Among the next few pieces that I shall enter on here will be works that I wrote while I was in the rehab clinic in Bad Nauheim following my heart attack in 2008.
The first is called "Silence". It is a sort of poem, but in a very loose sense of the word.
You sit
In your silent room
With its silent phrases
And silent puncuation
Alone
Untouched by all this crazy world
And its crazed obsessions
Like success and failure
And fat and starvation thin
Finding nothing
Neither dreams nor hope nor sense
Nor illusion nor delusion still
And the truth repeats itself
Still and silent repeatedly -
Only words can save me!
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Friday, 18 March 2011
Well I can now actually vote - but for whom?
I got a very large envelope yesterday.
It was about the upcoming elections for whoever should serve on Frankfurt City Council (apparently as an EU national I am allowed to vote - my non-EU wife cannot!). OK, there are some complications. I apparently get 93 votes. How to work out how that works is fascinating enough. Choose one party and all its candidates, and it is quite simple. Anything else .... Yes, well.
Problem then follows who to vote for. Will anyone achieve any worthwhile objectives? Are they up to the job? Would you want to support these people?
Well at least there is not the problem that you have in the US and used to have in the UK where the choice is between a party who would never represent your interests on the one hand, and one that would try and fail on the other (though in the UK, the line between the two has become extremely blurred - Blair turned the Labour Party into a Tory Party clone, so the choice is between two parties that would never represent my interests!).
In Germany though the choice is so vast, it is overwhelming. And when you come down to the (five!) main parties, the choice is not that inspiring.
Start with the CDU. The traditional German conservative party, traditional conservative rather than American neo-conservative, the party of Adenauer and Erhard .... In the days of the economic miracle they were well worth supporting. That the majority of their support have already passed retirement age, probably says everything. Merkel may be better than Kohl, but that is not that much in her favour. She is certainly no Adenauer! The party has no fresh ideas, and gets away with being a safe pair of hands. At local level, they hardly inspire.
The FDP - their national tax policy (give away tax cuts without having any cash in the till) is total nonsense. At local level, are they any better? About the last choice I would make all things given. Neo-liberalism strikes me as being just about the complete reverse of what is needed at any time - it is the total reverse of sound money thinking. They are on a completely different page.
The SDP. According to a test I took before the last election, this is the party that I should support. More of their policies suit me than any other (I should in theory be a good Social Democrat). Your mind then goes back to the 8 years of incompetence when in power nationally between 1998 and 2006. Schröder's only achievement was to keep Germany out of the Iraq War. On a local level they might do better, but the concepts "incompetence" and "SDP" seem to fit together like a glove.
The Green party (Die Grünen) are still relatively radical, and have some interesting ideas. Probably where I will end up again, even if the vote for them tends to reflect dissatisfaction with current trends rather than whether the environmentalist philosophy can be made to work in practical terms while maintaining prosperity for everyone.
Die Linke (the "Left" party) - well I don't like the version of capitalism which hit the wall in 2008 either. I also don't like the thought of people sitting in gun turrets, built along barbed wire fences, ensuring that nobody gets out, and while their national commitment to cut unemployment and poverty sound good on paper, the realisation that the parent of this party is the former East German Communist regime .... Yes. Fence Frankfurt off, train a large number of border guards, make sure nobody gets out! And there is also the realisation that you have to create wealth in order to share it - sharing out a static pile reduces the pile and does not rebuild it, so everyone eventually gets poorer. I don't think that they have the answer.
For the rest, the Pirate Party are a load of Julian Assange clones with a lot of FDP economic ideas - no thanks.
The Gray Panthers - fighting for pensioners' rights is a great idea, but how effective will they be with overall policy?
The KPD - the non East German Communist Party. Typically they do not get on with their natural sister party die Linke, while sharing most of their unworkable policies.
Freie Wähler (Free voters) - independence may be a fine thing. Can independents get anything done?
NPD, Republikaner and the other neo-fascist extreme nationalist trash? Absolutely no way, thank you!
I am not hopeful that much good will come of this. I believe in democracy, I just do not seem to believe in any of the politicians that it throws up. But I will turn up and vote now I have the opportunity, though scepticism will guide me more than hope.
