Authenticity

Modern societies consist of a dubious principle, because its achievements are increased and decreased at the same time. By expanding the division of tasks the holistic forces representing what is behind are on the decline. On the one hand, the amount of knowledge is growing; on the other, it becomes less and less manifest. Domains of knowledge pile up without resulting in a general sum of individually relevant information. Simply because its quantity is beyond individual capacity. As a consequence, sectorial information A can at best evoke confidence within sector B that A will not harm B. Especially technological innovations can not deny that faint feeling of uneasiness.
Nowadays it is the mass media which own the monopoly of linking social groups. They are meant to generate the public. And this public consists of leftovers – all you cannot attribute to the other expert sectors. For this reason we talk about public opinion rather than public knowledge. This is an immanent problem – neither the producing nor the consuming factors of public dicourse are endowed with insight into what is reported. Otherwise we could not call them the public. In short: The Public is the battlefield of dilettants such as you and me.
Knowledge provided by mass media is predominantly virtual. To put it more complicated: it is not autoptical. It is impossible to prove or refute if dog leashes have ceased to be regarded a useful instrument in Iraq, not even what is happening two blocks away at this very moment because that would mean one was not sitting in front of this text. So the seaming side of modern enlightenment is its growing demand for attention and trust. As we are forced to rely on other people, we are condemned to convert hope into guess that these other people (the experts) will do the right things. That is why modern enlightenment is increasingly dependent on confidence constantly searching for credibility.
Credibility means both competence and reliabilty. It is apalling to be reigned by faithful idiots as well as by cynical technocrats.But in our knpowledge based society we are more inclined to assume the publically
observed expert is competent (just because we cannot know better). And this means it is reliability that is the problematic factor.
But how to do the right things in public? How to appear credible under the present conditions? It goes without saying that our political representatives (as the embodied public actors) attach very much importance to that issue. The answer is difficult, since, unfortunately, public perception changes beyond predictability. Might dozens of PR consultants, demoscopes and spin doctors try to evoke a different impression: We are not dogs secreting saliva because someone rings a bell. And what is worse, public opinion has become aware that media reports create their own kind of reality: that politicians act differently depending on whether they communicate secretly or in public. And it is that person which lets us ignore that insight who is the one to gain consent. The extent of ignorance is called authenticity. Surprisingly, authenticity is time-bound; for instance, being authentical in the Third Reich has come totally out of fashion; especially public shouting does not generate confidence anymore.
Therefore is seems the requirements of authenticity have increased to a large degree; as a matter of fact, they cannot be
fulfilled anymore, because today two aspects interfere that can only be analytically but not factually separated:
A) the public person claiming to be authentical is to be the way he is –. In other words, he is to be a real person.
B) the public person claiming to be authentical is to appear to be the way he is. In other words, he is to be a media personality.
As soon as the intended effect comes into sight, as soon as one has to be real in front of observers, strategical conscience breaks in. The public person is aware that his authenticity is examined. As a consequence, he cannot be that kind of person he might be in private. So, the demand is paradoxical, because it mixes up publicity and privacy. And it is the fact that this is impossible that makes it that interesting. A public person is necessarily a performer, and the audience, the public, is prepared to equate him with a liar, to suspect the appearances are deceptive. Many media attacks on privacy are owing to the inspired efforts to look behind the mirror, to observe with the camera without the camera, to find out what person the personality is.
Once celebrities in politics and economy could faithfully consult media consultants (mostly journalist deserts) who gave the same kind of advice to any face and forgot that lifting the corner of the mouth looked in one case malicious, but in the other sly. Well, those times are over. Nowadays authenticity demands different strategies. Having invested some thought on that issue, the author has come to the conclusion that there are two some politicians are already applying:
1) They turn inquiries into their authenticity in a modest lesson on the topic of media image constraints. Motto: "As a journalist, you ought to be aware of your professional expectations. We both know how to play the game, after all."
2) They ostentatiously (!) take pains to appear to be as boring, unimaginative and rhetorically incompetent as possible. Motto: "Attention! I am real. After all, there are too many swindlers who bombard the public with oratorical unit constructions. I am so ... matter-of-fact."
Both strategies count on minus times minus making plus. Strategy 1 argues: Yes, I am real, because I admit I cannot be real. Strategy 2 prefers to deconstruct the image of competence the media create: Yes, I am real, because I am incompetent.
In sum: Is an authentical person someone who lies best? Not necessarily: Authenticity means believing one's own lies.

