpredictable, twisted plot, it also includes many other striking characteristics.
First, there's the perspective and narration that is generally closely tied to one character, obviously to gain a very subjective view.
Second, there's the setting often deducted from daily situations.
Third and most interestingly, most of those movies share a melancholic, almost sorrow soundtrack heavily relying on the play of bow instruments gradually increasing in tempo and gravity.
Finally, I came to realize that most of them were released around the same time, from 1998 until 2002 to be precise.

Have a look at the following list.

1987 - Angel Heart
1995 - 12 Monkeys (FAV!)
1997 - Cube (FAV)
Lost Highway
The Game
1998 - Dark City (FAV)
Pi (FAV)
The Truman Show
1999 - Being John Malkovich
Fight Club (FAV!)
The Matrix (FAV!)
The Sixth Sense
2000 - American Psycho (FAV!)
Memento (FAV)
2001 - A Beautiful Mind
Avalon (FAV)
Mulholland Drive (FAV!)
Vanilla Sky
2002 - One Hour Photo (FAV!)
Insomnia (FAV)
2003 - Oldboy (FAV!)
2004 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (FAV!)
2005 - The Island
2006 - The Fountain (FAV!)
The Illusionist (FAV!)
The Prestige
2009 - Moon (FAV!)
2010 - Shutter Island

Corporate Governance in the railway business: empire-building of (partially) state-owned railway companies – the case of SBB in Switzerland

2010-04-21T22:11:00.002+02:00

My father is a passionate car-driver. Conversely, I’m a strong supporter of public transportation for its safety, reduced environmental impact and increased social equality. Yet, my father quickly convinced me of one crucial flaw of public transportation: inefficiency, especially through empire-building.
In particular, my father would give the example of the Swiss Federal Railways’ (SBB) investment policy in rolling stock, trains and wagons that is. Indeed, over the last two decades, the SBB has renewed its rolling stock almost every three to five years with top-notch, heavy train-systems which catches the eye of foreigners on a regular basis, too, I noticed. I myself conceded that of course, that investment also came in the context of the tremendous capacity expansion and many older train systems were kept in service. Yet, I myself keep noticing that in other countries like Japan or recently France, trains are much older in general. Also, trains in those countries are “less equipped” and lighter in general. While I appreciated the extra-gain in safety, my father would point out that heavier trains are not only more expensive, but also use more electricity, put more strain on the rails and subsequently create more dangerous emissions of iron dust – much more cancerous than any tar of tobacco could ever be, I know. Also, my argument that those trains could travel at higher speed was refuted by my own experience in foreign countries where those light commuter trains often went even faster than in Swiss agglomeration. My father definitely had a point there – although I did not share his conclusion to switch to private transportation.
In fact, in recent years, my father’s point gained support by other investment policies by SBB I came to observe. There is the maintenance and expansion of railway stations for example. There is not a single train line that does not pass at least one or two stations under construction. Yet, we do not talk about the setup of new stations or additional infrastructure, but the constant change of pavement, platform roofs, waiting seats, ticketing machines and so on. A good example might be the construction of a plastic roof at the entrance of a passageway at the station on my way to high school: Construction work blocked the only way to the platform for half a year and when it was finally finished, some hale turned it into Emmentaler cheese after the first week. Even more, the thing was constructed in such a way that the rainwater was poured down into the passageway. Obviously, nobody thought that through and that was even more annoying as the architect of that damn thing was the father of a former class mate I didn’t really like. Another good example is the recent introduction of 3rd generation touch-screen ticket automats at stations. Not only cost those damn things so much that every platform doesn’t get its own, but the touch screen is so insensitive, the software so slow that non-commuters will miss their trains for sure.
Along these inefficient policies, ticket prices have raised quite a lot – if not more than a dozen percent – in the last ten years. This is even more astounding as passenger numbers have sharply increased over the last decade and the Swiss people hold the record for train kilometers travelled per capita.
In conclusion, I’ve witnessed plenty of evidence that supported my father’s thesis: Railways are inefficient – yet not by nature but due to issues of corporate governance.
And this is exactly what we come to see in “Bahn 2050”, the long-term planning of the railway expansion of the next forty years.
First, in light of the ever increasing numbers of passengers, the SBB has dedicated the plans to capacity expansion: more trains and more railways for the already densest train network worldwide. This still makes sense.
Yet, second, despite those ever increasing numbers, the SBB points out that the increased capacity would have already put so much more strain on the railways that ticket prices would require a strong increase – and more state subvention would be required as well.
Obviously, such logic seems to go against the logic of the most basic economic models. Yet, in the light of my father’s criticism, things make sense all of a sudden: The SBB does not expand because of the increasing numbers alone but the sake, the inherent benefits of expansion itself. Just like they had always been buying the most expensive train toys (and neglected maintenance of the railways), increasing passenger numbers have yielded more income they could waste in unnecessary investment! In corporate governance theory, this growth strategy for the sake of its own has a name: It’s called empire-building.
Indeed, given the SBB a former state-owned, still state-backed quasi-monopolist on Swiss grounds, the high bosses with their passion for slick, fast trains may have barely met any restricting control over the last decades. Apparently, my concerns are shared in a wider area as the suggestion has arisen to split the railways into separate companies for rail services and infrastructure maintenance, and of course, such plans met the harsh refusal of the railways management – simply proving their dedication to empire-building.
In fact, such a split-up might be indeed an effective approach to diminish discretion among the rail-fanboys residing in the carpet floors and 1st class coaches in the railways business: As the rail service company would no longer build stations or even buy trains themselves, they would be first and foremost interested in the purchase or leasing of cheap and efficient rail stock in order to keep ticket prices low. As a result, infrastructure needs to be more cost-efficient. Actually, such separation could be pushed even further by setting up several infrastructure maintenance companies. That way, competition would increase efficiency and keep prices low without affecting the end-consumer market as happened in Great Britain. Basically, such a system would correspond exactly with the Keiretsu system in Japanese manufacturing companies like Toyota.

More about Bahn 2050 on NZZOnline: Die Weichen der Zukunft werden neu gestellt and In einer Stunde von Zürich nach Lausanne.

Comment on Coulmas' article "Der müde Samurai" in NZZOnline, 09.04.2010

2010-04-09T15:39:00.005+02:00

Just today, NZZ published a very interesting article about the current situation in Japan by Florian Coulmas, head of the DIJ in Tokyo. I encourage everyone being proficient in German to read the article and maybe, my comment as well.

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"Der müde Samurai
Source: NZZOnline
Die Japaner sind erschöpft – Sie sind alt geworden

Die Stimmung in Japan ist gedrückt. Von einem Problem zum nächsten stolpernd, scheint das Land vom Samurai-Geist verlassen. Während China und Südkorea mit Elan aus der Krise herauskommen, spürt Japan immer mehr die Überalterung.

Florian Coulmas

Japan hat sich nach innen gekehrt. Die Zahl der Studenten, die ins Ausland gehen, sinkt wie auch die der Touristen, die Überseereisen unternehmen. Bei den Touristen, die ins Land kommen, musste Japan 2009 einen Rückgang von neunzehn Prozent hinnehmen. Statt die Welt als Bühne zu sehen, auf der man mit viel Selbstvertrauen Herausforderungen annimmt, erinnern sich die Japaner heute an ihre Randlage. Das im Dezember erschienene Buch «Wir Japaner an der Peripherie» des konservativen Essayisten Tatsuru Uchida wurde auf der Stelle zum Bestseller. Zwar ist es recht inhaltsleer, spiegelt aber die Gemütslage wider. Die Japaner fühlen sich marginal und etwas ermattet.

Transformation der Szene
«Mut zum Leben», «Kraft des Alters», «91. Heute glücklich ohne Bedauern», «Gespräche über ein glückliches Alter», «Ratschläge eines Hundertjährigen», «Ein Leben ohne Rückzug aufs Altenteil». Das sind Titel einiger Neuerscheinungen, die in Tokioter Buchläden ausliegen. Alter und Tod sind Themen, die dem kollektiven Befinden der Japaner nie fern liegen, aber in diesen Tagen scheint das Interesse dafür besonders gross zu sein. Verwunderlich ist das nicht, sind die Japaner doch sehr alt geworden. Abgesehen von dem Altersheim für Betuchte namens Monaco hat Japan die höchste Lebenserwartung der Welt.

Eine Gesellschaft, die es ihren Mitgliedern erlaubt, länger als andere nicht zu sterben, ist eine erfolgreiche Gesellschaft, aber die problematischen Begleiterscheinungen der Alterung sind heute nicht mehr zu übersehen. Die vielen alten Menschen beginnen das Gesicht der Gesellschaft zu prägen, eine Transformation der kulturellen Szene macht sich bemerkbar.

Eines der lohnendsten Tokioter Theatererlebnisse in letzter Zeit war eine Inszenierung von Sho Ryuzanjis Theaterstück «Hitparade der Vergeltung», in dem alte Gangster sich noch einmal aus dem Ruhestand aufraffen, um einen ihrer vor vielen Jahren «zu Unrecht umgebrachten Kollegen» zu rächen. Ort der Handlung: ein Altersheim, dessen Insassen von jungen Schauspielern gegeben wurden, während die Protagonisten des Stücks selber alle im fortgeschrittenen Rentneralter waren. Das Ensemble, mit dem Ryuzanji arbeitet, ist «The Old Bunch», Durchschnittsalter achtzig. Komisch und zum Teil brillant war die Aufführung, aber nicht ohne eine gewisse Wehmut, war sie doch – unvermeidlich – die letzte. Der Held des jüngsten japanischen Films, der auch international mit zahlreichen Auszeichnungen geehrt wurde, «Okuribito», wörtlich «der Verabschieder», von Yojiro Takita, richtet Verstorbene für ihre letzte Reise her, um ihren Angehörigen einen möglichst schönen Abschied zu bereiten. Ein Film voller Zärtlichkeit und beinah frei von Sentimentalität.

Unterdessen wächst die Zahl derer, die fern der Leinwand ohne Abschied aus dem Leben gehen. In Tokio etwa leben 2,3 Millionen Menschen über fünfundsechzig, viele von ihnen allein. Im Alter sind die sozialen Kontakte im städtischen Milieu sehr viel spärlicher als auf dem Land, und immer mehr Menschen verbringen ihr Alter in Einsamkeit. Eine Wachstumsbranche sind deshalb Nonprofitorganisationen wie «Schneeglöckchen», die Menschen Informationen und Hilfestellung bieten, die sich vor ihrem Ableben einen Platz in einem Gruppengrab kaufen wollen, um ihren Angehörigen nicht zur Last zu fallen oder weil sie keine haben. Es entstehen Klubs Gleichgesinnter, Grabkommunen gewissermassen, die gemeinsam einen Platz auf dem Friedhof und eine Stele kaufen und Ausflüge unternehmen, um einander kennenzulernen; denn man will ja nicht zusammen mit Wildfremden in die Gruft.

«Memento mori. Im Angesicht des Todes das Jetzt leben» heisst ein anderes jüngst erschienenes Buch, das in den Auslagen liegt. Sein Verfasser ist ein Star, der Arzt und extrem produktive Publizist Shigeaki Hinohara, 98. Er ist vielen ein Vorbild, da er bis ins höchste Alter ein höchst aktives Leben führt. Andere sind weniger glücklich. Die japanische Regierung hat den «Monat der verstärkten Massnahmen gegen Selbstmord» ausgerufen. In Tokioter U-Bahnhöfen hängen Anschläge mit der Aufschrift: «Leben bewahren. Kontaktstellen für Beistand und Gespräche, um Ihre Probleme zu lösen, gibt es im ganzen Land.» Lange Listen von Telefonnummern und Adressen stehen mit auf dem Plakat. Da Selbstmord in Japan weniger tabuisiert wird als in christlichen Ländern, werden Gegenmassnahmen offener diskutiert, aber dazu besteht auch Anlass. Denn dem eigenen Leben ein Ende machen weniger die Hochbetagten als Männer mittleren Alters, die neoliberalen Reformen zum Opfer gefallen sind und alle Hoffnung auf einen neuen Arbeitsplatz verloren haben. Es sind so viele, dass die Regierung sich zu einer öffentlichen Kampagne genötigt fühlt.

Ohne Visionen
Die Stimmung im Land ist gedrückt. Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise haben dazu stark beigetragen, insbesondere, weil man sieht, dass der aufsteigende grosse Nachbar China und auch Südkorea mit jugendlichem Elan besser aus der Krise wieder herauskommen. Japan scheint vom Glück verlassen, scheint von einem Problem zum nächsten zu stolpern. Daran hat die vor einem halben Jahr mit Enthusiasmus begrüsste neue Regierung bisher nichts ändern können. Man vermisst zukunftsweisende Visionen oder wenigstens Gesten.

Der Anblick des Herrn Toyoda, der vor dem amerikanischen Kongress mit Tränen in den Augen für Toyota Besserung gelobte, statt zu sagen, was alle dachten, nämlich dass die US-Regierung eine Autofabrik erworben hat, GM, und sich jetzt die ausländische Konkurrenz vorknöpft, konnte wenig dazu beitragen, den Samurai-Geist in der japanischen Volksseele wiederzubeleben. Der Stolz Japans, die herstellende Industrie, hat etwas von ihrem Glanz eingebüsst. Das hat weniger mit der Qualität ihrer Produkte zu tun als mit der Atmosphäre und dem Ausbleiben sensationeller Erfolge. Es fehlt an Auftrieb, Mut, Zuversicht.

Gleichzeitig haben viele Intellektuelle das Glück entdeckt, nämlich als Thema einer wahren Flut von Publikationen. «Wo ist das Glück in schlechten Zeiten?», fragt der Soziologe Masahiro Yamada, ohne eine überzeugende Antwort zu finden. «Was ist Glück? Die Illusion des überwinden», fordert der Umweltaktivist Shinichi Tsuji, der in der Krise gute Voraussetzungen dafür erkennen will, die Japaner von ihrer materialistischen Lebensweise abzubringen und ihr Umweltbewusstsein zu sensibilisieren.

Bei der wachsenden Schar der Benachteiligten stösst er damit auf wenig Widerhall. Sie haben «Prekariat» zu einem japanischen Lehnwort werden lassen. In Anspielung auf das vor dreissig Jahren erschienene Buch «Japan als Nummer 1» von Ezra Vogel denkt Kang Sang-jung, Politikprofessor der Universität von Tokio, in «Glück als Nr. 3» – nämlich nach den USA und China – über Japans Abstieg nach. Sein Aufsatz erschien in einer Sondernummer der traditionsreichen Monatszeitschrift «Chuokoron» mit dem Titel «Die nivellierte Misstrauensgesellschaft». Und der Nervenarzt und Schriftsteller Otohiko Kaga legt einen Essay «Über das Glück in einem unglücklichen Land» vor, in dem er Japan als ein finsteres, da in grosse soziale Ungleichheit abgerutschtes Land ohne Hoffnung beschreibt.

Eine Bürgerbefragung über das Glück
Einen glücklichen Eindruck macht Japan heute gewiss nicht. Dabei ist der Diskurs über Glück unschwer als ein Reflex der Krise zu erkennen; dessen ist auch die Regierung gewahr geworden. Sie hat deshalb beschlossen, die Bürger selbst zu befragen, was sie glücklich macht, in einer landesweiten Erhebung. Dahinter steht die Einsicht, dass das unaufhörliche Streben nach Reichtum und Steigerungen des Bruttoinlandproduktes, dem Japan sich seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs monoman hingegeben hat, die Menschen offenbar nicht glücklicher macht. Ob die Befragung Hinweise darauf geben wird, was an die Stelle dieses Strebens treten könnte, steht freilich dahin.

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Fliessende oder verflossene Welt?

Dieses atmosphärische Essay ist in der Tat eindrucksvoll. Es komponiert viele klassische Aspekte des Japanbildes wie Inselstaat im Schatten des mittleren Reiches, verschwindende Mittelstandsgesellschaft, Überalterung, Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, Selbstmordrate, verarbeitende Industrie, Nachkriegsgenres und die Literatur als Stimmungsbarometer im Allgemeinen zu einem bedrückt-traurigen Gesamtbild und wirkt darin überzeugend. Ich selbst wollte schon speziell an der ewigen Kulturnostalgie einerseits und andererseits dem wirklich krassen Materialismus mit seinen ideenlosen, wenig geistreichen kommerziellen Auswüchsen verzweifeln.: Japan schien mir mal wieder schneller und lebt uns die faule, initiativelose, immer ungerechtere Wohlstandsgesellschaft vor.
Aber da wird mir glücklicherweise immer wieder gesagt, dass Japan noch immer Wirtschaftsmacht Nr. 2 ist, viel nachhaltiger wächst als etwa China, das gerade ähnliche Probleme wie Japan in den 1990er Jahren entwickelt (Finanzsystem und Corporate Governance, Immobilienblasen, etc.), R&D angesichts der hohen Zahl an Patentanmeldungen überragend sind, die Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich wie Selbstmordrate in europäischen Ländern schneller wächst. Es gilt zu relativieren, gerade in der japanischen Populärliteratur, und zu bedenken, dass Japan schon immer der Underdog sein musste und gerade an Krisen mächtig wuchs. So will auch ich Glauben fassen, dass die materialistische, wenig ideenreiche japanische Jugend aufstehen wird, wie die jungen shishi und rônin seinerzeit plötzlich gegen ein veraltetes Shogunat rebellierten.

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By the way, Coulmas basially implies exactly my concept of happiness which is direct product of social and technological progress rather than a mere state of mind.

Shutter Island does no justice to Fight Club, Memento and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

2010-04-09T15:19:00.003+02:00

The anticipation was high when I went to watch Shutter Island in the cinema last Wednesday. After all, Scorsese and Di Caprio created two masterpieces with The Aviator and The Departed. Such anticipation should be taken even more seriously in the consideration that some internet troll managed to embed a crucial spoiler in his short movie preview. That single sentence basically trivialized the whole story.
But then, any movie fan may have been able to anticipate the conclusion if he had watched a few "mindfuck" movies. "Mindfuck" movies - I've recently come across this term for a movie collection containing 12 Monkeys, American Psycho, Being John Malkovich, Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fight Club, Memento, Oldboy, One Hour Photo, Pi, The game, The Illusionist, The Sixth Sense and thus, quite a few of my most favourite movies, I think the term is very appropriate and gives the basic charm of these movies: a complex plot with some really surprising twist. Yet, it was exactly those two things the director managed to screw up. The plot was too complex in a way that it forced in themes that were simply inadequate: Why would you want to include some Nazi death camp liberation to make the protagonist's psyche more credible? Why would one of the doctors need to be German? What the heck was some escaped whistleblower called Noyce important for? Maybe, the story was filled up with those themes to distract from the obvious hints of the protagonist's role. Yet, those hints remained plain obvious wherefore the twist was not really striking either. Even more, that twist came slow, dragged along and lacked the right atmosphere: How could you possibly make a character in the movie tell, repeat the whole twist instead of making the viewer realize it itself? Where's the mindfuck if the characters repeat it?
On the other hand, the doctors' sermons gave me enough time to realize that Shutter Island basically combines the stories of three incredibly awesome psycho movies: Fight Club with its schizophrenia, Memento for forced amnesia and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest for the threat of lobotomy.
Once you've realized those striking parallels, Scorsese's new film loses its last appeal (apart from Di Caprio's acting) and you better hurry to the next movie rental or website to watch those three awesome movies.

Did you like "THX 1138" and "2001 - A Space Odyssee"? Well, you might want to have a look at this movie then!

2010-03-07T11:26:00.007+01:00

Meet a victim of the future's streamlined society with a HAL-computer as his only friend!

I must admit that that I succumb way too easily to such (more and more repetitive) movie settings and their melancholic soundtrack in particular.
May it be THX 1138, Le Fabuleux Monde d'Amélie Poulain, Memento, The Fountain, American Beauty, Lord of War or American History X. (If you skip the action scenes, you can basically include Forrest Gump and Fight Club, covering almost 50% of my most favourite movies.)

