Category: culture

Posted on

After a Pandemic a Plague? US-American Republicans and Their Embarrassing Leadership

Image of chess game with board and black and white pieces
Image courtesy pixabay.com – free license

To think that after all that has happened the US-American Republicans seriously consider nominating a person like the one before the current president of that country is practically embarrassing! One would laugh with wholehearted mirth if it wasn’t too serious. I am trying hard to avoid naming its name. Yes, “its”: This is a sorry excuse for a man. To make him the president the second time is like advocating Adolf Hitler as head of state. Period.

But the party and its leaders seem not to think so themselves: A person who lacks any kind of scruples, is devoid of feeling any responsibility except towards the ‘Golden Calf’ of the bible, namely worshipping money – who is responsible during his term of government for cancelling the contracts for disarmament with Russia – and that way may be indirectly responsible for the current situation in Ukraine, a person who threatened North Korea into near war, until it became clear that money rather would do the trick with a nation that already has ‘the bomb’.
A person, particularly, who actually threatens the democracy of that nation itself they are so proud of stating to be the first real one…??!!! He was close and will get closer to instate another dictatorship in the US – and he will closely collaborate with Putin in Russia – they are the best of friends as anybody knows who follows the news.

And the news are only publicly acknowledged information, there is probably more, if we look into similar situations in history.

It’s a pity to think what the Republicans in America actually stand for: But the constitution or its principles are certainly not part of it, when all is said and done. Whatever they will tell you during election campaign(s).

Let’s hope that Italy’s sad example is not one they will follow.
…But then: Such leaders are really only about being ‘the man’, right? Silly women all around, as long as they are nice to look at, lots of booze and a large enough stretch limousine ready to take those said silly ‘chicks’ in – and with… and that in front of cameras too, is really all they care about.

And such people ‘we’ should vote for? Seriously?

I hope and actually pray that murder, money and power is not the only thing Republicans go for over there. Although: Looking at history that too may be too much to hope. Because: Murdering others in the name of the power and so-called US-American overseas ‘interests’ usually doesn’t make them turn a hair.
Or will it this time?

I can only hope that some kind of reason and responsibility will prevail over there and a Democrat such as Joe Biden be president – a second running in this case.

Whatever else happens: I will ‘bother’ all of those that are in power – and in stretch limousines – using my kind of weapon: the writing quill!

Posted on

1 Among a 100 People – The Iceberg Phenomenon – How to See with Your Heart

drawing of a heart and a brain connected by two lines and a knot
Image courtesy pixabay.com – Free license

If we want to understand our peers better, it is vital to be able to relate to others: The basics of human existence, the basic needs and sorrows and joys. Knowing about them in yourself makes your ‘heart’ ‘clairvoyant’: You start to see the other’s pain, their need, you understand – and you can relate to them in new ways and find new solutions to old problems.

People are like icebergs, rarely is everything visible at once. It’s a fact that we all know to be true, at least more or less: Especially in business it’s a common idea that one should be always competent, never make mistakes…, always be fit and never lack enthusiasm. Perhaps even smile, if you can, to show that you are happy.

That means many people, even if half-consciously, behave that way; because we learn early in life from our surroundings, namely parents, family, friends and later kindergarten and school, and so on.

But sometimes people start realizing at some point that there is “more to it than meets the eye”.

Human beings have fine sensors especially as children about what is accepted behaviour and what is not. Therefore starting with early childhood they adapt to what is expected. The culture and personal background therefore are decisive aspects of what makes for the personality you meet one day around your workplace. And the personality you are.

The hidden emotions and less accepted tendencies and urges and wishes and the yearning sometimes to fulfill an inner need for something else – love perhaps, passion, adventure, or just true self-confidence because sadness and fear and childlike joy have a place again – can be strong. The self-control usually is too.

If we take into account that any culture in this world has these limitations imposed on people’s behaviour and even their thoughts and ideas that are basics for that self-control preventing them from speaking up – we will start to be able to look beyond the image. Relate to the true human being behind the business personality.

Daniel Goleman in his bestselling book called it “EQ”: Emotional Intelligence, the ability to realize the emotional side to any human thought and reaction. He states it clearly that science did eventually prove what has been part of literature, music and stories for as long as mankind exists: Emotions are the basics and central. Without them we become incapable to decide – anything.

That’s how heart and brain are connected – in a nutshell.

Statistics show too that 1 among a 100 people will speak up or contact someone when they have a problem or an issue. Therefore, looking at the small numbers in this respect can be crucial.

