My 2 lifes in 48 years & the decline of the German civil society

Englisch

Christmas is approaching and it is the time of reflection and silence that allows you to look back on a wonderful childhood and also the dear people you have already lost along the way.

As Roger Willemsen described the moment of change in his book: The Knacks, 2008. “There comes a moment in every life when time takes a different path than you do. You let the world go!”

For me, such a time was in my early 30s (2007) when I failed my Orientalist studies for the second time because I had “messed up” my master’s thesis, even though I had previously passed all the exams in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. In Germany it’s over after 2 attempts, in contrast to Austria, where some people get their master’s degree after 35 semesters. 🥳

Anyway, Asia and the Orient were my passion for a good 10 years. I built a library of books from Cambridge and Oxford University Press literature, as well as deGruyter and Brill in Leiden, as well as several other academic publishers who published excellent books on Islam and the Middle East.

I traveled to Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, UAE, as well as conferences from London, Paris to Budapest and Rome on the subject of Islamic illumination and art.

Then came the bang. Expelled from university, 1 year job search and regeneration. Then 1 year of Hartz IV. – “…and the day is yours ;-)!” until I caught myself again in 2009 and remembered my student job roots as a headhunter, which was how I supported my studies, my library and traveling for 10 years had financed.

Life went on, but the old life and the friends and acquaintances were mostly gone. Yes, I had lived in an academic bubble for 10 years with a lot of inspiration and upper-class middle-class friends who lived in their own bubble and were softer on ‘old money’ or still got the right job through vitamin B.

My new era of work began in my early 30s and 5 years later, at 36, that of entrepreneurship.

From Hartz IV to an office job, to the start-up program, to an entrepreneur in Vienna as Piefke. Well hello!

Now almost 12 years later it feels like 2 lifetimes. The first life in the educated citizen bubble as an academic and esthete with the aim of changing the world and mediating between East and West. The 2nd life of Hartz IV. to become an entrepreneur, closer to reality than before and sometimes in the hamster wheel, intellectually very underchallenged, but still making money.

Maybe it’s because I’ll be 50 in two years and people are reflecting more on my life so far, but it currently seems to me to be a time that is so absurd and throws everything I’ve learned so far out of the window. tramples on every common sense and every logic and many are resigned to politics and economics, because their common sense has been greatly insulted in recent years by absurd behavior against every law of nature and what has been learned.

All the values ​​and educational measures of the 80s and 90s that one had learned, action and reaction, behavior and the consequences of it, no longer seem to apply, because a certain upper class in politics and business, which is essentially only mediocre to no level, but has a claim to power and does what she wants.

The middle class is groaning under ever higher taxes, bans, requirements and vague ideas that are created by people who simply implement their ideas without practical experience and specialist knowledge.

The first farmers and honest craftsmen dare to protest, but these are downplayed again. The intellectuals are still doing too well because they have inherited and can continue to afford a lot of words instead of real actions, and are not judged by that, like an entrepreneur who was successful or whose business collapsed because he wasn’t.

The risk in politics and the first two levels of the economy is very low these days because people protect each other and don’t end up in the gulag if they make bad decisions.

I also now ask myself, what can we, who still have common sense and actually know what the neutral measure of all things is, do to turn things around for the population and future generations? Should we start a revolution? Probably no one will come because everyone is full and the electricity isn’t out yet in Germany. Should we continue to ignore everything, like I did for the last 4 years and spent more time with my family and read comics and books, even created a parallel world to what’s going on outside.

I think there are so many good things that we learned from our parents and grandparents, both from war generations, that we could transfer into today’s world, but the general public is only interested in TikTok, Insta, climate rescue with drops on hot stones and distraction. Give them WIFI and a new iPhone every two years and they’ll continue to live dutifully in the matrix while a few elites line their pockets and invent absurd business constructs like Wirecard and Signa, which the general public will pay for anyway after the crash.

Christmas is always a time for reflection, a time to reinvent yourself and at least reflect on the past year. For the coming year, I would like to see the silent masses mobilize more and put all the things that are currently in trouble back on track. Because our children actually deserve real role models and personalities, rather than the current puppet theater of fakers, dreamers and fact deniers. What are real role models?

These are craftsmen, individual entrepreneurs, nursing staff, educators, teachers, police and fire departments, academics from the old school (of whom, unfortunately, many have already died – like my father), simply people who know hardship, risk and responsibility, who are constantly continuing their education , but also implementing instead of just chasing ideas. People who can be measured by actions. People who work hard and are not pseudo-entrepreneurs because they are actually living off a legacy built by the 2 generations before them.