Anti-Semitism

Any way you look at it, no matter how long you hold your breath - the phenomenon anti-Semitism will continue to be a crucial issue for Germany. Everybody sighs we could easily dispense with the discussion but will let himself be carried away into a comment, as soon as the next debate emerges. By now we have grown accustomed to the public discourse so that we can quite easily recognize a pattern of topicalization. All you need is a scandal. Do not worry if there is none - you can just as easily produces your own. Then everything will go its own way - in five steps.
I) An event, maybe concerning foreign affairs, triggers off a (halfly-) public evaluation of Israel or single Jews or all Jews and their relationship to Nazi Germany or the Federal Republic.
II) Someone retorts this evaluation and raises the objection of anti-Semitism.
III) Hey presto! Providing there is nothing more important lurking in the background (the world championship in football, for instance), the journalistic outcry breaks.
IV) Depending on cold-bloodedness the principle debate (Germanys's attitude towards its past) might be delayed. But to no avail - sooner or later it will emerge.
V) After one or two weeks the turmoil is over and we can turn to daily politics again.
The interesting thing about the debate is it continues to return - restlessly, endlessly, nearly just the way anti-semites have always imagined the eternal pariah Ahasverus, thus making their special contribution to the issue projecting complexes. Since the babble cannot be exterminated, we may conceive it as a kind of dynamic system - a system of thought, to be more precise. Dynamic systems must have a minimum of self-control, which means they cannot simply created by a few intelligent engineers and governed all the time. Self-control second order cybernetics calls autopoiesis means the system produces its elements it consists of by itself - while keeping up constant contact with its environemnt. In relation to anti-Semitism we might draw the conclusion its elements, resentments against Jewish people, make no difference at all what is happening on the outside - providing it can be fit into its ideology. Needless to say, an anti-semite in the flesh can do so effortlessly - if a Jew behaves badly, he will feel just as confirmed as if he behaves well (which he is quick to demask as typically Jewish, crafty dissimulation) or even does not do anything at all. Anti-semites can always conjure up the spectre of wirepuller.
What distinguishes the term anti-Semitism from traditional hatred of Jews historical research for a long time has described as secular, modern forming. While in the Middle Ages Jews had been despised for their religion (anti-judaism), this aspect became of second importance in comparison with racist depreciation during the modern times. Racial argumantation lays the foundation of modern anti-Semitism which refuses to treat Jewish converts in the least. But this does not mean religious resentments did not play a part at all. It seems to be more precise to say that modern anti-Semitism rather establishes a different coupling between the elements of thought; instead of tightly linking Jewish inferiority with the confession it looses the connection between the various relations - no matter if they are moral, religious, economical, racial, political, hygienic. And it is just this kind of ambiguity, the strict depreciation of the Jews on the one hand, the extremely flexibile (if not exchangeable) invention of examples on the other, which makes anti-Semitism a constant threat. Its examples create the impression to be inductive, even though they are only illustrative. There is no objective proof when you know what you will know in the first place.
