Think – But Then Move

Did you hear about the crisis we are all in? Fine, so we are on the same level. My friend Jeb has provided new insights into the current paradigm shift in societies – but the ensuing discussion left me somehow clue- and hopeless. This is how I felt: We are sitting on an train, we know a little about where we are – but where we might be going is in the dark.

By Detlef. Was a risky business. Don’t try this alone.
I believe the cause of the current economic crisis is not some individual failure: some managers or politicians being greedy, unscrupulous and simply for sale. I think the problem is that the liberal economic systems actually reward this behaviour and punish those who try to inspire trust and to be worth that trust.

I had that funny exchange with Ryan, about how money should be based on something different than math. Well: I think money is based on trust. “In God we trust” meaning: I trust I will get value for my money because we all share the same values. I don’t trust money of a political system that’s based on shaky civil legs, because I fear that system will explode from within and its money will be worthless.

Up to now every single day billions of Dollars are transferred to the US, because people all over the world trust America, trust its political and economic system, trust the old-fashioned  American values. Who else is there to trust? Which state, which organization? There are some, but very few.

If you were a successful business(wo)man in a developing country: would you invest your hard earned money in your own country or rather in US Government Bonds? So each day the billions are flowing into the US and into the EC from the developing countries – because of trust. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I think to solve the current crisis we have to inspire trust at home and in the developing countries. I believe this is President Obama’s agenda but no individual and not even an administration can do this alone. In the US and in the European Community I currently witness a deep mistrust against politics and politicians. But it’s no use: politics is the solution. We have to pick up the ball, formulate our values and create a political willpower. We have the great rules of our constitutions.

By Detlef.
Let’s get frustrated, agitated, compromise, win, loose. Let us play.
What do you say?

My Vacation from Being a German

Don’t ever try to be funny in a foreign language.
Do you see the light? By Detlef.

• The way you talk is probably funny enough without you intending it at all.
• Irony is almost never understood between cultures and for that reason often misunderstood in a very bad way.
• Humor is frequently based upon a shared cultural context. That is why we still understand Aristotle – but not Aristophanes.

But what can a poor boy do? In this blog I enjoy my vacation from being a German. So, as I’m trying to be a German in English, please play along, don’t be a German (I am riding this donkey until it’s dead), laugh out loud – but let me in on my unwilling jokes. Corrections are much appreciated.

Hi, I'm Your Problem

Hi, I’m your problem. By Detlef.Who would not know it: you have something REALLY important to do and you simply cannot get yourself to perform. It’s called: lack of discipline.

Sometimes there are even things you would like to do, but as they are so very important, you want to do them very, very good. You wait for the right time – which unfortunately never comes.

I met my own problem at Jeb’s post.

“Hello Problem! So you are here at Jeb’s, too?”
“Hi Detlef. This is probably a misunderstanding. I’m not your problem, I’m Jeb’s. People often mix us up – but we are different.”
“Oh, sorry.”

But how is it that we meet this problem-family so often? I suspect there was a time when that behaviour actually made sense. Back in the cave, in Stone Age, if you did not like to perform a task, it was probably dangerous – so you better avoided it. The avoiders survived.

Of course there were those adventurous tasks involving a lot of adrenaline and prestige (if you completed them successfully), like hunting the mammoth or killing the saber-toothed tiger. To defend the horde from an imminent danger was an instant benefit.

And you didn’t need discipline – you needed (only?) courage. That’s the story of discipline and how it got wired into our brains in a rather negative way.

Of course, this is just my little uneducated theory. If you are an expert in the field of discipline (either executing or avoiding) your opinion would be cherished very much.

At the End of the Road – Which Way?

Which way do we take at the end of the road? Turn left, turn right, turn back? Or try something completely different? Try to swim, try to fly? Put up a tent and try to settle down?

At the end of the road. By Detlef.
Put up a diner, catering for the people at the end of the road, inviting them to sit down, to share their stories about the road, the way, the sea, the sky and new horizons near the rainbow’s end, prepare their food, wash their dishes, clean up their rooms when they left (where to?) – making ends meet, making a living.

Here is a song from the end of the road. The lyrics are in German by Heinrich Heine, from his “Northern Sea” cycle. Sitting at the fisherman’s house, looking at the sea while the dusk is setting and the fire at the lighthouse is starting.

[flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/fischerhaus.swf w=240 h=65]
Full text  of this song in German.

At the end of the road there is the start of something new. Exciting, strange, frightening – unknown.

We Are In This Together

With my post about Brahman, Atman, Ego and the USS Enterprise I wanted by no means join the ranks of the ego-bashers who maintain that the ego is the sole source of all the human problems.

We need our egos bitterly to deal with everyday problems. We are gregarious animals, we have to organize our lives, our politics our finances in a rational way – we have no choice but to do so. We are in this together.

Here is another song out of my archives. I am astonished that I sang it in 2007 already. That’s when the current financial crisis started as “the credit crunch”. Remember?

[flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/credit-crunch.swf w=240 h=65]

Let’s all hook up our egos in a joint effort to end this crisis, learn some important lessons out of it and try to make this world a better place for all of us.

Wasn’t that what President Obama said? It’s so along ago, I don’t quite remember.

Brahman, Atman, Ego and the USS Enterprise

Crown of Creation. By DetlefThe Catskill Cottage Seed states:

“The ego complex, or consciousness, is the crown jewel of creation.”

