The sound of the 90s
While my generation was busy with going out, traveling overseas, celebrating Goa Parties and Loveparades and the likes, todays youth seems to be more interested to get stuck behind their electric devices. Gossip with each other from a distance, also.
Where something valuable is constantly put to use, what becomes of it? Is the use of free speech the same as free opinion?
While online gossip spreads wide and far and opinions are so worshiped (not), it appears that what is celebrated is condemned at the same time. Having an opinion, is mistaken as "free speech", even abused, one might dare to say. The basic right to speak freely, it can be looked at as "misuse" of this very "right".
Funny enough, the very means which make it possible in the first place to distribute the gazillion voices over the ether, now make attempts to lessen it, to restrict those waves of opinions.
Have you noticed, you find that the contradicting voices are much closer to each other than admitted?
From where I look, I find that wanting to be good is more of a nuisance to me. It's like "Look at me! How considering I am! I care and so should you! I shed tears for all war suffering people!"
The very same voices then ask for "help" to those under war threat. "Some one has to step in and free the folk!" Now, I know, that uttering these kinds of opinions will be heard.
Let me repeat my first sentence from part one:
War, where it happens for real, is hideous, terrifying, and traumatizing. Where bombs fall, where buildings collapse, where weapons fire is heard, fear reigns.
Where there is call for "freeing the suffering people" it means that this call can be translated into "bring your weapons and soldiers".
No? I mean, why should I say such a thing?
If I am an outsider, meaning that a war takes place far away from my own point of existence, do I actually know what I ask for? I just asked for bringing the troops to the very ground of which I pretend to have it safe, no?
My interpretation of this opinion is: If I ask for troops and weapons, because I perceive (trough media and opinions) one nation attacking the other, I ask at the same time for the people concerned to make sacrifices. It's them who must hide from the shootings and bombs. It's them whom I so lightly ask for "becoming protected", while it seems being the opposite of protection.
Living in Ukraine, would you like having more weapons and troops in your area? Does it really depend whom they belong to? They will shoot and most likely the average person will be dragged into.
I imagine the bombarded Germans who remained somewhat intact looked bewildered at their liberators who first bombed German towns into oblivion and then were expected to be praised. But of course, that was what also happened, right? First the killing and then the celebration of survival. If you want that, you will get it.
You see the world as a map and you mistake the map for the territory.
But the written menu is not the food.
After having been so overly critical, I can say: I have been there myself. Uttering nonsense into the world. Marketing myself as a good person, who "cares", placing my comments correctly. Winded forward, I'd say that I probably better have shut it up. HaHa!
I actually cannot be good for "everyone", because that is an impossibility in itself. I select what I want to care for. Right now, "caring" is my number one un-word.
It's very likely that the last two years have made me cynical and that my blindness would probably be preferable to me making the darned effort to point out with laughing eyes what hypocritical creatures you and I are, after all. I plead guilty and hope for extenuating circumstances.
Personal involvement
The Russians got serious after Germany attacked their country and took prisoners. Thousands of civilians were taken to Siberia, including my family. What provokes me is when people outside my country talk about the EU, the Americans resp. the NATO countries "taking a stand against Russia" (i.e. intervening with weapons and military).
My mother, on the very left side from the viewers point. Survived the effects of the Russian Revolution, expropriation by the Bolshevists, escape from Ukraine, the Second World War (bombing near Berlin), Russian prison camp. On the run at nine, in the Hitler Youth at fourteen, in Siberia under Stalin at sixteen. Back in Germany at the age of 47.
It's tough to imagine that we Germans could again suffer the same fate as other (also European) countries in recent years, that war is being waged on their soil and suddenly the media are full of opinion-mongering and ignorant people on some corner of the earth decide that we "must be helped". Even worse, hearing my own countrymen talking that way.
The fact is that the Russians gave up their occupation of Germany in 1990.
In any case, my parents and grandparents have been imprisoned in Russia for ten years and have been refused permission to leave the country for another twenty years. For the Sowjet Regime it must have been more difficult in doing so, after all, they have not afforded themselves the liberty to appear light minded (compare it to the US and British governments). How could they? Think about it for a while.
You can say what you like, but the Russians were serious about it, probably because they were severely shaken and traumatised by being attacked by Germany in the Second World War. The severe wounds suffered by the German and Russian people do not require further hostility, rather the opposite!
You need to heal together with your former enemy not without them
It takes several generations to come to terms with these experiences and put them aside. It is important not to simply brush aside the German-Russian friendship and say "they were much worse than the others". Precisely because it was so bad, it is important to reconcile. The reunification of Germany was extremely significant because it was seen by the older generations as a an act of detachment from a horrible past. Cynics might say "it was all pure strategy" etc. - for the people, it doesn't matter if it was strategy.
I suppose for the former GDR citizens, just like for my family, hostility to Russia is not desirable for the very reason that the end of an active war does not mean the end of its effects and because it takes a very long time to be able to give up freedoms achieved through death and blood and curtailment of liberty with a light-hearted attitude.
There is a profundity to be found in the fact that when you have been in such close and violent touch with the enemy, that experience does follow you. You must, in order to come to peace with yourself again, overcome the enmity and give the enemy the opportunity to do likewise.