The purpose anti-Semitism is to serve is obvious. It is the cement which keeps ethnic groups together which long for being regarded as a nation but suffer from a severe inferiority complex - by rigorously excluding people of a (supposed) Jewish descend. There is no use in pointing out the lack of factuality it has, for, as has been said, it is the social function which counts. Were there no Jews, they had to be invented. And, as a matter of fact, it is done. It works so insidiuously well, because the persevering use of anti-Semitic stereotypes conceals their fictional status. It is hard to tell reliable rumours from truth.
Anti-Semitism is so complicated, because it is so unbelievably simple. For that reason it can back its claim by anything, unites various ethnic groups, outlasts the centuries. That is why its counterpart for Reason's and Humanity's sake is similarly simple. At worst it quotes documentaries to give the anti-semites watertight evidence they are mislead, the holocaust really happened and so on. This is an entirely useless endeavour which at best helps to clarify one's own, anti-anti-Semitic position, but not to refute the hatred of Jews. Confrontations induces self-trivilization (just like the antisemites), but just the other way round. One runs the risk of becoming a biasedfriend instead of an enemy of the Jews. At least the public discourse works along the tertium non datur principle. Who is not for the Jews, is against them - including Israel. In a way (quite a tragical irony) both parties deny Jewish people are human beings: The anti-semites by defaming them as subhuman creatures, the philo-Semites by regarding them as mere victims who make no human mistakes on principle. But as philo-Semitism is more intelligent than the anti-Semitism its public argumentation is a little more unseasy, for contrarily to the enemy of the Jews it is aware of its self-trivilization. To put it differently: It is not only the antisemite who thinks there is a taboo of political correctness (that is to say Jews are not Israelis, we are not allowed to criticize Jews), but the philo-Semite does the same - but not to denounce it, but to keep it uo at all costs. Just because of that decreed philo-Semitism is problematic. Fearing one could involuntarily back anti-Semitic hallucinations one does not want to know anything about the lapses the group to be defended makes. As time goes by the boundary between criticism and hatred becomes blurred; the code phrase is 'freedom of opinion'. Today's anti-Semitism is not dangerous, because it is latent (for who can judge from the outside if someone rejects someone because he is Jewish by chance or because he represents all Jews?), but because it is derived: Watching a group be defended all the time against criticism will convert the denied potential into hatred. That way the philo-Semites generate by fear of existing anti-Semitism its derived form - unintentionally and excusably. Their mistake is simply they want to seriously tackle the anti-Semites, thus entering a kind of argumentative symmetry, thus upvaluing anti-semitism. Following the understandable motto to nip things in the bud they put any kind of criticism under a general suspicion. Some critics actually desert to the people who hate.
As can be seen, the hatred of Jews will continue to exist; regardless if one is against it or not. However, it will be much to any human's relief if the first alternative is chosen.

