POWER VS. PARALYZATION E-Book

Magnus A. Torell

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 360

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

For a long time we have recognised that the apparently unstoppable climate changes and disturbances of nature, the intensification in the rift between rich and poor, as well as the increasing unrest and migrant streams are indicative of a global state of emergency. Furthermore, the new risks to our health, for example due to multi-resistant microorganisms, allergies or cancer, are causing us concern. What can I still eat, whom can I still trust, and where will it all end? In the face of these problems many of us are overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. How could we even find ourselves in such a situation? How can we overcome the paralysis, indifference and resignation? Every individual has the power to change something, because the economy and politics are dependent on mankind and not vice versa. An exciting analysis of the psychological and social backgrounds allows us to better understand the situation and introduces us to the concrete steps that each of us can take to free ourselves of this feeling of powerlessness.

Leseprobe

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive andbelieve, it can achieve”

W. Clement Stone (1902-2002)

This book was written out of love for my children andgrandchildren.

I would like to thank my wife Sabine for herpatience, inspiration and constructive criticism.

Magnus A. Torell

POWER

vs.

PARALYZATION

The potential of the individual

© 2016 Magnus A. Torell

Cover design and illustration: Lina-Marie KöppenProof-reading & setting: Angelika FleckensteinTranslation: Dr. Caroline Futter

Publisher: tredition GmbH, Hamburg

ISBN:

978-3-7323-8248-4 (Paperback)

978-3-7323-8249-1 (Hardcover)

978-3-7323-8250-7 (e-Book)

The work is copyright protected in all its parts. Any use without the consent of the publisher and the author is prohibited. This particularly applies to electronic or other reproduction, translation, distribution and public availability.

Table of contents

1 The current situation in Germany and the world

2 The ego or who am I really?

3 Philosophical and psychological backgrounds

4 Aspects of Having and Being in everyday life

5 The difficulty of changing the human character

6 Two German economic miracles – learning from the past

7 The German health care service

Summary and Conclusions

8 Concrete Steps

8.1 The new human science

8.2 The reformation of the school system

8.3 A global ethic

8.4 The alignment of production towards healthy and sensible consumption

8.5 Hypnosis-like methods in commercial and political advertising

8.6 Basic changes in our relationship to nature

8.7 The persistent continuation of the energy revolution

8.8. Market-based instruments in climate protection

8.9 Ecological finance reform

8.10 Abolition of inequality between the rich and poor countries

8.11 Ending the exponential growth of mankind

8.12 Active participation by people through decentralisation of the economy and politics

8.13 Information committees for the dissemination of objective information

8.14 The political co-determination democracy

8.15 Disarmament

8.16 Separation of basic scientific research from military practicality

8.17 The necessity for female equality in every area

8.18 Health reforms

8.19 Introduction of an annual minimum wage

8.20 The tasks of the politicians

8.21 The tasks of the entrepreneur

8.22 The role of religion

Bibliography:

1 The current situation in Germany and the world

Let’s take a look at our world with open eyes: modern society has provided us with many amenities; the achievements of humanity are impressive. Great works have been created in the fields of art, music, literature, architecture, painting and sculpture. Science and technology have brought about changes that allow us to do things today that would have been considered a miracle 200 years ago. The human mind seems to be highly intelligent. But is it really? The entire history of mankind is permeated by cruel wars, motivated by greed, desire for power, or fear and violence based on religious and ideological reasons. Man has not only developed internal-combustion engines and begun to use electricity; he has also invented bombs, machine guns, poisonous gases and tanks. By the end of the last century over 100 million people had died at the hands of their fellow men. They died in wars of mass destruction and genocide, for example the Jews in Nazi Germany. They died in countless internal conflicts or were among the approximately 20 million “class enemies and traitors” in Stalin’s Soviet Russia. We only have to glance at the TV news to realise that this madness is by no means in the past. Every day we are confronted with new reports of unprecedented violence, of men against men, against other life forms, or earth itself. This process of destruction continues unabated. Oxygen-producing forests are destroyed, rivers and oceans are poisoned, and the air polluted. The climate has become increasingly erratic in recent years. Periods of heat and drought, storms, floods and hurricanes are becoming more and more common.