Yet, what matter in this world would be more reasonable to indulge in melancholy than the saddened acceptance of its fleeting, cruel nature?

About progress, welfare and well-being

2010-01-30T20:16:00.006+01:00

What if I say that modern liberalism, neoliberalism in particular, is the reason why mankind hasn't stood on the moon for almost 40 years? Think about it this way: Production priority has been given to private corporations that have fallen victim to ubiquitous markets. The result is incredible efficiency that in the end, serves private customers who have grown as wealthy and well-fed as never before. But then, from a point of mankind development, most of that consumption is complete waste that even harms the environment! Thus, the liberalisation of markets, the welfare of society is about to lead the demise of our own civilization.

Furthermore, what if I say that the general conception of "happiness" or "joy" as the ultimate goal in life and societal welfare is completely misleading in the first place? Rather than happiness, isn't the ultimate goal supposed to be progress?
Actually, the two concepts go well along: As a general agreement, happiness is considered as the absence of harm and misfortune. The problem is, however, that you do not really notice when you're free and spared of harm and misfortune. That's why people tend to be more aware of negative events and negative risks in general. Of course, with increasing age and experience, you can overcome that bias more and more.
In general, however, people require unfortunate situations to get reminded of happy ones. Thus, there's no such thing as a "state of happiness", but only a cycle, a wave of happiness and misfortune. In general, we reckon that someone has led a happy life if he's had (perceived) more "highs" than "lows". In economic terms, however, this "increasing wave" is expressed by an economic cycle graph ("Konjunkturkurve" - Can you imagine that English lacks such an expression?). What drives an economic cycle upwards? Progress and innovation! Thus, even the personal well-being and social welfare relies on progress and it would make sense to rank that concept higher than "happiness" per se.

The utilitarian concept of "the Greater Good" has become generally despised in today's society. It almost seems like we've approach Christian principles more than ever before. But then, in a stagnating world without any goals or general meaning, the individual life hasn't found its fulfilment, either. Even more, today's egocentric lifestyle has turned against the very basic principles of valuing each and all life: While in former days, people were still procreating for the sake of life itself, people these days prefer to use, to use up all resources for their mere own. In this view, "the Greater Good" appears far more sustainable.

In his book "The Embedded Corporation" (2005), Jacoby argues that the recent focus on market value hasn't only foregone the welfare of employees (particularly through growth and general empire-building), but also organizational and intellectual innovation in companies. That's also a reason why more and more corporations try to go private again. It implies that getting streamlined in financial markets is just a dead end for entrepreunerial innovation.

What's to be done? Back to the ant state, borg cluster or whatever you want to call it. How? Go Tracer Tong or Snake Plissken and heavily censor or entirely sabotage the information system might be a good way to start. Today's information society is not the master but the slave to its own evolution.

Letter to a friend

2010-01-24T15:13:00.001+01:00

Mate, you get me worried there.
What's all the problem with religion these days? Christianity in particular?

Don't you think that it serves some awesome purpose to this very day? What about people in need and times of crisis in general?
Furthermore, apart from personal merits, it was Christianity with its strict norms as well as well-established institutions that melded European people and established socio-political, cultural and even legal and scientific development in the first place!

Think about human rights: They heavily rely on Christian norms. In general, our social norms are massively influenced by Christian ideas and thus, we all carry inherently and inevitably the social imprints of that religion - and that's what makes us to go along so well in the first place, I think: More trust, more confidence, less cheating and back-stabbing. What do you think fend off social darwinism in the first place? Ethics? No way! It was Christian morale.

Think about enlightenment: That movement would have never developed without humanism. But then again, humanism is strongly based on scholastic ideas: Erasmus and Morus weren't as much political philanthropists as they were Christians. Still not convinced? Well, even the leading heads among the enlightenment movement were assertive towards religion. Think of Kant who said to better believe in God or Voltaire himself who concluded that if there's no God, we must create one.
Now, where would science be without enlightenment and thus, even our very most modern and well-accepted belief thanks its existence to religion.
Heck, in this view, even science is just another religion built on dogmas called axioms. How could one mock Christianity for its views when they're on findings are based on mere assumptions. Consider that mathematics falls into the field of humanities! Thus, the term q.e.d. is a contradiction per se. In this sense, our confidence in science rather stems from generations and generations of professors preaching about previous findings. (For example, I still don't understand why we cannot divide through 0 or why any force meets counter-force.)

Yet, I must agree that among all the religions I've learned to know, science is certainly the least dogma-based, since so self-questioning religion.
But then, the concept of falsification (and heck, if the argument with maths wasn't evidence enough, structural and critical theory will convince you that only a zealot of scientific dogmas would consider nature sciences, biology and physics included, to be verifiable studies) renders science flexible, but uncertain: What confidence or comfort do studies that cannot give proof, but only stand until proven wrong? Or as Einstein put it himself: Science provides some very efficient tools, but it doesn't give any meaning. (Let's not ramble about the existence, purpose or necessity of any meaning of life 'cause that will lead us to contradictions anyway.)

What's my point? Don't you underestimate the purpose of religion! If the world is really as efficient as Darwin, Hobbes, Smith and Weber, fathers of most awesome fields of science, predicted, then why is religion still in the place? Furthermore, if you don't think that there are indeed quite a few clever heads among all those clerics, there are way too many scientists and artists hinting at the importance and significance of religion, Christianity for our Western culture and science in particular.
There's no other explanation than a valuable purpose. Let me dare to claim that this reason lies both in personal comfort and societal stability, well knit and woven under our scientific concepts, secular state and legalized society.

Indeed, this has nothing to do with truth or righteousness. But then, what does? Isn't it hypocritical to decry the many dogmas and obvious assumptions of our religion and spare out other fields? Or let me take up one of one example of a recent artistic hint on the whole question: Among "The Watchmen", would you want to be a Rorschach who constantly denounces the many contradictions, self-lies and dogmas of our society or an Ozymandias/ Dr. Manhattan ready to swallow it and being ready to build up something on nothing - on the many turtles all the way down, so to speak? The latter is certainly more challenging than the first.

I've spent a terrific birthday!

2010-01-17T20:33:00.001+01:00

Thank you all for making this day so special! In particular, I'd like to thank my friends joining me at the birthday party and heating the place up real good (also, Silvan and Bastian accompanying me until morning), Maya for the romantic and contemplative present (It's almost a pity others cannot watch it! ^_T) and of course, my family for their tireless support!
I've really come to the point where common words and sayings about "family support" and "friends' help" aren't simple platitudes, but meaningful experience I can relate to very well. I wouldn't want and probably couldn't go along without you anymore.

By the way, I've got so much raclette cheese, cakes, sweets and booze (Let's call it "fillfood & funfuel", shall we?) left that we could go for a second round. :-p

Another good reason why men won't die out.

2010-01-03T13:23:00.009+01:00

Today, I've realized about another reason to take comfort that men won't die out anytime soon.

In fact, this second reason may be more comforting for many men than the primary argument of simple procreation since it doesn't require the maintenance of a few potent males, but males of all kind and ages in correlating numbers to females. (This argument is meant for some of you 'cause I'd like to count myself to the first group of males. :-p)

This compelling argument may be called "residual psychological risk-bearers" for economists, "psychological black hole" for physicists or "crying shoulder" for people who like to keep it simple.
The basic idea is evident: Women have the fascinating talent to develop more psychological problems than they could absorb from others and therefore, overall psychological welfare and societal stability in general can only be maintained if there remain enough tough blokes that can absorb the excess of lamenting, crying and nagging. Whom would women tell about all their snark chatter if not to their faithful men? Psychiatrists? Heck, I'd never want to be the husband of a psychiatrist!

This crucial task for men bears the huge sacrifice, of course, that we must let our sound mind and health get cankered and consumed by our poor protégés and maintain personal balance with casual fights or consumption of alcool for example.

This thesis also provides a good explanation why many women need carebears or put men into the friend-zone. Conversely, this may imply, though, that confiding personal problems to your lady to an equal extent, must render your role futile: You will be deemed a "pussy" and be replaced by someone "more manly" in the near future. Beware!

Nevertheless, the deal may appear fair for staying alive and maintain dignity in this emancipated world after all.

Don't consider it as a year gained or lost, but as a level-up, dude!

2009-12-30T19:01:00.003+01:00

The day has come when we solemnly say
to wish you a happy birthday!
As far as you told me, though,
you're not too keen on being made known
of having "spent" another year,
"passing by" and "disappear"
reminding you of age and death,
of having less less time at hand left.

Now, you're talking! And right you?
Shouldn't you be the optimist of us two?
So, let me give you as a first birthday gift
a psychological facelift!
Shall we start with questioning time?
I'm quite a fan of ol' Einstein!
Or do we want to ask Old Chinese?
'Cause time's a loop and constantly repeats!

Have you forgot when you were a kid
and couldn't do what all the "adults" did?
Now, the girls hit you like never before!
You shake so many hands that yours got sore!
And littering booze is worth the age!
In such few years, you've become beers' sage!
No, you've become too earnest for such a point,
another reason for embracing the time spent!

So, let me get straight to my own concern
that age allows you to gain and earn:
Life's not like some hourglass
with sand trickling down as the years pass
as future's not created yet,
and there's no upper glass in the set.
There's nothing but the bottom end
accumulating more and more sand.
Thus, there's no restricted "life bar",
but just your collection for so far.

But, maybe such old platitudes
still sound too old for the like of yours
so let me refer to Chevalier Maurice:
Aging's still better than the alternative!

My queen bee's birthday

2009-12-30T18:58:00.002+01:00

Birthdays are the time for gifts and your wishes are not absent.
Yet, I’ve been holding back for years to make this an honest present.
So let me light a candle now and cast your wish upon
as I know well what you long for – you’re no more on your own.
I’ll keep this candle’s flame alight and wait for your advent,
it may flicker at times when wind aligns, but will certainly never be spent.
And should hail or gale take it out, I’ll light the flame anew,
until you come and blow it out to make our wish come true.

Odyssee

2009-12-30T18:57:00.004+01:00

The sun has passed the orient
where Ilion's light has all been spent.
The lustrous sights of lands of dawn
have lost their light and lustre's gone.

The days of raids to the Far East
to spirtual springs and fishy feasts
have come to end the dreams
as Troykot lies in dark ruins.

The geeks came here to booty-loot,
but the place bore nothing but some boot
which were completely empty as well -
no ghosts, no mind inside the shell.

Most men are drunk and thus, don't care.
They marry the island's female heirs
and end up as Circe's pigs and boars,
deprived of enlightenment by Helios.

There's one man who won't drink the cup,
he's got his clear mind all made up,
he stands at the island shore
to return home, Ulysses aims for!

"What farce this journey actually was!
Who travels along earth's revolution?
You leave the West at early dawn
and ship into dusk and disillusion!

Yet, disillusions, odysees,
they certainly yield purposes!
As I stand here at the dark shore,
my Vesper shines bright all the more!

Alas, to see my Vesper's light
I had to journey into the night
and wait till even Helios sent
the sun into the occident.

There glows the star of his own
awaiting him at his old home:
Penelope is the one
whom the sun's shining upon.

With determined hands, he sets the sail,
there's no way this quest could fail,
as this time he will ship along
the dawning day of the sun.

Brief an die 後輩

2009-12-20T00:44:00.008+01:00

Verehrte Kommilitonen, liebe 後輩 im Speziellen

Ich möchte hier einen längeren, kritischen Erfahrungsbericht zu meinem Studium der Japanologie an der Universität Zürich schreiben. Ich bin selbst noch am Studieren und will denn keineswegs behaupten, die Weisheit mit dem Löffel gefresse zu haben. Der Bericht zielt vielmehr auf ein paar gut gemeinte, aber auch bestimmte Ratschläge zum Japanologie-Studium ab und möchte gleichzeitig zur Mitteilung eigener Erfahrungen und Meinungen einladen.

Einsicht ist der erste Schritt zur Besserung. Unterschätzt die Bedeutung einer solchen Diskussion nicht.

七転八起 – Diesem Spruch wird mein Studium immer mehr gerecht: Inzwischen studiere ich schon über fünf Jahre lang Japanologie – oder bin zumindest als Student der Japanologie eingeschrieben.

Doch muss ich keineswegs zugestehen, in all‘ diesen Jahren untätig gewesen zu sein. Im Gegensatz! Der Stress in den Nebenfächern, der Verdruss an den schönen Künsten, die Aufenthalte in Japan wie auch Südostasien haben mir eine ganz neue Perspektive auf mein Studienfach vermittelt – eine Perspektive, die mir länger denn je richtig erscheint und mich in Konflikt mit dem Aufbau des Japanologie-Studiums an der Universität Zürich bringt.

Das ist aber nichts Neues. Schon nach dem ersten Jahr intensiven Sprachstudiums begann ich mich an der ewig isolierten und mystifizierten Sichtweise auf Japan in vielen Themenbereichen zu stören. Was studiere ich als Schweizer überhaupt Japanologie?

Die Frage ist keineswegs gesucht oder abwegig. Sie ist nicht nur zentral, sondern erstrangig. Ich erinnere mich noch gut an meine allererste Vorlesungsstunde an der Universität Zürich: Montagmorgen war jeweils das Proseminar zur japanischen Geschichte bei Herrn Reinfried. Herr Reinfried stellte diese Frage selbst in jener allerersten Stunde – und das nicht von ungefähr: Er lehrt ja selbst am Sprachenzentrum und an seiner eigenen Schule Japanisch, vermittelt in seinen Vorlesungen jedoch eine wenig Japan-intrinsische, vielmehr komparative Sichtweise auf seine Themen.

Herr Reinfrieds Antwort war noch relativ diplomatisch: Wir studieren nicht Japan, um es LIEBEN zu lernen. Wir studieren das Land, um es zu VERSTEHEN lernen. Wir sind alle schon Japanologen, doch wir wollen Japan-Gelehrte werden – chinnichika! Wer einfach nur Tee aufgiessen möchte und dabei ein bisschen Japanisch schwatzen will, der kann ihn in seinen Sprachschulen besuchen. In dieser Hinsicht ist Herr Reinfried für mich geradezu eine Personifikation der eingängigen Frage geworden.

Doch auch andere Dozenten stiessen in jene Richtung: Herr Meyer betonte häufig den schweizerischen Bezug auf Japan und Herr Gefter entlarvte vor einem Jahr selbst meine verbliebene Befangenheit in der Frage.

Diese Beispiel sind keineswegs Ausnahmen. Auch unter den Studenten stehe ich nicht alleine. Die Frage bringt unter diesen einen Verdruss einher, der sich schon seit Generationen nach den ersten Semestern breit macht – es ist geradezu etwas Normales, ein Schritt im Reifeprozess.

Im Zusammenhang mit den Professurwahlen vor drei Jahren akzentuierte er sich jedoch erstmals und zeigte eine starke Fraktion an interessierten, motivierten Studenten, die mehr Interdisziplinarität forderten. Für mich und viele Mitstudenten wurde dabei eine erste klare Stossrichtung für eine generelle Antwort klar: Wir versuchen definitiv nicht, das Land zu verstehen, um japanischer zu werden. Uns braucht es nicht für länderspezifische, kulturintrinsische Studien. Dafür gibt’s Japaner genug! Wir sind Schweizer und das ist unsere Stärke.

Gewiss, die Japanologie ist ein Departement der philologischen Fakultät und hat traditionsgemäss einen literarischen Fokus an der Universität Zürich. Des Weiteren erzeugt die grosse Auswahl an Kombinationsmöglichkeiten mit anderen Studienfächern eine Vielfaltigkeit, die eine umfassende und konsequente Abdeckung seriöser interdiszipliner Forschung nicht erlaubt. Schliesslich ist die Japanologie ein kleines Seminar, dem es an Ressourcen und Kapazitäten mangelt. Ein Fokus ist unablässig und im literarischen und linguistischen Bereich hat man Qualität. Drei starke Argument, die immer wieder zu Recht fielen. Doch die Frage blieb: Was sollte ein Schweizer japanische Literatur kennen?

So unbedeutend schien diese Frage im ganzen Kontext nicht zu sein und hatte einen klaren Niederschlag im Wahlentscheid: Unser neuer Professor ist keineswegs ein traditioneller Literat, wie mir scheint, und darüber hinaus offen für interdisziplinäre Studien. Mit der Aussicht auf einen zweiten Lehrstuhl mit soziologischem Fokus erfolgte ein weiterer Schritt – weg von der Literatur und hin zu den Sozialwissenschaften.

百年河清 – Länger konnte ich aber nicht zuwarten, im langsamen Wandel der Japanologie eventuell eine Antwort zu finden und so suchte ich selbst danach. Eine Antwort für mich habe ich gefunden. Die Frage ist, ob sie verallgemeinerbar ist und euch allen zu Nutze tragen könnte. Lasst mich deshalb kurz meinen persönlichen Eindruck schildern.

Mein Austauschjahr in Japan war mein erster längerer Aufenthalt und machte mich mit Japan, vor allem seiner Gesellschaft, dem Lebensstil und Alltag vertraut. Doch war ich nach dem Jahr nicht nur über meine sprachlichen Fortschritte und sozialen Kontakte frustriert, sondern blieb ein Ausländer.

Ein Jahr darauf wurde ich über meinen Tandem- und Studienpartner von der Tôdai an seine Uni eingeladen und machte dort Übersetzungsarbeit und Assistenz bei der Entwicklung einer Umfrage. Diese Arbeit war ganz anders: Ich sass über einen Monat in einem Institut bis nach Mitternacht und las vor allem Schweizer Zeitungen, um deren Essenz dann in Japanisch und auch Englisch zu erklären. Da ging mir ein erstes Licht auf!

Im gleichen Zeitraum begann ich in meinem Wirtschafts- und Politikstudium die ganzen Theorien und Modelle auf die japanische Situation zu testen. Eine grosse Bereicherung war dabei der Glücksfall, dass an der Universität Zürich sowohl in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften wie auch an den Politikwissenschaften einige Professoren und Assistenten sind, die langjährigen Fokus auf Asien und Japan im Speziellen haben. Die Sichtweise war dort vollkommen umgekehrt: Japan war kein Land zum Verstehen, sondern einfach ein weiteres Studienobjekt für die Theorien.

Die vermehrte Wahrnemung als Schweizer einerseits und den Fokus weg von der area study Japan hin zu den Sachdisziplinen gaben mir schliesslich die fruchtbare Kombination, einiges über Japan zu WISSEN und es dann aus meiner Sicht als Schweizer und den Theorien westlicher Herkunft zu INTERPRETIEREN.

Aus diesen Erfahrungen habe ich drei grundlegende Schlussfolgerungen abgeleitet.

1) Area studies sind nicht wirklich forschungsleitend und damit für das Studium förderlich. Es ist geradezu eine Ironie, dass an der Universität Zürich Japanologie im Hauptfach studiert werden muss, wenn man es mit Fächern wie Geographie oder Wirtschaftswissenschaften kombinieren will.

2) Es gibt kein Japanverständnis, sondern nur eine Interpretation im eigenen kulturellen Hintergrund. Ein längerer Auslandaufenthalt in Asien ist unablässig, um einen anderen Blick auf die eigene Herkunft, Kultur und den Charakter zu gewinnen. Ihr geht in erster Linie nicht nach Japan, um japanischer zu werden, sondern euch als Schweizer (oder was auch immer) zu erkennen.

3) Japan braucht uns nicht für unser Japanwissen. Andere Länder tun das. Wenn ihr trotzdem nach Japan wollt, dann müsst ihr umso mehr über eure Herkunft wissen – soziologisch, politisch, wirtschaftlich oder kulturell. Kennt eure Herkunft! Kennt Europa!