It was about the upcoming elections for whoever should serve on Frankfurt City Council (apparently as an EU national I am allowed to vote - my non-EU wife cannot!). OK, there are some complications. I apparently get 93 votes. How to work out how that works is fascinating enough. Choose one party and all its candidates, and it is quite simple. Anything else .... Yes, well.
Problem then follows who to vote for. Will anyone achieve any worthwhile objectives? Are they up to the job? Would you want to support these people?
Well at least there is not the problem that you have in the US and used to have in the UK where the choice is between a party who would never represent your interests on the one hand, and one that would try and fail on the other (though in the UK, the line between the two has become extremely blurred - Blair turned the Labour Party into a Tory Party clone, so the choice is between two parties that would never represent my interests!).
In Germany though the choice is so vast, it is overwhelming. And when you come down to the (five!) main parties, the choice is not that inspiring.
Start with the CDU. The traditional German conservative party, traditional conservative rather than American neo-conservative, the party of Adenauer and Erhard .... In the days of the economic miracle they were well worth supporting. That the majority of their support have already passed retirement age, probably says everything. Merkel may be better than Kohl, but that is not that much in her favour. She is certainly no Adenauer! The party has no fresh ideas, and gets away with being a safe pair of hands. At local level, they hardly inspire.
The FDP - their national tax policy (give away tax cuts without having any cash in the till) is total nonsense. At local level, are they any better? About the last choice I would make all things given. Neo-liberalism strikes me as being just about the complete reverse of what is needed at any time - it is the total reverse of sound money thinking. They are on a completely different page.
The SDP. According to a test I took before the last election, this is the party that I should support. More of their policies suit me than any other (I should in theory be a good Social Democrat). Your mind then goes back to the 8 years of incompetence when in power nationally between 1998 and 2006. Schröder's only achievement was to keep Germany out of the Iraq War. On a local level they might do better, but the concepts "incompetence" and "SDP" seem to fit together like a glove.
The Green party (Die Grünen) are still relatively radical, and have some interesting ideas. Probably where I will end up again, even if the vote for them tends to reflect dissatisfaction with current trends rather than whether the environmentalist philosophy can be made to work in practical terms while maintaining prosperity for everyone.
Die Linke (the "Left" party) - well I don't like the version of capitalism which hit the wall in 2008 either. I also don't like the thought of people sitting in gun turrets, built along barbed wire fences, ensuring that nobody gets out, and while their national commitment to cut unemployment and poverty sound good on paper, the realisation that the parent of this party is the former East German Communist regime .... Yes. Fence Frankfurt off, train a large number of border guards, make sure nobody gets out! And there is also the realisation that you have to create wealth in order to share it - sharing out a static pile reduces the pile and does not rebuild it, so everyone eventually gets poorer. I don't think that they have the answer.
For the rest, the Pirate Party are a load of Julian Assange clones with a lot of FDP economic ideas - no thanks.
The Gray Panthers - fighting for pensioners' rights is a great idea, but how effective will they be with overall policy?
The KPD - the non East German Communist Party. Typically they do not get on with their natural sister party die Linke, while sharing most of their unworkable policies.
Freie Wähler (Free voters) - independence may be a fine thing. Can independents get anything done?
NPD, Republikaner and the other neo-fascist extreme nationalist trash? Absolutely no way, thank you!
I am not hopeful that much good will come of this. I believe in democracy, I just do not seem to believe in any of the politicians that it throws up. But I will turn up and vote now I have the opportunity, though scepticism will guide me more than hope.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
God never existed, Marx is dead, long live greed
So there is the day that you realise that there is no God and no after life and the whole mythology, which is the basis for the society, has no credibility.
So does the society, in which you live, suddenly disintegrate? Not exactly. You have something called “civil law” which protects the rights of individuals from the predatory behaviour of the anti-social. Atheism is not the same thing as anarchy.
The only question then is what comprises the “rights of the individual”. Property rights and the like then come into play, but the arguments of the Marxists and the Proudhonistes have been dismissed as irrelevant, so where do we go from here?
Many of the concepts regarding property rights are essentially “what I have, I keep”, and “I share only when it suits me”. In other words stuff the poor, let them starve, why should I care? Essential conservative thinking, essential conservative lore.
The more I have, the more condescending I can become.