Agenda

Club members in the flesh might be accustomed to that voluptuous manner in which the notabilities (that is right: the ones who may speak without being asked) celebrate an indestructible ritual: Calling and ticking off the agenda. Mostly consisting of seven issues (in doing so, number seven entitled diverse will be the most dazzling but dubious one) it gives the necessary discipline to the urge to communicate. The satisfactory feeling to put something into work is too intriguing, after all.
In the course of globalization the image of agendas have changed, suggesting business meetings with round tables and four different kinds of juice and not so much rabbits breeders' associations. Agendas seem to be dynamical, requiring dashy teamwork instead of shirtsleeve wrangling for the right to speak; after all the English corresponding phrase is "what is do be done".
Media researchers have known the term for quite a while; they mean by agenda publically relevant issues dominating the headlines - in short anything which moves the newspaper reader or the news viewer. And the wider the space given to an issue, the higher it is placed on the agenda, the more relevant it is. And here comes the question: relevant - to whom? Or the other way round: Who determines what is relevant? The answer will be easy if we take the good old rabbit breeders' association; there is the managing committee which takes up - entirely democratically, of course - the devoted grassroots' suggestions and makes them a topic. Still, the public just is no club. Once again: Who makes the decision? Of course some readers might shake their heads and say, simply the media. They have a nose for what is in the air and all they do is to take it up.
This is not always that easy. Media research has produced a catalogue of criteria, the so-called news factors which influence the chances of success of a topic to be included in the agenda. The more news factors are part of a potential message, the better is the prospect of publishing. For example, roughly three injured train passengers in England are equal to three dead ones in Switzerland, 30 ones in Czechia, 80 ones in Bulgaria, 140 ones in India, 250 ones in Central or South Africa. This is the factor vicinity. If, in contrast, a baby miraculously survives three days in the ruins, then there will be the human interst component whcih might interest all mothers, at least all housewives. If a frustrated muddlehead slaps a stranger's face, this will make at best five lines in the local newspaper - on condition a fre-for-all has evolved. But if the stranger is by accident the PM, then the national media will seize upon it - even without a subsequent free-for-all. However, this is no natural law. Simply because we can never be sure the media actually have the nose.
So it is no surprise the public services providers look around for help to fulfill the responsible task confidently. Now enter politics. It steps into the breach and gives the media useful advice. To be more exact, the more important newspapers, magazines and stations. As soon as they will have let themselves be inspired, the remaining and less important media will follow with relief. Just in the age of increasing competion and stingy advert customers especially print media are worried about the possibility of having placed the wrong issue high upon the agenda. Fear of isolation leads to preferring declining together to maybe prevailing alone.
Political assistance and media information is scientifically called 'agenda setting'. Contact between editorial offices and parliamentary factions are maintained. For a success-oriented politician it is very important, though, not to simply plead self-interest when sharpening editors - far from it, the guardians of democracy will demand some reasons why a message might be of public interest. So it will not be a bad idea to take news factors to heart or to practice subdued self-promotion when emitting press releases. For that reason during election campaigns politicians cuddle anything which could not be got out of danger in time, look out diligently for actual football results to illustrate their declarations of political intent.
Adjusting to media agenda in advance is what PR really is all about. It is called issue management. If possible, one does not content oneself to wait for a public issue to enter, but rather creates it oneself. But this takes more than distributing bright coloured balloons with counted canapés to hungry newspaper photographers on Open Days. This is because the desire of PR centres upon the ideal of the communicative preventive strike. In the long run it will be quite straining and unsatisfactory to have to practice constant crisis management and to argue defensively.
The interchange of politics and journalism, in particular on the interface of PR, is usually observed in a one-sided way. Political scientists complain about the increasing influence of tabloids and TV, personalization at the expense of factual issues, the uninhibited media democracy, as practiced by the head of government. In turn journalism admonishes us of the media independence being jeopardied. Truth lies halfway in between. Politics and journalism work independently, but not detachedly. Both sides watch each other permanently and what is really surprising is they have not fallen into expectant rigidity yet - according to the motto: What would you write if we did so and so? - Well. Let's see. Why? Do you intend to do so? - No, no. We were just talking hypothetically. - We see. PR's job is to have that talk monologically with itself.
What distinguishes media agenda most clearly from club agenda is that the former fixes its issues any minute again, unable to deal with them in conclusion. Unlike clubs requiring a majority decision the media public must rely on the practice that yesterday's hot issue will be forgotten tomorrow. So whatever is meant to generate enlightening discussions, rational forming of public opinion, civil societies, is merely a medial end in itself. There is no other way, for otherwise the newspaper would be filled differently and we would not know certain celebrities.