4) Japan ist keine Insel. Konzentriert euch auch beim Untersuchungsobjekt nicht auf Japan. Seht Japan vermehrt im asiatischen Kontext: Lernt andere asiatische Sprachen, gerade etwa Chinesisch. Lernt die Geschichte und Kultur. Die Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede sind bezeichnend. Geht etwa mal nach Südostasien und schaut euch an, was Japan für einen Einfluss hinterlassen – und auch erhalten – hat! Die Gegensätze und Widersprüche sind frappierend. Darüber hinaus ist Japans politischer und wirtschaftlicher Wandel ohne diesen Kontext nicht mehr nachvollziehbar! Auch Asien integriert sich!

In der Forschungssprache will das heissen, dass ihr keine japanintrisische Sichtweise haben solltet, weil ihr erstens Schweizer seid und damit schon extrinsisch und zweitens Japan selbst „von aussen“ gewandelt wird! Ja, die Japaner übersehen das in der kulturellen und linguistischen Determinierung selbst!

5) Wählt Sachdisziplinen in den Nebenfächern, Fächern mit Fokus auf Theorie und Methodik. Ihr wisst, was ihr betrachten wollt, nun holt euch das Werkzeug! In der Tat wage ich zu behaupten, dass eine Fächerkombination mit Sinologie, Germanistik oder Romanistik überaus kontraproduktiv ist. Mag man zuweilen noch Synergien finden, werdet ihr im Endeffekt nicht nur ohne Instrumente dastehen, sondern auch zwischen den Themefeldern hin- und herschwimmen. (Die Idee komparativer Analysen verkennt dabei häufig das nötige theoretische Fundament.)

6) Ein Studium kann sich kaum (mehr) einer von uns als Hobby leisten. Das zeigt auch gerade der derzeitige bildungspolitische Trend. Ihr wollt nicht einige Jahre lang Japan lieben, um danach an einem Bürojob den Bezug komplett zu verlieren. Überlegt eure Stärken und Kompetenzen! Eine Stärke, die wir (fast) alle haben dürften ist es, Schweizer zu sein.

So, das wär’s. Ich gestehe, dass mein „Erfahrungsbericht“ (willentlich) immer determinierter und universalistischer wurde. Das soll aber auch eure Kritik aus der Reserve locken – gerade von 先輩.

Ich wollte ihr keineswegs irgendjemandem vor den Kopf stossen oder ans Bein pinkeln. Im Gegenteil! Ich bin eher dankbar, scheinbar auch noch die Kurve kratzen zu können.

Vielmehr möchte ich vielen von euch dieselben Umstände ersparen und zu einer glanzvollen Karriere im Zusammenhang mit Japan beitragen. Wie heisst es so schön? 麻中之蓬.

My two cents about the minaret-initiative

2009-11-30T21:03:00.004+01:00

Votes are democracy at its best and other institutions, including constitutional jurisdiction, basically just an impairment of democracy. The council for human rights everyone is talking about now is a good example, I reckon. Talking about human rights, I consider them as the most convincing and powerful achievement of democracy right because all people came about to agree on them. If we put them over people's will now, their power's lost.
Switzerland's direct democracy is an institution that acknowledges people as the ultimate sovereign. I'm proud of that and will support it in any way. But with power comes responsibility. Yesterday's result showed that many people are not capable, ready or willing to make reasonable decisions and even more to assume responsibility in the first place. Indeed, I wouldn't blame the outcome as much on populism or unreasonable fear as on the opponents' indifference or blatant mockery: How many didn't take people's concerns serious or personalized the topic? And how many of this now outraged Swiss citizens did actually go to vote?
People being afraid isn't sad, but downright normal. Sad is that those fears weren't acknowledged and taken care of. Furthermore, I can't help to conclude that the result doesn't reflect as much concerns about islam as about a secular state being undermined by religion.
Thus, we're not talking about freedom of religion, but the stability of a system that provides such freedom. Of course, building a tower or not doesn't change much for it in particular, but then, such an interpretation doesn't take care of people's wider concerns again: This was a representative debate about the role of the state and religion indeed. If people would be downright opposed to Islam, they would have attended churches on Sunday morning instead of going to the ballot. In this view, the vote showed that many people are concerned about the future of the secular state - and even more didn't care at all.
As a personal sidenote, I did go to vote and I voted against the initiative. With this comment, I try to assure you and myself that even more than assuming personal responsibility, we must learn to accept democratic decisions over our personal views and opinions. That's what the common will is ultimately based on in the first place.

Standing on the shoulder of giants - joining the ranks of a school

2009-11-22T11:21:00.007+01:00

Independent thinking may bear real understanding, but only by reading, we can put it into a broader, or better put, common context,that is to relate to like-minded predecessors. I should have been reading more these last few years: It so happens that all my thoughts on science as a belief have already been wrapped up in a consistent school of thought which I simply didn't become aware of because I was questioning and refusing scientific research in general.

If you had the time and patience to read through all my previous blog postings, you may not want to miss this short definition of "critical theory" provided by Wenger & Zimmermann in there book "International Relations". It basically sums up everything: Knowledge cannot be derived through universal logic, but just historical reckoning: Newton didn't discover gravity through logical thinking, but since he got an apple falling on his head. Furthermore, political power - in science as well as society - determines how we look at history in the first place: Politics set the agenda and decide what we are allowed to look at. Next, language alters or determines interpretation of events: We cannot explain what we don't have words for.

"Critical theory is a social theory linked to the German Jürgen Habermas. At the core of this theoretical work was a paradigm of social reality rooted in the dialectic of knowledge and power. Critical theorists postulated a theory that all approaches to knowledge - in fact all knowledge - are fundamentally historical and political. Contemporary heterodox elements in the field of international relations are drawing on various works of critical theory, for exampl, those by Antonio Gramsci and on Ludwig Wittgenstein (linguistics and hermeneutics), as well as that of post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault. Critical theory challenges the stated and unstated assumptions and alleged objectivity of canonical social science. Critical theorists have singled out ideological and other vested interests that appear to be, or rather are presented as, theories. To critical theorists, suspect theories stand out in that they pretend to be objective perspectives of social and political reality. Basically, critical theorists do not subscribe to any belief in objective or logical positivism. To them the rigid separation of normative and empirical theory is artificial. Moreover, according to critical theorists, what we think we know is in truth a function of language and social and political context. Critical theory advocates an interpretative understanding of perceived reality, a notion originating in Max Weber's work in social science and methodology."

Thus, all my ideas about science as a belief fall together with critical theory. The question that remains is what use there is in taking down another dogmatic belief that helped us people to explain the world so perfectly. Personally, I've given up the agnostic idea of strictly refusing every belief as artificial, but have come to ask what belief would suit the most. Obviously, egality, fairness and progress are the most important prerequirements for such a belief. Democracy might be a good option, but experience, that is history, has proven that information asymmetries corrupt Rousseau's egalitarian presumptions. Coming to the question how democratic processes could be improved, Habermas is again found to be ahead with his theory of deliberative democracy. However, as I'm about to look at information asymmetries as another natural law, I don't see much option in there.

Some general criticism on liberal approaches on international politics in East Asia

2009-10-14T16:32:00.000+02:00

While reading all those articles provided for this lecture, I noticed a common theorem in the scholars’ analyses that appeared to be in basic conflict with their analysis of “international relations between Asian states”.

In short, most scholars come from the idea of an “Asian region” that was determined by geography or even history and socio-cultural development and thus, must be perceived accordingly by the actors involved. In other words, they presume that there are “Asians” that consider themselves as “Asians” and thus can relate to each other.

Obviously, this understanding stems from the opposite of the Far East, the West and Europan integration in particular and seems to have left strong impact on disciplinary studies like political science. In fact, the close entanglement of European countries ever since the rise of the Roman empire and all the more since formal integration in the course of the European Union seem to have been a very driver for the development of those disciplines. Thus, the complex, intertwined relations of European countries wasn’t only influental but fundamental to the layout and concepts in political science. The question now is whether this applies to “Asia”.

Let me give you three crucial observations: The word “Asia” stems from Old Greek. There is said to be no

native term for that region in the Far East. The Chinese word stems from aSino-Japanese term that was simply deduced from the Western word “Asia” by Japanese scholars as late as the middle of the 19^th century. Hence, the “Asians” had no word to relate to their kind until 150 years ago and probably didn’t need or wanted to.

Second, despite the pivotal influence of Chinese culture on neighbouring countries, in economic and political terms, there have been independent states within similar regional borders with distinct ethnicity throughout history. Thus, the concept of “nations” applies even better than to European countries.

Third, even more and as pointed out by Aggorwal and Koo (p. 123), there had been rather little “international” (We cannot really talk of nations because they didn’t perceive themselves as that – which actually adds to the argument as you will see!) exchange, interchange or even intermixture. Every “country” was a self-contained, comprehensive entity, a system, that was rather focused on its domestic issues. This actually explains the lack of nationalism back then: Right because they didn’t see their states in the context of foreign countries, but were completely absorbed in internal issues, they couldn’t develop such an identity – basically, there was too much “national” focus to become nationalistic.

The third point is also the reason why area studies work pretty well in the case of “Asian” countries: Every “country” constitutes a rather comprehensive system of its own and does not require so much attention to foreign impact, treating them as exogenous factors alone. Imagine you try to analyze Switzerland in an approach of area studies! Again, the intertwined nature of Europe gives reason for the promotion of disciplinary studies and theoretical approaches instead of area studies.

Yet, as in most fields of world view and science in particular (Damn you, linguistics!), the West did leave a tremendous impact on other people’s thinking: With no doubt, “Asians” do consider themselves as belonging together in certain aspects. Globalisation definitely gave rise to that, the emigration of Asian people in other, particularly Western countries made them aware of that and the Greater Japanese Welfare Sphere as the justification for Japanese hegemony in the beginning of the 20^th century is the perfect example of how quickly it was internalized (although the Japanese left a “three class society” in that concept).

In short, foreign – not foreign Asian but foreign Western – influence forged Far East countries together. This goes perfectly along with the conclusion by Aggorwal and Koo that it was mainly external, in the concept of area studies exogenous factors that are the basic drivers of Asian cooperation.

However, that doesn’t mean that we can assume this understanding among Asian countries and leaders. Quite the opposite! Doesn’t that tell us that those countries weren’t able or willing to take a proactive role but are basically forced into by given facts? First, they were perceived as Asians and they organised themselves accordingly, no they are thrown together in field of international politics and they have to deal with it. Basically, this implies that Far Eastern countries lack institutions for common perception by tradition. Rather than having developed them themselves, they were created by the West. Again, this hypothesis goes along with the Aggorwal & Koo-observation that there hasn’t been much multilateralism in Asian history. I would say that there didn’t need to be any as country borders were drawn along the regions that naturally operated together up to the 19^th century. In this sense, every single Asian country forms a continent of its own, becomes like a whole Europe of its own.

But, if Asian countries basically form regions, continents of their own, international – or rather intercontinental – relations are in a much different light: They do not cooperate towards more integration, the establishment of an economic union or becoming a new European Union in the Far East. They simply want to trade according to Smith’s basic idea of national surpluses. In this sense, economic interdependency cannot really be a goal or even means, but just a side-effect. Again, Asian countries can’t help but to deal with it. As Ms. Lisenkova said in today's lesson, we need to look at the dynamic power relations inside the countries. That's where the most part of the answers for foreign politics lie. To me, that sounded like in Asia, foreign politics aren't as much determined by ideological settings - like the U.S. liberalism or Switzerland's neutrality and peace-negotiations - as of a rather inconsistent spill-over from national politics. Of course, with anthropological axioms and the refuse of cultural determinism, the same may apply to any other country - like Great Britain's stances towards the European Union. Still, there are signs to concede, to postpone personal profit for later gains - no zero-sum games but tit-for-tat. Powerful evidence for such willingness to cooperate and concede, wait for benefits in the future, is the European Union itself, the introduction of a common currency and the upcoming conclusion of the Lisbon contracts. Remember what criticism Czech president Klaus faced just a few days ago? He would spoil exactly this climate of trust.

In fact, trust seems fundamental to the establishment of such relations and trust is exactly the one thing that lacks in Asia. The example of Sino-Japanese may give a good example where mistrust is actually "promoted" by Chinese government rhetoric, also to gain better positions for negotations.

So, what does that mean to our view on international politics in Asia? In my eyes, that means that we cannot expect any party taking active or even proactive roles. Instead, countries remain to seek international solutions once their stakes increase (keywords: energy dependency of China, FDI-flow from Japan) and leave it with that. Any theory focusing on multilateral institutions, liberalism in particular, is bound to fail because it overstresses international relations and anticipates tendencies of integration like in Europe. The implication of European development, however, draws off the attention from the self-contained and self-sufficient country of those rather large Asian countries that are and have always been economically, socially and politically consistent entities.

Instead, I promote a rather realistic view on the “Asian layout” – not because of historical legacy, Confucian or any other mindset, but simply because it considers states as the primary unit of analysis and international relations as the sphere of lack of regulation.

I’d rather think that there would be another large empire emerging in the Far East than a closely intertwined, multilateral union as the like of the European Union. That this won’t be very peaceful is already reflected in the ethical conflicts within those states – particularly the Chinese minorities that were promoted in today’s class as a rudimental informal institution: While they do play pivotal roles in the field of economics, they are discriminated from Japan to Malaysia and even prosecuted in Indonesia.

What is there to be expected of integration, an “Asian model”, as long as there are nothing but self-contained and -interest, reactive or passive states that reject even social interchange? Liberalism may be interesting once or if ever Asian countries have moved closer together. But for the moment, realism and realpolitik seems to be still at place.

About memories

2009-10-08T01:33:00.001+02:00

I've just come from spending a whole evening at my friends' place watching Koreeda-movies. Now, I must forestall that they all together appeared awful to me, nothing but platitudes as plotline covered with kitsch scenes. But there was one idea in the movie "Afterlife" that made me ponder for almost the whole evening after all.
In the movie "Afterlife", the "reception" of the underworld/ heaven/ paradise is depicted where all the deceased end up to and are asked to choose one particular memory from their lives within three days. That memory will be put into a movie and be the only reminder of their past life. Different characters are presented that review their lives in different views - or not at all. The rest of the movie is a hommage at movie-making showing how the scenes are made - a horrible profanisation of the basic idea and pretty crappy done anyway.
However, the message was clear and made me ponder - like way too often - right from the start: What would I choose from in my whole life?
Critical input was given by two particular characters - one elderly man who remembered that he wanted to achieve something that will stay as a reminder of his deeds, but eventually ended up to live a life as normal as he could be, he said, the other a rebellious youngster who refused to choose one memory altogether as he could not bear the responsibility to deny all the others.
The two views are symptomatic and give lots of answers to the underlying issue.
However, while these two difficult cases bears lots of important thoughts, they don't give any conclusion because of their approach: The elder man won't be able to make any decisions, the younger is afraid to do so.
Instead, it is much more revealing to go the common approach of "playing along" and finally, including the problems and concerns of those particular two cases.
Hence, I started thinking about my own life and what I would want to remember. Soon, I noticed a very striking dilemma: While my strongest memories contained strong feelings or impressions, they came to marginalize my own identity completely. Reaching the peak of that cliff arching over the whole large valley, visiting that remote shrine in the middle of the night, walking through empty streets drenched in neon light, your first kiss, walking along the beach with your girlfriend, waking up in the morning light or whatever - you completely lose sight of yourself. While this may be the epitome of strong impressions, I would like to see myself in that single memory that would depict my life, like a proof of life that assured me that it was me who experienced it.
Next, I came to realize about the past character of memories: The most awesome experiences can quickly turn into the most awful ones from today's perspective and vice versa. Therefore, the way we look at past experiences is completely different from how we felt back then. If we choose one memory from our today's point of view, we may end up feeling completely different about it.
Finally, experiences always build on others. Hence, the more you go back in your past, the more you lose about your life.
These three conclusions made me draw some conclusions: First, in the future, I will try to become more self-aware. When having a new overwhelming experience, I shall try to find myself in it as soon as possible, realize that this is me living in this very moment, making this very experience, adding something new to myself. Whether this will spoil the intensity of the experience remains to be tested. Second, I shall not value memories. What happened lies in the past. Not only whether it was good or bad, right or wrong, but even how I felt about it back then, cannot be assessed anymore and any judgement will be for today's moment only. Third, living in memories is killing the present. Rather than seeking experiences in the past we shall find them in our present life.
Of course, the final conclusion would not be of any help for the deceased in that reception. But we're still living and shall make use of that. Why not trying to create a strong memory for the future on purpose? While celebrations in general actually aim at that, they've come to be too much of established institutions that distract from that basic goal. Therefore, rather unusual events are required, events that pay no respect to institutions, but are designed for that purpose from the very beginning. How that should be particularly realized, therefore depends completely on the idea. I've already got some in mind, though.

About life

2009-09-26T17:23:00.007+02:00

What's the purpose of life? Procreation.
What's the purpose of procreation? Life. Life bears only meaning in a system-intrinsic view. From a system-extrinsic view, it's a tautological loop of nonsense.
What's the biggest problem of intelligent life? Self-awareness. Self-awareness transcends the system-intrinsic view.
How do we take of comfort of that problem? Happiness. Happiness is the state of absence of worries. Worries derive from system-extrinsic questions, that is criticism.
What's the most sustainable driver of happiness? Love.
What's love? To be taken care of.
What's care? To be thought of and helped.
What's the problem of being thought of? You cannot control, thus check and monitor it. There's no credible signal.
How do we substitute the lack of signals? Trust.
How do we signal trust?
Commitment.
What's the most common way of commitment? Contracting.
And in the case of social life? Marriage.
What do we seek for in life? To be thought of.
Why do we want to become famous? To be thought of by many.
What's the advantage of being thought of by many? Diversification through a portfolio: If one investment is lost, there are others to cover up.
What's the trade-off? Diversification reduces commitment.
Why are we afraid of death? To be forgotten.
Why do we want to go down in history? To be thought of by many even after death.
According to this, who must be the happiest people ever lived by now? Jesus, Buddha and Hitler.

Wouldn't it contribute to happiness a lot if we assigned two people to each other by birth, to force them to commit to each other, think and take care of each other? They don't need to marry, not to live together, not to procreate. Just by default, they are committed to get in touch and solve each others' problems.

How do you think about that? Or even better: How about thinking of me? :-p

About rejecting cultural determinism

2009-09-14T10:47:00.000+02:00

Before presenting my argumentation to this rather disputed topic, I may preempt certain criticism by pointing out that on the one hand, there's no right or wrong approach in humanities and social sciences, indeed, but only common approaches that people had managed to believe in. Therefore, the most viable approach is the most accepted one - which renders the importance and impact of this dispute even higher.
On the other hand, right because of this high impact, my argumentation is of rather provocative kind. For reasons of such provocation, the diligent reader may look up my short essay about being provocative. In short, an agent provocateur does not want to simply outplay his opponents, but force the discussion in a certain directions and bring it down on common terms in general. There's simply no use in agreeing that "opinions are different": The common approach must be found! Otherwise, there will be a lack of trust.

Having said that, I introduce this topic with the bold statement that cultural explanations are of no use in humanities and social sciences. That means that accruing certain customs and habits as well as norms and values as simply "cultural determined" is no conclusion, but just a first step for finding the basic causes of culture itself. It simply does not suffice. The cultural approach is a relict of dogmatic view in modern sciences that has to be challenged like natural sciences once scrutinized religious dogmas about God and the World. "People are like that." and "There's no explanation to why culture is like that." may be the epitome of such unreflected view.
In fact, the cultural approach seemed to have only gained force after other, rather unethical approaches deemed to be unpragmatic for society, social darwinism and racism in particular: As Ronald Dore pointed out there had been times when countries' culture and politics in particular had to be linked to the dominant races' traits, genes and blood.
Therefore, stepping beyond the cultural dogma these days bears the constant risk of receiving the stigmata of neo-liberalism or being outright branded as racist.
Why would you want to tear up those old wounds? The answers is simple: Because current superficial culture-petting bears no answers and understanding, thus simply silencing those old evils like racism instead of solving them once and for all.
This seems like a more than viable argument to challenge the old dogma and ask what truly lies beyond, below, before culture.
There are plenty of theories already in existence and well-established: geographic determinism, biological influence or simply chaos theory, thus pure historical coincidence. Heck, what would have happened if that bullet missed Franz Ferdinand?
The crucial aspect of all those theories are that they do not stop at cultural determinism, but follow a rather anthropoligcal principle. In this sense, they have learned more of the racial issues than cultural determinists themselves: People are people and the reason for different cultures must lie somewhere else.