That’s why I use this blog to post about perhaps unusual subjects – to some of my readers. In the hopes that one or the other of them finds realization and perhaps even consolation in the fact that they are not alone with those thoughts, ideas or puzzles of human existence.

Understanding our emotions and relate to others better that way, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put this way in “The Little Prince”:

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: you only truly see with your heart.
What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

Posted on

Spreading Joy…

…Smile when they are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by, if you smile through your fear and sorrow, smile and maybe tomorrow you will see the sun come shining through, for you…

The song above has an interesting history.
I’ve found it to be true: After many years of hardship, especially during the pandemic, things are finally looking up again. But just as Charlie Chaplin – although more lucky in some ways – I’ve found as so many people around the world:
When life is sad or difficult you learn to smile to lighten the burden(s).

The song above was originally a piece without words for a film of Chaplin’s, one of his masterpieces. He was there in the beginning of the art of movie making, he improved it and became a master and an inventor with awards and special mentions all around the world. He knew, too.

Posted on

Relativity and Perspective in Business – The Two World Views

London slum interior, 25th Nov. 1913, photo A. Goss (image in the public domain)

Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of me.

Uriah Heep is a character in Charles Dickens’ novel “David Copperfield”. I think he is one of the most disgusting persons as a character in a book you can think of. He is vile, scheming behind people’s backs – all the while pretending to be ‘humble’, submissive and grateful. In the story’s reality he is practically the opposite. He makes use of secrets to his own advantage, using blackmail to gain power over others. But in that story it takes almost a decade until his true character and his deeds are known – and redeemed.

Although in English literature many of Dickens’ novels are counted among the romances to some extent due to the highly emotional parts – they are very realistic in the depiction of living conditions in the first half of the 19th century. The extreme poverty and starvation that included dreadful living conditions in London slums are the locations Dickens’ uses for famous and most influential stories such as “Great Expectations”, “David Copperfield” or “Oliver Twist”. Dickens was a wonderful master of the language, of dramatic point and counterpoint – and the plot as such, clear, including dramatic twists and turns as well as a true feeling for the unfortunate that make his books great examples of the rising civil societies’ best values: Empathy and social security as well as justice.

I was raised on firm principles: I do not believe that business and its representatives are the ruling powers of this world. So many people writhe and grovel for the sake of a favour, even if only inwardly, of a job, their character becoming so warped and twisted that its original quality becomes invisible. It’s sad to watch when you meet them.

I was raised to the idea that trade unions had been created for a reason. That every human being as such is what is called ‘a small universe’ in some contexts. That the capital in the hands of the few will not stay there or be ‘multiplied’ if the many ‘little people’ do not work for that.

Additionally, I was raised on an explicit work ethic: And an understanding of the many connections as well as relations that make human life what it is – and that make it necessary and desirable in a reasonably sensible business to do the best in my ability to make that business thrive – and keep mine as well as others’ jobs – to an advantage.

My approach is not always clear and easy to everyone around I know. There are still parts of this world where the belief in the ultimate authority of anyone superior in a hierarchy make it crucial to be subdued, even servile, in everyday behaviour. Anyone deviating from that kind of behaviour may be subjected to suspicions of disloyalty.

For me these two views are worlds apart:

    • Be ‘a humble servant’. Or

    • be a proud, self-contained and yet reliable employee and/or colleague in an honourable trade.

 

Posted on

Love, Passion, Seduction – Truth and Make-believe

Open old book in the sun and haze on a dark background
I am not out to make it any easier to any of my readers, alas, if any of them had supposed that. I am out to make it clear – and less painful for many, who really care.

Starting out into life as a young person in its teens, growing up, growing mature and even more mature over time, one thing we will realize at some point:

Love is no light game.

There are movies, books and TV series in abundance especially these so ‘progressive days’, where we seem to ‘know it all’ – which try to ‘make one believe’ differently…
The 1960s long since behind us, when it was supposed to be just the butterfly thing for all who called themselves avantgarde – modern and advanced in thinking…

So, it’s routine these days?

To this day I observe those who believe that seduction is a game: ‘He who seduces successfully wins the prize’ – the prize of the biggest and most important among his peers – the football club, the card players – or simply the pub goers.

Well, my friends, its not. It’s the prize for the biggest simpleton – among many –  given away, if anything.

Go on and use your imagination, your intellect and your heart – talk to people – and read. And you will learn. If you want to.

Of course there are those whose sole excitement in life is the thought of yet another passionate love affair.