Administration

O thou enslaved, tied up, sedated giant of hampered might, thou shaven Simson, thou poor Germany - the industrious official dwarves have a strangle on you, handcuffing even the slightest jerk of the muscles with a tight paper string of freshly printed ordinance amendments! The elegies are echoing throughout the country. In a terrified way Germany is registring the registry's power still on the increase. No street sign, no pavement café's sunshade, no new couch in the lower-class housing estates escapes the vigilant eyes of this Argus-Hydra called administration. A visit at the public authorities gives a very good reason for filing away a complete day under debit balance in the file Modern Life - in duplicate, mark you!
Administration paralyzes and keeps in the leading strings; its constitutional employer, the citizen, turns his horrified back from the monstrous child of civilization. There is a certain irony to it - originally the administrative structure promised the opposite: legal protection and freedom from the despotism which characterized any Father of the Land whose mood determined his serves' future. The citizens might have celebrated the gained beginnings of increased security as a milestone on the way to enlightened rationality - but it slipped their attention that authorities and officals also freed the tyrant of his obligation to make casuistic decisions all the time. This means he had to do justice exclusively in the single case, not by comparison - running the risk of greeting the next morning with an axe in his head.
The increasing literalization of the population, just like office system becoming a work of art has contributed to the adminsitration turning into a system of its own. This could only work because it had always been meant to serve a purely executive function. That means, in formal administration has no power - it helps realize it. According to its self-image, it is no autonomous social function system - like economy, politics, religion, art, education, for instance -, but an organizational one - no constitutional end in itself, a means.
And just that is why administration is that indestructible - no matter how paradoxial this might sound. Day by day people compete for power, hectically handing over the relay of guidelines, but putting that into practice is much less attractive. Therefore admninistration remains what and how it is. This explains the stoic image the clients who believe time is money have been attaching to our public servants. So administration has become unnoticed - like any system, regardless what social level it occupies - its own pivot. As a means it is its own end. That is why it will not alter. In so far it is insensitive to the environment. We are always reminded of that whenever we come across a Führer's ordinance still valid, particularly concerning nationality. Or, to be less compromising: No matter if the territorial prince, the German Kaiser, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the FRG or the GDR defined the form of government - there have always been residents' registration offices which were entirely unimpressed by the sometimes dramatic revolutions surrounding them. According to the assumption the more evasive systems control the less evasive ones it is obvious that in the long run administration will regulate itself, legislative representatives may come and go.
What makes administration a rock in the breakers of panicky innovation is one more paradoxy: It is constant just because it permanently innovates. It has not crumbled into dust yet, as it realizes day by day dozens of new decrees, trying to stop more and more tiny loopholes total burocracy inevitably leaves, thus creating new ones to which it can react again by creating new ones and so on. And if there is nothing else on the agenda, it will regulate its own regulations, decree its own decrees - this is an ordinary system procedure, too, called 'reflexivation' - the permanent self-application of an operation. Biological systems practice cell division. Administration applies conferring an application form. It is a particularly interesting specimen for the modern Theory of Social Systems which assumes the self-maintenance of dynamic systems. Accordingly, the administrative structures are so rigid, because their procedural realization is so flowing. Sometimes - probably not too rarely - to such an extent that citizen and, say, revenue officer helplessly look at each other when trying to clarify the latest ordinance. The only difference is the officer recieves the money the citizen is to pay extra. For basically modern distinction of role and person consists of the administrative acievement. Persons are exchangeable - unlike administrative duties. At least only by administrative effort.
Therefore the only way to check the tangled administrative mass is to enact new decrees, to establish new posts to replace the old ones. Even though ancient mythology nowadys can only interest incorrigible idlers, it is replete with a battery of fable figures we can profit by knowing. For that sake there is not only Hercules, but also the above-mentioned Hydra constantly replacing each cut-off head with countless new ones. But whether the desired shrinking following the path of lean management will really serve the common benefit if the police and the refuse collection disappear within the Black Hole of outsourcing remanins a question the administration is not even allowed to answer - after all it is meant to realize what has been conceived, not to conceive on its own.

