Monument Man E-Book

Reto Giacomo Zanoni

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 47

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Humanity has a long history of development behind it and has seemingly left many of the problems of the past behind as well. However, many issues such as a lack of equality, war or environmental destruction still play a role. How did this come about? To answer this question, Reto Giacomo Zanoni takes a look back, from the beginnings of humanity to the present day. He reveals how earlier developments in history continue to play a role today – and why it is worth taking a closer look at human history. Are humans really so different from other animals? How has democracy developed from ancient times to the present day? How can equal wealth distribution be achieved? Are there alternatives to democracy?

Leseprobe

Hate and love

The history of mankind is peppered with unbelievable atrocities right up to the present day, including genocides. Genocides are already documented from antiquity (including in the Bible), could take on huge proportions as early as the Middle Ages (Genghis Khan) alongside religiously disguised atrocities such as the burning of witches, and continue in a gruesomely bloody trail. For the Europeans, for example, it went hand in hand with the colonization of North and South America, with the German Reich, which inscribed the annihilation of Judaism on its banner, which led to the Holocaust, in Russia it was Stalin's Holodomor in Ukraine, in the Middle East the cleansing policy of the Ottoman Empire, in Japan the geopolitical war crimes in the Second World War, in China Mao Zedong's war crimes. World War II in Japan, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in China, ethnically motivated mass murders in Burundi and Rwanda in Africa, to name but a few. In view of the overwhelming evidence, the hypothesis that humans are endowed with an infallible conscience for good and evil, with an ethical imperative for their actions, seems daring. We should therefore remind ourselves, as Dawkins did (see below), how much we, like all other animals, are simply programmed to survive as individuals. Equipped with extremely sophisticated mechanisms to react reflexively to both physical and psychological challenges. Equipped with a brain that can grasp situations in a matter of seconds, that is incredibly adaptive and eager to learn and has given us an excellent ability to communicate, which has made it possible for us to become one of the most successful species on earth in terms of spreading to the furthest corners of our planet by means of technical aids. We can move very quickly on land with allpossible vehicles and even take to the skies, albeit with deafening noise and sinful energy consumption, and thus cover the greatest distances in the shortest possible time or rock ourselves or huge loads across the seas with huge cruisers or penetrate the deepest depths of the oceans with submarines. But since the earliest beginnings, we have also created magnificent works of art, pictures, songs, music or buildings that serve only to delight us or to feed our superhuman presumption, such as the Egyptian pyramids. In the field of music, probably more than in any other art, we see the predominance of love between the sexes, to which, at least in modern times, more than half of all mostly magical works are dedicated. Nothing would be more wrong than to criticize this; it speaks for us, but ultimately stems from the strongest of all instincts prominently represented in our brains, reproduction, the be-all and end-all of evolution. In addition, however, #MeToo, abuse, violence, disregard and oppression of women and people with a queer sexual orientation are endemic to the present day. Even in more "progressive" societies, it is proving difficult to do justice to the unequally distributed burden of reproduction imposed by nature in the sense of effective equality between men and women.

"Heaven" of the Protestant Heiliggeistkirche near Bern railroad station.

Son of man

The great joy when a child is born! My mother used to say "straight from heaven". And yet it is also associated with a lot of hardship, more for the mothers than the fathers, for whom it starts long before the birth and saps their strength for a long time afterwards. And yet, for most parents it is a real blessing, they love them boundlessly and worry just as much when something is wrong. If a little daughter falls off your shoulder due to momentary overload with another little daughter, panic is the order of the day, straight to the emergency room with her, luckily nothing was wrong. If they don't leave you in peace in the evening because they have stomach cramps or who knows what, you hardly ever let yourself be carried away into an ill-considered action and if you do, then the feeling of guilt stays with you for the rest of your life, even if no misfortune has resulted; a doubt gnaws at you. It is and remains a great, unconditional love. We observe with amazement how the human child absorbs everything around it in order to integrate itself into the society of people surrounding it. We are even more amazed at how challenging it is for the infant, even in a crèche, to secure its place there, each according to its own character. All of this is much more diffusion with the culture around us, whatever form it takes, than "education". It can become intense when the human child reaches the age of puberty, an important process of self-discovery and the beginning of liberation from childhood innocence and dependence on parents. An enormous energy bubbles up, which has to find its own way out of the previously unquestioned barriers of the adult world.