I can look down my nose and treat those who have less than me with the contempt they deserve, and why should I pay tax any way? Unless it is to stop somebody somewhere else in the world stealing all my goodies?
The poor can work anyway, can’t they (OK – I sent all my company’s blue-collar jobs as dirt cheap labour to China and all the white-collar jobs to India, but there are bound to be other companies that haven’t? There aren’t? Never mind not my problem!).
I mean everyone in this world can get rich, can’t they? If they can’t, they are lazy idle good-for-nothing loafers, and why should I help them ….
So does the society, in which you live, suddenly disintegrate? Not exactly. You have something called “civil law” which protects the rights of individuals from the predatory behaviour of the anti-social. Atheism is not the same thing as anarchy.
The only question then is what comprises the “rights of the individual”. Property rights and the like then come into play, but the arguments of the Marxists and the Proudhonistes have been dismissed as irrelevant, so where do we go from here?
Many of the concepts regarding property rights are essentially “what I have, I keep”, and “I share only when it suits me”. In other words stuff the poor, let them starve, why should I care? Essential conservative thinking, essential conservative lore.
The more I have, the more condescending I can become.
I can look down my nose and treat those who have less than me with the contempt they deserve, and why should I pay tax any way? Unless it is to stop somebody somewhere else in the world stealing all my goodies?
The poor can work anyway, can’t they (OK – I sent all my company’s blue-collar jobs as dirt cheap labour to China and all the white-collar jobs to India, but there are bound to be other companies that haven’t? There aren’t? Never mind not my problem!).
I mean everyone in this world can get rich, can’t they? If they can’t, they are lazy idle good-for-nothing loafers, and why should I help them ….
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
So you are not a patriot?
I did not choose to be born where I was born. I did not choose my parents (though both were excellent people, let that be said immediately). All this was simply a matter of history, and depended upon things outside my control.
Everything that I knew about culture, I learned in my formative years. This includes belief systems, this includes attitude.
The point is though that it is training. Once you venture beyond your base, once you start to question the limitations, why should you stop?
First there is your street, then your town, then your county, then the area of the country, then your country. Everything is permitted up to this point.
But why stop there?
As a student I had a year in France. It was different. Better? In some respects. Worse? In some respects also.
Over the years I travelled, I visited different places, different countries, I found different cultures, different ways of looking at the world - some that struck me as more to my taste, some less.
But the initial training that had trained me to accept myself as part of one culture and one country had long disappeared.
By the end of 1987, and 8 years of the thoroughly awful Margaret Thatcher, I had had enough of the UK. I was out of tune with the way the UK worked, the predominating attitudes and expectations no longer matched those that I held myself.
The experimentation increased. I tried living in the USA, the Netherlands, France, Belgium – with various degrees of success. I only came to Germany to work in 1994 – I was already 46 years old.
Since 1994, it has been either Germany or the Netherlands. I still hear the siren call of what the Netherlands used to be (or at least its capital city, Amsterdam) – liberal, open, friendly, fun – from time to time, though whenever I go back now, there is a definite change in the air. Maybe it is just me getting older, or maybe things are different there now.
Germany is now home. I belong here, it appeals to my intellect, it has more of what I expect of a modern state than anywhere else I go. I speak the language (with a North of England twang). I even support the national soccer team (young, enthusiastic, and very exciting to watch). Leaving here to go back to England, I cannot contemplate.
“But you are British”, people will tell me. So what exactly is “British”? What does that mean. I was born in a certain geographical area, I was raised to certain expectations, I was trained to accept a certain culture, a certain way of thinking.
But I have moved on, I have evolved.
My bit of territory is now a not particularly inspiring area in what is not my favourite city (given the chance, which must include a degree of financial stability NB, I would tomorrow go back to Paris or Köln).
But it is home – I belong here, I am part of the local scenery, I mix with the local people, I use the local facilities …. I understand the local culture! It is by no means perfect – unemployment is too high, and the current government is not to my taste, for example.
But it is home, I repeat. It fits what I want as far as anywhere will now at this stage of my life.
I was not born here? I was not originally raised in the culture? My attitudes were not originally developed here? Maybe not, but are these things important, and if so, why?
Everything that I knew about culture, I learned in my formative years. This includes belief systems, this includes attitude.
The point is though that it is training. Once you venture beyond your base, once you start to question the limitations, why should you stop?