Hence, I personally reject social studies of completely cultural approach rigorously. Studies of ethnology, religions and arts are most prone to such cultural determinism. I deem them not only of no use, but dangerous for the development of norms and values in a multi-cultural future and forsaking thedevelopment to cosmopolitan views entirely.

About being provocative

2009-09-14T09:06:00.002+02:00

I'm an agent provocateur par excellence.
On the one hand, I would like to admit that my constant disagreement, that is the habit to to disagree by default, has become an annoying of mine. (You're surprised about me admitting at the start? Don't rejoice too early because, there's definitely a concession following. Here we go!) However and as a matter of course, there's also a reason to that: I'm constantly trying to push my system-extrinsic, non-conformistic world-view to new limits simply in order to maintain that. Criticism is like making money. You have to keep doing it or it'll bcome less naturally.
On the other hand and much more important, provocation isn't anything more than a rhethoric tool - for the sake of both discussion partners as I would like to stress out. That is because people are not of absolute, but dynamic standards: Their views, opinions and statements change according and adapt to, in fact depend entirely on their partners' views, opinions and statements. The simple fact that you adapt your argumentation to the points of your partner may be proof to that. Hence, you have to take a different stance if you want to change your parnters' opinion - even if your opinions differ only slightly. Actually, the more similar they are, the more provocative you need to become to give that necessary impetus to cause changes in minds.
There are two types of critics on this point: First, there are supporters of a smoother approach to such miniscule, but all the more difficile differences. These critics rather suggest to simply lay out all your reasons and wait for critical self-reflection by their partners. However, it has proven to lie in people's lazy nature to comfort with different opinions as long as they do not challenge oneself personally.
Second, there are critics that don't see any point in trying as you could not change people's minds anyway. While I have no argument against such views, I don't see any reason to discuss in the first place.
At this point, I would like to return to my statement that in fact, a provocateur's opinions are not so different and hence, the reasons for his attitude, his motives, lie somewhere else.
This leads to the question what he is not, what people generally are and what everyone is supposed to become. Now, a provocateur is certainly not a defender of views of black and white - in opposite what many people may think who feel offended. Instead, he simply thinks that people in general and his critics in particular are just too colourful in their way of thinking: There are no different colours to reality - at least not in the fields of physics, biology and even politics. There's only one reality with different views on it. In other words, the provocateur thinks of reality - or rather wants of reality thought of - as a grey-scale, a more systemic and intersubjective way where the exchange of views and opinions leads to an actual progress and of which all participants can profit. There's no use and therefore reason to simply state your own opinion if not for the sake of your both improvement. In this view, a provocateur is also a realist, a humanist and a philanthrop and certainly not to be despised for his radical approach. After all, his radical stance aims at nothing else but to make people each other in a better way, the grey-scale way.
However, there's a flaw in this approach: Grey may not look the same for everyone. By suggesting a grey-scale, the provocateur always forces his partners to certain terms of discussion. There's the terrible risk that he might be entirely wrong in his conception of grey, of what reality may look like. But then, as long as his partner is not willing to suggest terms for intersubjective exchange himself, but sticks to his own colour, it can't be helped with any better solution.
As self-protection, however, a good provocateur shall never provoke in a field where he isn't or at least does not feel of knowledge and experienced. After all, a provocateur wants to learn from the exchange, too.provocateur chooses to take radical stances: to force people in that gray-scale. Of course, he himself always risks to choose the wrong scale. In other words, he forces his discussion partner to lead the discussion on his terms of what gray looks like. But as long as his discussion partner is a supporter of that colourful-hippie kind there cannot be any other suggestions for terms expected anyway.

What's the problem with conformism anyway?

2009-09-04T00:06:00.003+02:00

I was asked what the problem is with conformism.
My point is that people can only conform to other systems as long as there are any. However, once you've caught up and even passed the state of those systems' creators - not in cultural but anthropological respects, e.g. aging of population - there is no more thing to conform to.
Instead, you must come up with your own solutions. I reckon that's rather difficult if you drew primary inspiration from others so far, had developed no culture of system-criticism or discussion.
What will happen? You'll halt and wait till others catch up. Of course, this will inevitably increase the state of crisis and it's left to find out what changes in attitude can occur once crisis is not bearable anymore. But then, conformism measures "bearability" at others' standards, too, doesn't it?
Anyway, such attitude is of no use to others. Actually, it's free-riding on costs of others and your own.

Looking into the mirror of the future, I expect to see ideas, suggestions and answers everywhere.

Peaches without skin

2009-08-18T13:27:00.002+02:00

Let me tell you about the peaches without skin - or whatever is left of them - but then again, that depends entirely on your point of view.
People are like peaches. Whether they're still growing, appear a bit green and feel hard or whether they've already turned ripe, soft and juicy, they all share a common characteristic: their skin - that skin that feels like a woman's slender back, both soft and a bit hairy. (:-p) Isn't it just a wonderful feeling to bump against it? And that's why people wear such a skin in the first place: They want to live through their lives by just bumping their coevals. Just soft bumps - they don't hurt anyone, especially not themselves. And that's what turns most people in such boring fruits.
However, there are some peaches that got bared of their skin - either because they fell down from the tres and hit on the hard asphalt or simply because they ripped themselves off their skin. They were made or simply wanted to strip themselves of their shallow skin and search for their pit in order to see what they're truly made of and - as personality is just a product of social interaction - other people.
So, what happens whenever such a blank pit gets in contact with other peaches? As its stone is bumpy and furrowed, nolens volens it starts to peel and rip of the others' skin, slashing into their tender flesh to get through to their stone. Of course, most peaches don't like that and start to back off. But there are others that start getting interested in their own stone as well. However, some of them will retreat later once our stones hit on each other, clash and bang, grate the gorges and heighten the bumps of the stony surface: They'll get aware of their strengths and their weaknesses even more. They aren't smooth stones but with treats, talents and lacks. And that's how they end up becoming aware of others - and eventually themselves. There's nothing else in this void but the image of each others' pits.
Maybe, you're such a peach without skin yourself that has torn off a big part of your own skin. Maybe you've already turned into a blank pit, stripped yourself from all your beliefs and norms worming in the sweet flesh and have realized that there wasn't any tree in the first place, no asphalt, nothing but void in which the bumps and clashes of matter is all that can be taken for real, maybe you've become a true humanist. Whatever you may be - you're not a peach with a skin.

Die Lehr' vom Meer

2009-08-18T13:21:00.001+02:00

Seit jeher treibe es uns ans Meehr,
um das Gros der Welt zu seeh'n,
dem Ort, wo All‘ Anfang einst begann,
und auch unser Leben mal entsprang.

Dort streunte ich am Stand umher,
zerrann Sand zwischen meinen Zeh'n
die Zeit verrann, der Mut gerann,
bis die Sonn‘ im Meer verklang.

Was soll denn diese ganze Mär
vom Suchen eines fernen Orts,
den ich nicht kenn‘, denn nicht erkenn‘,
den sich mal ein and’rer ersann?

Was blicke ich aufs leere Meehr,
der Strand ist's, wo wir heute steh'n,
verweile dort, bau meinen Hort
und setz' erneuert mein Leben fort!

Die Tiefe gründet in mir selbst,
die Weite quillt aus mein' Ideen
und blick‘ ich dann auf and're Seen
spiegelt sich und glitzert licht
in allen Farben mein Gesicht.

Ich bin mein eig’ner Ozean,
aus dem mein All konstant entspringt,
Gezeiten gleich steigt und sinkt,
wo Dinge wachsen und vergeh’n,
so will ich die Lehr' vom Meer versteh’n.

On the first church of Satanism

2009-08-14T03:52:00.004+02:00

Dewi says (02:46):
So dark like leVayan Satan?
Il Principe says (02:47):
Haven't heard of that one.
Dewi says (02:47):
Hehehe. He is the first high priest of satanic church. (That guy likes Ayn Rand and Friederich Nietzsche, too by the way, and he put the self indulgence high.)
Il Principe says (02:48):
LaVeyan – whether that's a reference to Leviathan?
Dewi says (02:50):
Yep. I think so, he passed away already btw. But his daughter keeps the evangelism.
Il Principe says (02:51):
The term's euphemistic.
Basically, that guy is promoting a mix of humanism, epicureism and capitalism, I’d say: There’s nothing but people who are opportunistic and bad, but that's what makes them advance in the first place.
Dewi says (02:51):
That's why last time I ever asked you if you like the ideology of Ayn Rand. Well, its pretty simple to start some thoughts about bad religion and how suck a belief is, isn't it?
Il Principe says (02:53):
There's no use of asking whether we "like" philosophical concepts. (Note: There's a tremendous difference to simple ideology.) The question is whether the argumentation is convincing.
Dewi says (02:53):
That's why I despise someone who are willing to do anything to get the opportunity.
Il Principe says (02:53):
In general, I don't “like” Ayn Rand’s objectivism, the idea of the right of the stronger, the survival of the fittest or whatsoever, but evidence is overwhelming so I need to accept it.
Further, I see certain flaws about sustainability in Rand's theory of objectivism: I don't think that people will progress by simply carrying out their plans. There's always measurement and rules needed to guarantee that such projects pervert and distort. The reason is simple: Even if some dictator is the most benevolent and insightful person in the world, he will die eventually and God knows who will succeed him. Thus, objectivism by Rand eventually fails because of the limits of mankind.
Now, LaVey basically continues Rand's ideas into all spheres of life: Do what you can do best - whether building houses or well, fucking and killing. Did I get that right?
Il Principe says (02:57):
He's got some pretty nice rules there.
Why did he need to label them as "satanistic" anyway? Just to catch attention?
Dewi says (02:57):
He? You just give in and accept it? Why some people don't question the concepts?(and try to find a better ideology---- which I doubt there will be a good one for the governance in the planets , except some human basic rules)
Il Principe says (02:58):
Those sins sound very reasonable. Basically, he wants everyone to take responsibility and max out their own potential - right in order to make mankind progress. The aspect of progress is what's so important to Rand, isn't it?
Dewi says (02:59):
No? Because he started to praise something that he has to believe in, to support his ideas(which against the covenants of course). He is not, he build a satanic church.doh!
Il Principe says (02:59):
Girl, you've found the weak spot!
Il Principe says (03:00):
He calls for independent, responsible, in short system-critical thinking and acting, but the way he calls for it, is just another dogma. Well, that's the basic dilemma of system-criticism: You cannot force people to think like that. If you force them, they're doing exactly the opposite.
But, that's somewhat indicated in his first Satanic rule: Don't give opinions or advice. In other words, Satanists need to find the way to Satan themselves.
Dewi says (03:01):
In the end people have to hold on something. Think if you are alone in this world! I definetely won't hold on to satan.
Il Principe says (03:01):
You’re totally right there. There’s nothing without belief. However, he doesn't hold to the Christian Satan. He holds to people.
I think that's pure marketing to call it "Satan". It's really stupid that he does all that ritual shit. Basically, he's a philosopher of enlightenment, a second Kant, cross-mixed with a clever marketing manager. Replace "Satan" with "Humanist" at every place.
Dewi says (03:03):
Humanist is a concept. Satan is a thing.
Il Principe says (03:03):
Satan is a thing according to Christianity, but not LaVey. He clearly states that people are Satan.
So, whoever takes offense of that logical short-circuit is just obsessed by the Christian view.
That's a pretty clever mind-trick, I'd say.
Really, just try it, replace "Satan" with "Humanist": The Nine Humanist Sins, The Eleven Humanist Rules of the Earth, etc.
Dewi says (03:04):
You cannot say sing towards humanist. Except you want to replace "satan" with "hitler" or some politician nowadays.
Il Principe says (03:05):
I see no difference in his suggestions with those of enlightenment.
He really seems to be nothing else but to be a modern philosopher of enlightenment who provocates with Christian terms. I think that it's somewhat out of fashion, though. There are other more retroverted, unprogressive beliefs than Christianity. But well, he must have been influenced by Christianity in his childhood and youth.
Dewi says (03:06):
Stop giving comments on thing that you just read from wikipedia.
Il Principe says (03:07):
I will definitely read more about it. But in my eyes, there's nothing "really" Satanistic in his stuff, it seems.
He just wants to stop people believing in anything else but themselves. And that's just what I said: In the end, there's nothing real but the fact that I discuss about reality with other people. Thus, people are the only thing I can take for sure. That's where I need to start: with people. And he does it.
The next step is crucial, though: He thinks of people as bad. There are two implications: First, why does he think they are bad? Obviously, because he was influenced by Christianity in the first place! And second, why does he denote bad things with "satanistic"? Obviously, because of the same damn reason.
Dewi says (03:08):
And You started with a christian.
Il Principe says (03:09):
No, that's the point. He starts with Christianity. But you're right: In the end, he just wants to convince people of his own belief - just like I wanted to convince you that there's nothing real. That's a belief as well. Even more, he clearly develops a belief that is antagonistic to Christianity. He is rather short-minded if he considers Christianity as the opposite of progress and focus on this world.
Dewi says (03:10):
Hum. You cannot blame a turnover only because of christianity. Who was the people that influenced him in christianity in a wrong concept at the first place?
Il Principe says (03:11):
"Influenced"? I don't think so.
Dewi says (03:11):
Well in the end if all people are bad. Why do we need to hold on to something bad as well? I mean satan?
Il Principe says (03:11):
Based on their own experience, everyone can learn to know something in a different way. You might be just as annoyed of Christianity as most Europeans if you were born and raised here.
Il Principe says (03:12):
I guess he means that we need to accept it and make the best out of it. But that's the point: He doesn't realize that "people being bad" is just an assumption of his. It's like the thing with "homo oeconomicus" in my thesis: There's no proof that life is purely opportunistic. But history made us think and act and again, think even more like that.
We can't get rid of that idea anymore – just like we cannot get rid of the idea anymore that women need to beautiful, men strong, etc. Those are the normative concepts. However, I don't want to imply too much my own ideas into that Satanism. It's just how I interpret it. And I think he managed to speak it out in a very accurate way. I just don't like his marketing approach of labeling it "satanic".
Dewi says (03:14):
Seriously I will try not to hold on to bad things in having a belief. But isn't belief are a concepts to learn as well? I mean , you can protest until u get involved with it. But before you joined any belief, you can make a forecast thru good or bad(like in finance market)-- we have ate the apple in eden to get that knowledge aren't we?
Il Principe says (03:14):
I consider it as "humanist". No, that's the point. You cannot "decide" what you want to believe. Your social environment leaves an "imprint" on you. You have no free will to decide so. Well, again, that's my belief. But looking how parents can basically make their children believe anything, how language gives clear determinants and barriers for thinking, this lack of free will seems rather evident for me. We cannot think of anyone that isn't caught in words. We need words to describe, to structure our thoughts, to think in the first place.
The apple story is even more interesting. I was discussing that with those clever interviewers from that free church that hit me up in the canteen a few weeks ago. I tried to argue that eating from the tree of knowledge, exactly meant that we start questioning, to realize that we don't know. So, in other words, the Bible says that if you start to question and realize the fragility of the Christian belief, in fact of ANY BELIEF EVER MADE, you will end up troubled and confused, thus you end up living in a life of doubt and fear - which is the opposite of Eden, I reckon.
Dewi says (03:18):
I know, curiosity.
Il Principe says (03:18):
It was not God that drove us out of Even. It was people themselves, their thoughts.
Dewi says (03:18):
True.
Il Principe says (03:18):
Yes, curiosity. You shall not question.
Dewi says (03:18):
God never changes. People do.
Il Principe says (03:18):
What is God?
Dewi says (03:19):
My belief and thus, its up to me.

Farewell Poem

2009-07-24T15:47:00.003+02:00

会者定離 - esha jôri
"Treffen heisst auch wieder Scheiden,
Kennen wird einst zum Vermissen",
mögen die Japaner meinen
und damit des Abschieds Leiden
schicksalsbedacht zu trösten wissen.

Doch wenn du mal jemanden triffst,
den du nicht so leicht vergisst -
du merkst ihn dir, du weilst bei ihr,
und sie zu treffen wird zum Bestreben,
dann wird er bald ein Teil von dir
und bleibt dein Leben lang am Leben.

Void does not matter.

2009-07-18T22:36:00.000+02:00

Have you reached the turning point
where your world’s got out of joint,
when to accept was past-due
that nothing’s right, wrong, false or true.

What you’ve learned through all these years
were just some else’s fantastic ideas,
confirmed through propagandistic millenia
as “general knowledge” and “trivia”.

Theorems are gravity
attracting castles in the air
Commands mean certainty
blessing people in despair.

Laws just bring security
in taming all that liberty
and taking freedom in custody
while moral relieved the dense
from comprehending what would make sense.

All your life, you saw a world
that was drawn, labeled and rehearsed
by people who just believed in it
and drew it further bit for bit.

Either you will join them in
drawing dream worlds out of air thin
or you start to question that all
and try to bring it to the fall.

Paralysis, disesteem
awaits for bursting their all dream
the only meed for you, indeed,
is to overcome some others’ creed.

Yet, never be just destructive,
but try to invent your own belief!
Choose what you want, what to agree
reality is what you choose to see.

See the world through your own mind
and find some people of your kind.
Meet them and you will find your own
reflection in what you’ve always known.

What you are and what you’re for
keep questioning that furthermore.
But never take the step as far
to doubt that you actually are.

“Just be yourself!” means being first,
to question life leads to the worst.
For life means nothing but to avoid
to be welcomed by the void.

Specialist shops in retail won’t go under – manufacturers‘ concerns about branding and marketing rescues traditional distribution channels

2009-06-29T18:21:00.001+02:00

(Thank you, Claudio, for pointing out this trend in the first place!)

Internet has radically changed the world – including marketing and sales of products and even services. With cheap transportation, tariff reductions and saver payment systems world-wide on the one hand and large savings in shop rents, product display, promotions and expensive employees for product advice on the other hand, internet dealers have been gaining an increasing market share in retail. Not only cost-sensitive buyers but more and more the general customer base wants to profit of quick and stressless shopping and fast and save delivery right to their house.

However, such internet shopping has always needed and exploited retail shops with product display, professional advice and support. Buyers started to inspect the products in stores, just to get home and order them cheaper over the internet. As retail shops could neither prove such exploiting behaviour nor call on any legal measures against it, they were bound to carry the costs themselves – with layoffs in particular. There seemed to be no end to this trend until to the point where price competition on the internet got so fierce and the high fix costs of retail shops so unbearable that the whole retail market collapsed and there would be no more traditional shops at all. Solutions like product display and sales by manufacturers themselves (see Apple stores) struggle in maintain the corporate image or lack knowledge about local markets, while ideas of exhibition halls with entrance fees would scare off or be bypassed by the customers.

To my own surprise, I have come to learn about a solution by the manufacturers themselves: More and more of them (see Philips for example) have started to provide exclusively specialist stores with specific high-end product lines. Others (like HP Compaq) distribute different product lines over internet and retail. As manufacturers could not possibly be (directly) concerned about the fate of independent retail shops, the reason for this strategy must lie in bad experiences with their corporate image and profits: Probably, lack of advice and support by internet resellers did not cast as much shadow on the resellers themselves as on the manufacturers’ brands. Further, the fierce competition among internet resellers will probably have effect on the production development in the long term: Assuming that in the near future, internet resellers try to out-compete their rivals by requesting only cheap models (with lower margin) from manufacturers, they cannot bear the costs of their high-cost and -profitable series anymore. Thus, price rivalry on retail markets will gain such a strong momentum that it effects production of the manufacturers themselves.

These two reasons appear to be the reason for this striking development in consumer markets: Manufacturers limit the distribution of their product lines and cancel market forces – in favour of their own and retailers’ profits.