I am for the truth, the simple and humane truth: In love it’s the heart that counts, not the brain or the long legs – or the hormones.

Posted on

The Long View – Hollywood and Bollywood – The ‘Happy End’ of Fairy Tales

Fairy christmas holiday lights in a jar with christmas decoration and snow in half darkness
Love is perhaps the single most often treated subject anywhere: In arts, crafts and music, writing and the film industry, including this blog. There’s such a lot around on love, passionate and otherwise. Poems, novels, songs, concerts, ballets, stage plays, and, last but not at all least, TV and cinema movies as well as serials. They can entertain, instruct or move you, separately – or all at once. But one thing is true too:
Many of them are quite beside the facts.

I think we can safely conclude one thing: What we do not see or have is reality. And what we do see or have is reality, as well.

The longer you are around, the more you learn to understand that life is not a cookie jar. No song and dance either. That passionate love affairs that end happily for all concerned are not around every corner, no matter how frustrated you might have felt in your everyday life before…

Happiness in life comes from the small things, the ‘mundane’, the apparently undramatic.

Why is that? Because, human beings are not ‘made from clay’ (‘flesh and blood’) alone. Simply and concisely put:

We are no cars… to be assembled and put together in the workshop – or put right by replacing a part like a broken windshield wiper.

A human being is more than the sum of its parts.

That means that apart from any helping elements such as opportunity or surroundings or music or – stimulants…there’s always the emotional part, and ‘the day after’. And the others, those concerned.

I have been interested in humans and why they behave the way they do, love, hatred, fury, anger, frustration, joy, happiness and love or friendship, and all the existing research on that, in more or less depth, as well as all the arts have to say and show for it, all my life. I am no youngster anymore and I can say this, with all my heart.

Remember that you are no “gymnast of love” – but a human being, with heart, mind, soul, and body.

Again:

A human being is more than the sum of its parts.

Posted on

Weekends – Writing – Wellness

Image of a narrow road in a green grassy field surrounded by green trees with the bright sun in the background

Anyone who comes back here now and again will come to realize that this is a mixture of mission and message… 🙂

I love to share my knowledge, I sometimes watch my contemporaries and feel that they suffer from similar worries as I did – or do at times.

So, I write about it. Which does not mean I ‘go through it’ myself. Necessarily. People, writers and myself – we, they – write or create a lot of writing that reflects thoughts, ideas or realizations.

A little like Woody Allen movies, actually: It’s a sublimation of thoughts, ideas and observation as well as reading…. with a few biographical aspects thrown in for ‘taste’… so it appears.

It may seem incongruous but I feel it’s part of the same thing: In these modern times, with working weeks reduced to less than the classical 40 hours of half a century ago, and considerably less than those 12-16 hour shifts people had to work in the course of the 19th century – I say, the weekends often are considered to be like a list of ‘must-haves’:

    • ‘Must’ have fun. Lots.
    • ‘Must’ have – physical encounters… Lots.
    • ‘Must’ do amazing or awesome things… Lots.

And if you would not – you might doubt yourself. Feel inferior, and hide that too. Pretend. There’s a lot of pretension around, has been as long as I can remember, which is some time now…

In reality, if you really listen to what is inside, less is more. I have found this to be true for anyone who’s still able to connect with their human side: Sorrow or joy, they have the most chance to spread, if we listen to our innermost needs. Which can be:

Less is more.

 

Posted on

Dreams and Pictures that Move – Moving Pictures

image of movie theatre and lights on its dark screen
The prince and princess, the lovers, the heroes, the white stallion, the knight and the lady in distress, they are images, similar in many countries’ folk stories and fairy tales.

“Moving” – it’s a word that in the English language has several rather distinct meanings. One of them is about emotion, basic human feelings. They move us. Deeply, in some cases. Sometimes it’s words, connected to ideas.

Or the simple or more complex images that recall a happy moment, peaceful nights full of light – or sad moments.

Movies, the moving images originally, have become a forceful way of telling stories, just as plays, their ‘predecessors’. To tell stories is a pastime that is as old as mankind itself. Among the most famous artists always were storytellers, the craftsmen and craftswomen of words, phrases and sentences invoking images in the mind of the audience – and thus emotions.

And just as fairy tales they sometimes barely represent the real world, the truth. Instead, they tell us about the wonderful combinations of dreams and wishes people have – and create new stories from to entertain – and for a few hours take us to fairyland.

It is a fine way to spend the time, at times. This world some people force us to see can be cruel and dangerous. I consider  myself lucky in spite of quite some hardships I’ve seen and experienced in the course of my life.