First there is your street, then your town, then your county, then the area of the country, then your country. Everything is permitted up to this point.
But why stop there?
As a student I had a year in France. It was different. Better? In some respects. Worse? In some respects also.
Over the years I travelled, I visited different places, different countries, I found different cultures, different ways of looking at the world - some that struck me as more to my taste, some less.
But the initial training that had trained me to accept myself as part of one culture and one country had long disappeared.
By the end of 1987, and 8 years of the thoroughly awful Margaret Thatcher, I had had enough of the UK. I was out of tune with the way the UK worked, the predominating attitudes and expectations no longer matched those that I held myself.
The experimentation increased. I tried living in the USA, the Netherlands, France, Belgium – with various degrees of success. I only came to Germany to work in 1994 – I was already 46 years old.
Since 1994, it has been either Germany or the Netherlands. I still hear the siren call of what the Netherlands used to be (or at least its capital city, Amsterdam) – liberal, open, friendly, fun – from time to time, though whenever I go back now, there is a definite change in the air. Maybe it is just me getting older, or maybe things are different there now.
Germany is now home. I belong here, it appeals to my intellect, it has more of what I expect of a modern state than anywhere else I go. I speak the language (with a North of England twang). I even support the national soccer team (young, enthusiastic, and very exciting to watch). Leaving here to go back to England, I cannot contemplate.
“But you are British”, people will tell me. So what exactly is “British”? What does that mean. I was born in a certain geographical area, I was raised to certain expectations, I was trained to accept a certain culture, a certain way of thinking.
But I have moved on, I have evolved.
My bit of territory is now a not particularly inspiring area in what is not my favourite city (given the chance, which must include a degree of financial stability NB, I would tomorrow go back to Paris or Köln).
But it is home – I belong here, I am part of the local scenery, I mix with the local people, I use the local facilities …. I understand the local culture! It is by no means perfect – unemployment is too high, and the current government is not to my taste, for example.
But it is home, I repeat. It fits what I want as far as anywhere will now at this stage of my life.
I was not born here? I was not originally raised in the culture? My attitudes were not originally developed here? Maybe not, but are these things important, and if so, why?
Monday, 14 March 2011
Japan and stereotypes
There was a time when you would mention the word: “Japan”, and a whole series of unpleasant stereotypes would come to mind.
Unpleasant and uncompromising imperialist warmongers in the 1930s and 40s. Manufacturers of cheap junk (particularly transistor radios and the like) in the 1950s and 60s. Check out Allan Sherman’s revised version of the “12 Days of Christmas” if you want more on that.
These days though the image has changed somewhat. They appear to have come of age. They are seen as manufacturers of quality goods (even if the problems with Toyota affected that reputation somewhat). And their company structures offer a much more reasoned relationship between management and employee than you find in many other countries.
All the more interesting in its way then, is the response to this week’s earthquake tragedy and the resultant problems with the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Thankfully the negative stereotypes that existed are now a thing of the past. We will all happily respond positively to the needs of the people affected by the tragedy, and also support the efforts being made to contain the problems at Fukushima.
One is prone to wonder though, in a world where we often allow stereotypes to get ahead of actualities, whether we would react so positively to tragedies faced by people in less favourably viewed nations. People eventually are people, not stereotypes.
Unpleasant and uncompromising imperialist warmongers in the 1930s and 40s. Manufacturers of cheap junk (particularly transistor radios and the like) in the 1950s and 60s. Check out Allan Sherman’s revised version of the “12 Days of Christmas” if you want more on that.
These days though the image has changed somewhat. They appear to have come of age. They are seen as manufacturers of quality goods (even if the problems with Toyota affected that reputation somewhat). And their company structures offer a much more reasoned relationship between management and employee than you find in many other countries.
All the more interesting in its way then, is the response to this week’s earthquake tragedy and the resultant problems with the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Thankfully the negative stereotypes that existed are now a thing of the past. We will all happily respond positively to the needs of the people affected by the tragedy, and also support the efforts being made to contain the problems at Fukushima.
One is prone to wonder though, in a world where we often allow stereotypes to get ahead of actualities, whether we would react so positively to tragedies faced by people in less favourably viewed nations. People eventually are people, not stereotypes.
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