Of course, such separations of distribution channels will heavily affect market overview, consumer information, buying behavior and satisfaction: No longer can customers compare prices as well as product specifications in retail or internet stores, but need to access manufacturers’ websites to gain full overview. This goes hand in hand with recent changes in retail shops where manufacturers send their own employees to. Those employees will only promote, inform about and support customers of their brand.

As a result, radical changes in competition and market forces will result: Internet resellers will be parked on a new discount market while retail shops won’t compete among each other as much as manufacturers inside the shops themselves.

The end of neo-liberalism

2009-06-17T12:33:00.001+02:00

Today, U.S.-president Barack Obama presented his plan to introduce legal changes – the newspapers report either about a whole new agency or about an extensive reorganisation for an increased control of financial intermediaries in the U.S. capital markets. Whether new agencies are established or existing ones empowered, anyway, the direction of this policy is clear: away from a neo-classical/ capital market-oriented, neo-liberal/ state-independent economic system towards a system of governmental supervision. The American idiosyncrasy has found an end – the end of neo-liberalism draws near. Whether the Americans, still locked up in their paradigms and barely able to find system-criticial/-extrinsic approaches out of their deep mole, already realize what that means? A walk to Canossa, respectively Berlin, Tokyo and Beijing, the re-writing of economic textbooks that stylized the neo-liberal market-system as the best and most efficient one in the world: separate banking system, rating agencies, hedge funds and funds of hedge funds, dispersion of ownership and last, but not least: Friedmann, that arrogant Nobel-laureat.

Whether the Obama administration has realized or will have realized in time what radical change they’re really up to, will be crucial for the consistency and extensiveness of this turnaround. There couldn’t be anything worse but an administration that just fights symptoms and ends up stuck in the same paradigm, just a bit more twisted in its logic, which would harm the system and its participants even more.

Basically, economic systems are just like religions – in the latter case, you call it belief, in the first one, it’s trust. The integrity and consistency of such a system needs to be maintained in order to keep people trusting in it. Of course, with a bit of self-discipline and moderation, the neo-liberal system could have worked – but so would have communism.

The lack of credibility by scientistic esotericism

2009-05-27T18:03:00.004+02:00

Anticipating the outrage and feelings of insult of some believers, let me foreclose (again) that I consider myself as a pragmatic relativist. My pondering in all kind of religions, philosophies and theories led me to the conclusion that simply nothing is true or false, right or wrong. There’s simply no (objective) reality out there to base any (universal) truth on. Thus, I’m no disciple of science, either. Heck, I consider science just as much of a belief than religions for example: It’s basic axioms in methods and theorems in theories are arbitrary presumptions – premises. However, this is where pragmatism comes in: Science has provided the most comprehensive and compelling concept for explaining this our world (in the West) so far, calmed down people’s worries and doubts and thus contributed the most to life’s highest values – may it be longevity, happiness or human progress (as I think is the basis for the prior).
I’m trying to understand every different concept for explaining the world. This attempt of course is limited and sometimes thwarted by my social imprint (which is of a Middle-European Protestant-Christian, rather Republican than liberal democratic kind). I see logical inconsistencies in the argumentation of people who on the one hand affirm the subjectivity of our consciousness and the important role of the human subconscious and on the other hand, claim to have got conscious of all their social imprints and to be able to transcend them. Such transcendence would not only require full objectivity but also full awareness of the subconscious. This is logically contradictory, I reckon. But again, such people may immunize their opinions by claiming that they have also transcended logic – which I must admit haven’t managed myself nor observed among great philosophers, animals or nature in general: Trial and error, learning by doing – life is doomed to be logic, it seems. Thus, such people rather appear like heretics in my eyes and out of different presumptions alone, must be excluded out of this discussion.
And nevertheless or just in fact, it’s such logical contradiction and the subsequent lack of credibility among certain alternative concepts of beliefs to science that I want to discuss at this point. Recently, a huge variety of rather new concepts of beliefs have come to my attention that try to merge spiritual ideas with scientific findings. The term “spiritual ideas” may not have explanatory sufficiency (as in the sense of mathematical sufficiency), but seems to hit the spot as the basic difference between such concepts of beliefs and science is that it assumes “non-materialistic”, thus spiritual factors in the universe that play a role in our life. Again, it’s important to notice that such beliefs do not assume that this might be materialistic aspects that just haven’t been discovered or proven by science, yet, but presume (and thus immunize the discussion) that this cannot be researched by scientific methods. “Only through your spirit you can explain consciousness”, I was told. Well, this reminded me of semantic linguistics where my friend told me that you cannot really explain scientifically the coordination between words and their empirical referents. Another common example is that there’s no way to explain with science why human beings have consciousness. On my behalf, however, this question is flawed because again, we analyze our consciousness from a subjective point, raise it over living being’s state of being and think that we’ve reached the peak of evolution. How the heck should we really know what we are, what we are thinking when our subconscious is so overwhelming? I rather favour the cyberpunkish conception that consciousness and identity is the result of an overflow of information that cannot be processed in time. In such a view, consciousness is not digital – existent or inexistent – but analog-dynamic: You can have more or less. On a sidenote, I don’t see any other motive in the general dichotomic conception of human beings on the one side and the rest of the nature of the other side than the “eternal” struggle of the human ego to be special. Dodge this!
So, we’re talking about concepts of beliefs that draw most of their ideas from spiritual and religious beliefs like Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism (Heck, most of those people don’t even know the source of both Buddhism and Hinduism!), Daoism, Shintoism, etc. General characteristics of these beliefs are that they exclude (monotheistic) deistic entities, stress on the human spirit and other polypolistic forces in nature. This renders the explanatory content rather flexible or differently put, ambiguous and vague.
I don’t see any logical inconsistency in those views. They’re perfectly fine in regard of their intrinsic premises, the argumentation and conclusions.
However, the bogus comes in when disciples (especially Western people) try to merge these ideas with science. By trying to fathom the limits of scientific explanatory power, in the present case, quantum physics, they try to build a bridge to spiritual concepts: Waves are no immaterial, thus spiritual. The logic is incredibly flawed. Why? Because science is built on materialistic premises! You cannot connect to line of argumentations that are built on different presumptions! Further, empiric science itself consciously excludes itself out of the whole wave and string theories because experiments have already proven that the very act of empirical analysis influences the object of investigation. (Personally, I also see that case in social sciences where descriptive and especially instrumental theories turn normative as their explanatory power influences the empirical referent more than the other way round. Jensen’s free cashflow theory might be a famous example. Personally, I’m studying on the case of corporate governance in Japan in general.) Thus, such disciples simply abuse the huge comprehensive and consistent body of findings, arguments and conclusions by science in order to prove their own ideas right – even though you cannot prove but only confirm or falsify theories of a humanistic approach!
But, why the heck would they want to merge those ideas with science anyway? There’s only one simple answer: They cannot belief them without having approved their own (socially imprinted) beliefs of Western science and norms! In other words, they’re still (unconsciously) trapped in their old beliefs – and haven’t even got aware of that! Thus, they do not only implicitly confirm their old Western beliefs but also betray their new-claimed spiritual ideas, deprive their credibility and create an illogical bastard of esotericism. That’s what esotericism is anyway.
Instead, those disciples should keep their hands of scientific findings and turning them into scientistic arguments, but instead should stick to their completely distinct premises. And if they want to proselytize – either because they need confirmation in their own beliefs by convincing others or because they want to make profit out of it – they shall argue the only valid way: with pragmatism. They shall foreclose – just as I did – that their ideas are also mere beliefs, not to be proven (scientifically), but to be believed, and argue that then– and only then – they would fulfill those aforementioned highest values even better than science does.

Liberaler wider besseren Wissens – Haltet wenigstens ein paar grundlegende nachhaltige Prinzipien hoch!

2009-05-13T14:01:00.002+02:00

Wie die Obwaldner Regierung und gewisse Kommentatoren auf NZZ Online den jüngsten Vorschlag einer Sonderwohnzone für Einkommensstarke zu rechtfertigen und Leuenbergers harsche Kritik zu verurteilen versuchen, schlägt doch dem Fass des politischen Opportunismus den Boden raus!

Ich muss mich wohl selbst als Liberaler wider besseren Wissens verstehen: Im internationalen Wettbewerb bieten wir besser mit und hoffen, als Letzte unterzugehen. Viel lieber bezeichne ich mich aber als Pragmatiker mit einem letzten Funken Hoffnung, im ganzen Wettbewerb da oder dort nachhaltige Prinzipien wahren zu können: Chancengleicheit und Meritokratie etwa. Aber solche komplett korrumpierte, systemintrinsische Lackaffen versauen auch das!

Was der Kommentatoren bubenhafte Diffamierungen einzig und allein offenbaren, ist, dass sie in ihrem prinzipienlosen, systemintrinsischen Denken über das derzeitige politisch-wirtschaftliche Paradigma die gleiche Ahnungslosigkeit allen Mitmenschen unterstellen: Als ob wir direkt unsere Ansprüche an einem Wohnsitz in dem hinterwäldlerischen Kaff bedroht sehen würden! Nein, hier geht’s um grundlegende Freiheits- und Besitzrechte, deren Korrumpierung auf zahllose Generationen nach uns Auswirkungen haben können – nicht nur zu unserem Schaden. Eigeninteresse ist immer die grundlegende Motivation des Menschen. Das will ich nicht bestreiten. Aber wer sich Rawls’ Ideen nicht selbst zusammenreimen und entsprechende Schlüsse ziehen kann, der wird die Implikationen eines nachhaltig bedachten Eigeninteresses nie verstehen können.

Leuenbergers Unmut ist gänzlich verständlich: Wer selbst ein föderalistisches System aufgrund der Mitspracherechte für möglichst viele Gruppen gutheisst und dann zusehen muss, wie St. Floriansprinzip und unsolidarischer Kantonsgeist das ganze Projekt zu gefährden droht, der verliert mal die Geduld – abgesehen davon, dass solch’ krasse Verstösse nicht schönrednerisch gerügt werden sollten. Leuenberger ist in den vergangenen zehn Jahren der einzige Bundesrat gewesen, der sich als gerechter, volksbedachter und pragmatischer Staatsmann hervorgetan hat. Versaut ihm nicht die Nachfolge oder ich gehe selbst in die Politik.

Why has Japan become a culture of materialism and ignorance?

2009-05-07T18:35:00.004+02:00

Let me get straight to the point: Present-day Japan is promoting a lifestyle in materialistic ignorance. The question isn’t whether this is true – every initiate would agree anyway. It’s not a question about right or wrong, either, as there’s no “right” or even “optimal” way of lifestyle and it’s all about view, values and attitudes. There’s simply the question of why – why has Japan become like that?
To allays reservations about me forestalling the first two questions: First, of course, I’m talking about Japanese in general. And second, “materialistic ignorance” is not meant to be judgemental – at all. Both because of the bias of almost any present-day term as well as the high relevance of the topic, the second assertion may need some clarification: Ignorance shall not be confused with stupidity. Economists may think of “rational ignorance”, the state where it would be simply stupid to acquire more information since it wouldn’t pay off. And sociologists may think of the incredible judgemental embossement the “educated bourgeoisie” (in German: Bildungsbürgertum) has left on all these thoughts. You don’t need to watch modern movies like “Fight Club” to understand that “you need to loose everything before you can appreciate the least you gain”, but can start off right in the Bible where it’s written that “blessed are the poor in spirit because the heavens are theirs”. Having allaying this first concern about my own bias, I may introduce the two fundamental attitudes towards life that make rate “the Japanese way of life” completely different. The view and valuation of different kinds of needs and their satisfaction is crucial to the differences occurring.
On the one hand, there’s a simplistic, fundamental attitude towards life. This attitude stresses out basic needs and their satisfaction: Why caring about science and arts if you gain the best feelings from good food, deep sleep and well, intensive sex. Educated people in particular may agree that thinking rather leads to more worries than intellectual satisfaction: Either because you get more questions than answers or need to start to worry about losing your answers again. Critics may call this lifestyle hedonistic, supporters have already called it pragmatic. Anyway, the prioritization of basic needs also implies – and hopefully, will be consciously grasped as – a rather existentialistic, self-determined, maybe egocentric world view.
On the other hand, there’s an attitude towards life that combines utilitarian principles with the higher appreciation of more “sophisticated”, “distinguished” needs: Just according to Maslow’s pyramid, satisfaction in intellectual studies and self-fulfillment are considered as well as felt as more intensive – probably also in the awareness that they contribute to human development and therefore the chance of satisfying even more “sophisticated” needs. Please consider that I’m talking about development and not improvement as the first doesn’t need to make us any happier.
Having said that, let me also disclose that personally, I’m trying to commit myself rather to the second attitude towards life – not out of conviction but a sense of duty: Probably, I wouldn’t have been put in this privileged position both to take the time as well as the system-critical capabilities to asses these two views if my parents and ancestors wouldn’t have worked their asses off for me. Thus, if I want to grant the same insight to future generations, I may do best not to make them read this essay but to make them experience themselves – and this can only be ensured with enough resources gained now. Thus, both for human development as well as the opportunity to make the very conclusions here, I consider it as much more sustainable to choose the second way – and history seems to prove me right, too.
See? Going straight to the point has made me to go into details of details. However, in the end, you may see that the conclusions of this whole essay lie much closer to the universal attitudes explained above than you might have though. Also keep in mind my important distinction between reading and learning on the one hand and experiencing and understanding on the other.
Well then, the question is at hand: How come that the Japanese society has brought up such a short-sighted, ignorant materialistic lifestyle?
This certainly hasn’t always been like that! Just looking back before the two World Wars reveals a Japanese society craving for knowledge, leading discussions through all social strata and resulting in upheavals and movements that threatened the very locus of power. Think of the Meiji reformists and their principles or think of Buddhism. We need to consider that all these events and ideas may not be representative for the whole people of Japan, though. There’s the valid claim that Japan simply never showed such a lifestyle because most people couldn’t afford it! It’s only been in the last few decades that most Japanese have acquired enough wealth that they – or rather their children – could live out their real attitude towards life to the full extent.
However, instead of insinuating hedonism as a cultural basis, I rather would like to introduce another hypothesis: The economic development in the last fifty years hasn’t allowed such a lifestyle, but caused it in the first place! The economic success of Japan has cauterized Japanese culture. When Japan entered the period of high growth, every Japanese was able to get a job – however, despite the high and fast growth of the economy, Japanese people have never acquired the same living standard like in Europe for example: They normally spend 12 hours a day at work, get home exhausted, just to do the same thing the next day again. The economic success hasn’t freed them from their poverty and lack of need satisfaction but just locked them up in a new cage. Japanese employees don’t have spare time or power to care about politics, they don’t have spare time and power to think or do arts. All what it’s left for is some mindless shopping. Think it this way!
At some certain point, this development had become a self-enhancing process, of course. You may want to call it a vicious circle. A culture of political culture ceased, topics like philosophy and arts lost attention and this again had an impact on the socialization of upcoming generations which were born into a system of labour and some spare time for shopping. You can’t learn about political discourse in school. You need to try it out yourself. But are you supposed to do that if there’s cram school to be attended late night? The Japanese have started to run faster and faster in their hamster wheel and all their amenities were expelled until there was only the cold-iron wheel bars left they were clinging to. Japanese materialism isn’t an expression of hedonism, but a desperate escape from an underprivileged life.
Now, if this hypothesis should hold true, how are we supposed to solve things? There’s no use to call Japanese to come to their senses when there’s nothing but work that awaits them. You need to break the system itself, see and try whether a life less under the economic imperative holds more amenities. However, kept in fear of loss by the mass media, having never seen how things are different and still work in other countries, they lack the experience to compare. As extensive and effective the Japanese education system may be, it’s diametrically opposed to the concept of true understanding and insight.
As I mentioned in the introduction already, this conclusion is based on a rather strict conviction about learning and understanding: I’m a fierce opponent of monologue argumentation and explanation. In other words, I don’t think that anyone can gain more understanding (however, certainly more knowledge – but what the fuck is that supposed to be good for if you don’t really understand, grasp the problem and idea behind?) that lies beyond the personal, subjective view. That means that you cannot lead a political discussion representing both sides, that you cannot improve your argument by not receiving any input from someone else, someone else who’s thinking differently than you. You cannot fool your immanent you hiding behind every idea and argument of your own. It’s only in a true discourse with someone else where your thought, your opinion, your idea and your understanding can be enriched. And well, the truer and more direct this discourse is, the more effective! You cannot argue with a book and therefore, reading a book is the least insightful way of learning! How do you want to study, not to mention to understand a foreign country if you haven’t been there? The information is just too complex to be stored up on some pages – just like this essay by the way.
Just think of Japanese in holidays! They don’t try to live in the foreign country, try to get in contact with its people – no, they stick together in a group, follow their tour-guide and rape pictures from one sight after another. Captured, it’s in the box, ours now. This short moment saved for the rest of the life. There’s quite some despair shining through that materialism, isn’t there?
No, the best way to make Japanese aware of their situation is to actually make them see the world!

Economics at a turning point?

2009-05-07T18:03:00.007+02:00

The following newspaper article was published on NZZ Online just this morning. I could not refrain from adding my two cents as soon as the comment tool got available again. Please have a look at this article and my comment even if you just know a bit of German. Now, is this a pivotal turning point in modern economics? Has the financial crisis not only shattered the neo-liberal paradigm but has shaked the very foundation of economic liberalism itself? Are we heading towards socialism or at least that bastard called social liberalism again? Or was this all bound to happen and is just a further accentuation of much longer development? Well, considering that my university professors and teaching books have defended the efficiency of neo-liberal market systems and the separation of management and ownership until last year, this all comes rather surprising to me, I must reckon.
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Deutsche Manager sollen für Misserfolg haften
Koalition einigt sich auf weitere Auflagen für Unternehmensführer

Mit mindestens einem Jahresgehalt sollen Manager künftig haften, wenn mit ihrem Unternehmen etwas schiefgeht. Darauf hat sich die grosse Koalition in Berlin geeinigt. Die Wirtschaftsverbände sind entsetzt.

(sda/Reuters) Die grosse Koalition hat sich trotz scharfer Kritik aus der Wirtschaft auf weitere Auflagen für Manager verständigt. Unternehmensführer sollen künftig für Schäden in Höhe von mindestens einem Jahresgehalt mithaften. Darauf einigten sich am Donnerstag Vertreter von Union und SPD in Berlin.

Erfolgsprämien erst zum Schluss

Ebenso soll die Auszahlung von Erfolgsprämien erst am Ende der Vertragsdauer erfolgen. Ein Unternehmensvorstand soll künftig erst nach zwei Jahren in den Aufsichtsrat wechseln können, ausgenommen von dieser Regelung sind Familienbetriebe.
Vor einigen Wochen hatte sich die Koalition bereits auf erste Auflagen wie die Kürzung von Gehältern bei wirtschaftlichem Misserfolg verständigt. Das gesamte Paket soll noch vor der Sommerpause den Bundestag passieren.

«Hilfloser Populismus»

Union und SPD wiesen die Kritik des Bundesverbandes der Deutschen Industrie (BDI) zurück. BDI-Chef Hans-Peter Keitel hatte Union und SPD «hilflosen Populismus» vorgeworfen.
«Ich habe den Eindruck, Herr Keitel hat das Problem nicht erkannt und zeigt sich wenig sensibel», sagte SPD-Vize Joachim Poss: «Offenbar musste er sich gegenüber seiner Klientel als Hardlinder profilieren.»
CDU/CSU-Fraktionsvize Wolfgang Bosbach verteidigte die Pläne als «politisch absolut notwendig». Für Sachargumente sei man zudem immer offen. «Eine solche Politikerbeschimpfung des BDI allerdings ist nicht zu akzeptieren», sagte Bosbach.
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Plötzlich gilt kein Lehrbuch mehr!