Our world is limited, but the world population continues to grow and industrialisation is progressing. In much of the world, hunger and poverty persist, and riots are on the increase. We are faced with the constant threat of nuclear war, with the inability of leaders to make long-term global decisions, with an overwhelming power of corporations, and the apathy and ignorance of large parts of the population who are primarily concerned with their private affairs, and pay little attention to anything beyond the end of their own noses.

The climate problem was already recognised in the 1960s, but today – 50 years later – there is still twice as much CO2 emitted annually into the atmosphere than the forests and the seas of the earth can absorb.1 Since then, the oxygen content in the atmosphere has decreased from 21 to 19 per cent, and in some areas even down to twelve per cent. Life is no longer possible below six to seven per cent.2

So the real question is, where will this path end? How could humanity ever get into this situation, and why does it appear to be so difficult to solve the problems? To answer this question, we must understand the current situation.

After overcoming the feudal society, people experienced a new sense of freedom that inspired them and gave them strength and hope. The achievements of the developing industrial society, the strain of manual labour relieved by machinery, the use of mechanical, electrical, and later of nuclear energy and the development of computer technology gave man the feeling of being almost omniscient and omnipotent. It was believed that a life of wealth and comfort would lead to unlimited happiness.

Traffic routes were created that reduced the earth to a single, huge continent. Boundaries fell and the united Europe was born. Mankind evolved into a large society in which the fate of the individual became the fate of all. What could be automated was automated, what could be converted into digital form was digitised. Accelerating progressive inventions made it possible that today everyone can have access to the best literature, art and music. Working hours were approximately halved in the last hundred years; people could use the free time to develop themselves. But do they do this?

Many people do not know what to do with the newly-created free time and are glad when one more day is over. Some suffer from acute stress, others from boredom. The liberation from hard work is now regarded as the greatest gift of modern “progress”, but this liberty has unfortunately led to the ideal of absolute laziness in which every effort is avoided if possible. The “good” life is a life without effort. Often the car is used for shopping although the store is very close by. A calculator is used to solve the smallest arithmetic problems. Convenience and lack of time have given us the mobile phone, fast food and the microwave, even though countless studies indicate serious health concerns in connection with these. In the fourth German government mobile report we were warned again of the health risks associated with WLAN. But although the EU indicates that the frequencies of these hotspots can lead to cell damage, the wireless range is expanding more and more.

In 2013 there were already over 300 public WLAN hotspots in 70 Bavarian cities and towns. Previously, a WLAN offer was successfully tested in Berlin and Potsdam. In Berlin, for example, around 1.5 million users per month log in to the WLAN network of “Kabel Deutschland” which consists of 100 public hotspots. It should be the job of a government to protect the population against factors which are demonstrable health hazards, but in the fifth report of January 2013 the warning had completely disappeared. Thus, the entire world population is currently part of a large-scale experiment that no one can escape. But despite WLAN and the Internet, people are far from boundless happiness.

Man as a biological being is part of nature, but his relationship with his livelihood has become a hostile, destructive process. People can imagine today, although only vaguely, what a rise in sea level means, but they are obviously not in a position to understand what the loss of millions of plant and animal species will mean for the people in the year 2100. Nor is it morally justifiable that our descendants should have to worry about our nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years.

In developed countries, the relationship between man and nature has in the meantime become so heavily disturbed that the majority of people are disinterested when made aware of the massive destruction of nature throughout the world. An expected profit or job creation outweighs the extinction of countless species and the long-term destruction of their own livelihoods.

The central question for our society is not “What is best for the people?”, but rather “What is good for the system?”

Along with the Internet came the new tools of individualisation, including the home page, e-mail, laptop or iPad. By using the Internet, it was possible to obtain not only information but also a wide variety of products at reasonable prices, thereby bypassing the old structures. The constantly growing needs created all kinds of offers, such as countless search engines, YouTube, iTunes and social networks like Facebook, allowed contacts with colleagues, friends and strangers to be created and maintained. We were happy to be able to exchange information so quickly and easily, and a whole new means of communication was established through the development of entirely new forms of dialogue and open expression. All this gave people the feeling that everything favoured the interests of the user. They succumbed to the illusion that the data sent belonged to the owner of the computer. The owners of Google or Facebook got rich, but they wanted to be even richer and sold their customers’ data to advertisers and address dealers. But not only that: as part of the preparatory work on Google Street View even personal data from computers were secretly stolen. Companies were given the opportunity to make personalised advertising based on user profiles and browsing habits. The internet user became a profit-enhancing data supplier. Furthermore, the communication of citizens and politicians was now scouted by intelligence agencies on a grand scale. No-one knows whether his data are safe. Deutsche Telekom has even contractually warranted the American FBI access to communication data, and stores all data without given suspicion for two years.