Action

In many languages, words and actions are oppositions. Words seem to belong to the dusky domain of theoretical talking, whereas it is the action which courageously creates facts. Take, for instance, the role model of the taciturn cowboy whose communication efforts are focussed upon twinkling and spitting in the prairie wind while his gun acts. But even in civilized areas there are people who deliberate, announce, threaten, promise, and others who shut up and realize the talking. People languish for those active men or women prepared to end all the mourning and babbling. Without explanation, without hesitation.
But this is a misunderstanding of great consequences – and it is due to the implications of the word (!) action. Since human beings rely more exclusively than ever on their eyes, they concentrate on the immediately visible and neglect what can be heard in between. Furthermore, it is easier to close one's eyes than to listen carefully. But if we compare words with actions, it will strike us that they do not differ that much. After all, they both require consciousness and mind; and both of them are meaningful (it might only be dubious what meaning they convey). And both of them can be described with regards to their beginnings, their proceedings and their effects. Describing means understanding. Understanding is based on cultural convention. Words and actions are not contradictory; all the same, they are interdependent, for words must be embodied by actions, and actions become actions by being put in a verbal form. Otherwise we could only speak about behaviour that remains to be interpeted as meaningful action.
Cultural convention can only reveal itself within a certain type of situation. This especially goes for verbal actions. An utterance such as "He is very intelligent" can express as various action patterns as a praise, an envious concession, an ironical remark, a warning. That is why verbal actions are often ambiguous and much more comlicated to handle, for as opposed to nonverbal action they are always directed towards a partner player. We never act alone, whenever we speak; even monologues imagine an interlocutor.
It is the observable effect which separates words and actions. Hitting a nail into a wall to fix a picture is simple by comparison; but nailing another person to the wall in an argument is in contrast very problematic. But this by no means implies using words has no effects and is no action of full value. Vast quantities of human beings have already been delegated in transcendence because someone (but a certain someone) has just uttered certain words referring to a mighty instance called God, Allah, Property, Nation, Race, thus triggering off the manifest action. But we need not address to the world concience. Just look at everyday life. Some diligently chosen words suffice to contract marriages, arrest persons, put masses into a state of highest joy or anger. The issue becomes most crucial when someone intends to achieve a certain effect X, but lamentably ends up with Y - the notorious boomerang effect, for instance when you get spanked for a compliment. Sound waves sometimes generate physical uneasiness.
So we should not be too prompt to separate words from actions. And that fewer and fewer persons are ready to take over responsibility for what they have said does not back denial of words as actions - quite the contrary. Even modern sociological theories which prefer talking about communication to action confirm personal communication must be conceived as action. To put it differently: It may be true all of us are determined by constraints of matter - but we remain us. And at the age of automatism we do not respect people who put decisions into practice, but people who declare themselves responsible. We should not get fatigued to stress that especially persons in leading positions get also paid for being personal address groups for social sanctions. That the word became flesh is only partly true; backbone is indispensable, too.

Accordeon

Thanks to chaos theory we shall be seized by a pleasant horror whenever we see a butterfly spreading its wings. We might even be tempted to operate the stop watch, waiting for the real crash. Quite a similar thing applies to the noisy date making for après ski in the avalanche warning sector or the pub customer's decision to buy another drink while carrying a knife in his pocket. The vernacular reflects upon the great effects of the small cause. Impredictable and maybe for that reason inevitable.
For the development of modern jurisprudence as well as modern philosphy of language this cause-effects-relation has been a major issue. Both of them understood from the start what modern natural science had to strenuously acquire - the insight into the fact causality does not degrade the universe to a merely mechanic clockwork that easy we can manipulate thanks to our superior intellect like we want to. To jurisprudence this uncertain causality refers to an individual's responsibilty for a breach of law. To language philosophy it refers to the difficulty in defining everyday action. E.g.: The superior mentions to the subordinate: “I'm giving you a free hand.” This can have all kinds of meaning: a direction, a stimulation, a warning. It depends on what insight into the utterance conditions the observer has, what he uses to understand what is said - which means to characterize it as a certain action by interpeting. Insofar there is no objective action independent on that person to attributing a term of action to it. The only thing which can be relatively easy stated is the word-by-word quotation of the utterance. And this is it.
Analytical philosophy of language calls this common denominator basis action. Unfortunately, basis does not mean here the core which keeps the world of language together, but rather an action atom. Too small, too general to be informative. No matter how we make out the action, what consequences we take into account or neglect, it is solely the basis action which will remain unchanged. What happened before, what will happen afterwards, might help to understand the complex, but is bound to transcend the basis action.
For describing that phenomenon analysis has found the nice image of an accordeon. We can expand it to the length of two arms or fold it up to its original finger state. But the important thing is this original state does not make a sound. It merely waits to be expanded, interpeted. So the question remains if we really have found the right measure, taken the relevant aspects into consideration. That is why the court sentence will be negotiated with reference to the attested actant's responsibility. That is why one and the same utterance might be regarded by two different hearers (at least) two different speech acts. That is why second order cybernetics is interested in dealing with observing instead of observed systems.
Maybe we should play the accordeon more often before jumping to the conclusion that reception of Heavy Metal or violent videos is a lethal basis action per se.

This writer's English ranges from terrible to appalling, but he hopes the readers will show some mercy.