Unglaublich, was sich in diesen Tagen abspielt: Nach dem Neoliberalismus wanken jetzt sogar die Grundfesten des Wirtschaftsliberalismus selbst! Management und Aktionariat - die Trennung von Führung und finanziellem Risiko - einfach mal so über den Haufen geworfen. Wer dies zu beurteilen, die Folgen abzuschätzen weiss, hat wohl angesichts des Umfangs und der Tragweite dieses Entschlusses den nächsten Wirtschaftsnobelpreis auf sicher. Wer sich hier zu werten anmasst, tritt auf jeden Fall ins Fettnäpfchen - wie auch der Wirtschaftsverband selbst: Das ist kein Populismus, sondern radikaler Vertrauensverlust ins System. Vor 100 Jahren waren es die Bourgeois, heute sind es die Manager selbst. Dass diese aber ihre Positionen nicht vererben können und mehr oder minder meritokratisch ihren Einfluss gewannen, macht den Vertrauensverlust umso frappanter. Ich rieche japanische Dilemmas.

The whole discussion in the vault

2009-04-13T22:50:00.002+02:00

oelsen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-ZrwFwLQg hahaha

Karakasa: Wer über Religion herzieht, ist ein impertinenter Vollidiot, der noch nicht kapiert hat, dass unser eigenes Dasein reine Glaubenssache ist. Ob du dich nun von einem Schöpfer geschaffen oder aus abermilliarden Atomen zusammengesetzt siehst - alles sind unüberprüfbare Konzepte, die uns einfach Antworten auf Fragen geben sollen, die uns unser lästiger Intellekt eingebrockt hat. Ein jahrtausendealtes Antwortmuster ins Lächerliche zu ziehen, zeigt nur, dass man das überhaupt nicht kapiert hat. Wer bestreitet, dass Wissenschaft im Kern Glaubenssache (Stichwort Theorem) ist, der ist so bescheuert wie ein Islamist
Und jetzt versucht nur, mich zu widerlegen. Ich weiss die klügsten Köpfe der jüngeren Geistesgeschichte hinter mir.

oelsen: nun denn: religion flies you into building, science on the moon – und jetzt? wir können über theologie streiten oder darüber, wie wir das mrsaproblem in den griff kriegen. egal. arguing on the internet...

Karakasa: Also das Christentum hat im Mittelalter ziemlich erfolgreich für soziale Ordnung gesorgt. Wenn du Wissenschaft mit Pragmatik rechtfertigen willst, soll mir das recht sein. Verzichte einfach auf den höheren Geltungsanspruch. Pragmatik hängt aber auch wieder von persönlichen oder zumindest intersubjektiven Prinzipien ab: Gewisse Leute wollen "in Würde" und damit ohne Medikamente oder Maschinen krepieren, andere nicht. Indirekt hast du mich ja nur bestätigt. :-p

oelsen: wenn höherer geltungsanspruch der verzicht auf irrationalität und hinterhältigen terror ist, dann habe ich diesen anspruch weiterhin :D

Karakasa: Es gibt keine Rationalität. Lies' mal Organisationstheorie. Behavioural Finance wäre auch ein interessanter Startpunkt. Und Augustinus' "gerechter Krieg" ist in der heutigen Politik determinierender also Nye & Keohayne's Institutionalismus. Wer das nicht einsieht, sollte nicht behaupten, einen wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt zu vertreten.

oelsen: hokuspokus. könnte ich den pfaff, den bischof und den papst abwählen wäre die sache halb so schlimm. wie gesagt, es geht um religion, nicht um glaube. […]

Karakasa: Die grossartige Grundidee der Wissenschaften (gerade wegen ihrer historischen Ursprüngen in den Naturwissenschaften) ist es, dass im Gegensatz zu anderen Weltbildern, namentlich Religionen, keine konkreten Grundprinzipien für die Anschauungen, sprich die Theorien, existieren sollten, sondern nur Prinzipien, Grundsätze, in der Methodik, also, wie man die Welt anschaut. Es ist auch diese Grundidee, auf der die empirischen Sozialwissenschaften und ihre deskripitven und instrumentellen Theorien fussen: Man behauptet nichts, was man nicht vorher gesehen hat. Nun gilt es jedoch - wiederum aus historischer Sicht - zu befinden, dass die meisten heute gängigen empirischen Untersuchungen und Theorien von westlichen (also im westlichen Kulturraum sozialisierten) Wissenschaftlern im westlichen Raum untersucht und zu solcher Konsistenz entwickelt worden sind, dass sie im Zeitpunkt der Ausdehnung und Vermittlung in andere Kulturräume, speziell den asiatischen, wenig aufnahme- und veränderungsbereit war. In der Folge sollte sich die Wissenschaft nicht mehr an den Tatsachen, sondern umgekehrt die Tatsachen an den Theorien orientieren. Hierbei entblösste sich die Empirie als stark in den Theorien befangen, als teilweise "self-fulfilling prophecy", indem sie den Untersuchungsgegenstand, asiatische Kulturen oder Wirtschaftssysteme, durch ihre eigene Untersuchung und mit dem übermächtigen ökonomischen, politischen und sozialen Apparat des Westens im Rücken selbst veränderte. Es ist dies, was Kritiker an westlichen Wissenschaften als "moderner Imperialismus" diffamieren. An dieser Stelle soll nicht von einem (beabsichtigten) Imperialismus der Wissenschaften gesprochen werden, sondern von einem Paradigma: Die westlichen Theorien sind zu raffiniert geworden, als dass sie allzu andersartige Tatsachen integrieren könnten. Dies muss oder kann sie auch fast nicht mehr, da mit der Globalisierung schon in vielen Bereichen eine "Verwestlichung" - gerade auch im Zuge der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung - stattgefunden hat. Damit hat sich die Wissenschaft aber selbst unbeabsichtigt auch den Anspruch einer höheren Geltungskraft als andere Glaubensmuster, etwa auch die Religionen, abgesprochen. Umgekehrt lässt sich diese Argumentation aufgrund des nachhaltigen Einflusses der westlichen Wissenschaften auf die verbliebenen andersartigen Referenzpunkte nicht beweisen. Sie erhebt aber auch keinen höheren Geltungsanspruch wie die Wissenschaft und will sich selbst immunisieren, sondern will als These verbleiben. So. Das ist meine Ansicht.

oelsen: ich weiss nicht, was an einer relativitätstheorie oder dem wienschen verschiebungsgesetz so imperialistisch sein sollte. oder der tatsache, dass ein gen X leute farbenblind macht, wenn es mutiert ist

Karakasa: Ich differenziere bereits zwischen Sozial- und Naturwissenschaften. Aber auch Naturwissenschaften könnten in ihren Ansprüchen hinterfragt werden: Könnte der Anziehungsfaktor g auf der anderen Seite der unförmigen Erde nicht anders sein? Die Farbenblindheit ist interessant, weil Farben in verschiedenen Sprachen ja anders konnotiert sind. Über Quantenphysik und Astronomie wollen wir gar nicht reden: Das ist reine Mutmassung auf Zahlenakrobatik. Man bedenke, dass Mathematik eine Geisteswissenschaft ist. Du denkst eben auch noch in den Gesetzen der Wissenschaft genauso wie ein gläubiger Christ nicht aus dem Grundkonzept des Schöpfers herausdenken kann.

oelsen: blrk. g ist überall anders, siehe mal in der wikipedia

Karakasa: Umso besser. :-p

oelsen: farben sind auf der ganzen welt gleich, weil die aminosäure dieselbe ist. es gibt zwar bevölkerungsgruppen, die andere haben (siehe tetrachromatopsie). farbnamen werden erfunden, weil sie praktisch sind

Karakasa: (Ich verstehe g als den Anziehungsfaktor, der der Erde zugeordnet ist, ja?)

oelsen: ja. der variiert je nach untergrund

Karakasa: Das wusste ich nicht. Ich dachte an die Unförmigkeit der Erdkugel. Aber das ist jetzt alles wieder nur wissenschaftlicher Wissensschwanzmessen. Tatsache ist, dass da nichts universell ist.

oelsen: eigentlich ist es kein schwanzmessen. du stellst eine frage und kannst sie verifizieren. das ist doch ansatzweise wissenschaft...
gretchenfrage: wie reagierst du, wenn jemand sagt "schwule sind krank, das steht so in der bibel?" du darfst a) nicht die bibel zitieren, weil sonst besserwisser/blasphemisch b) keine wissenschaftlichen erkenntnisse erwähnen, weil böse und so und c) keine philosophischen grundsätze der letzten 3000 jahre anführen, weil bibel hat sowieso recht

Karakasa: a)

oelsen: achsonein, das ist eine aufzählung. du darfst nichts der drei dinge tun...

Karakasa: Ich kann nur versuchen, mit einer system-intrinsischen Argumentation seine Ansicht zu widerlegen. Ein Argument einer anderen "Schule" ist in seinem Glaubenskonzept nicht akzeptabel, genauso wenig wie biblische Geschichten nichts in der Wissenschaft zu suchen haben - zumindest als Argument (gewiss aber als Untersuchungsgegenstand). Sollte der Ansatz über a) scheitern sind Schwule gemäss dem christlichen Glauben wirklich krank und seine Aussage denn richtig. Das gilt es zu respektieren - genauso wie er unsere andersartige Meinung zu akzeptieren hat.

oelsen: relativist!

Karakasa: Ich kann ihn nicht widerlegen, er nicht mich. Angesichts der Machtverhältnisse in der modernen Gesellschaft dürfte sich dieser christliche Zealot mit dieser Situation schon mehrmals abgefunden haben. Wir, die Wissenschaftsgläubigen aber nicht: Wir wollen zeigen, dass er Unrecht hat.
Fein. Wenn die Schlussfolgerung meiner Streitrede gegen den höheren Geltungsanspruch der Wissenschaft der Relativismus ist, so kann ich mich damit zufriedengeben. Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass dieser noch weitaus pragmatischer und damit effizienter ist als deiner. :-p Und wenn du das nicht akzeptieren kannst, spiel' doch nochmals "Bioshock" durch und frage dich, weshalb Andrew Ryan den Freitod wählt. Das ist pure Kritik an Ayn Rands Objektivismus!

oelsen: achjaklar, stell mich in die randecke

Karakasa: Keineswegs. Ich kontere deinen polemischen "Relativist!" mit etwas mehr Rhetorik meinerseits - oder versuche es zumindest.

oelsen: :)

Karakasa: Impliziert dieser denn nicht, dass du als radikaler Vertreter der Wissenschaft auch keinen Relativismus akzeptieren kannst, weil er indirekt den höchsten Geltungsanspruch der Wissenschaft untergräbt? Ist das nicht genauso missionarisch und zealotisch wie ein Zeuge Jehovas, der unbedingt den nächsten Christen rekrutieren will, um sich in seinen Ansichten bestätigt zu sehen? Oder der Schwule, der seine emotionalen oder sexuellen Präferenzen nicht für sich behalten kann, sondern demonstrativ auf die Barrikaden gehen und "Gay Pride!" schreien muss? Wer mich kennt, dürfte sich an meinen nonkonformen, absolutistischen Sprüchen schon genügend gestört haben. Ich bin also keineswegs ein diplomatischer Relativist der Eintracht wegen, sondern vielmehr aus Ernüchterung durch konsequente und eben unvoreingenommene Überlegung. Ich gestehe den Kreationisten nicht einen Geltungsanspruch zu, weil ich Menschen im Allgemeinen gern habe, oh nein!, sondern weil ich die Richtigkeit der Wissenschaft nicht beweisen kann.

oelsen: die konsequenz einer gesellschaftlichen relevanz solcher theorien ist eine schludrigkeit in den begriffen der welt, die uns umgibt. gerade heute, wo es darauf ankommt, bytes von watts zu unterscheiden, wo jeder eine verantwortung gegenbüer allen haben sollte, ist so etwas gefährlich. genauso, wie man bescheid wissen sollte in religiösen belangen, wer shia und wer sunni ist z.b. Kreationisten sehen sich selbst gerne als exklusiv auserwählt

Karakasa: Eben nicht. Du kannst nicht den Anspruch erheben, einfach mal mit deinen Standards die Welt zu eichen. Das ist wirklich imperialistisch! Damit implizierst du ja auch, dass du den Dialog mit diesen anderen Ansichten gar nicht willst oder einbeziehen kannst.Karakasa: Du denkst ja bereits in Bytes und Watts. Die denken in Suren und goldenen Zeitaltern!

oelsen: ich glaube, die meisten menschen auf dieser welt sind sich einig, was ein gutes leben ist. wenn sie aber durch ihre handlungen das nicht erreichen können, oder wenn sie gar dem ziel entgegenwirken, dann muss man das ihnen sagen. alles andere empfinde ich als fies.

Karakasa: Willst du jetzt mit Utilitarismus argumentieren? Vorher war es gerade noch Demokratie! Ein weiteres gutes Beispiel, dass Demokratie nicht unbedingt gerecht ist. Deshalb legt die Schweiz ja auch solchen Wert auf den Föderalismus.

oelsen: nein. mit alphabetisierung

Karakasa: Damit sie unsere Bücher lesen und in unserem Glauben sozialisiert werden?

oelsen: wieso denn? wenn einer gegen die wand fährt, dann sag ich es ihm. sowas nennt man nett.

Karakasa: Du verfängst dich immer mehr in meiner imperalistischen Unterstellung.

oelsen: genauso können sie uns ihre dinge mitteilen

Karakasa: Offensichtlich nicht, wenn du sie nur in Bytes und Watts sprechen lässt. Oder versuche du dich mal auf Japanisch zu rechtfertigen. Das wird dir schnell Schwierigkeiten bereiten.

oelsen: für mich ist es ganz einfach: ein fundi, der zuviele kinder macht und die umwelt totalvernichtet hat in diesem leben verloren; wir, die gott für tot erklären (jaja ich weiss, es ist anders), haben erst im nächsten verloren.

Karakasa: Vielleicht gewinnt er schon früher, wenn seine Kinder seine Rente sichern - und nicht deine. :-p Du weichst aus.

oelsen: nun denn, dafür sind alle enkel tot. doch, darum geht es. antworten zu finden, für dinge, die nicht unmittelbar klar sind.

Karakasa: Du hast schlichtwegs kein Argument, dass deinen Glauben, die Wissenschaft, über den ihrigen stellen kann. Akzeptier' es und werde von mir zum gleichen Fundamentalist wie im Nahen Osten abgestempelt. Naja, du hast noch einige Jahrzehnte Zeit, an einem guten Argument zu feilen, denke ich. Wenn du während all' dieser Zeit meinen Stempel ertragen kannst. Oder warum wollte Kant Gott mal nicht pauschal ausräumen? :-p Oder warum wollte Kant Gott mal nicht pauschal ausräumen? :-p

oelsen: wenn der dünger ausgeht, wird es sich zeigen, wessen gott zuerst tot ist...

Karakasa: Du hast ja nicht mal einer! Woran willst du dich klammern, wenn du nicht mal mehr an einem Hungertuch nagen kannst? Interessant auch, dass du das jetzt als Krieg der Glauben, als Glaubenskrieg, auffasst. Wann bläst du zum wissenschaftlichen Kreuzzug?

oelsen: wenn schon wissenschaftliche genuugtuung; wenn auch tödliche

Karakasa: Verstehst du nicht? Du willst Recht behalten. Ich versuche nur, keinem Recht zu geben. Was denkst du, wem von uns beiden zuerst die Puste ausgeht?

oelsen: dem, der früher schlafen gehen muss :D soweit ich das verstanden habe soll ich die klappe halten, weil sie in ihrem system recht haben. oder zumindest ordnung. dazu sage ich: dann müssen sie halt nicht hinhören.

Karakasa: Das wollen sie auch nicht! Du störst dich an ihrem Schwulengedresche. :-p

Eine These zur Problematik des wissenschaftlichen Geltungsanspruchs

2009-04-13T21:56:00.001+02:00

Die grossartige Grundidee der Wissenschaften (gerade wegen ihrer historischen Ursprüngen in den Naturwissenschaften) ist es, dass im Gegensatz zu anderen Weltbildern, namentlich Religionen, keine konkreten Grundprinzipien für die Anschauungen, sprich die Theorien, existieren sollten, sondern nur Prinzipien, Grundsätze, in der Methodik, also, wie man die Welt anschaut.
Es ist auch diese Grundidee, auf der die empirischen Sozialwissenschaften und ihre deskripitven und instrumentellen Theorien fussen: Man behauptet nichts, was man nicht vorher gesehen hat.
Nun gilt es jedoch - wiederum aus historischer Sicht - zu befinden, dass die meisten heute gängigen empirischen Untersuchungen und Theorien von westlichen (also im westlichen Kulturraum sozialisierten) Wissenschaftlern im westlichen Raum untersucht und zu solcher Konsistenz entwickelt worden sind, dass sie im Zeitpunkt der Ausdehnung und Vermittlung in andere Kulturräume, speziell den asiatischen, wenig aufnahme- und veränderungsbereit war. In der Folge sollte sich die Wissenschaft nicht mehr an den Tatsachen, sondern umgekehrt die Tatsachen an den Theorien orientieren.
Hierbei entblösste sich die Empirie als stark in den Theorien befangen, als teilweise "self-fulfilling prophecy", indem sie den Untersuchungsgegenstand, asiatische Kulturen oder Wirtschaftssysteme, durch ihre eigene Untersuchung und mit dem übermächtigen ökonomischen, politischen und sozialen Apparat des Westens im Rücken selbst veränderte. Es ist dies, was Kritiker an westlichen Wissenschaften als "moderner Imperialismus" diffamieren.
An dieser Stelle soll nicht von einem (beabsichtigten) Imperialismus der Wissenschaften gesprochen werden, sondern von einem Paradigma: Die westlichen Theorien sind zu raffiniert geworden, als dass sie allzu andersartige Tatsachen integrieren könnten. Dies muss oder kann sie auch fast nicht mehr, da mit der Globalisierung schon in vielen Bereichen eine "Verwestlichung" - gerade auch im Zuge der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung - stattgefunden hat. Damit hat sich die Wissenschaft aber selbst unbeabsichtigt auch den Anspruch einer höheren Geltungskraft als andere Glaubensmuster, etwa auch die Religionen, abgesprochen.
Umgekehrt lässt sich diese Argumentation aufgrund des nachhaltigen Einflusses der westlichen Wissenschaften auf die verbliebenen andersartigen Referenzpunkte nicht beweisen. Sie erhebt aber auch keinen höheren Geltungsanspruch wie die Wissenschaft und will sich selbst immunisieren, sondern will als These verbleiben.

Interlude

2009-03-29T18:18:00.000+02:00

The day when I've found my own pace
the day I won't run to remain
shall be the day when I will raise,
to set off paving my own lane.

The day I get to my map's ridge
the day I see beyond world's border
shall be the day the point is reached
where I can put things into order.

The day I won't go to sleep alone
the day when I'll rise with the sun,
shall be the day I've found my home
and time will follow me along.

The sun's empire was in reach,
where every season's much more bright,
but a raven will just never bleach,
thus swallowed every ray of light,
croacked and pecked, put up a fight
eventually driven out of sight,
to end up plighting to the night.

While in the eye of stormy weather
was where this raven fledged,
it shall be at world's edge
on a remote and high ledge
where the raven ends his flight
sets down and waits for the twilight
to ignite into ember feathers
ashes flying to the dark nether.

