Closing In

My Grandma is turning ninety-six this weekend.  With that she is closing in on a hundred years of mind boggling human history.  Or is it really just more of the same - just a lot more..?!  Anyway, I am off to join in for a jolly hip-hip hurray!

The Greedy One

The bully, the diva, the tyrant, the ruthless deal-pusher - what they all have in common is a great fear.  

Like terrified two-year olds they clamor for control, because they fear that otherwise their survival is at stake.  The bully dominates the class room, the diva controls anyone who comes into contact with her, the tyrant is obsessed with security and the arm twister, the greedy One Percent of this world, tries to control it all. 

Psychology would point to a fragile self-image, possibly a damaged parent-child relationship, while spirituality might suggest a tormented soul working its way through these sad biographies, but what is striking above all that there is a recurring theme.  In every society, the air gets thinner at the top.  

There seems to be a cynical element as well, since there over time any human group develops hierarchal structures.  Just like chimpanzees we huddle around the one who is actually the most scared simply because we know what he is capable of....  

In human society there seem to be certain leveling events, which have a tendency to temporarily shake up social structures, moments throughout our history, where that hierarchy eroded and where the middle came to be strong and wide.  Natural or human catastrophes, such as war, starvation, disease, migration initially form strong liens between survivors.  Cooperation between all ensures the survival of the group in the aftermath of such an event.  But eventually, individual interests take over and the all to common pattern reshape themselves as one witnesses the formation of pyramids where few at the top control the lives of many at the bottom.   

And so over time, any tribe, any organization, any economy tends to go pear shape once the dust of the founding years has settled. 

Just check out the tenets of the latest free trade agreement between the US and the European Union (TTIP) and witness how the greedy 1% is trying to take control over entire economies and manipulate their legal frameworks and democratic principles.   

If this treaty passes there is no stopping the tyranny of the most fearful!!

Click to inform yourself!!

From Back Here

From where I am standing, it seems as if things are spinning out of control.  From cyber crime to genocide, from overpopulation to ozone evaporation, from endangered species to energy depletion.  

How am I to stop  digital criminals, rampaging generals, horny hillbillies and captains of industries and with it the entire world from spinning faster and faster for no good reason?  

From where I am standing, it feels rather sobering that little of what I see wrong with the plot can be helped by anything I am even remotely interested in doing.  This is truly a man-made script and from where I am standing, I can barely see centre stage.  

So here I am, a second rate stage hand - at least, I think that’s what it feels like - and all I can do is push the props around....baby prams, school bags, healthy greens....and from time to time chime into the refrain about sustainability and community...

But maybe, I keep telling myself, that is really what counts while the plot is spiralling out of control and the actors are stumbling in a drunken stupor.   

At least that’s how it appears from where I am standing.

Was that the Doorbell...?

I wonder whether among PoliSci departments around the US, there is one whose faculty openly decries the systemic corruption enshrined in the US constitution... A worthy endeavour, I would think, and really never out-of-date.   

How else to describe the the U.S. democracy where, intererst organisations of different coleurs, i.e. “lobbyists” pay elected government officials “contributions” to their electoral campaigns (which they get to keep and never ever mention again even if they don’t get elected)...?   

The more powerful the interest organisation such as in the case of oil&gas, pharmaceuticals, media, and military, the more likely their interests will get considered, right?  Bigger means more (cash) and hence more influence over policy issues.  

But, wait, aren’t senators and members of the House of Representative supposed to represent their electorate’s interests?  Hm.  

I wonder whether it is still legal to think beyond this point...or whether the  NSA will be on my doorsteps any moment now.  After all, it surely cannot be legal to question the only true guarantor of justice and peace in the world, right?!

Recording Happiness

A scathing article appeared in a London daily recently about the droll habit of people recording their moments of happiness on Instagramm in order to share them with their less fortunate peers.

What can be an enraging need to cause envy is, however, nothing less than a testimony to desperation.  

Happiness must be a scarce emotion for those who need to capture it (or stage it) to document it.  In fact, I believe that the habit of recording happiness is a phenomenon that brilliantly exposes our inability to cope with more complex emotions than childish bliss.  

Love to Emily&Alex

There is that bit about “bad times” in the wedding vows, but it almost sounds like a good luck charm.  What bad times...??  You are getting married!!!  

There may be a clandestine tuck though, a whisper, a last piece of advice given.  But in general we like to think of a wedding as a magical event not to be spoiled by reality.  

Here are my few bites of advice as I have rounded the corner of our second decade together:

Don’t fool yourself.  Love is a chemical cocktail that can leave you with a serious hangover at the other end of married life.

That feeling of profound connection  triggered by a potent potion of happy hormones, which are generously disbursed when we  encounter the one we have longed for all that time, may in fact hold a secret by-product:  familiarity - as in "It seems like I have known him forever..."

True.  

After all, the person you will fall in love with is likely to combine the best and the worst of your parent-child moments.  

It may not be at all obvious at first or even after twenty years, but marriage will reveal - to the ones who dare look - the entire list of hopes and disappointments we had buried in the depth of some mental drawer while growing up.  

Marriage will provide the time to open it up again and to take a good long look inside.

On the bright side, falling in love means that we connect with someone, because somehow we feel that we have found the closest expression of our first love relationship - just better - or so we hope!  

On the murkier side, we may never find what we are looking for and generously distribute blame in all directions.  Drawer shut, key tossed.

At the best, however, marriage is a joint plunge into the entrails of childhood hopes, frustrations and coping mechanism.  After some soul searching it may very well provide some clues to why we are the way we are and why we do the things we do and also why we chose each other.  At least that's what I am working on.  

My advice: have your parachute ready and 
don´t worry to take the leap.  After all, working it out together can be good fun!