While the Internet promotes a surveillance society, it at the same time offers voters a huge opportunity to organise and sample real democracy. The fear that phone calls and e-mails could be recorded and stored, however, restricts the feeling of freedom of the people and thereby damages freedom overall.

Withdrawal from nuclear energy and coal would be no problem with the efficient use of energy offered by the sun, wind and water. That has indeed begun, but the nuclear power plants continue to operate. Every day they continue to provide the material required for the production of further nuclear weapons with increasing destructive potential, although the existing weapons could already wipe out all of life on Earth. Recognising and using nuclear fission requires a high level of intelligence, but its use for the construction and the accumulation of nuclear weapons testifies rather extreme stupidity. This excessive stupidity, for which one could cite many examples, threatens our survival as a species today.

In the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, there was hope of nuclear disarmament. And a great deal was actually achieved here: of the over 70,000 nuclear bombs waiting for use at that time, more than two-thirds have been scrapped. The medium-range missiles Pershing and SS20, which prompted many people to demonstrate at that time, are completely gone from the world. In 1995, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was extended indefinitely, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, an important agreement for arms control and disarmament, was closed in 1996.

The Euro was introduced and the EU expanded.

Shortly after he took office in 2009, President Barack Obama conceptualised the vision of a world without atomic weapons during a speech in Prague. A little later he closed a new START disarmament treaty with the then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

All this gave cause for hope. But the reality brought something quite different. The former Soviet statesman and party head Mikhail Gorbachev had criticised the eastern expansion of NATO many times in the past. In 2009, the “Bild” newspaper said that Germany, the US and other western states had promised Gorbachev after German reunification - and therefore also after the negotiation of the Two-Plus-Four Agreement in 1990 – “that NATO would not expand one inch to the east”. The Americans had not kept to this.

Russia could not prevent NATO under Clinton advancing up to the Russian border. Not even as George W. Bush digressed from the ABM Treaty and began to build missile defence stations along the Russian border. The official line was the missile shield was intended to protect Europe from Iran’s intercontinental missiles. The Kremlin counted on the good relationship with Europe being sufficient to prevent American military bases in, for example, Georgia.

Seven countries were bombed under the command of Barack Obama, with Syria immediately following Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya.

Washington demonised Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad, and each time it was the prelude for military attacks.

Washington’s demonization this time of Putin can therefore also be seen as the first step towards a military act. Hillary Clinton even called him the new Hitler.

The Malaysian passenger plane allegedly shot from the Russian side has completely disappeared from the news. In the meantime, numerous technical performance characteristics, photographs and eye-witnesses confirm that it was in no way hit by a ground-to-air missile. Published images of the impact speak in favour of the machine having been shot by a (Ukrainian) military aircraft (possibly two). This explains the specific aim for the cockpit, with the target of killing the occupants so that no alarm signals could be transmitted. AWACS and satellite data would have identified without doubt a shot from a ground-to-air missile. NATO and the USA would have been certain to share it with the general public within a few days. The ongoing use of the unchanged false appraisal is used to condemn Russia.

And what has become of the Russian armoured vehicle convoy which is said to have been driven into the Ukraine? ARD admitted that in its coverage of the Ukraine conflict images were used that did not originate from there, or were even already years old.

Georg Friedmann, founder and CEO of the US private intelligence corporation STRATFOR known as the “Shadow CIA”, admitted during an interview with the Russian newspaper “Kommersant” that the Ukraine Crisis was a targeted campaign by the US Intelligence Services to punish Russia for remaining loyal to Syria’s President, Baschar al-Assad.3

But not only that. NATO realigned its strategy against Ukraine. The state secretaries of the 28 member states agreed to deploy a response force in 2015 against the possible threat from Russia. Germany should provide a large proportion of the soldiers.