Gender-specific conception of attention

2009-03-19T20:51:00.006+01:00

There appears to be a rather striking difference in the conception of "attention" between genders. In fact, I daresay that the female understanding of "attention" is, once again, fallacious. My argument is persuasive as it's developed system-intrinsically, in other words, I thought it through by emphatising women in particular situations which men are confronted with way too often: bitching.
First things first however: What is attention? The term involves two different sub-concepts, I reckon. On the one hand, there's natural attention for things that appear interesting to us. Therefore, it's interest that steers our attention. Such kind of attention can be lost again, though. Things aren't interesting all the time. On the other hand, there's the normative attention, that kind of attention we're required to pay - for safety and security. Women tend to mix up these two ideas. Or let's simply ask: What makes a woman gain the attention of a man? There might be a slight chance - or rather a first, small significance - for looks. Generally and to the most extent, however, it's rather about the stuff he's doing and the thing he's talking about. This is the reason why the concept of status and prestige goes so perfectly along with the amount and extent of women a man can get: Women are attentive for achievements and skills. Of course, such status and prestige isn't constant. Men aren't interesting all the time and therefore lose attention again. The male gender is used to have learn this bitter lesson for millenia already.
When women come to themselves, however, they suddenly apply completely different standards: It's not about what they do and say, but how they appear. In short, it's all about appeareance, not what you are, but how you have been created. Anyway, this goes still perfectly along with the concept. Looks aren't permanent, either. Even the most beautiful girl doesn't only get old, but boring to look at much quicker than she ages. Everyone gets fuckin' bored about a picasso after watching it for some time - and even Picasso got fuckin' bored of his perfect paintings he drew in early years.
However, due to the fact that female attention isn't gained by achievements and skills, they never had to do much for it and end up thinking of it as a state of being! That's the first big fallacy! They think that they're simple existence is cause for attention. And whenever a man loses interest in a woman's appearance, she feel rejected and without any attention. Not leaving to that, they step further and mix up the two concepts of attention and further allege men of being careless! That's the second big fallacy. That the whole case isn't about this second type of attention, anyway, shows the very reaction of the woman herself: In fact, her allegations are nothing else but a final, ignorant and desperate approach to raise attention: bitching. There might be the general tendency that the more attention a woman can gain with her appereance the more ignorant she is to the whole process and the less alternatives she has to "deliver" than the oh so natural bitching.
Of course, bitching itself is the most illogical, retarded act of communication known to man. Basically, it's a woman searching for every slightest option and reason to make allegations to her man. Hell, they might start digging up your whole past 'cause that's the only thing they could come up with. Don't ask them what their point is about. They first have to stop talking to realize that they're only doing it to gain attention - which apparently doesn't work and therefore wouldn't have started in the first place. Self-reflection, my dear friends, cannot be forced upon.
However, modern technologies seem to have given a very powerful tool to men and their suffering: To the extent that women have to write down their bitching and that stuff actually get protocolled, they are confronted with their loose, illogical babble first when they are actually writing it down, second when the man has the opportunity to answer and point out the fallacies in the argumentation without being interrupted all the time and third, when checking the protocolls. Oh, how I am looking forward to the day of complete state control when I can ask the woman to look up "conversation protocoll, file 4.21, day 19.03.2009" to see that I've already admitted, asserted and analyzed a certain mistake of mine - or that it wasn't my mistake in the first place. Efficiency in partner conversation appears to have a very bright future.
Back to the concept of attention. In short, there aren't only different types of attention, different ways genders cause it, but in woman's case, they apply different types of standards to attention: While men naturally get and deserve it only when they deliver, they claim it for themselves as some state of being.

Physicists are the biggest hypocrites in science.

2009-03-16T13:59:00.001+01:00

I can’t help but to think that physicists are the biggest hypocrites in the theory of relativity. I presume that in the meantime, we, cultures and science dominated by Western concepts have come to terms that there’s simply nothing in this world that is true or right. In fact, this world is completely chaotic.
Hasn’t physics provided us the most persuasive evidence on this chaotic manner? Matter can be considered as energy, space can be bent and even time is supposed to be relative. But why the hell did we need to resort to such an unworldly field of examination in the first place to come up with this conclusion? Why should anyone in his right mind care more about tiny spots in the firmament and invisibly small particles than urgent political, social, economic, medical or psychological problems? There can be only one reason to that: For millennia, people have looked up to the sky and in things beyond visibility to find the “divine” system beyond this chaotic and relative world. Therefore, what makes physicists chose their field of work in the first place is scepticism if not mere ignorance about that the fact of relativity which might be pretty commonly known, but difficult to understand all the more. It’s like they need to make another absurd experiment to convince themselves of the arbitrariness of their systems in order to proudly present that they have confirmed relativity. But still in this case, they can feel to have given “better proof” as physics are supposed to be the ultimate, respectively most fundamental field of scientific research. Even though they must conclude with the same relativity like in other fields of sciences, they can still comfort or even flatter themselves of having made this conclusion on a more basic object of investigation. Hunting for and showing off with the “most basic” evidence on relativity – now that’s what I call a hypocrite.

Why "Watchmen" rocks.

2009-03-16T12:15:00.003+01:00

On Saturday, I went watching the Watchmen. What was I supposed to expect of a movie-adaptation which wasn’t only based on a rather unpopular and seemingly pretty trashy comic but has already two failed attempts in the last ten years? Obviously, nothing more than some good laughs of mockery with the help of a few cans of beer. So let’s rather say that I went drinking in the cinema.
However, out of this my initial attitude I was surprised about the movie all the more. In fact, I was delighted. Now, don’t get me wrong! I wasn’t delighted by the characters. There were way too many of them in order to make a decent picture of them. Anyway, the director didn’t really seem to care about a profound characterization of all those “super-heros” anyway. The bad actors did the rest. Neither was I delighted by the camera and sound. The shots were too much “inspired” by movies like “Sin City” and the music, well … I think it says everything when I reveal that Nena’s “99 Luftballons” is played in one action scene. Not even the story did any good: It took ages to realize that the movie plays in alternative historical dimension of the 1980’s where Nixon was just elected for president for the third time and the “doom’s day clock” for nuclear war was set four minutes before midnight.
No, I was delighted by the way the director managed to lure comic-fans into the cinemas to confront them with a basic introduction into socio-philosophical concepts of the 20th century! And how much this movie ended up being philosophical! Basically, the characters all represented different views on society and subsequent concepts for social organization: There’s Ozymandias, allegedly the most intelligent man on earth, who doesn’t care about individual destinies but just “the greater good” – the perfect image of utilitarianism. There’s Rorschach, the Irish-looking small guy with a horrible childhood who is only concerned about justice and therefore would never want to compromise for any “greater good”. There’s Dr. Manhattan whose condition made him transcend humanity to such an extent that he sees how insignificant human existence, life in general, is anyway: What’s the big deal if mankind would vanish anyway? There’s no big difference between the constantly reproducing cycle of life that in the end, stands still and doesn’t change anything and dead space. And there’s the Comedian who’s turned completely cynical and just laughs at humanity’s dilemma. (There’s also Nite Owl and Silk Spectre which either should contribute some emotional view on the whole question or just add in some erotic.)
It’s interesting to observe how those different views of members of a former team clash together in the last third of the movie – after the first half-time was mostly spent on drawing up the Comedian’s life-history and view on the world and in the beginning of the second half, the nerdy audience was put off with some action: How a “miracle”, a phenomenon that couldn’t be explained logically by Dr. Manhattan made him abandon his indifferent view on life, how Ozymandias’ success in uniting the world made most “super-heros” give up their principles of justice and how they became even ready to kill their former comrades for the sake of peace.
Just as much as all those “super-heros” don’t have any real “super powers” (unfortunately with Dr. Manhattan as the big exception), they don’t really stick to any principles in the prospect of success and are even ready to kill each other and deny themselves.
Of course, just as much as the characters and story are superficial, those philosophical discussions remain rather basic. That doesn’t make it any less valuable, though, as it may inspire people with less interest in philosophy to sort out those ideas and get a comprehensive picture of them themselves. Let’s just hope that the movie manages to succeed in this plan and not to fail like his predecessors in movies, namely “The Matrix: Reloaded” and the two final episodes of the series “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, as well as games, “Deus Ex: Invisible War” and the killing of Andrew Ryan in “Bioshock” in particular.

Ein Ketzer des sozialwissenschaftlichen Grundparadigmas der westlich-imperalistischen Moderne

2009-03-01T03:47:00.005+01:00

Im Grunde genommen bin ich ein Ketzer in den jüngeren Sozialwissenschaften.
Meines Erachtens haben sich die Sozialwissenschaften, die Wirtschaftswissenschaften im Speziellen, im Zuge der Liberalisierung und Globalisierung der letzten Dekaden zunehmend von den geisteswissenschaftlichen Prinzipien der Falsifikation weg- und mit empirischer, speziell quantitativer Forschung auf das Dünneis der Quasi-Verifikation hinausgewagt.
Diese Wissenschaften erheben heutzutage gleichsam den Anspruch, mit ihrer empirischen Methodik Tatsachen nachweisen und beweisen zu können. Auf theoretischer Ebene kommt einer solchen Auffassung die Idee gleich, dass die sozialen und ökonomischen Entwicklungen naturgegeben seien, ein höherer Mechanismus dahinterstecke, der das Bessere obsiegen lasse – sozusagen "survival of the fittest" in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
In den Sozialwissenschaften drückt sich das in der Demokratie aus, die sich als „Ende der Geschichte“ versteht. In den Wirtschaftswissenschaften ist es der Liberalismus, der sich als effizienteste Wirtschaftsform behauptet hat. Gerade mit dem Sieg über den antagonistischen Kommunismus sieht er sich als Optimum bestätigt.
Doch meines Erachtens sind alle diese Entwicklungen willkürlich und systemintrinsisch. Ob das eine oder andere obsiegt, hängt ganz alleine von Machtverhältnissen in Politik, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und Medien ab. Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsform sind denn im Endeffekt eine reine Glaubensfrage.
Interessanterweise scheint dieser feste Glauben gerade mit der jüngsten Finanzkrise etwas zu bröckeln: Das Paradigma des Neoliberalismus zerbricht an seinen eigenen Ansprüchen der Universalität. Ich will hier aber einmal ganz aus Stolz klarstellen, dass ich schon vor Jahren trotz systemintrinsischen Vorlesungen und Lehrbüchern an der Universität unser Wirtschaftssystem als Konstrukt erkannt und exzessiv systemextrinsische Kritik an diesem blinden Paradigma geübt habe.
Es ist an diesem Punkt, wo ich harsche Kritik gegenüber dem Grundpfeiler der modernen Sozialwissenschaften, der empirischen Forschung, und seiner prominenten Form der komparativen Analyse heftige Kritik üben muss. Eine komparative Analyse ohne kritisch theoretischen Gegenpol scheint nämlich genau diesem quasi-naturwissenschaftlichen Grundparadigma in den Sozialwissenschaften zu erliegen, indem der Vergleich davon ausgeht, dass das was in der Realität existiert, die optimale Lösung ist. Es gibt gar keinen Grund für platonische Ideenwelten, auf Theorien auszuweichen, da diese schon längstens Umsetzung gefunden hätten.
Eine solche Denkweise ist natürlich auch vom Neoliberalismus inspiriert und verkennt in ihrer Systemintrinsität, dass ein jedes Wirtschaftssystem von politischen Gesetzen, sozialen Normen und ökonomischen Konventionen (wie Verträgen) nicht nur beeinflusst, sondern geradezu determiniert wird. Erst der Glaube an das System lässt dieses optimal funktionieren, und wenn dies nicht der Fall ist, dann herrscht Korruption, Window-Dressing oder soziale Aufruhr – je nach Systemauslegung.
Eine komparative Analyse auf rein praktischer Ebene riskiert denn in der empirischen Prämisse leer zu laufen, dass die Wirtschaftspraxis Produkt einer Evolution ist, die es nur zu beschreiben und instrumentell zu erklären ist: eine self fulfilling prophecy der forschungsleitenden Theorie sozusagen. Doch die Prämissen der empirischen Erhebung, der Beschreibung und der Interpretation sind wiederum von Gesetzen, Normen und Konventionen determiniert, kurz: Eine jede Theorie ist in ihrem Kern normativ.
Da dies nicht ausgeschaltet werden kann, muss es zumindest explizit gemacht werden. Deshalb darf eine komparative Analyse nicht auf einen theoretischen Gegenpol verzichten.

東京

2009-02-28T11:32:00.001+01:00

There’s no such melancholic sight
like that cityscape at night
drowned in pouring summer rain –
an image which will always remain.

Raindrops raise the gaze aloft
where murk clouds lurk, wind and waft
silent flashes light up behind
as water needles pierce night's blind,
flashing up and shooting down,
they make night’s sky in your eyes drown.

Then, the drops tap dusty roofs
to ask the dust to swing its hoofs.
More and more drops join the waltz
and turn it into a river dance.

There, above the dark alleys,
illuminated in neon rays,
rain has set up its own stage
the last dance is what shall be waged,
to waltz their life’s final round,
before they hurl themselves towards the ground.

As rain cries off the city’s paint,
the world reveals a bit its taint,
as water allays the city’s pain –
an image which will always remain.

Brief an Bundesrat Leuenberger

2009-02-15T16:53:00.003+01:00

Sehr geehrter Herr Leuenberger

Ich schätze Sie als kultivierten, umsichtigen und vor allem systemkritischen Staatsmann, wenn ich auch Ihrer umso rebellischeren, engstirnigen und wenig pragmatischen SP wenig abgewinnen kann.
Letzthin haben Sie meine spezielle Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen, als Sie als einer der ersten in der Schweizer Politszene die einzig konsequente Folgerung aus der derzeitigen Marktkrise (Der Begriff Finanz- oder Wirtschaftskrise halte ich für irreleitend.) gezogen haben und eine grundlegende Hinterfragung des neoliberalen Paradigmas forderten. Die CVP ist ja gerade in diesen Tagen – noch vor Ihrer Partei – auf diesen Zug aufgesprungen.
So viel Systemkritik und Bereitschaft für Neues mag vielleicht auch Beachtung für meinen Vorschlag für eine Neuformierung der Schweizer Parteienlandschaft gewinnen können. Keine Bange! Auch ich will mich in Pragmatik und Umsichtigkeit üben und sehe die Idee denn mehr als Ergänzung denn als Konkurrenz zu einem jahrhundertealten System. Der Text konnte sich einer gewissen provokativen Rhetorik aber trotzdem nicht ganz enthalten, wie ich gestehe. Ich hoffe, Sie wissen darüber hinwegzusehen und mir Ihr grundehrliche Meinung zum Vorschlag zu geben – wie auch eine Antwort darauf, weshalb gerade der Bundesrat bis heute nicht das Heft in die Hand genommen hat und selbst ein solches Projekt konsequent und determiniert vorangetrieben hat.
Ich kann mir vorstellen, wie viel Arbeit Sie gerade in diesen Tagen haben, hoffe aber trotzdem, ein persönliches, substanzielles Rückschreiben zu erhalten und verbleibe

Hochachtungsvoll
xxx

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Auf dass Parteien wieder unsere persönlichen Interessen vertreten!

Wir alle haben politische Interessen. Diese haben sich gewandelt. Die Parteien nicht.

Politisch sind wir alle. Ob wir es wollen oder nicht. Dies trifft gerade auf ein Volk zu, das sich eines politischen Systems mit direktdemokratischen Elementen und Prinzip der Konkordanz rühmen darf wie es sich in keinem anderen Staat dieser Welt findet. Und dies trifft gerade auch auf Zeiten des schnellen und radikalen Wandels wie diesen zu, wenn wir alle unsere Interessen und Sorgen vertreten müssen, weil Politiker und Beamte die Übersicht verloren haben und bewährte politische Konzepte plötzlich versagen.
Und genau ein solches Versagen zeichnet sich offensichtlich ab in der für jede, auch unsere so spezielle Demokratie so wichtigen Institution: in den Parteien zur Repräsentation unserer Interessen im Parlament.
Parteien sollten die verschiedenen Interessen und Meinungen von uns Bürgern bündeln und effizient und konsequent in der Volksvertretung, dem Parlament, vertreten. Sie sind im Grunde eine vorgelagerte Wahl unter Gleichgesinnten, die so ihre Interessen abstimmen, ein gemeinsames Vorgehen festlegen und in der Landesregierung einbringen.
Die Interessen der Menschen, gerade uns Schweizern, haben sich über die letzten Dekaden einschneidend verändert: Wir streiten uns nicht mehr über Evangelismus, Katholizismus oder Atheismus. Wir haben uns auf den Glauben als persönliche Sicherheit und Konstante geeinigt. Wir brauchen nicht mehr die Mehrheit, um uns in ihm bestätigt zu fühlen. Wir streiten nicht mehr um Kapitalismus oder Kommunismus. Wir haben erfahren, dass die konsequente Extreme zum Scheitern verurteilt ist und das wirtschaftliche System kontinuierlich neu justiert werden muss. Wir streiten kaum noch über die Frage nach Urbanisierung oder Bewahrung von Landleben: Die Globalisierung und der Strukturwandel, gerade in der Schweiz, hat die meisten von uns zu Büroangestellten gemacht, die trotzdem Schweizer Milch und Brot zu geniessen wissen.
Neue Herausforderungen verlangen von uns Ansicht und Meinung ab: Wollen wir uns der Welt öffnen, sie beeinflussen wie auch beeinflusst werden? Überwiegen die Vor- oder Nachteile dieses Einflusses? Wollen wir leistungsorientierter werden oder vorbeugen, alles diesem Kriterium unterzuordnen? Was für einen Stellenwert müssen, wollen oder können wir der Natur in unserer Politik zugestehen?

So steht es um die Schweizer Parteienlandschaft.

Doch schauen wir uns die Schweizer Parteienlandschaft an! Da ist die sozialdemokratische Partei SP im linken Flügel. Noch immer streicht sie alles putterrot. Ihre alternden Vertreter schreien noch immer nach Sozialismus, träumen von einem europäischen Proletariat und sehen den Fiskus in erster Linie als Schöpftopf. Dass sich in erster Linie die Unternehmen und reichen Menschen über die Welt hinweg die Hand gereicht haben und schnell mal den Schöpftopf in ein ausländisches, wohl weniger demokratisches Land mitnehmen können, das wollen die sozialkonformen Querdenker nicht wahrhaben.
Da ist die Christliche Volkspartei CVP, die einst den christlichen Glauben im Parlament gepredigt wissen wollte. Inzwischen kleidet sie sich wie die Migros und der Coop in Orange und versucht den Durchschnittsschweizer statt ins Lebensmittelgeschäft in die Partei zu locken. Wofür sie eigentlich steht, wenn sie "Familienpolitik" betreibt, dürfte wohl niemandem klar sein.
Da ist die Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei FDP, die sich in den letzten zehn Jahren mehr zu einer Wirtschaftslobby als einer Volksvertretung gewandelt hat und deshalb im Volk alljährlich Stimmen einbüsst.
Da ist die Schweizer Volkspartei SVP, die gerade mit dem Versagen der FDP zum Sammelbecken aller liberalen Vorstellungen wurde, aber unter der entsprechenden Vielfalt der Ideen und Ansichten wie auch den machtpolitischen Interessen ihrer Gründerväter am Zerbrechen ist.
Neben diesen vier noch grossen Parteien ist da aber auch die neue Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei BDP, die ein erstes Kind dieses Konflikts in der SVP ist, sich aber programmatisch von jener kaum unterscheidet und denn mehr eine Partei der Geächteten und der Unzufriedenen ist.
Da ist ferner die Grüne Partei, die mit ihren Umweltanliegen dem Schlagwort der Gegenwart, Nachhaltigkeit, Rechnung tragen und denn plötzlich Zulauf gewonnen haben. Aber auch sie sind geschwächt, da Umweltanliegen kein konsistentes Programm bilden und so sehen sich einige immer noch als kleine Tochter der SP, während andere als Grünliberale einen neuen Weg gehen wollen.
Und da sind noch viele kleine Parteien, die in geographischen oder programmatischen Nischen oder auf Schultern einer charismatischen Persönlichkeit halten.
Doch sie alle haben gemeinsam, dass sie mehr Namen als Inhalt haben.
Was will die SP nochmals genau? Da hört man von Kinderkrippen für alleinerziehende Mütter und umfassenden Versicherungen, die man mit höheren Steuern für Reiche finanzieren will. Dass diese aber wahrscheinlich (wieder) ins Ausland abziehen, das sei nicht bedacht. Jüngere Generationen rufen schon lange nach einer Neuorientierung der Partei, doch zeigen mit Hausbesetzungen, dass diese entweder noch rebellischer ausfallen oder umgekehrt mehr sozialen Liberalismus als Sozialismus wünschen.
Da springt die CVP ein, die sich als gemässigtere (Mitte-)Links-Partei gibt. Aber mit den globalpolitischen Massstäben konfrontiert, verkommt sie allzu häufig zum Fähnlein im Winde, die aber sehr wohl da und dort noch etwas soziale Gerechtigkeit herauszuschinden weiss.
Die FDP steht für das KMU ein. Ihre Repräsentanten rekrutiert sich aber vor allem aus grossen und gar multinationalen Unternehmen und auch gerne mal noch einen Sitz im einen oder anderen Verwaltungsrat haben. Dass diese dann gerne über die kleineren Unternehmen hinwegpolitisieren, entspricht dann nur dem opportunistischen Fressen-und-Gefressen-Werden der ökonomischen Philosophie.
Da dürften noch mehr Leute aus dem Gewerbe in die SVP flüchten, wo sie aber mit den angestammten Bauern schnell in Konflikt geraten. Der gemeinsame Nenner wird Konservativität, was von vielen schon als konsequente Nein-Sagerei verurteilt wurde. Bezeichnenderweise kommen hier immer noch die meisten neuen politischen Ideen, so radikal oder einseitig sie manchmal auch sein können.