The German-Russian friendship is therefore of a completely different nature than the German-American friendship.
Whereas America is the superficial lover with whom you can have a party, but of whom you know she can have a new affair any day, you know of the Russian lover that she looks at you with pain in her eyes, criticises you, but her readiness to leave you is like a wife who prefers to stay married, for there is still a lot of work to do for your ambivalent relationship.
So, to any outsider I would like to say:
Hold your opinion to yourself, except, you have to tell something from your personal history, which may point to the past way back more, than you might assume. Like it or not, for us Germans we were in a much tighter grip by the Russians, we experienced first hand through our families how it was to be kept imprisoned. Don't forget, after all, it was the insanity of dictatorship which led to pain and destruction and that it was not Russia which actively attacked German grounds and people. Of course, another possibility also would have been to surrender (hardly anyone talks about that).
Shall my family's sacrifice be in vain?
Shall the war trauma of the elders, inherited by me, resurface? It was not millions of Americans, nor Australians or Englishmen, whose country was divided and who felt compelled to swallow their hatred in a confined space, who wished to live their lives out of misery. We Germans have paid a hard price and I do not wish to hear superficial platitudes about who has been our liberator or oppressor. In the end, everyone was taking their parts in war.
Solutions to problems can generate further wahla or wahala depending on its effects. No matter the situation, wahala experienced by even the gods could spell doom for those that worship them.
Quoted from @scholaris blog post, who runs the wotw-contest.
This sounds to me. Troubles experienced, they can be used for further troubles, of course. But you can use them as well as coherent means to stay in touch with especially those, whom you were told to hate or to reject.
So, I would like to ask you of one thing. When you read something about Ukraine and have the opportunity to comment, please consider your opinion and think twice before you write something. Every voice has an influence, even when it's underestimated. Let us build bridges.
I welcome critique and conversation.
P.S. The very fact that I write in English, speaks a volume in itself, does it not? Maybe someone can give a translation also into Russian?
Seh ich auch so.
Schön, dass ich damit nicht allein bin.
Heute aus der Stadt rausgefahren, um zwei Wochen beim Bruder zu sein. Demos allerorten.
Auf der Fahrt dachte ich: "Ach, das ist alles ein Spiel. Ein großes Welten-Theater und wir alle spielen mit."
Leider ein ziemlich blutiges Theater, jedenfalls dort.
Oder, wie ein Freund von mir meinte: "Die Amerikaner werden kämpfen bis zum letzten Ukrainer."
Die perfekte Zusammenfassung.
Ich denk mal, niemand nimmt Krieg wirklich ernst, so lange er nicht direkt mit dem Leib betroffen ist. Das meiste andere übersteigt mein Fassungsvermögen und ich hoffe, mich nicht damit zu entblöden, dass ich kluge Sprüche über "die Lage" klopfe, als wüsste ich, was geschehen wird. Nur eines will ich nicht: dass man mich zu einer "Meinung haben müssen" zwingt.
Wenn die Gefühle hoch fliegen und einstürzende Bauten und tote Menschen in meiner Nähe wären, fürchte ich, würde auch ich meinen Verstand verlieren und irgend jemanden dafür beschuldigen wollen. In jedem Fall würde ich vermutlich zu den Ersten gehören, die sich den Waffen ergibt, egal, welchen nationalen Stempel die Waffen tragen.
Jemand sagte mal, dass es klug sei, die Zahl der Wahlmöglichkeiten (Alternativen) zu vergrößern und nicht, sie zu reduzieren. Aber die Leute reden, als gäbe es keine Alternativen. Das ärgert mich.
Simply.put, this generation has drifted from what should be seen, held and managed to wasting resources. You are 101% right with your premise, I think I would buy into it.
What may seem to be trouble for one end may not necessarily affect another? Hence, the time to set what is right is evident in outstanding what experiences play before our faces.
To further close the gap, individuals and society can learn bow to tolerate one another through an experience of wahala elsewhere.
Thank you for the comment. I am not sure if I have understood everything correctly. What exactly do you mean by "this generation"? Do you see a difference between using and wasting resources and what would that be?
Yes indeed, what is not a problem for one is a big problem for another, that can be quite so and is often an issue between disputants.
A useful premise, in my view, would be to broaden the possibilities of alternatives rather than engage in propagandistic "either-or" talk. As one all too often encounters in the media (or even in real conversations with each other), isn't it?
Can you explain a little further? In particular the "elsewhere"?
By this, I meant that from the history of others, we could learn to comport ourselves in relation to others, knowing that we all can not be the same. The principle of individual differences should be respected.
I think there is a big margin between how we handle resources in our time compare to the last two centuries.
There are more wastage now compared to those times.
That may be the case. At the same time, there are also more opportunities to use waste in a more creative way. But I don't want to play dumb :) I think I know what you mean.
I agree, it's good to know that we are NOT all the same. Individual difference is for me a matter of fact and I detest being seen as a digit belonging to a mass of digits.
Thank you for sharing your story. My days brighten when I read one of your articles.
HaHa, I am happy that you see the bright side of my texts. I shall call it "goal accomplished", then.
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