Former chancellor Helmut Schmidt is one of the few who are aware of this. He said: “For the majority of continental European nations, there will neither be a strategic nor moral reason in the foreseeable future for being willingly subordinate to American imperialism. We should not morph into Yes-men.”

The USA imposed economic sanctions against Russia. As their own economic relations with Russia are lacking to a large extent, the USA forced Europeans to declare sanctions. The American government has openly admitted to having press-ganged the EU into sanctions against Russia against its will. Because for Europeans there is a lot at stake in doing business with Russia. The EU countries obtained goods to a value of over 200 billion euros from Russia last year and supplied Russia with goods and services totally around 120 billion euros. About 300,000 jobs in Germany are thought to be dependent on this.

Russia would be able to officially declare the NATO states as enemies of the Russian state in the framework of the military doctrine and thereby cease supplying gas to the NATO states. Russia is Europe’s largest supplier of gas. Almost 40 per cent of Germany’s imports come from Russia. This would paralyse large sections of European industry, allow unemployment to explode, and ruin banks.

As the sanctions did not really seem to have much effect, last year the USA loosened its grip on its decade-long prohibition on oil exportation. Since then, oil prices have sunk rapidly. A difficult situation for Putin, as 45 per cent of the Russia’s public revenue comes from oil exports. However, Russia will strengthen its cooperation with China before it collapses. Trade with Russia is important for China. For this reason, China prefers to help Russia rather than watch it fall.

The majority of Germans do not want to be involved in an American war. Over two-thirds of Germans do not want any American atomic weapons in the country. The Germans also do not want any sanctions against Russia. The many false reports in the media about the Ukraine crisis have sensitised people and made them listen. They have the impression that they have often been manipulated and lied to by the media.

On 5 December 2014 over 60 German celebrities and top politicians called on Russia to enter into dialogue. It was an insistent call for peace signed by Roman Herzog, Hans-Jochen Vogel, Gerhard Schröder, Manfred Stolpe, Antje Vollmer and many others. They appealed to the media to fulfil their obligation to report in a convincingly impartial manner as they had done previously, in order to prevent a war in Europe.

For ARD and ZDF, this appeal fell on deaf ears.

Also the peaceful demonstration by 4,000 people on 13 December in front of the Bellevue Palace, during which the West was accused of warmongering, was ignored by our “quality media”. To quote the wellknown theologian Eugen Drewermann:

“We should stop believing in our mainstream media. It has been repeatedly telling us for decades about the willingness to accept conflict as an emergency solution. But really this only serves to enforce the interests of the economy.”4

ARD ignored the event. Not a single word was said about it in the evening “Tagesschau”, or “Tagesthemen” that night. Instead there were reports about the demonstrations in the USA, special reports about the CSU party convention and finally the game show “Wetten dass …?” with Markus Lanz.

Although the German people are against it, the American nuclear weapons stationed in German will be up-dated and even stocked-up in terms of numbers.

Moscow sees itself as a “sovereign democracy” which will not bow down to any other power or confederation of states. Germany appears to have relinquished parts of its superiority to the supranational state confederations such as the EU and NATO.

The German people expect their government to deliver sovereign and independent politics and not to help drive Europe into a catastrophe which the German’s themselves will not survive.

Ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev, who initiated the end of the Soviet Union in 1980 with his new foreign policy, already saw the approach of a Third World War (!) in the late summer of 2014. Putin is “provoked to continue the armament race”, said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And he continued: “The greatest danger comes from the military-industrial complex. Circles that are interested in armaments want to create the appearance of an alarming situation. At the same time they want to accustom us to the thought of a new war – a Third World War.”

Russia was also forced to overhaul its military doctrine for its own protection. A new version was adopted on 26 December 2014. It states that the USA and NATO represent a serious military threat to the survival of Russia as an independent nation. Washington’s military doctrine, which speaks of an atomic first strike, the building up of a missile shield, strengthening of NATO’s military clout, and the planned installation of weapons in space, is assessed by Russia as a clear sign that Washington is preparing an attack on Russia. To protect themselves from such an attack, Russia and China have united their economic and military capacities. The governments of both countries have agreed to combine their military supreme commands.