Die Parteien sind in einer Sinnkrise und lassen sich nicht helfen.

Die Schweizer Parteien sind in einer Sinnkrise. Ihre Neuorientierungen kann man einfach nur als notgedrungene, verzweifelte Sinnsuche deuten und die vagen Prinzipien und abgenutzten Phrasen in den Statuten sagen einfach nichts aus. Viele Leute drohen dabei ausser Acht zu lassen, dass solche Prinzipien und Programme niemals Quelle neuer, guter Ideen, konsequenter und bestrebter Denkrichtungen und erfolgreicher und effizienter politischen Vorschläge sind. Da versteht plötzlich jedes Parteimitglied etwas anderes unter den Grundsätzen und die endgültige Deutung wird den Funktionären in der Partei und den Politikern im Parlament ausgeliefert. Sollten die nicht unsere Interessen einen und vertreten?
Ist es nicht bezeichnend, dass die Presse in diesen Jahren mehr denn je über Parteiengezänkt, Schlammschlachten zwischen einzelnen Politikern und Auslosungen über Ratssitze zu berichten weiss? Wie häufig lesen wir von programmatischen Diskussionen gelesen? Wir Bürger wollen unsere Interessen vertreten sehen, nicht des Politikers persönliche Quoten und Zoten.
Was nützen uns solche Parteien und ihre Repräsentanten denn? Höchstens eine gute Promi-Story in einer Boulevardzeitung am Morgen. Aber sie helfen uns garantiert nicht, das Schweizer Vermächtnis der Demokratie hochzuhalten und weiterzutreiben, auf dass wir und unsere Nachfahren auch in Zukunft in einem der grossartigsten, ja wahrscheinlich dem grossartigsten Staat der Welt leben können.
Was können wir dagegen tun? Interessen müssen stets gebündelt werden. Parteien gibt es seit Anbeginn der Politik. Aber nie waren sie dasselbe und sie sollen auch nie dasselbe bleiben. Die Parteien haben gezeigt, dass sie nicht willens oder gar in der Lage, sich endlich neu zu erfinden. Reformversuche versanden im Parteienfilz. Warum denn nicht ein Neuanfang? Warum formieren wir uns nicht einfach neu - hinter unserer wahren Interessen und Sorgen, gebündelt in neuen Prinzipien und Programmen!
Gewiss mögen viele denken, dass ein solcher Versuch alleine schon aus Gründen der Ressourcen, der kritischen Grösse, des Konfliktes mit bestehenden Parteien und so weiter zum Scheitern verurteilt ist.
Aber wir müssen uns gänzlich von diesen althergebrachten, überholten Vorstellungen des politischen Austausches lösen - wie wir es doch in so vielen anderen Bereichen getan haben. Die Lösung liegt in genau diesem Medium, in dem ich hier mit euch kommuniziere: im Internet. Ist es nicht bezeichnend, dass der Schweizer Staat bis auf den heutigen Tag sich tatkräftig dagegen gesträubt hat, sich hierhin auszudehnen, wo inzwischen schon so viele von uns den Grossteil ihrer Informationen holen, ihre Meinungen austauschen und machen? Dasselbe gilt für die Parteien! Die Webseite welcher Partei bietet schon ein Forum, wo man seine Meinung publik machen könnte? Man könnte fast meinen, die Funktionäre und Politiker wollen das Internet aus der Politik verbannen, weil sie ihre persönlichen Interessen bedroht sehen.
So wollen wir denn die längst überfälligen Dinge selbst in die Hand nehmen und die politische Landschaft ins Internet erweitern! Gründen wir die Schweizer Politik im Internet neu! Dies soll nicht im Konflikt zum Schweizer Staat und seinen staatlichen Institutionen erfolgen, sondern höchstens als Konkurrenz zu den vertrockneten Parteien, die die Schweizer Politik zu Boden richten zu drohen.

Wie wir unsere Interessen trotzdem untereinander abstimmen und ins Parlament bringen können.

Was gilt es denn zu tun? Wir müssen ein zuverlässiges, schnelles und vor allem sicheres Netzwerk von Foren errichten, die Ausgangsort für die Interessenfindung und Gründung von neuen Parteien werden. Neben diesen Parteiforen werden zwei weitere Typen von Foren bestehen: Das eine sind offene Diskussionsforen, in denen jeder Teilnehmer seine persönliche Meinung äussern und diskutieren kann. Das andere sind Parlamentsforen, in denen eine solche Diskussion von Repräsentanten aus den Parteiforen geführt wird und die Grunddiskussion klar und geordnet spiegeln soll. Diese Parlamentsforen soll ein Parlament mit Mehrkammersystem wiederspiegeln, um den Föderalismus zu wahren, ja vielleicht sogar mehr als zwei Kammern umfassen, um spezielle Diskussionen wie Umwelt oder Atom ohne die Pattsituationen des traditionellen Systems diskutieren zu können. Es sei bedacht, dass auch diese Parlamentsforen alleine der Diskussion dienen sollen und gegenüber den öffentlichen Foren für mehr Klarheit und Einsicht sorgen.
Schliesslich sollen die User auf Grundlage der Diskussionen in den Partei-, öffentlichen und Parlamentsforen, mitunter auch den Empfehlungen der Repräsentanten der Parteiforen ihre Meinung fassen und in der Realität, in den echten Abstimmungen, auf den echten Wahlzetteln einfliessen lassen.
Das ist wahre Demokratie! Das ist Parteienpolitik, die programmatisch orientiert ist und zum Erfolg der Schweizer Politik führt. Das ist die Plattform, die uns endlich unsere Meinungen richtig diskutieren, ordnen und repräsentieren lässt. Denn politisch sind wir alle.

A comprehensive discussion

2009-02-09T04:42:00.012+01:00

This is somewhat an appendix to the previous entry about language as the final frontier of my concept of system-extrinsic criticism. It's in German but I guess even if I tried to translate it into English, I wouldn't manage to get across all the minor tweaks and points in the argumentation.

Karakasa : Wie darf ich deinen Statustext "rocking concepts!" verstehen?
Lilith : das bezieht sich eigentlich darauf den geist flexibel zu halten..
Karakasa : Im Sinne von shaking concepts?
Karakasa : Interessant.
Lilith : ja aber noch ein bisschen zielgerichteter nich ganz so zufällig
Lilith : und spielerisch
Karakasa : Was konkret?
Lilith : ..sich seine realität zu erschaffen
Lilith : und zwar eher so dass man leichter damit umgehen kann
Karakasa : Ein überaus pragmatischer Schluss. Ich muss gestehen, dass ich sowohl von deiner Idee als auch deiner Wortwahl verblüfft bin - weil sie genau auf meine Lieblingsbeschäftigung zutrifft.
Karakasa : Und nein, ich trage hier nichts dick auf.
Lilith : ok wie genau sieht deine lieblingsbeschäftigung aus?
Karakasa : Ein Blog wider die normativen Konzepte, die den Menschen so leicht im Kleingeist verfängt.
Lilith : ok
Karakasa : Eine konsequente systemkritische Denkhaltung mit dem einzigen Theorem, kein Theorem zu haben. ^_^
Lilith : und ganz schön viel zu lesen..
Karakasa : Das verlange ich dir auch nicht ab.
Lilith : haha aber ich glaube nach meinen prüfungen schau ich mir das nochmal genauer an
Karakasa : Ich würde mich geehrt fühlen.
Karakasa : Vor allem um jeden kritischen Einwand.
Karakasa : Im Endeffekt ist doch die ganze Sache nur ein einzig grosses Signal, gleichgesinnte Menschen zu finden.
Lilith : ok und funktionirt?
Lilith : e
Karakasa : Mein Club der Pfirsiche ohne Haut wächst mit jedem Jahr. ^_^
Karakasa : Inzwischen zählt er etwa fünf Leute, denke ich. :P
Lilith : ok hat also noch potential
Lilith : echt erstaunlich was so ein lerntag anrichtet
Lilith : ja aber heute gings um inneratomare zusammenhänge und quantenphysik
Karakasa : Da dürfte ich wohl nicht mehr mithalten können.
Lilith : das war wirklich teilweise fesselnd
Karakasa : Wieviel die Wissenschaft ohne kaum irgendwelche Evidenz etwas zusammenzudichten vermag?
Lilith : ja aber lauter spannende konzepte
Karakasa : Also die biblische Entstehungsgeschichte klingt für mich auch ganz schön spannend.
Karakasa : Weltenbäume und Fluten, Migrationen und Kriege.
Lilith : ja neulich ist mir erst die bedetung von'am anfang war das wort' klargeworden
Karakasa : Ob da S- und P-Wolken ohne irgendwelche plausible Erklärung mithalten Karakasa : :P
Karakasa : Da hast du mich gerade auch erleuchtet. :P
Lilith : nein aber das hat auch wenig mit entstehung der dinge zu tun
Lilith : oh
Karakasa : Dem wird übrigens auch noch mein letzter Eintrag des Blogs gewidmet sein.
Karakasa : Danke, dass du dem gerade einen Titel zugefügt hast: Sprache als die letzte, unüberwindliche Theorie im Denken des Menschen.
Lilith : ich meinte das nur begrenzt im bezug auf sprache als laut
Lilith : eher in form von begriffen
Karakasa : Wie meinst du?
Lilith : man könnte sagen am anfang der existenz der dinge steht ein begriff
Lilith : eine zuschreibung
Karakasa : Hehehe, was für ein Zufall, dass du in Freiburg lebst. :P
Lilith : oh?
Karakasa : Und ich gehe einen Schritt weiter und sage, dass der Begriff etwas ins Leben ruft, die Existenz erst bestimmt.
Karakasa : Na Heidegger! :P
Lilith : ja
Karakasa : Wir können schlichterdings nicht über etwas denken, wofür wir kein Wort haben.
Lilith : zumindest aus dem standpunkt einer subjektiven realität
Karakasa : Sprache determiniert die Formen und Grenzen unseres Denkens.
Karakasa : Im Grunde gesteht selbst Platon die Subjektivität der Realität ein.
Lilith : hm ich würde immer noch sagen dass man auch einen begriff von etwas haben kann ohne es in worte zu fassen
Karakasa : Wer will das noch bestreiten?
Karakasa : Vielleicht nicht in eines.
Lilith : wie könnte der mensch sonst überhaupt sprechen lernen?
Karakasa : Ich denke aber auch, dass es gerade dieses "Unbeschreibliche" ist, das uns beim Denken Schwierigkeiten bereitet, gerade, weil wir es noch nicht "fassen" können.
Lilith : ja und höchstwahrscheinlich gibt es mehr un als beschreibliches
Karakasa : Ich glaube eher, dass es nichts anderes als das Beschriebene gibt.
Lilith : konventionell betrachtet sicher nicht
Karakasa : Sonst bist du doch inkonsequent und gehst wiederum davon aus, dass es eine "objektive" Realität gibt.
Lilith : innerhalb der konzepte
Lilith : nicht eine realität eher eine nichtrealität
Karakasa : Meine Theorie steht da auf wackligen Füssen. Ich gestehe.
Karakasa : Aber etwas, das auch ohne Wahrnehmung existiert, ja?
Karakasa : Etwas, auf das der Mensch einfach noch nicht aufmerksam geworden ist.
Lilith : nichtexistiert
Karakasa : Das wird mir jetzt zu metaphysisch.
Karakasa : Was verstehst du unter der Nichtrealität?
Lilith : ja ich bin mir auch nicht so ganz sicher aber ich werde dem noch nachgehen
Karakasa : Ich beginne, über die Welt immer mehr wie die Schaffer der Welten von Uru zu denken: Ein schwarzes Nichts, in das wir unsere Feder setzen und plötzlich Formen und Gestalten herauszeichnen.
Karakasa : Das erinnert mich wieder an das Sprichwort "All matter is void.". Es existiere also gar nichts wirklich.
Lilith : aber dann müssten wir ja einen freien willen haben
Karakasa : Den hätten wir ja auch. Aber wir lassen uns von den Konzepten einschränken.
Karakasa : Um Sicherheit zu erlangen.
Karakasa : Kennst du Neon Genesis Evangelion, ja, den Anime.
Lilith : hm und was sagst du zu diesen experimenten mit den nervenzellen
Karakasa : Vielleicht könnten wir fliegen, wenn wir nicht an die Schwerkraft glauben würden.
Karakasa : Welche?
Lilith : also kein freier wille sondern ein freier unwille
Karakasa : Das ist wunderschön formuliert.
Lilith : dass eine nervenzelle ein signal schon sendet bevor wir uns überhaupt bewusst entschieden haben
Lilith : nein kenn ich nicht
Karakasa : Neon Genesis Evangelion ist so ein stupider Actiontrickfilm, der aber gegen Ende plötzlich tief philosophisch wird und die Psyche des Menschen hinterfragt. Im Kern will der Film (meines Erachtens) sagen, dass wir uns die Welt selbst zusammenreimen, ja dass wir selbst nichts als Spiegelbilder im Kontakt und Austausch mit anderen Menschen sind. Unsere Identität, unser Selbstbewusstsein ist das Resultat von Interaktionen zwischen Menschen. Selbstverständlich muss so eine Interaktion auf einem gemeinsamen Code basieren. Das sind die Grenzen der Identität. Der Anime bringt da Beispiel wie die Schwerkraft, etc. an.
Lilith : das hört sich relativ glaubwürdig an
Karakasa : Bezüglich der Nervenzellen muss ich sagen, dass ich meine These nur damit verteidigen könnte, dass die Registrierung unseres Entscheides länger gedauert hat als die Registrierung des Signals selbst, also ein Messfehler besteht, wie beim Experiment mit dem Licht, das durch ein Loch scheinen sollte, aber überall durch die Wand scheint.
Lilith : ja vielleicht
Lilith : oder aber dass wir unterbewusst entscheidungen gemäß unserer gewohnheit -sozialisation treffen
Karakasa : So glaubwürdig sich das auch anhören dürfte, würde es radikale Konsequenzen haben: Unser höchstes Gut, das Bewusstsein unseres Lebens, gehört nicht uns selbst.
Karakasa : Und wer hat die Sozialisierung eingeleitet?
Lilith : deshalb haben wir ja den freien unwillen
Karakasa : Sprichst du mit anderen Leuten über solche Dinge?
Lilith : du meinst den messfehler?
Lilith : ja
Lilith : ziemlich viel sogar
Lilith : haha
Lilith : ja deshalb die pfirsiche..
Karakasa : Genau.
Karakasa : Willkommen in meinem Club.
Lilith : ok
Karakasa : Mit der Wortwahl habe ich mich mit keinem bisher so getroffen.
Karakasa : Und die Worte bestimmen ja gerade die Denkweise.
Karakasa : Ob das am Freiburger Umfeld liegt? Ich habe mich nämlich auch bei Heidegger und seiner Neuerfindung der Sprache wiedergefunden. ^_^
Lilith : vielleicht..
Karakasa : Erlaubst du mir, den unpersönlichen Teil unseres Gespräches zu speichern?
Lilith : ich hab meine ideen eher aus der quantenphysik,sprachwissenschaft psychologie und der buddhistischen philosophie
Lilith : ja klar
Karakasa : Genauso ich.

In the beginning was the word and the word was God.

2009-02-09T04:39:00.002+01:00

What a coincidence - or is it fate? Within ten days, I've got presented and came to realize about the final piece of the puzzle that denotes my philosophy of normative concepts based on the assumption of subjective realism. I'm talking about that final piece that would mark the final frontier of my theory, the very basic theorem below which even my principle of having principle would lose sense.
Let me recapitulate: Reckoning that every theory, every philosophy and every religion, in short every belief, is ultimately based on completely deliberate premises which can refer to no more basic universal true and right fact, you come to realize that our whole world, everything we have explained and accepted, is an invention, or better put an "enacted reality". That doesn't mean that it's completely subjective, but rather inter-subjective between members of that same belief. Past that, there's no way of communication or argumentation. In fact, as those beliefs get consciously and unconsciously passed on to future generations, the community, for example the modern society, gets less and less aware of them. The result is a process of socialisation that lacks system-extrinsic views and criticism. The belief becomes a self-explanatory system, its principles (or theorems) norms (or normative concepts). Whenever such a belief becomes dominant and drives all other systems and their concepts out, the system-intrinsicism tends to become absolute and there's no other competitive belief that could shake the fundaments of the new-born paradigm. I feel like we're currently living in paradigms in many fields of our lives: The totalitarian national state in politics, neo-liberalism in economics, romanticism in relationships, etc. Now, what I try to do is to shake the grounds of those current normative concepts. My goal isn't to make people abjure their beliefs but to come to realize that those are "only" beliefs, an enacted reality and not the truth and righteousness.
This is where my new concept of a world view without any principles but the principle to have no principles comes in. Actually, such a principle is pretty to the basic theorem of (social) sciences that things cannot get confirmed but only proven wrong. However, in contrast to science, my theory doesn't allow to construct a reality but only to destroy one. Therefore, it's something like a final step past deconstructivism, one may reckon. However, there is a tendency to start building new idols - and the idol of my concept as been revealed as the human being as the final truth which means that we can only take for sure that there are other people out there. This again completely relates to humanism which is a forerunner of modern sciences.
However, the final frontier, the very last concept that would allow criticism on other concepts in the first place, missing.
Actually, that piece was right in front of my eyes all the time. Ironically - or maybe rather logically (on an unconscious level), that was nothing else but the other big topic in my constant pondering: language. All my system-extrinsic criticism can only be valid and effective if I actually presume that I've understood the terms of those beliefs in the right away. That problem became apparent when I was talking to a woman who conceived "norms" not as social, inter-subjective standards but personal, subjective guidelines. On this point, my whole argumentation head a dead end.
It was just yesterday when someone made a so simple but so accurate reference to the initial words of the bible: "In the beginning was the word and the word was God." Take it literally and it means that the way you define your concepts defines the ways of your belief.
This also goes along with my theories about the determinant character of language in our way of thinking: As she defined terms in another way, she was thinking of the denoted aspects in a completely different way. I reached the same problem like below the basic principles where beliefs cannot communicate between each other anymore as there's simply no code of conduct.
Therefore, the basic presumption in my concept is that I'm criticising with the same language the belief's communicated in.
Personally, I feel that as a very low-level, commonly accepted presumption: Language is the basic carrier of communication in the first place. There's no use to consider it as subjective instead of inter-subjective as otherwise, it's simply got no use. But of course, misunderstandings happen as the definition of its semantics and syntax requires ongoing synchronisation between all partners.
Nevertheless, it's a presumption and whereever someone says that I didn't understand his words, my argumentation fails.
It's at this point where my concept becomes constructive of its own as it tries to promote and establish an understanding of language as the most basic principle of all beliefs. Language as the final zealotry? I can imagine more ignorant doctrines.