I would have loved to comment on this, but presently there seems to be a problem with parts of the internet. I can read the post in my rss-reader but not the original post with the comments. I cannot get Twitter and FriendFeed as well – so it’s a broader problem.

Richard is a deep and original thinker provoking your own thoughts.  Not knowing where the conversation went I’d like to say:

I don’t know what Richard means by “ego complex”. If  it is the “Self”, the “All-One” of the Upanishads, the identity of Brahman and Atman, then I agree. If it’s tied to Homo Sapiens – I disagree.

Who is the crown of creation? Perhaps the question is more relevant than the answer. We are gregarious animals living in hierarchic communities. We need to know who is at the top and naturally we like it to be us.

I like the perspective taken in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Homo Sapiens might not be the most interesting species on this planet under a cosmic point of view. We will never know any “superior” form of living, or of civilisation, because we lack the organs to sense it. If Homo Sapiens is the measure – no species will ever surpass it.

We don’t know what the dog smells, we don’t know what the cat sees at night or what the shark senses through the water. We don’t have the equipment. And I believe we lack a lot of  sensory equipment in the spiritual sphere, too.

4 Pieces of Abstract Music

Why “Abstract Music”? This music is “just” music. Signifying nothing else:  no feelings, no thoughts, nothing to dance to. Just sounds and rhythmical structures revolving around each other within a mathematical frame.

These pieces are more than 10 years old. Once I had mapped out and set the mathematical relationships between tones I let my old Atari ST run and run and the musical textures evolved by themselves.

The Atari was linked via MIDI with a Roland device with a preset of sampled sounds.

I still listen to these pieces for relaxation and meditation or if I want to purify my musical imagination to hear something totally different.

[flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/dinnerbell.swf w=240 h=65][flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/flow1.swf w=240 h=65][flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/penguin.swf w=240 h=65][flash http://licht.detlefcordes.org/flosh/heinz.swf w=240 h=65]

Originally these pieces were called “Abstract Flow 1 to 4”. But as they are all individual to me I came up with these names.

An Android Robot? Recorded Dreams?

The Infinity of Subjectivity. By DetlefA man telling a story about a woman telling a story about someone knowing someone who heard a story told by a man who doesn’t remember where he heard it – but probably on TV.

I am very thankful to Richard Reeves, who indicated the remote possibility in the future in this comment and sent the link to this story about the possibility to record dreams.

The article made me think about the nature of human subjectivity again. I believe that there will never be recorded dreams. As well as there will never be android robots acting like human beings. The reason is the infinity of human subjectivity.

The Greek philosopher Plato is making a point about the infinity of subjectivity and the relativity of each written statement. He seldom states an opinion in his own name. He relates stories told by people who met people citing people talking at (e.g.) a dinner, where people were talking about other people telling stories, who … I think you get my drift by now.

Each statement is a statement by a subject with its own history and within its own context. Being inside you cannot look from the outside. If you could, you would be in yet another inside.

Because of its infinity subjectivity can never completely be described or programmed. That’s why there never will be an android or human robot with the feature of an ego with true subjectivity. That’s why we will never be able to record our dreams.

• To dream is a state of being.
• You cannot relate a state of being.
• If you reached perfect relaxation or oneness in meditation all you can relate are allegories in pictures or sounds.
• Dreams are experiences.
• You cannot relate an experience. (That’s why education is so difficult)
• If you spent a night in the desert recording your experience with a camcorder you could relate some of the pictures you saw – but not the experience.

At the foot of the lighthouse there is no light.
The hand holding the flashlight stays in the dark.

Only Time Can Tell

My surreal hometown. By Detlef.Yesterday while I was visiting my father in the small town where I was born and raised we were shopping at the supermarket.

As usual the sales floor was flooded  with music. Pushing our shopping cart through the aisles we had the pleasure to be entertained by yet another version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.  I was irritated, because Dylan’s song has always been special to me and still means something to me.

Shopping for milk, canned lentil soup, onions and toilet paper while hearing from the vagabond rapping at my door wearing the clothes I once wore I wondered: is there anything more surreal than reality?

Dylan, Jagger and Miles Davis were the clothes I wore growing up in this small town in northern Germany during the seventies. “I never want to be like my parents” was the motto of my peer group and we were proud that our parents resented our music violently. It had to be this way.

In our town our music was played in just one club , where most of us were strictly forbidden to enter by our parents – one more reason to hang out there on a daily basis.

As Dylan’s song has found its way into the supermarkets: what has happened to our ideals of the seventies? Are they all mainstream now? Does the next generation see anything in us they never want to be? What is the ridiculous or even horrendous “flash in the pan” today going mainstream 30 years from now?

I like “Richards idea, we both being two grumpy old bloggers standing to the side” by the time, shaking our heads – in disapproval?

Only time can tell.  See you in 2039!

Let's find a way to do things wrong

by DetlefYou want to do the right thing. You want to do it the right way. You enjoy yourself when it turns out you were right.

“Wow, I knew it! I was right from the start!”

Big Deal.  – So what?

“Whoever is right has to buy the next round.”

Being right is such a bore. It’s okay. It’s right. It’s true –  It’s a yawn.

Being wrong is so much more interesting. Things didn’t turn out the way you anticipated.  Life is life, life is more complex than the image about life we have in our mind, life is exciting and full of suspense.

Very often if things go according to plan we meet disaster.

So let’s all convene under the storyteller tree and figure out a way to do things the wrong way.