Russia is not Iraq, Libya or Syria. The Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons if the country is under attack, even if it is attacked using conventional weapons.

Russia is in the process of developing two new types of intercontinental missiles, and in 2016 will put a weapons system into operation which will annul the American missile shield.

But what happens if one sees that an opponent has created something that can bring one to his knees? Would one risk carrying out a first strike, before the joint Russian-Chinese commando is fully ready for action, and in doing so plunge the whole of Europe into chaos? Russia and China must constantly be on red alert.

A clever German policy renounces provocations and strong-arm tactics towards the Russians. A lot of mistakes were made in the past. The changes in Europe promised far more for broad levels of the population in Russia. One had hoped for a common European institution, and certainly more prosperity. But the reality has turned out to be quite different, and that not only through the expansion of NATO into the East and the disregard of Russian interests during the pursued EU association with the Ukraine.

The West felt itself to be in the superior position, instructing Russia in every possible topic and area, from social values to the economic system to the evaluation of the Olympic Games in Sochi.

Russia’s gift of unity and peace, and the act of reconciliation was attributed less to the Russian nation than to Mikhail Gorbachev as an individual.

The pan-European vision for the future proposed by Russia’s President Putin in 2010, such as the common economic area reaching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, was barely discussed seriously or pursued further until recently.

Despite all the previous disappointments, Germany remains Russia’s preferred point of contact. Germany’s responsibility is larger today than it has ever been. One would not have considered it possible a few years ago that Germany would be required to have a major foreign policy. The Germans themselves have not pushed for it, but now they have to rise to the challenges and prove that they can cope. In doing so they must not only keep their eyes on their own interests, but must also not lose sight of those of Europe. A new cold war is not in Europe’s best interests, and nobody would survive a “hot” one.

But a conflict escalates when both sides feel they are completely right. That is why it is currently so important to set a political stance and to signalise to one another that even difficult political upheavals do not preclude the understanding and respect that the nations have for each other. Is it not possible that this could be an initiative in accordance with Germany’s role and importance?

If the Federal President spoke of value-based democracy at the Munich Security Conference, could one not understand these words as the responsibility of the West to take the first steps?

Let us demonstrably walk away from the position of accusation and try to collectively develop perspectives of European solidarity.

The Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel took a step in the right direction when she seized President Putin’s offer and offered the prospect of a common economic area for Russia with the EU during the World Economic Forum in Davos on 23.01.2015.

Talks between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union of the former Soviet Republics seem possible. Minister of Economic Affairs Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) even went a step further: “Putin’s idea of a free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok is conceivable, at best even from New York to Vladivostok.”

The anniversary of the end of the Second World War would be a possible occasion to recognise the merits of the liberator. Let us use these signs while we are still able to!

The Russian people must feel that they are welcome in Europe.

We must send positive signals and in doing so also give Russia’s political leaders the opportunity to save face while demonstrating their capacity for compromise. We must remind ourselves of what we really want.

Europe needs Russia and Russia needs Europe.

After a 17-hour negotiation marathon there was a glimmer of hope: during the Ukraine crisis summit in Minsk, the participants aimed for an agreement on cease-fire for the Donbass war zone. The four heads of state from Russia, Germany, France and the Ukraine confirmed their full respect for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Ukraine. They were firmly convinced that there was no alternative to a purely peaceful solution. They recognised the mutual vision of a common humanitarian and economic area stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific based on the full respect for human rights and the principles of the OSCE.

The conference declarations were an important step towards returning to what in the recent past had been a strategic partnership, and what could be described as a diagonal line of Russian and European interests.

Russia and Germany, the two powers which have viewed each other for centuries and in spite of conflicts with more than a little sympathy and often a great deal of fascination, cannot afford to move further apart. It is not too late, because this mutual trust between Russia and Europe is not yet lost. We have to boldly and confidently risk the next step and demonstrate our vision. We must not tolerate a break in this bond. An optimal European security system will only work together with Russia as an equal partner.