Change is always uncomfortable, but watching in shock and writing against it on social media (like with this article) doesn’t make any difference. Unfortunately.

Sometimes I think of a science fiction scenario that brutally changes and then we have order, like after tidying up Messi’s apartment. It goes like this:

An extraterrestrial power with soldiers and spaceships gives all people who are real role models, see above, the power to rearrange the world according to their ideas. She was able to locate these people using alien technology, read their previous lives and the core of their personality, which is why they are the chosen ones.

A mixture of Don’t be evil and consistency is the new motto, but far away from woke dreams.

A real order is being established that does not harm anyone, but holds gamblers in politics and business accountable instead of paying them millions in bonuses.

Yes, sometimes totalitarian regimes also have something good, even if I, for example, B. would only implement half of it. We would need a mix of USA democracy, China and the Middle East and Europe. Religion would be a private matter and here too there would be clear rules against extremists, regardless of their stripe.

Educating a society is like educating children, only with foresight. There needs to be the right balance between punishment and reward and consistent implementation. What is needed are simple rules of the game that apply to everyone without legal and democratic subtleties that only serve as a loophole or block quick decisions. Yes, we are slowly becoming over-bureaucratized and over-democratized.

Currently I see more and more disorientated young people who lack stability in life because everything was and always is ok. Too much laissez-faire.

When I think about the old friends from my academic bubble, and I’m talking about Gen X and maybe a few boomers, they are on a better path. Anyone who attended a boarding school, like me, and who is no stranger to the Anglo-Saxon upbringing a la ‘Dead Poets Society’, will find their place in life from their mid-30s onwards, because they have values, community, humility and education within them, from which one can It lasts a lifetime and makes you a mature, responsible person.

Anyone who had parents who abhorred consequences and where everything was always completely OK is now disoriented in life and is addicted to fixed ideas and dreams, unless he/she/it built something up as an entrepreneur from scratch.

Anyone who has inherited a lot and has had no upbringing that the inherited wealth should not be spent but rather increased and is only borrowed for the next generation. Anyone who has not learned this is also lost, becomes a green or an esoteric and the grandpa who built up the wealth had, rotating in the grave.

Unfortunately, this waste of resources repeats itself every 3 generations. It used to be said that the 1st earns, the 2nd manages and the 3rd becomes an artist. And then it starts all over again.

Presumably everything has to get worse before reconstruction can succeed or the Chinese will help the West to return to its true values ​​and discipline by conquering the West instead of letting the aliens do it.

Personally, for example, I am not afraid of an Asian conquest of the West, because I believe Europe has long been like “the sick man on the Bosphorus” or the Roman Empire before the invasion of the Goths.

We still live in bacon and dance through the colorful world and yet we are a divided Europe that cannot see the future and the storm on the horizon.

The quiet, silent majority must come into focus again and seize power and shape it according to old values ​​and experiences, not according to green ban utopias that are based only on emotions.

If pensioners who have worked for 40 years have to go collect bottles, and around 4 million able-bodied people in Germany receive citizen’s benefit and therefore perhaps only have €400 less in their wallets than normal earners, then something seriously is no longer right in our society.

In France there was 1789, when the elites got too crazy and then Robespierre came along, but the Germans are in a state of shock and are hoping for a Christmas miracle.

We can do it, we should think, if we reverse the current grievances in politics and the economy and renew Germany in a meaningful way without bans. We should become fit again for the future in the areas of economy, energy, military and education. We have the know-how and the brains for this in Germany, they are just hiding among the 52% of the silent, tolerated masses who do not dare to come into the light.

Rammstein expressed it well 3 years ago in his Germany song: “Germany, my heart in flames, wants to love and condemn you.” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc]We Germans are just onlookers in our own country and obediently follow what is dictated to us from above through higher taxes and energy regulation.

A healthy national pride like the Italians, French or Spanish have is forbidden to us because of our past.

What are we actually afraid of?

That 20-year-old teenagers who have accomplished nothing except parroting ideological fantasies are calling us Nazis?

That can’t be it, dear people.

Remember your roots and what you have achieved so far and don’t let anyone keep your mouth shut, because we are still silent, but there are many of us.

Yes, there are more like-minded people out there than you think, but through passivity you are ruled and patronized by mediocrity, which brazenly grabs power, and even succeeds with it, because the German Michel allows it, rubbing his eyes in disbelief, what is happening right now.

Thomas Zahlten, Vienna 23.12.23, the Breadhunter