I have read through towers of books, a mid-sized library at least. Countless movies and TV-serials that did help me laugh at the world and the hardships, sometimes. And that also managed to be a sort of friend, patient, non-judicial in some cases, boosting self-confidence and understand about hardship in other parts of the world.

Indeed, documentaries, too, these days have reached a high level of expertise, combining entertainment with facts.

I closely studied the literature and culture of three distinct countries covering a time span of two thousand years. I’ve read about many more. And heard about still more.

I can safely say that I know a thing or two about history and mankind.

I want to encourage all who read this: If you haven’t already, check your values – and then read books, or articles, or posts, or – watch movies, but always remember: To confuse writing or other pictorial arts with reality can be a problem, at least.

There is a person or persons behind it – and sometimes it’s only a thin veil between yourself and reality, yet – not reality itself.

Posted on

Competition and Patriarchy – or: Manipulation as Doubtful Means to an End


Patriarchy is an old concept of society but not the oldest ever. Even older is the one about matriarchy.
What they mean? They are about power in societies and describe the fact that either the male or female aspect reigns, the eldest being the head of the family, respectively.

Patriarchy in particular has won a rather doubtful reputation over the centuries since its advent. It’s been a while, bluntly put, a couple of thousands of years. But archaeologists still find ample and unambiguous proof that matriarchy is even older as a concept and was wide-spread at one time all around the world. Some religious traditions and rites still show the roots of it to this day. Just as some rather old customs, in all cultures today.

Patriarchy employs rather doubtful means to its ends, as it were. A society model that to a great extent is based on – competition.

Some people try to tell us competition is a human impulse. I beg to differ, to my mind such people do not look closely enough and I think that the humanities agree: In many societies around the globe a basic human need is met only by winning something:

The need for attention.

Human beings need attention, actually some form of love, to survive. And the closest some lesser developed cultures seem to get to that is the attention provided when winning a competition.

And sadly, this fact also is often used between the ‘comrades’, the ‘buddies’ when trying other people to do something, get them to react, in short: Make them feel or think something.

It never was nice. And it never was really considerate. Even less ‘gentlemanly’. I find the original idea of the ‘gentle man’ rather intriguing. As opposed to some aberrations of the snob.

Again, quite bluntly put: Manipulation is often used as a means to win an end. But as my father used to put it even more bluntly: “Do you have to sit on cr…p just because a million flies do?”

 

Posted on

Work, Life and Chance – Backgammon: The Game of Princes

Iran, Esfahan (Isfahan) – Ali Qapu Palace

“Your life’s whatever you make of it.” That’s a popular phrase meant to bolster confidence – or even motivate employees… Well, there’s more to life than meets the eye at a glance. Anyone who’s gone through life longer than just a couple of decades has come to realize what Baz Luhrman so aptly said:
“Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.”

Many smart comedians, philosophers and coaches will tell you that. It is actually a wise person who realizes it – it has been known for centuries if not thousands of years among people, mankind even.

There was a ‘modern’ urge when the civil society began to form that found one outlet in the possibility to emigrate to the USA, then dominions still. With a huge country apparently all there just to find your luck without any shackles or strings attached, the credo was: “Your life’s whatever you make of it.”

Was it, really?

Even the first settlers faced grave challenges, partly from indigenous peoples who wouldn’t all easily accept that land-taking by strangers. Bluntly put.

Additionally, so few conditions known, many pioneers just died from starvation due to completely different climate and soil conditions.

Yet, marketing and people who wanted to sell this idea and self-promoting methods as new ways to happiness and self-made wealth just persisted publishing self-help guides.

The idea of course is appealing. But in the long run it will lead to anger and frustration, because it leaves out all those chances life presents us all with: Recently we were all witnesses to it again on a huge scale, a pandemic, with millions of deaths.

We were lucky too, in many ways, in many parts of the world. But the long and the short of it is this:

Life is full of chances and conditions and surroundings that will make it easy or difficult to reach goals you wished to attain.

Sometimes, just knowing there is a philosophy behind it, summarized like this, can help:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”

Here is a fine short documentary on the game of Backgammon and its vital difference to chess: Chess is like war. But Backgammon is like life: And it is thousands of years old. It was even used to teach princes at the ancient courts of Persian kings to be sophisticated and wise leaders of their governments.

We cannot control everything in life. A lot depends on luck and surroundings. But we can always try to do our best in any given situation.

It’s a German language version with English subtitles:

Privacy Proudly powered by WordPress