As much as Obama’s disarmament initiative was talked about, U.S. defence spending has increased since that point. Russia is still thought to have 13,000 nuclear warheads, while the U.S. figure is nearly 10,000. Roughly speaking, this represents a potential destruction power of more than 900,000 times Hiroshima. In the U.S. new nuclear weapons are developed, China and France are modernising their arsenals, Russia announced the construction of new nuclear missiles, and the UK is building a plant for the development of new nuclear weapons.

Man stands today, after the heyday of human creativeness, at a crossroads where one false step could be his last.

While no-one would remain idle if there were a threat in his private life, many people appear shockingly indifferent and even powerless in the face of social problems. How is it possible that the strongest of all instincts, self-preservation, no longer works?

Why are many people unwilling to open their eyes and to act – not even for those who are closest to them: for their children? Do we really want to leave a ruined and polluted planet for our children?

Luckily, there are still people who think about the future. People who work for peace or are involved in environmental organisations. For example, the Association for the Environment and Conservation (the German organisation “BUND”), fighting for clean rivers, a sustainable transport policy, against nuclear power and mass animal husbandry.

Among others, the German Nature Conservation (DNR), founded in 1950, is committed to safeguarding and enhancing our quality of life. Today, 94 organisations belong to this umbrella association of nature and environmental organisations in Germany. The environmental organisation Greenpeace mobilises people against nuclear testing, pollution of the seas or toxic waste shipments.

Many environmental groups have reacted with disappointment to the resolutions of the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha. Many governments are trying to avoid climate protection rather than climate change, at the expense of the poorer countries, although thousands of people have already lost their homes or their lives as a consequence of global warming, droughts and floods. The situation of the people in Ethiopia or Sudan is desperate.

More and more people are becoming aware today of the following facts:

➢Satisfaction of all desires does not lead to happiness. Those who already enjoy the relative freedom that wealth brings remember that even that is not enough to fill their lives with meaning.

➢Scientific progress has also brought with it the dangers of environmental and nuclear disaster.

➢The Internet is indeed an unprecedented platform for open expression and dialogue forms. It gives users at least theoretically the best opportunity to organise themselves and test real democracy. But indifference, excess and disinformation prevent the voters from really coming together to save these rights and democracies.

On the other hand, it promotes the surveillance society, and the users are taken advantage of through the dissemination and sale of their data for pure profit-making purposes. No-one knows whether his data are safe.

➢The developmental gap between the poor and rich nations is constantly widening rather than diminishing: of the nearly seven billion people living in the world today, the World Bank estimates that 1.4 billion earn less than 1.25 dollars per day and a further 1.6 billion less than 2.5 dollars. 80 per cent of the global domestic product belongs today to one billion people, while the remaining 20 per cent is distributed over almost six billion people. Around half of mankind is starving or undernourished. Every six seconds a person dies of hunger.5 Every year six million children do not have the chance to reach adulthood because they lack food, while at the same time around 155 million people in the world are overweight.6 According to the International Labour Organization ILO, a special agency of the United Nations, 50 million children work for starvation wages in factories, mines and in agriculture, above all in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

➢Measured relative to the current state of technology and human behaviour, our planet is already severely over-populated. In the last 20 years the global population has grown by 1.5 billion people. The United Nations has predicted that the population will increase from the present-day seven billion people to nine billion by the year 2050. If the current trends continue, by the mid-21st century more than 90 per cent of the world’s population will live in the less-developed countries. At the time the population of the industrialised countries with shrink or remain the same.7

➢The basic requirement of every person on the planet for water, food, accommodation and clothing could be satisfied if the greed of the individual would not create a massive imbalance during the distribution of resources.

➢The attempts to increase food production to date have accelerated environmental contamination even further, which in turn affects soil fertility.8

➢Our aim to use nature and conquer it led to us not cooperating with it; instead we exploit and destroy it. Species extinction and climate change are progressing. Forests are disappearing, soils are exhausted and the seas are depleted of fish. The areas inhabited by millions of people, broad areas of fertile ground and freshwater reserves are threatened by tremendous storms and the increasing sea level.

➢The greatest gift of modern progress, the liberation from hard work, has freed up capacities that could be used for personal development, further education, for example learning an additional language or involvement in art or culture. But unfortunately this has happened relatively rarely up to now.

➢In the Western capitalist society one is turning against cultural intolerance. But at the same time arms exports are not regulated democratically for example in Germany. Germany ranks among the top ten international suppliers of arms. The German arms exports to the Gulf region in 2012 increased to 1.42 billion euros and in doing so doubled when compared with the previous year. The United States’ military budget of about 711 billion dollars makes them by far the undisputed leader.

➢There are millions of intelligent women in our social system who still do not have a fair chance to take responsibility and to participate actively in social life.

➢The energy transition is being driven forward extremely reluctantly, although 40 minutes of sunlight on the earth – were we able to utilise it fully – would meet the energy requirement of the entire planet for one year.9

➢We farm enormous numbers of animals only to slaughter them, even though we know that they are sentient creatures with an awareness which makes their killing morally highly questionable. Furthermore, it brings major health problems and consumes huge quantities of water and grain.

➢A lot of feelings, thoughts, and people’s taste are influenced by the mass media, which itself is controlled by the industry and the state apparatus. Every day and everywhere, the sense of reality and human reason are undermined by misinformation and suggestive methods, especially in the advertising in the press, on the screen or on the radio.

➢Instead of making independent decisions about their lives, people have become part of a system of psychological conditioning and mass suggestion.

The well-known American molecular biologist Gerald Crabtree already raised the theory several years ago that mankind was gradually becoming dumbeddown again. Our modern-day society is considered the cause of this negative development. The consumption and pleasure society is blindly following the apparently increasingly spiritless entertainment industry and the role-models in advertising.

Modern man owns many things and uses a lot of items, but his feelings and thought processes are regressed like untrained muscles. He is surrounded by things whose origin and nature he is unaware of. We label things with words and pretend we know what's behind them. But no matter what it is – a bird, a tree or a person – we are able to give it a name, but we can only superficially perceive, mentally register or experience it. The faster we assign things, people or situations with verbal or mental labels, the more lifeless our reality becomes. If we just hold a flower or a stone in our hand, look at them and just let them be, without being provided with a word or mental label, we are stunned by a sense of awe: the things reflect our own nature, that which we have lost our connection with.

People can indeed handle a TV, tablet, dishwasher, laptop and all the other devices that surround us, but that only means that they know which button they need to press. They know almost nothing about how they work. Even things that are not based on complicated technical processes are unfamiliar. Ask the bricklayer the dimensions of a brick or a glazier at which temperature glass melts; ask an aquarist, from which country the guppy originates or a chicken breeder, where the primeval chicken came from! Most people do not know what electricity is, how bread is made or how to make glass. We consume without any specific relationship to things. We live in a world of things that we can handle and our connection to them is simply manipulation or consumption.

Our Western capitalist society is based on two premises: on the belief that egoism, selfishness and greed, properties that our consumer society must promote to exist, can lead to harmony and peace, and on the idea that happiness is achieved by a maximum of pleasure, by which the satisfaction of all desires and perceived needs that a person can have.

2 The ego or who am I really?

In the 17th century, the philosopher Descartes achieved fame with a sentence that he regarded as the highest truth: “I think, therefore I am.” It became clear to him that he thought constantly, and so he equated thinking with being, hence the identity. It was not until 300 years later that another philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, recognised something in this sentence that everybody else had failed to see: he came to the realisation that the consciousness that we are is not the consciousness that thinks. If we are aware that we think, this awareness is not part of thinking, but another dimension of consciousness.

But then: who am I really? The one who realises that he is thinking. If only the thinking was present alone, we would not even know that we are thinking at all.

If a child learns his name, he begins to equate this word with himself. Then he learns the word “I” and equates it with his name. Later he refers to things that somehow belong to the “I” with “mine” and “my”. If a toy is taken from the child, or the toy breaks, he is sad and cries, but not because the toy had a special material value. It could be quickly replaced by another and in other situations, the child would have quickly lost interest. He suffers because the toy is a part of his evolving self and personality.10

Later, the child identifies with his gender as a boy or girl, and as he grows up, his possession, his body, his skin colour, his religion or his profession. The toy will then be a car or a house. Added are likes, dislikes, experiences and events in the past, so that the person obtains a “story”.

These are just some of the aspects which man uses to derive his sense of identity. We gain our sense of self and of what we are from the incessant stream of thought creating it. The sense of identity is ultimately a theoretical construct and is held together only by the fact that a sense of self has been assigned to this thought.

But this construct, is it the real me? Most people identify with their purpose in life. Everything people perceive, do or have experienced, is content and takes their entire attention. If you say “my life”, you do not refer to what you are, but on what you own or think you own. You mean the content: your age, gender, occupation, finances, physical condition, the past, what has been done and the planned future. But I’m not the content, and if I’m not, then what am I?

If you look closely, it’s not me, saying or thinking “I”, but one aspect of this mental construct – the ego spirit.11 And I am actually the one who recognises it: the awareness that precedes the thinking, the space in which the thought or sense-perception takes place. If we are aware that we think, this awareness is not part of the thinking. This phantom-I was born when thinking prevailed, and thus replaced the simple but profound joy of connectivity with the Being, the origin. The ego is only an identification with the form of a material object, with a body or thought forms that ascend in consciousness, a search for self in which you lose your true self to any shape. If we constantly identify with the voice in our heads and the emotions that accompany us, so that we lose every sensation, we identify completely with the form. Then we are mastered by the ego, the agglomeration that represents constantly recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns. The ego arises when we confuse our sense of being, “I am”, which is a formless consciousness, with the physical form.

Albert Einstein described the ego as “optical illusion of consciousness”. In everyday terms, “I” means a false sense of identity and is, together with the derivatives “me” and “mine”, one of the most misleading words most commonly used.

A basic structure of thought through which the ego emerges is the identification with something. Identification or equalising, but with what? With me. I connect my sense of self with something, and then it is part of my identity.

What you identify yourself with is dependent on your age, income, occupation, culture, fashion, social status, etc. One of the basic levels of identification is with objects, things. Most people are no longer in the living reality, but in a world of concepts. Everything is covered with words and concepts and we thus believe we know what it is about. In reality, we have only given a secret a name. With our limited senses we can only perceive the surface, whether it is a tree, a bird or a person. Ultimately every object has infinite depth. As we pave over our world with words and labels, we are blind to our bond with the whole. We have forgotten our oneness with everything and with the origin. We no longer feel at one with nature and have often even lost the connection to our own bodies. We use our bodies like we use a car. If we have lost this connection, we are consciously aware that something is missing and wrongly trying to fill this gap with things that cannot bring lasting satisfaction. This ego-identification with things causes an obsession, a desire to own more and more, which in turn justifies the economic structures in our consumer society where progress always means more. This uncontrolled desire for more, for ever greater growth, is a disorder, a disease.

There are two reasons why we see everything separately instead of establishing a connection between everything. The form of our perception reduces reality to the limited range of our senses, to what we can see, hear, smell or taste. Everything we perceive is then immediately interpreted by the phantom-I, the ego, then given names, judged to be good or bad, or compared with others. If we have named a thing, we think we know what it is, but that is an illusion. Words reduce reality to what the human mind can deal with, and the language consists of only five vowels, produced by the vocal cords, and of consonants that are formed by air pressure. It is questionable whether the human mind will ever be able to grasp the deeper meaning of the universe, or even that of a bird or a stone. The voice in our head takes up most of our attention, and perceptions and experiences are distorted by immediate reviews. Thinking splits reality into mere lifeless fragments, and such a fragmented view leads to destructive and unwise behaviour.

But when we perceive without interpreting immediately, focus all our attention on the subject matter, on every detail, or the situation, suppress emerging thoughts consciously and fully concentrate on the perception, then we can still feel the deep connection that links everything apparently separated beyond our perception.

We can be aware of our self when the compulsive, unconscious naming, interpreting or evaluating subsides, or if we are at least aware of it, so we can observe it when it happens.

If one wants to sell people things they do not really need, one tries to convince them that their self-esteem will be enhanced with this product. One connects the product with a known personality or a youthful, attractive person. And so the people ultimately do not purchase a product, but rather an identity amplifier. Even designer brands are ultimately only collective identities, which one buys into expensively. If everybody could buy them, they would have lost their psychological value. Only the material value would remain, which is worth only a fraction of what was paid for it. Our consumer society is kept alive only by the fact that the attempt to self-actualise in things fails, because the ego can be satisfied only short term, and so we buy and consume again and again.